ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now with the government spending review looming, the debate over whether the defence budget can take any more cuts marches on. In Jeff Randall’s documentary on Sky News last week the Head of the Army raised concerns about the effect further savings could have on Britain’s defence capabilities but as you saw earlier in this hour, the Prime Minister insists there is room for further efficiencies. [Excerpt from Jeff Randall programme] I am joined now as you can see by the former Defence Secretary, Lord Reid, of course much experienced about Afghanistan. I want to start though, Lord Reid, more broadly about the issue of our defence capabilities being eroded by cuts. I suppose to work out whether you have got sufficient resources you have to work out and define the kind of threat you might face.

LORD REID: And the role you want to play in the world because it’s all very well saying we’ve got the fourth or fifth largest defence expenditure but first of all, if your foreign policy ambitions merit the first or second, then there is obviously a disjunction between the two. The second one is to say what range of capabilities do we need and in today’s world if you want to play a leading role you have the conventional forces, the manpower, you also have nuclear forces and you have the growing threat of cyber which is becoming the firth domain of potential conflict over land, sea, air and space. So my worry would be when someone like Sir Peter Wall, General Sir Peter Wall, says what he says, I think we should listen. We’re always used to ex-military or ex-secretaries of state complaining or criticising or putting in their tuppence worth, when the existing Chief of the General Staff backed by his boss, the existing Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir David Richards, says look, we’re giving you a gypsies warning on this, I think we have got to take this very seriously indeed.

DM: But aren’t we being told that Afghanistan is nearly over, Iraq is certainly over and interventions like that are probably not going to happen again. We’ll park Syria for a moment but what we know about Syria, it’s not going that way, I want to ask you a specific question about that in a moment but the threat is going to be different so shouldn’t we concentrate for instance on cyber, on the lone wolves who are capable of launching terrorist attacks, things like that?

LORD REID: Well there is now a seamless threat, you are quite right on that Dermot, because we can no longer describe the threat as only defence or only foreign affairs, separated from domestic affairs. There is a degree of seamless threat but the threat isn’t going away. I mean Iran is going towards nuclear status, there are diplomatic moves and economic sanctions to try and stop it but it’s there. Conflicts are burgeoning in many, many parts of the world and if your assumption is right, that the Prime Minister is saying no, we’re not going in there, that’s all right, we don’t have the capabilities to do that while we are still in Afghanistan, that would be one thing but if we are still in Afghanistan and we haven’t yet removed ourselves from Afghanistan and we are saying yes, we are going to Libya, yes let’s go into Syria or wherever it is, that puts an undue burden on the British Armed Forces and what I understand General Wall to be saying is that if you cut the forces the way you’ve done and continue to do, you have to cut your ambitions. So it is ironic that on the very week he’s saying this, the Prime Minister is suggesting that we either put arms in or put a no fly zone into Syria. There are free standing arguments for and against that ….

DM: Well let me ask you about that specifically, leaving aside the issue of resources, I mean you come from a government that was the most actively interventionist on foreign fields, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list goes on but what about Syria?

LORD REID: Well I would be very cautious. I don’t think there are any good choices here. I understand people’s frustration, this is a monstrous regime but let’s take Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. This isn’t like Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a direct threat to his neighbours, he had invaded Iraq, he had invaded Kuwait, he had massed troops at the borders of Saudi Arabia, he had missiled Israel. Assad, monstrous though he is, wasn’t in that position. Secondly, in Afghanistan there was a direct threat to us because it was where the attacks on the West were being rehearsed, launched and the Al Qaeda being protected, so that’s the first thing. The second thing is that …

DM: That’s the real politic, what about the moral dimension to what Assad is doing? There was a moral dimension to Labour’s foreign policy so …

LORD REID: Absolutely, there is always a moral dimension, including doing nothing. That’s what I used to say in Iraq, the idea that you do nothing does not absolve you of responsibility and God forbid that Saddam Hussein was around at the moment, in the middle of what is going on in that region, because in some ways he would have made Assad look almost a gentleman because he was a monster as well. Nevertheless there are two problems with Syria I see. First of all, you start putting arms in there, a significant amount of the opposition to Assad is Jihadist, Al Qaeda related, people like Jabat Al Nusra and so on and there is always the problem that they will get hold of those weapons. The second thing is, Syria is just becoming a battlefield in a wider conflict, not least the Sunni-Shia conflict, and throwing oil on the flames in that region by getting involved, it seems to me to have many more dangers than many of the previous interventions.

DM: A lot of those views would be expressed in any debate in the House of Commons on this issue. Do you think there should be a full debate and a binding vote on military action, further military action in Syria?

LORD REID: I think there should certainly be a debate if there is going to be an escalation. During the week I said that one of the problems here is you start by saying lets provide small arms and then somebody says that won’t shift the balance of military power so you have to provide anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry so there is a greater danger that will fall into the other hands. Then somebody says, like John McCain has said in the United States, yes, but really Assad’s great superiority is in the air so you have to have a no fly zone. So you can very easily get sucked in and it is as well to have a debate on this. Now I understand that this is a close call, I understand that people that are looking at the horrors that going on there and they ask, can we do nothing? The real question is, if we do something and it’s the wrong thing, will we make the situation worse in Syria, in the wider region and for ourselves, because it is possible, with the best possible intentions, to have unintended consequences which result in an even worse situation than doing nothing.

DM: Great to talk to you. Lord Reid, thank you very much indeed.

LORD REID: Thank you Dermot.