ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS TONIGHT, SKY NEWS

ADAM BOULTON: In his first  interview since stepping down as Chief of Defence Staff, the former head of the British Armed Forces has told Sky News that Western leaders still have no strategy to deal with the advance of the Islamic State.  Lord Richards told us David Cameron and Barack Obama are failing to grasp the scale of the threat of Islamic extremism.  He spoke to Sky’s Foreign Affairs Editor, Sam Kiley.

SAM KILEY: Given the level of threat that the Islamic State now poses to the West in the view of David Cameron and Barack Obama, should we be looking at some kind of military intervention?

LORD RICHARDS: Well I think everything has got to be on the table but my word to the wise is if you do it, you’ve got to do it properly.  If you look at East Timor, Sierra Leone and even Kosovo, Bosnia for example, that are successful interventions actually, it’s because relative to the enemy, relative to the threat posed, those involved did it properly.  My worry would be that the sort of response I think is being looked at at the moment isn’t comprehensive enough, isn’t full enough to achieve the sort of success that people need to achieve.  If you don’t do it properly you just make it worse so I’m absolutely with the Prime Minister that this is the biggest threat facing us at the moment, it ought to be dealt with, a military dimension certainly I suspect has to be part of it – it doesn’t mean British boots on the ground – but you’ve got to do it properly and all the nations of this world I think should come together in a new version of NATO if you like, to get their act together, accept that it’s going to take a long time and then get on and do it properly.

SAM KILEY: In the Western policy towards the Islamic State it is unstructured isn’t it?  There is no policy.

LORD RICHARDS: Well I think there’s a policy but there’s a big difference between a policy and a strategy.  I think they’ve got a policy, President Obama the other day admitted he didn’t yet have a strategy.  That’s what they now have got to come up with and I heard the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs speak the other day, a good friend of mine General Marty Dempsey, without doubt he understands what is required, I have no doubt that my successor here in London as Chief of Defence Staff, General Horton does, but have the nations and have our political leaders got the will to bring it all together in the multi-dimensional way that the Prime Minister rightly spoke of the other day?  Some military, some economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, all that’s got to come together in a synergistic way and it will, as the Prime Minister said, be a generational struggle.  Are we up for it?  That is the issue and a policy is not a plan, i.e. is not a strategy.

SAM KILEY: So essentially you are saying that we now need to look to our political leadership to step up to the plate, explain some awkward truths to the population and get on with the job?

LORD RICHARDS: This is a threat that requires a sort of scale of effort and a united approach that needs great leadership, it needs statesmen and vision.  I have no doubt that we’ve got them there but they aren’t used to doing it and someone has got to help them bring it all together, there’s got to be a conspicuous leader – I should imagine that should have to be President Obama.  People like Prime Minister Cameron and his advisors clearly get it but I don't think they have yet really grasped the immensity of the problem and the scale of solution i.e. in bringing together all these nations in a coherent way to develop an agreed strategy and accept it is going to take a lot of willpower and probably quite a lot of time.

SAM KILEY: Russia’s back, it’s back, it’s aggressive. Do you really honestly think that there are any leaders within NATO, particularly within the English speaking parts of NATO, that have the statesmanship, the nerve, to deal with Vladimir Putin?

LORD RICHARDS: I sat alongside Prime Minister Cameron for three years in the National Security Council, it is not for me to make these judgements but I can absolutely tell you he is a leader.  Can that leadership with help and with experience be turned into the sort of visionary statesmen that we are now requiring of him and of President Obama and other Western leaders?  Yes, I have no doubt that can happen but it’s outwith our and their experience, they are intrinsically capable of it but it needs a change of mind-set – less politician, more statesman.

SAM KILEY: The Ukrainians have applied, they have said that they are going to apply for full allied status within NATO.

LORD RICHARDS: I do think that NATO should not at the moment accept Ukraine into that alliance, that Article Five commitment, no, definitely. 

SAM KILEY: Because it could trigger a war?

LORD RICHARDS: You can’t in the middle of a conflict decide you are suddenly going to spread that commitment to another country.  My own view is that Europe should be a little more careful in encouraging them because they can’t at the end of the day deliver on it.   We need to understand these countries much better before we even offer support which in the event we can’t actually follow through on and I think it’s almost immoral sometimes to do this.  There is a little risk at the back of my mind that Ukraine could fall into that situation and we shouldn’t encourage it.