Rt Hon Des Browne MP

Speech by the Rt Hon Des Browne MP, Secretary of State, Scotland Office and Ministry of Defence to the Council for Foreign Relations in New York on 24 May 2007

I would first like to thank the Council for Foreign Relations for the opportunity they have given me to speak today on issues that affect us all.

Since it was founded here in New York in 1921, the Council has had a long history of making significant contribution to developing solutions to some of the most difficult problems we have faced. I know it has been called the most powerful agent of US foreign policy outside State Department - and rightly so. From South Asia to the Middle East, the Council makes a vital contribution to our common understanding of the challenges we face and how we might best address them.

I also want to pay particular tribute to Richard Haass, President of the Council. I worked with Richard when I was Minister for the Peace Process in Northern Ireland and he was the US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland. He continues the substantial contribution started by Senator George Mitchell to that process, which reached an historic conclusion earlier this month. That process took 15 years in one of the most sophisticated democracies in the world and in a Province of only 1.6 million people. A salutary in the need to set realistic timescales at the outset and to stay for the long haul.

I know it is unusual for a Defence Minister to come to New York - this is usually where Foreign Affairs or Aid and Development Ministers ply their trade. But I wanted to come after having been in the job for just over a year to share with you some of the lessons I have identified after having immersed myself in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am convinced that Afghanistan in particular is a laboratory that will help us develop and refine the capabilities we will need in future.

That future is a challenging one and we need to recognise the scale of the problems we will face and which the United Nations will need to address. I acknowledge that - and the reforms made by the UN in recent years, along with those it has in hand. I believe in international organisations. I am of a generation that grew up after the Second World War, energised to ensure that countries worked together for the benefit of us all rather than fighting each other to a standstill with all the sheer waste of human talent and opportunity that represents.

My experience over the past year has confirmed my views on the need to support such organisations. Having had responsibility for the UK’s contribution to two major international military operations, one a coalition of the willing and one an alliance operation. I know which one I prefer.

Context

There’s no point talking about the international community without first reminding ourselves of the context we all operate in.

We are seeking to manage some well-identified risks. First and foremost, of course, is international terrorism, but then I don’t need to tell people from New York that. Yet we also need to deal with the risks posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, scarce resources and mass migration. Then there is the effect of globalisation which means that our security is inextricably linked to events well beyond our shores. The proliferation of technology, mass communication and travel around the world all means that events are able to affect us at increasing distances.

It is a truism that no conflict can be solved by military means alone. Improvements in security must go hand in hand with improvements in governance, economic opportunity and the rule of law. Afghanistan is a perfect example of how all these need to come together.

They need to come together in an overall campaign plan. Otherwise there is no way we can measure success. We need to get better at defining our measures of success, be more realistic in setting these metrics and in explaining them to our electorates.

Specifics

In particular, we need to pay more attention to developing the rule of law and to be more culturally sensitive in how we approach the range of issues we are likely to face. Engaging regional partners will be key to help us do that.

Taking Afghanistan as an example, some of the most difficult issues we are grappling with include:

• Counter-narcotics and how related activity interfaces to support or detract other strands of activity;
• Development of police forces. Our approach has tended to focus on developing national forces. While this is understandable in terms of supporting a nascent democracy, it goes against the history of most countries, which naturally grew police forces out of their local communities;
• In contrast, how best to develop a national Army, ensuring it has the necessary ethnic and tribal balance;
• The rule of law. For me the most important of all yet the one are we are probably least good at. It defines the nature of policing. It defines the character of the justice available to people. And it ensures that criminals and terrorists cannot act with impunity.

An overarching campaign plan is required to draw these strands together. A strategic plan, not a military plan or a development framework, or a government road-map. The international community then needs to coordinate resources to deliver against that plan for the long term, ensuring coherence in what we do and coherence by those who do it.

This need leadership - and there is no organisation better placed than the UN to take on that role. We also require in the relevant country a visible leader representing the international community, empowered to drive the campaign plan forward including, crucially, at the political level.

There is a hunger for this leadership among the military, the development and aid communities, and among non governmental organisations. Yet we do not have the mechanisms to deliver that leadership. The question I want to discuss today is how we can develop those mechanisms. To do so now for Afghanistan and thereby to ensure that we retain the capacity for the next major challenge we will face, whether it be Darfur or Somalia or elsewhere.

Biography: Rt Hon Des Browne MP,  Secretary of State, Scotland Office and Ministry of Defence

Rt Hon Des Browne MP was appointed Secretary of State for Defence on the 5th of May 2006.

He has previously been appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Minister of State for Nationality, Immigration and Asylum at the Home Office, Minister of State for Work at the Department for Work and Pensions and, prior to that, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office.

Mr Browne has been MP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun since 1997 and was previously Parliamentary Private Secretary to the late Donald Dewar MP 1998-1999.

He is a former member of Select Committees on Northern Ireland 1997-1998 and Public Administration 1999 and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights 2001.

Mr Browne also tabled the Register of Drug Trafficking Offenders Bill, a private Member's Bill to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) to establish a register of trafficking offenders.

Mr Browne was born on 22 March 1952 and studied at Glasgow University where he was awarded an LLB. He is married and has two sons. Before entering Parliament he was a lawyer, he was admitted as a solicitor in 1976 and was subsequently called to the Scottish Bar in 1993.

Responsibilities

The Secretary of State for Defence is the Cabinet Minister charged with making and executing Defence policy, and with providing the means by which it is executed, the Armed Forces. He is Chairman of the Defence Council and of its three Boards, (the Admiralty Board, the Army Board and the Air Force Board).

Although responsible ultimately for all elements of Defence, the Secretary of State is supported by three subordinate Ministers: the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces and the Under-Secretary of State for Defence. The Secretary of State assigns responsibility to them for specific aspects of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence's business. However, the following are specifically his responsibility:

• Policy, including nuclear issues and European defence
• Operations
• Personnel
• Finance and efficiency
• Oversight of major acquisition decisions and defence industrial issues
• Media and communications