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'Positive Policy' - Foreign Policy - The Known Unknowns?
Posted by James Burdett (@jamesburdett)
Tuesday, 2nd March 2010
One of the truisms of politics is that that there is a big difference between what a party plans to do in opposition and what they end up doing in government. This isn’t deliberate or malicious but simply a factor of what Harold Macmillan called “events, dear boy, events”. It is also true that the biggest source of events that could blow a government off course is likely to be external. Foreign affairs have the capacity to change utterly the priority of politics. We have seen this as recently as the last decade when the 9/11 attacks occurred and global politics changed. The Labour government had to adjust fundamentally to a new paradigm and it led to choices in Foreign and Domestic Policy that still have an impact today.
Political parties rarely have a detailed Foreign Policy plan in opposition. This is wise on two counts, firstly they have no idea of what they are likely to face and secondly they need to reassure potential allies that they are reasonable and responsible. So oppositions on the whole resort to philosophy and generalities and picking obvious targets for attack. The Conservatives have done this quite successfully with attacks on policy towards Zimbabwe, philosophical speeches about the need not to attempt to drop democracy from 20,000ft and not much else. This is wise as they don’t know what they will have to face up to.
The other factor that has impacted Conservative thinking, and will impact Conservative action, is the economic situation. The big question that has to be at the forefront of Conservative minds is how to have a robust Foreign Policy without it costing the earth? One thing that is essential to answer that question is to understand where the threats lay. This is both easy and hard simultaneously; clearly terrorism and Europe are huge parts of Foreign Policy, but I want to look at the other areas that could cause issues.
Recently Argentina has been sabre-rattling over the Falklands. That demands close attention and will need to be factored in. I suspect that it will come to little but any future government needs to be fully on its guard. By no means is Argentina the only potential issue in that region, I suspect Cuba could move up the agenda. The question has to be what happens when the Castro family are no longer around to keep Cuba together? There are also other issues in South America that have largely been ignored over the last decade that may need to be looked at, such as the drift in a number of countries towards a hard-line xenophobic leftwing nationalism. All this could provide intriguing policy questions going forward.
The Middle East is likely to be the most interesting ground in foreign affairs terms for the foreseeable future. Recently the US Secretary of State has been toughening rhetoric towards Iran which may signal that diplomatic patience is running out. That brings the spectre of alternative approaches to ensuring that Iran remains a non-nuclear state. Any Military response to Iran is unlikely to be on the scale of that in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it would raise multiple issues not just the cost and logistics of any action. There is the diplomacy that would need to be carried out to ensure that we retain allies in the region.
The Far East provides another policy challenge in that we have a number of good relations in the region that we wish to pursue and enhance. Also the big foreign policy challenge in the region is adapting as China becomes the dominant economic and political force in the region. Clearly the relationship that the UK has had with China will change as China grows and we need to be sure what sort of relationship we want and be able to pursue vigorously our aims and objectives. Clearly the issue of the Chinese human rights needs to be factored in as well.
Then there are those totally out of the blue events that could blow both Foreign and Domestic Policy off course. Assassinations, coups, wars are the obvious things that can strike as well as natural disasters that require an international response, the recent earthquake in Haiti is a case in point. However even democratic election results can shift the balance of opinion in the world and affects how Britain relates to those countries. Ukraine is one example that used to look west but is likely to now look east. That has the potential to alter the bilateral relationship with Russia. What happens for instance if the USA ejects President Obama after one term? It would, overnight, alter the assumptions on which foreign policy is currently based.
The ultimate aim of UK Foreign policy will remain much as it is under Labour to retain a significant role in world affairs that is greater than that which usually attracts to a power of the UK’s inherent capability. That will require some far-sighted thinking and imagination especially given the economic strictures that will mitigate against the kind of role the UK has historically been in a position to play. That is unless of course the next Conservative government accepts that the UK is to be relegated down the list of front rank powers. I doubt that they will which will make Foreign Policy, which is at root a pragmatic policy area, all the more interesting.
