Style over substance

Those who expected Gordon Brown’s speech on British foreign policy goals at the Mansion House dinner on 12 November to contain significant new proposals were disappointed. There was a back-tracking from the impression he gave earlier that he would establish a greater distance between Britain and the Bush administration. (See 'Portcullis' in Parliamentary Brief, October 2007) We were now back with Tony Blair’s strategic vision. Indeed, with variations in detail, the speech could have been written by any number of British Prime Ministers going back to Harold Macmillan in 1961. Britain should stand at the centre of the overlapping circles of the Commonwealth, Europe and the Atlantic Alliance.

He condemned anti-Americanism in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, and said that Americans and Europeans should work together in frameworks like the UN. There was no comment on the critical stance towards the UN adopted by Republican regimes since that of Ronald Reagan, culminating with the extraordinary US representative John Bolton, or of the US security strategy for unilateral pre-emptive action. There was reference to the values shared by Europeans and the US. As Americans are now bitterly divided about their own values it might reasonably be asked which of these Mr Brown had in mind.

In the age of globalization there were shared interests, but also threats, and we needed to create ‘the architecture of a new global society’. There was need to work together on climate change, terrorism, environmental degradation, building civic society and controlling the arms trade, including that in small arms. Two proposals had been made previously in the speech to Indian businessmen in Bangalore in January 2007: that the World Bank should be more focussed on environmental questions and poverty reduction, and the IMF should develop its role as an early warning system for economic crisis. This was fine but lacking in any detail about ways forward.

On failing states, one of Mr. Brown’s personal interests, there were some strong, if general points. We should acknowledge our failings with regard to dealing with ‘illegitimate threats and the use of force against innocent peoples’. It was ‘to the shame of the whole world’ that it failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda. There should be ‘procedures to prevent breakdowns of states and societies’ and more should be done to link peacekeeping with stabilization reconstruction and development, already part of the UN mandate. But there was no indication of what this would cost in, say, Afghanistan. The key issue of Security Council approval for military intervention was not mentioned. Was it necessary, as for the first Gulf War, or an optional extra as for the second? The brutal events in Darfur attracted only the comment that we should continue to ‘pressure and persuade’.

Several references were made to the need for the Europeans to act together on global problems. But there was no indication of how to re-energise a European Union that was losing its sense of purpose. There were pleas that the EU should be open and internationalist, which the massive enlargement would suggest was already the case, and that there should be less time spent on institutional change within, and more spent on improving its capacity for acting externally. Again these were vague injunctions, and the British were as guilty as anyone of wasting time on EU institutional details. There was little which pinned the British government down to doing anything specific.

The speech simply acknowledged current policies on the Palestine/Israel problem, Pakistan, Iraq/Afghanistan and Iran’s nuclear weapons. Mr Brown proposed a further tightening of sanctions against Iran if its nuclear weapons programme continued. A call was addressed to President Musharraf to restore the constitution, to guarantee free and fair elections in January 2008, and to step down as Chief of Army Staff. Support for the people of Iraq was to continue though the implications of this for British troop levels in Iraq were left unclear. One interesting proposal was for a new coalition of democracies and civic societies, joining together as ‘allies for progress’ and leaders in politics and economics. This was in the context of a plea for the G8 to be broadened to include the emerging economies. One wondered how this new coalition would relate to the enlarged G8. Would it replace it or work alongside?

This was a speech about Britain’s strategic position, stated conservatively, rather than about identifying a corner or proposing specific actions. It avoided commitment or clarity in that it sided with all existing partners, suitably improved, invented a few new ones, and supported policies that were already around. It often proposed goals which had already been well rehearsed in other contexts with no reference to their possible cost. The word reform featured largely, with the implication that now was the time for international institutions, especially the UN and the EU, to do better. Not surprisingly there was no suggestion that any of the failures of the UN and the EU were failures less of the institutions than of their main members, including the US and Britain.

A few weeks ago some of us were encouraged by what appeared to be a change of direction and re-energising of British foreign policy. This speech disabused us of our impossible expectations.

Paul Taylor is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Director of the European Institute there between 2001 and 2004. His book, The End of European Integration, is published by Routledge in December 2007.