A new report urging foreign policy reform seems more interested in hand-wringing about colonialism than facing up to the reality of great power competition, says Ollie Ryan Tucker
Every diagnosis of foreign policy today starts with the acknowledgement that great power competition is back on the agenda. We live in ‘unprecedented times’, in a ‘dangerous world’, yet so few of the proffered curatives confront that reality. Instead, it is used as the justification for a less assertive foreign policy, which often starts from poorly reasoned first principles.
The latest of these offerings was produced by a cohort of former diplomats proposing what they describe as “urgent renewal” of our approach to international affairs. Introducing the report, Mark Sedwill, former cabinet secretary, and veteran civil servant, argues that “we cannot help the world respond to the list of global problems if we ourselves are on it”. problems if we ourselves are on it”. This is a bizarre but revealing formulation of a dominant view within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and therein the British state, that its role is to act as a vehicle for global, not British, progress. Nothing exemplifies this better than in the FCDO’s enthusiasm for granting the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, thankfully stalled for now by the Ministry of Defence, but which would empower China in the region at both our own and our allies expense. In contrast to its public focus on soft power, the FCDO needs to adjust both its messaging and its methods for the more contested world in which we live.
Yet throughout this report we find its authors apologising for Britain’s apparent failures, both past and present instead of analysing the wider pattern of Western decline. Setting out this stall in the Financial Times, co-author Tom Fletcher argued that “after a period when the world has often been bewildered by our public discourse, the UK has complex, patient work to do to rebuild our alliances and reputation”.
Readers should ask themselves which audience Fletcher and his co-authors are writing for. Is it a European one, beset by public disputes about how to support Ukraine, and how to increase defence spending at a time of fiscal restraint? Is it an American one, with a Presidential candidate floating “dormant Nato”? Or is it a small cohort of former civil servants on social media and in newspaper columns, embroiled in “endless naval-gazing” discussions?
Their own recommended countries of inspiration include Canada which has found it difficult to navigate repeated foreign interference in its domestic affairs, including state-sponsored assassination on its soil, and Norway, Switzerland, and Japan, who have a vastly smaller global footprint, influence, and responsibility, which none of the authors advocate.
It is also striking that, while suggesting that the UK’s tiresome public discourse is damaging our global reputation, the authors seek to set off yet more divisive culture wars with their suggestions that the FCDO’s grandiose branding is hindering its work. At least removing colonial-era pictures from the walls of the King Charles Street headquarters is a concrete suggestion, unlike the majority of the recommendations in the report. Many are non-specific and amount to little more than jargon-filled cliches: “more joined up approach to strategy”; “establish operational structures for longer-term strategic focus”; “harness combined levers of state”. Others are inconsistent, such as calling for wider engagement with devolved administrations, such as the Scottish Government which publicly rejects and undermines the most foundational pillar of Britain’s security, its nuclear deterrent.
The few sensible suggestions are brief and barely discussed, such as increasing specialisation within the diplomatic service and more external hiring. It is hard not to avoid the conclusion that the report’s authors were well aware these would be lost in the culture war discourse their headline suggestions have sparked.
The report’s call for the delegation of duties to semi-autonomous bodies is of a piece with the foreign policy establishment’s efforts to entrench bureaucratic control of the machinery of government, and limit democratic accountability. As we creep closer towards a Labour government, the idea that politicians shouldn’t be trusted to get the decisions right and that new quangos are needed to maintain the chart the right course is gaining traction. And yet those pushing this argument have not evidenced how it would improve decision making or outcomes.
By arguing that the UK and its allies should share rights in multilateral institutions, the authors are revealing a naivety about the nature of international politics. Making a similar argument last year, David Lammy said that “if we want China to live by the rules of the sea and the architecture that was drawn up after the second world war, then we have to live by international rules as well”. He is labouring under the belief that moral authority, not cold-self interest runs the international arena – a position as idealistic as it is misguided.
Britain’s foreign policy does require renewal – the authors are not wrong. This, however, is not the antidote needed.
Ollie Ryan Tucker is a writer and researcher on national security and runs the substack Neither Confirm Nor Deny