British Foreign Policy

Crises, Conflicts and Future Challenges

Jamie Gaskarth

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745670003
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Britain has been a significant voice in global politics in the last two decades and its impact on world events far outweighs its material resources. But how does a small island on the edge of Europe continue to exercise this level of power on an international scale? What kind of actor is Britain internationally? And what future challenges will confront British foreign policymakers in a multi-polar world of emerging powers? In this comprehensive introduction to British foreign policy today Jamie Gaskarth addresses these and other key questions. Against a rich historical backdrop, he examines the main actors and processes involved in British foreign policy-making as well as the role played by identity in shaping such choices. Later chapters focus on the relationship between economics and foreign policy, what it means to be ethical in this policy sphere, and the justification for and benefits of the UK's continued use of force to achieve its foreign policy goals. Combining interview research, theoretical insight and analysis of contemporary and historical trends, this book charts how British foreign policy has come to be understood and practised in the 21st Century. It will be an invaluable guide for students of British politics, foreign policy, international relations and related courses.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: Analysing British Foreign Policy

Why bother with a book on British foreign policy? Hasn’t Britain had its day? That was certainly the feedback I received whenever I took a taxi in the United States, as I was writing this book. ‘The sun has set on your Empire’, one driver told me with undisguised relish. The twenty-first century is destined to be an ‘Asian’ century, when the ‘rising powers’ of China and India forge a new locus of influence and remake the world according to their own interests and values – with Brazil and Russia contributing to the balance against the former dominance of the United States and Western Europe. ‘The West’ is in decline. Europe is an ageing, fattened continent made lazy on generous welfare systems and living off the wealth and memory of its past industriousness.¹ Meanwhile, Britain is a little island with a big history, borrowing its remaining status from the United States in return for unwavering support. At least, that seems to be the received wisdom.

It is an even further folly, perhaps, to wish to analyse foreign policy. Political scientists have been sounding the death knell of that field of inquiry for over forty years now. Regionalism, multilateralism and globalization are supposed to have weakened territorial boundaries, undermined governmental attempts to impose sovereignty, and promoted identities and political consciousness above and below the state – leaving the idea of ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ as quaint, archaic labels. It is a compelling narrative and may well turn out to be true. However, if we stop to analyse the world as it is rather than seek to prejudge how it might be in the future, a different picture emerges.

The recent record of British foreign policy does not imply Britain is an irrelevant anachronism. Indeed, it could be read as suggesting that the UK is a significant actor in world politics. From Tony Blair’s militarism, via Gordon Brown’s leadership of the G20 and the global response of 2008–9 to the financial crisis that began the previous year, to the coalition government’s actions in Libya, Britain has arguably occupied a leading role in world affairs. In each case it coordinated its policies with other actors, but this need not diminish our sense that Britain was acting and that its actions made a difference. International politics is a social activity and unilateral behaviour in this sphere is costly. If the UK perceives a problem as affecting its economic, military or ethical interest then it is likely other states will too, and that they will want a say in how policies are made and then implemented globally. The fact that states act in concert with others does not mean that their individual contributions are irrelevant. The British government retains the capacity to make political choices and these decisions have important effects.²

To deny this, and suggest that the actions of states such as the UK are determined by impersonal structural forces, or by more powerful states, may have the comforting benefit of pricking the pomposity of politicians and their self-aggrandizing statements. However, it also denies the observer the opportunity to critique the political choices and actions of these individuals and, hence, any chance of holding them accountable. This book takes a different approach, one that is unapologetically statist – in the sense that it views states as the primary actors in world politics – and governmental – i.e. its main research focus is the British government’s formulation of foreign policy. In exploring the making of British foreign policy, this book does not disregard the importance of non-state actors, or ignore the policy weakness of the UK government in frameworks where sovereignty is shared or the government’s power is constrained. Rather the book is interested in examining how policymakers adapt to these setbacks and reinterpret their policies in response.

Before outlining the structure of this text and proceeding with my analysis, this introduction will begin by exploring in more depth why some analysts have questioned the importance of the state and governments in world politics, and critiqued the idea of foreign policy as an appropriate subject of analysis. The introduction will then go on to defend the continuing emphasis on these concepts despite the social, political and technological changes that have arisen in recent decades.

All change?

One of the most fundamental challenges to the idea of the state as the primary political actor in world politics is the contrary notion that other forms of political community are now more important, either in terms of their power, or in their attraction as expressions of political identity. This conceit has emerged in successive waves of scholarship on international affairs. In 1962, Arnold Wolfers posed the rhetorical question: ‘are not national territorial units outdated today and on the way out, now that the age of nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and earth satellites is upon us … ?’³ Critics of the idea of states-as-actors highlighted the significance of ‘non-state corporate actors’ such as the United Nations and the Communist International.⁴ By the early 1970s, the global energy crisis provoked by the cabal of governments in the multinational Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)⁵ led some to see individual states as being at the mercy of markets and supranational organizations – particularly when this crisis was combined with the growth in multinational corporations (MNCs).⁶

In the decades since, the power of individual states has been perceived to be eroded by the forces of multilateralism, globalization and regionalism.⁷ Multilateralism has resulted in a proliferation of supranational forums for coordinating policy, and with it a profusion of international treaties and commitments that constrain state behaviour.⁸ Liberal institutionalists argued that international organizations set up to conduct multilateral diplomacy were capable of having an independent effect on policy outcomes and so constituted actors in their own right.⁹ A transnational class of bureaucrats and politicians was emerging to staff these corporations and they identified with transnational, rather than national, communities and goals.

Globalization, or the freer movement of people, goods, services and capital across borders – in part spurred by international cooperation and multilateralism but derived too from technological advances in travel and communication – eroded territorial boundaries. It also highlighted the global nature of many policy challenges, including those surrounding climate change, poverty, economic stability, crime, disease and terrorism. These have been described by Peter Hain as a ‘growing domain of interests that we all share – interests that affect every human being regardless of nationality’.¹⁰ As a result, Hain sees ‘new linkages between people’¹¹ and a ‘globalization of responsibility’.¹² Narrow, national identities bound up with the state are being challenged by transnational forms of political community that would previously have been impossible due to geographical distance. The development of new social media and digital technology is facilitating global protest movements, religious revivals and even acts of terrorism in ways that bypass state structures and control. It is also leading to a growing sense of ‘humanity’ as a community and identity that trumps nationalism.

Added to these processes is the increasing significance of regionalism, particularly in a European context. The member states of the European Union are now tied together in ways that cut across former boundaries of sovereignty, from defence and foreign affairs to fiscal and monetary policy. Such linkages arguably undermine the fiction of states as unitary actors, capable of independent action. Robert Cooper sees European states as increasingly ‘postmodern’, in that they appear to reject the trappings of the modern states-system, from unified national identities and strong militaries in balances of power, to the norms of sovereignty and non-interference in their domestic affairs.¹³

Coinciding with these changes is the rise to prominence of non-state actors.¹⁴ The number and scope of international organizations have increased in the post-Cold War era.¹⁵ European agencies and frameworks of governance have deepened and extended their reach beyond the immediate oversight of member states. A nascent global civil society, formed of international pressure groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is shaping the agenda in forums such as the G8, G20 and United Nations.¹⁶ At the same time, individuals and small groups have achieved political prominence in international politics thanks to the communicative possibilities of the internet. Comparisons are made between the economic wealth of states and those of firms, such as Darryl Copeland’s observations that: ‘51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations; Mitsubishi generates more annual economic activity than Indonesia; and sales by the 200 largest firms exceeded the combined economies of 182 countries.’¹⁷ Such evidence is offered to underscore a new reality, in which the ‘old domain’ of foreign policy, the ‘management of relations between states’, is said to be ‘no longer the centrepiece of world politics’.¹⁸

As a consequence of the apparent decline of the states-system, scholars have sought to redefine the concept and practice of foreign policy. For instance, Ole Waever describes a ‘post foreign policy’ analysis, exemplified, according to Waever, by James Rosenau’s idea of a ‘post-international politics’ made up of ‘sovereignty-free actors’.¹⁹ Here the focus of research moves away from the states-system and governments to include sub-state and supranational actors impacting on the global political arena. The emergence of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the European Union under the Maastricht Treaty seemed to problematize the traditional view of foreign policy as about how national governments managed their external relations in a world of states.²⁰ Once a high representative was appointed to coordinate ‘EU’ foreign policy under the Treaty of Amsterdam, the possibility of this regional organization functioning as an independent actor with an identity and policy in its own right appeared to be emerging. Yet in practice the CFSP has remained firmly intergovernmental, and attempts to strengthen the position of the high representative have been continually undermined by EU member states.²¹

The concept of foreign policy has been further redescribed by poststructuralists such as David Campbell, who have divided the idea of foreign policy as cultural mediation from its intergovernmental interpretation.²² Campbell posits ‘Foreign Policy’ as the official governmental management of a political community’s relations with other, geographically separate actors in international politics. He then distinguishes this from the social and political practices of ‘othering’, through which a community defines the ‘domestic’ and the ‘foreign’. The latter ‘foreign policy’ may involve the formulation of policy towards groups internal to the territory of the state but which are viewed as ‘foreign’ to the dominant culture, as in the case of Native Americans in the United States. Where common forms of consciousness are emerging in global politics, this idea of a ‘foreign policy’ separate from ‘Foreign Policy’ might also imply a ‘post-foreign’ politics, in which the separation of peoples into discrete political units is out of step with appeals to a wider political community, humanity, where the very idea of foreignness loses its meaning.²³

It is important to resist denying the salience of some of these arguments altogether. There are more actors engaging in the practice of international politics today. Non-state, sub-state and supranational actors arguably do have a greater influence than at any time since the development of the modern states-system. This has led to confusion over what foreign policy is and who should practise it. However, there are also powerful counter-arguments questioning how far these new developments have changed the character of international relations, whether they really threaten the primacy of the state as the key actor in world politics, and how far they challenge traditional views of foreign policy.

In the first place, it is possible to critique the impression that states were once independent and sovereign and have declined from this former position of power. The Westphalian narrative of states h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: Analysing British Foreign Policy
• CHAPTER TWO: The Actors in British Foreign Policy
• CHAPTER THREE: How is British Foreign Policy Made?
• CHAPTER FOUR: Self-Identity and British Foreign Policy
• CHAPTER FIVE: Britain in the World
• CHAPTER SIX: The Ethics of British Foreign Policy
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Defence and British Foreign Policy
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Economics and British Foreign Policy
• Conclusion: Future Challenges
• Bibliography
• Index