What Next for Britain in the Middle East?

Security, Trade and Foreign Policy after Brexit

Michael Stephens, Christopher Phillips, Michael Stephens, Christopher Phillips

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755617180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the UK enters a period of intense public introspection in the wake of Brexit, this book takes on one of the key questions emerging from the divisive process: what is Britain's place in the world? The Middle East is one of the regions the UK has been most engaged in historically. This book assesses the drivers of foreign policy successes and failures and asks if there is a way to revitalise British influence in the region, and if this is even desirable. The book analyses the values, trade and security concerns that drive the UK's foreign policy. There are separate chapters on the non- Arab powers – Israel, Turkey and Iran – as well as chapters on the Middle Eastern Arab states and regions including the Gulf, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria and the Levant. The contributions are from leading specialists in the field: Rosemary Hollis, Michael Clarke, Ian Black, Bill Park, Christopher Phillips, Sanam Vakil, Michael Stephens and Louise Kettle. They each explain and re-assess the declining western influence and continued instability in the region and what this means for the UK's priorities and strategy towards the MENA. This is an essential book for policy makers, journalists and researchers focused on foreign policy towards the Middle East.

1

Introduction

Christopher Phillips and Michael Stephens

For good or ill, Brexit has transformed the UK’s place in the world. Whether it will become the buccaneering ‘Global Britain’ promised by the Leave campaign, or the gloomy ‘sick man of Europe’ cautioned by Remainers, London’s outlook and priorities abroad are changing as a result of its departure from the European Union (EU). As the public adjust to new realities and policymakers seek to redefine Britain’s international role, it is an opportune moment to re-examine the UK’s relations with a region in which it has complex recent and historical ties: The Middle East.

Though Britain’s footprint in the Middle East rescinded in the decades after the end of its colonial occupation, recent decades have seen a noticeable increase in British activity. The military has been deployed against enemy governments and terrorist organizations; diplomats have worked with allies to seek conflict resolution; trade and investment have been actively courted; British culture and values, such as governance and human rights, have been encouraged, albeit selectively. However, can these policies be considered successful? The picture is mixed at best. While Western coalitions that included Britain seem to have contained terror threats like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, they also helped create the instability that helped them thrive in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. For all the UK’s efforts, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is no closer to resolution, nor are the wars in Syria and Yemen that British diplomats sought to settle. British trade and investment with certain Gulf states have grown steadily, but the region as a whole offers a limited contribution to the British economy. Though Britain retains some soft power via cultural institutions like the BBC and British Council, London’s attempts to promote ‘British values’ have largely fallen on deaf ears, with the region’s already weak human rights and governance record getting worse in most states.

As an introspective Britain reflects on its changing global position and recent policy failures, it must also reckon with the changes underway in the Middle East and wider world. An era of US dominance is giving way to one of renewed great power competition – made more complex by an international economy which, despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, remains globalized and interconnected. The Middle East is one arena for this competition, but it is also home to a range of medium powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey that are increasingly interventionist. Since the 2011 Arab Uprisings the numbers of unstable Middle Eastern states have increased, providing new arenas for their rivalries to play out. Moreover, the region continues to be plagued by the poor governance and limited development that prompted the 2011 uprisings in the first place, with even the prosperous Gulf states looking more vulnerable after a sustained drop in oil prices.

Revisiting Britain’s approach to the Middle East is therefore both timely and necessary, but it is a topic that has been surprisingly neglected in published works. Academics have tended to focus on British foreign policy in general or on a particular Middle Eastern issue or arena.¹ The same is true of Britain’s foreign policy think tanks and research centres, which largely produce detailed reports on particular issues, but rarely attempt broad analyses of the UK’s overall strategy towards the Middle East.² One exception was Rosemary Hollis’ 2010 volume, Britain and the Middle East: Policy in the 9/11 Decade, a strong survey of the Blair and Brown governments’ engagement with the region, though now somewhat dated. Another was the House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations report of May 2017, ‘The Middle East: Time for New Realism,’ which stated:

British policy as it stands has not always adjusted to new conditions: dilemmas abound and we find there are inconsistencies, half-hearted attempts and sometimes neglect. The UK’s engagement should be sustained and developed, but based on substantially revised assumptions from those that have guided British policy, some of them for the last century.³

In many ways the chapters that follow echo these sentiments and expand in more detail on the report’s general findings that the UK needs to re-evaluate its role in the Middle East.

The volume brings together a collection of leading scholars and policy experts on British foreign policy and Middle Eastern politics. Each offers a unique contribution discussing how the UK might respond to its changed position and the transformations underway in the Middle East and wider world, whether focusing on a particular theme, such as security, or on a particular regional actor, like Iran. Though the contributors each offer their own perspective, they are united in seeking to answer the same question: what next for the UK in the Middle East after Brexit? To answer this, we have posed a series of sub-questions to feed into this debate: which regions and issues should the UK prioritize? Is there any room for or even advantage in pursuing certain principles or ‘British values’, or should security and economic benefit always take precedence? Who are Britain’s optimal partners from inside and outside the Middle East, and will this remain the case in the coming decades? In an era of relative decline, can British influence be revitalized and is this even desirable? How should the UK best engage with the Middle East in the coming decades with the resources at its disposal? This book considers what Britain’s priorities and capabilities in the Middle East are and offers suggestions for what they should be.

In many ways this book muses on an even bigger question to emerge from Brexit: what is Britain’s place in the world? By focusing on one of the regions the UK has historically been most engaged in, this forward-looking volume assesses the drivers of foreign policy successes and failures, outlining a range of possible routes to maximize future British influence.

Changing world, changing Middle East, changing Britain

While the chapters that follow offer a range of assessments on Britain’s various future challenges and opportunities in the Middle East, several themes recur. The first is the changing global, regional and local context in which Britain must now operate. Globally, the liberal order is under severe strain. The post-Cold War ‘unipolar moment’ of US dominance has given way to a new era of great power rivalry, characterized by US–Chinese competition, a more militarily interventionist Russia, a retreating Washington (even after the election of the multilateralist Joe Biden) and increased activism by medium regional powers like Turkey and Iran. The UK’s historic role of oscillating between its European and American allies will likely continue, though in a context where the Western alliance as a whole is likely to be weaker than it has been in decades compared to other global players. Britain’s departure from the EU complicates this as London may have to pursue foreign policy based on achieving short-term goals such as trade deals rather than long-term strategy. The Middle East, one of several likely arenas for great power competition in the coming decade, could be one region where the UK struggles to find its own path in the face of rival US, EU and Chinese interests.

This global shift interacts with significant regional changes in the last decade. When the UK was intervening in the Middle East during the 1990s and 2000s, the region was broadly ordered into two blocs. Most states were allies of the United States and the West, but a collection of relatively weak states, variously led by Iran, Syria and non-state actors like Hezbollah, rejected US hegemony. Since 2011 that pro-Western bloc has split with a Turkish-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood faction challenging one led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE that includes Egypt and has ever-warming ties with Israel. These blocs are quite fluid and states within them frequently follow their own agendas often without consulting either regional or global allies. Moreover, while both the Turkey-Qatar and the Saudi-UAE-led bloc remain Western allies, none is as firmly wedded to Washington (or London) as in the past and both Russia and China have considerably enhanced their ties to each. Moscow and Beijing have also deepened their involvement in the third bloc, led by Iran but with close ties to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. In the 2020s then, the West will be less important to Middle Eastern states than it once was, and the UK is less important within the West.

In addition to this, the UK’s interest in the Middle East is diminished. Public appetite to be involved in the Middle East was low even before the 2003 Iraq War and has plummeted since. MPs decision not to endorse a proposed strike on Syria in 2013 indicated how much such scars continue to be felt. The main exception to this public reluctance is on areas of security, with the public largely in support of anti-ISIS operations, especially bombing campaigns that posed less risk to UK troops.⁴ There is sporadic public concern on certain Middle East issues, such as human rights violations, the Israel–Palestine conflict, women’s rights, arms sales and isolated events like the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but these rarely translate to sustained pressure on ministers to act. That said, Britain’s leaders are also less interested in the Middle East than they once were. The declining salience of oil with a shift to more renewable energy has lessened interest in the region in general. With Brexit and post-EU trade deals taking up most foreign policy bandwidth, the region has fallen further down the priority list except for when sudden crises return it to the front page, often prompting short-term reactive responses. The decision-makers have changed too. While the UK has long had a highly centralized policymaking structure, recent changes have amplified this. The newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has steadily lost influence under successive prime ministers (with the possible exception of David Cameron), with the Cabinet Office and No. 10 increasingly the centre of foreign policymaking. With most policies made by a small handful of individuals, this gives even less bandwidth for the Middle East. Despite a recent boost to defence spending, few expect the Middle East to be the MoD’s primary focus. The UK’s capacity and interest in the region therefore look increasingly limited.

The obvious conclusion from this changing context is for the UK to be more realistic and less ambitious in its engagement with the Middle East. This need not mean disinterest, but rather a recognition of its limited capacity and to be more selective in its engagement. While in the past the UK has sought to be influential in multiple Middle East arenas, it will spread itself too thinly to be effective if it repeats this path. A better approach, so believe the editors and many of the contributors to this volume, is to focus on a limited number of achievable goals in specific areas of Britain’s interest and then channel resources into those areas. In short, to favour depth over breadth: to do less, but to do it well.

Difficult choices: Principles and pragmatism

But what are Britain’s interests in the Middle East upon which this new narrower capacity should focus? A second theme of this volume is an exploration of the three areas that the UK has historically prioritized in the region: security, trade and values. Of these, security has been the most recently valued, partly due to proximity. As Michael Clarke notes in his chapter, unlike the United States, the MENA region is on Europe’s doorstep and the potential for instability to spill over directly means it cannot be ignored. And although both US and UK foreign policies increasingly place emphasis on the Subcontinent and East Asia as part of the so-called Indo-Pacific tilt, this should not mean that the Middle East suddenly becomes unimportant.

Despite leaving the EU, Britain remains one of the wealthiest and biggest defence spenders in Europe, meaning it is likely to play a role in any urgent short-term security concerns that emerge. Beyond such occasional reactive commitments, however, the UK must be selective on which security areas it will focus on. As Louise Kettle notes, after Britain’s own security, its next priority has been to support crucial allies, and this requires uncomfortable choices as the region sees more conflict. Would Britain send military assistance to the Gulf states, for example, if a war with Iran broke out? Likewise, would it join a US-led coalition against Tehran, even if it opposed conflict, but was worried about losing favour with Washington? Such outcomes are distinct possibilities in the coming decade and the UK would do well to plan for such an eventuality, establishing how it might viably support its allies in a means that it can afford, or how it can avoid such interventions without rupturing key alliances. This will require a delicate balancing act of trade-offs and calculations.

While the Middle East has historically not been a vital economic region for the UK, the recent increase in Gulf trade alongside the centrality of trade deals after Brexit has amplified London’s financial concerns. As David Butter discusses in his chapter, Britain faces a choice over whether to build on the existing but limited trade successes it has – mostly arms and services and with the Gulf states – or to seek new markets and focus on new sectors. Gulf trade is heavily linked to a buoyant oil and gas sector, and with both suffering from the impact of Covid-19 and a global shift away from fossil fuels, there may be slimmer pickings than in the past. Beyond the Gulf, there are comparatively limited options for British businesses, although Turkey and Egypt, with which it already has decent economic links, are the most obvious places to step up. As Sanam Vakil notes, Iran could be a further attractive market for Britain, but the current political climate makes any serious increase unlikely. Exploring possible areas for increased economic activity in Iran or preparing for any future change in political circumstances that would allow greater market penetration might be one area for UK planners to explore; however, given the limited resources available it is unlikely. Again, the question of bandwidth and resources is vital. Any increase in British trade requires more resources, energy and focus from London especially given the growing competition from other global powers, and the UK must weigh up if the Middle East is the best target for such efforts.

The final driver of UK Middle East policy is values which, as James Lynch notes in his chapter, have historically been the ‘third wheel’ – prioritized only when it doesn’t seriously hinder security or trade. In the post-Brexit landscape, it is highly possible that values will diminish even further in importance as the hunt for trade partners and sustaining military alliances necessitates turning a blind eye towards human rights abuses and poor governance. That said, values seem likely to retain rhetorical importance. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab made a point of emphasizing how post-Brexit Britain will prioritize sanctions against human rights abusers. Similarly, any future Labour government would likely vocalize the importance of values in foreign policy, as it did in the past. Yet whatever the rhetoric, Britain’s currently diminished global and regional importance, and its prioritization of trade and security, will limit the chances for such protestations to cut through to regional governments. That does not mean the statements should not be made, but a recognition that any value-driven policy requires more than rhetoric and symbolic action. With its imperial past the UK has never had the automatic moral authority that many of its leaders often assume, but its behaviour in the Middle East, especially the Iraq War, as well as the internal strife over Brexit, has damaged Britain’s reputation further. Rebuilding will require concerted effort. This need not mean jettisoning allies with unpalatable governing records, but being consistent in criticism of those policies, while seeking other routes to rebuild Britain’s reputation. Seeking to lead by example rather than by instruction might be a start. As both Christopher Phillips and Emma El-Badawy note, Britain’s pre-existing soft power institutions, such as the BBC, British Council and the UK university sector, could also be valuable assets, as could closer horizontal diplomatic and military relations, a point made by Jack Watling. However, these institutions remain under threat of cuts in the UK for domestic reasons, with politicians often unaware or unbothered by the potential foreign policy implications, and when combined with a cut in the UK’s foreign aid spending from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent the picture is not a happy one. Cuts to key public institutions – which will be inevitable given the enormous government spending undertaken during the course of the pandemic – will make the UK less attractive, hindering attempts to rebrand and rebuild the UK’s global and regional reputation.

Targeted engagement

Alongside exploring the changing context in which Britain operates, and the changes and continuities in its main interests, a third theme of this volume concerns where the UK should direct its attention. Where should it focus its narrower bandwidth? There is already an unofficial hierarchy of interest in the Middle East with more resources dedicated to some states over others. The authors in this volume suggest that some of this is justified, while others are a relic from an earlier era and require a rethink. The Gulf is and should remain the number one area of UK interest, given its overlap of both security and economic priorities. As Tobias Borck and Michael Stephens note, this necessitates some uncomfortable compromises on values as these governments are becoming more rather than less autocratic. The internal fissures within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) over the Qatar Blockade and other disputes have made managing relations in this region more complex, requiring a focus on a series of individual bilateral relationships rather than with a single bloc. Even so, the Gulf is a region where the UK enjoys some genuine and unique deep relationships. While it comes with the cost of appearing cosy with autocratic governments, there is merit in seeking to strengthen and deepen these ties further, while continuing to at least speak out against any human rights or governance abuses.

After the Gulf, the next most important states to the UK are Iran, Turkey and Israel. As Vakil notes, Iran’s importance to London is closely tied to security concerns in the region as a whole and the Gulf specifically. Its involvement as a guarantor of the JCPOA is one of Britain’s few prominent diplomatic roles in the region, but the possibility of conflict relating to Iran is increasing. The UK is more likely to be a follower than a leader on events, but it still needs to develop suitable contingency plans. Turkey’s importance is primarily economic though, as Bill Park notes, the UK is one of the few Western states enjoying favourable ties with an increasingly isolated Ankara. While again this requires some trade-offs on values as the Turkish government becomes increasingly despotic, London is well placed to build on this relationship for economic and possible security gains. Similar trade-offs will be necessary to expand its ties with an Israeli government that seems ever-more uncompromising on its occupation of the West Bank. As Ian Black notes, trade, tech and intelligence collaboration with Israel is at an all-time high and should continue. The challenge for London will be how to build on this relationship without abandoning the Palestinians. While the UK should recognize that its ability to influence the peace process, while never much, is now even less, that shouldn’t mean capitulation. A firm line on settlements and a human rights-based critique of Israel may be one means to enhance ties without unpalatable compromises.

The authors note some regions where Britain might hedge its bets: to dedicate resources if circumstances are right, but to avoid if not. Watling identifies Iraq as one. While a degree of security cooperation is likely to continue given the potential for instability and the possible return of ISIS or similar organisations, economic conditions make Iraq’s potentially valuable market unattractive without reform. S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Contributors
• Map of the Middle East
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1: Still searching for a role – The UK in the Middle East from East of Suez to Brexit
• Part 2: Principles and pragmatism – The debates over the UK’s Middle East priorities
• Part 3: Britain and the non-Arab powers
• Part 4: Britain and the Middle Eastern Arab states
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint