OC report: British foreign policy in a multipolar world | Dominic Lawson
The future of Britain in the world: how we ensure British independence in a fragmenting world order
Anyone looking to renew British society cannot overlook our foreign policy. It’s inevitable that domestic issues, such as family decline or a breakdown in law and order will attract the most attention. However, it would be a mistake to consider geopolitics as something far removed from this.
The United Kingdom cannot repair its society internally if it is preoccupied with fighting off risks of foreign forces. Therefore, defining a new direction for the UK’s foreign policy must be a central focus of any political movement seeking to rejuvenate British culture and identity, especially in a time of seismic instability.
Ongoing trends which include unbalanced demographic growth, rapid technological innovation and global urbanisation are creating fundamental changes to the very character of the Westphalian global order. This is all occurring as the United States, and by extension the West at-large, finds itself challenged by certain powers determined to rewrite global norms in their interests. These ambitious contenders: China, Russia, even Iran, have achieved a degree of success. Yet, it is of high probability none of them have a chance at replacing the United States as a global hegemon.
This new multipolarity represents nothing less than the rebirth of a Hobbesian world order - a global order defined by increasingly fierce inter-state competition. It’s within this context that the United Kingdom has chosen to upend a decades’ long partnership with our geographic neighbours. This decision, if seized properly, has the potential to benefit the UK enormously, representing a rebirth of British confidence and a new vision for our foreign policy. To truly seize this historical moment, we must have deft diplomacy and clear-eyed vision from our political leaders. And if they are unable to offer what is required, then it must fall to us to elucidate a new foreign policy for a newly fracturing age.
Post-imperial condition: the middle-power path
Our first principle in defining a working foreign policy must be to extinguish all illusions about the capacity of the United Kingdom to act unilaterally in the world stage.
The United Kingdom is a country in a state of decline. We may be one of the freest, economically stable and militarily capable nations in the world, but we are at a low point compared to our position only a century prior. The country is trapped in a bizarre mindset where our leaders express an exaggerated self-importance against a public hard-pressed by a crippling sense of internal decline.
Overestimating the power of our nation is dangerous as it could encourage politicians to pursue reckless foreign policy goals which further destabilise the global system, for example, the Iraq War. Yet, underestimating our worth as a country is equally pernicious because it has led us to being manipulated by numerous outside powers, such as the European Union. It is important that we recognise that our superpower days are over and will not be coming back. Instead, we settle into our natural role as a middle-power and a coalition-builder.
Those nations which occupy the mid-levels of the globe’s territorial and population ranks, such as Germany and Japan, have been able to strike a balance of institutional support of the US’s global regime while still affirming areas where their own interests cannot be disregarded. Within these middle powers, the United Kingdom has several natural advantages which, if we leverage correctly, mean that we can continue to exercise a great deal of soft power as a natural coalition-builder among nations.
First, we gave the world its lingua franca, and have in turn inherited natural advantages in global trade. Throughout the Global South, institutions which descend from the Anglo political tradition are viewed as being the premier means which guard against corruption and tyranny. These semi-formal links, not least of which is the Commonwealth, include some of the developing world’s most rapidly growing countries, particularly in Africa. It is vital that the British state nourishes these relations because we know from demographic projections that Africa will soon be the world’s most populous continent, as well as it’s youngest.
At present, China is pursuing an aggressive campaign aimed at ensnaring African states within a complex framework of debt. By doing this, they gain access to a bounty of industrial materials, such as cobalt and copper under the African continent, which will underpin the coming technology revolution in robotics and clean energy. If the UK, and the West in general, does not begin a diplomatic effort to court African states away from China, we could find ourselves in a world where access to resources which are vital for our economic competitiveness are monopolised by the Chinese Communist Party. Which is why the UK-Africa Investment Summit held in London this year, is a welcomed development.
Alongside reactivating our Commonwealth links, we should also revisit the concept of the so-called CANZUK association (headed by steer group CANZUK International and CEO James Skinner in Vancouver). The idea of a free-trade and movement zone between the non-American Anglo-zone nations has been flirted with by numerous political leaders but always ignored in favour of the EU. Now is the time to begin a concerted diplomatic effort to make this association a reality.
“Why spend so long fighting to recover British independence from the continent, only to join another union?”
Many may object to the notion. It is a legitimate question but one which ignores the reason that Britain was such an uncomfortable fit within the EU.
All the CANZUK nations have similar levels of economic development, therefore, making any damagingly high levels of mass immigration unlikely. The possibility of priority and nonbinding recicprocal agreements stand. Likewise, issues of cultural incompatibility do not apply. CANZUK cultures are offshoots of British norms. Movement between these nations would not cause the cultural tension or societal fracturing that immigration from other cultures can lead to.
Such a union based on free trade, a preferential immigration system and foreign policy coordination could stand, alongside the United States and European Union, as a third pillar of the free world. This would provide the UK with a counterbalance to the gravitational pull of the American economy and would act as a more united front against Chinese ambition, as all the countries within are faced with increasing pressure from Beijing.
Moreover, at the root of a successful middle power foreign policy is balance. The multi-polarity of the emerging global order has the potential to be far more stable than a world ruled by a single superpower. Within this, the United Kingdom should seek to create the infrastructure which will balance the numerous powers against each other.
Developing an independent European Britain
One of the most destructive aspects of the debate around the UK’s relationship with our continental neighbours has been the idea that one cannot hold a positive view of Europe without it being via the lens of the European Union. This was an intentional effort on the part of the pro-EU media who made a cognitive link between an unwillingness to be governed by a continental bureaucracy and a disdain for the continent. If you want to see how successful this effort was, just think of the words ‘Europhile’ and ‘Eurosceptic,’ the intentional use of ‘Europe’ and ‘European Union’ interchangeably, or the campaign to ensure that British people ‘remained European’ after leaving the EU - as if our independence would mean ceasing to be Europeans, dwellers of the European continent.
Needless to say, this was a cynical political ploy which does not reflect reality and it is a point which anti-EU activists were not bold enough in rejecting. The EU is not Europe. Europe is an ancient landmass which has birthed a rich tapestry of civilisations of which Britain is one. And when it comes to the continent, our policy should be one of ‘of Europe but ungoverned by Europe,’ where we recognise the fact that we are Europeans and self-determination is an alienable right of all nations.
People who talk about Brexit causing a permanent schism between us and the European mainland are intentionally exaggerating the importance of the EU to defining these countries’ interests. The interests that we share with neighbours will still be there, whether it be halting nuclear proliferation or preventing Islamist terrorism from harming innocents.
All of these issues are too fundamental to the interests of the states which comprise the European Union to allow them to be threatened by a domestic British decision. Does anyone really believe that an internal decision by the British public will, as was suggested during the referendum, mean that French or German authorities will not be willing to exchange intelligence with our own security services?
Our extradition from the EU provides the opportunity to develop a partnership of true respect and mutual assistance with the continent, where the UK is recognised as an equal partner which works with our neighbours where our national interests align.
As a show of good faith, the UK should take a proactive role in aiding the EU in its various security challenges. We could use the Royal Navy to assist Frontex in defending southern Europe from illegal migration and human trafficking. Likewise, the prominence of British forces in the Advanced Forward Presence on NATO’s eastern periphery will demonstrate to Eastern European states the desire of Britain to thwart any attempt to alter current borders - something at the root of security concerns for Baltic and Visegrad states.
By utilising our considerable resources to support the European security environment, we will show a sincere desire to retain close relations with our neighbours. This could gain us a leading position as a guarantor of the continent’s security, while being outside the bounds of EU governance.
America - we’ll be no 51st State
Looking at the cold reality of the world means we must finally put to bed the idea that we have a ‘special relationship’ with the United States. The US is a country which pursues its own objectives far better than we pursue ours. Since we are both Western democracies, our interests will align more than most but time and time again, the US has demonstrated that this relationship is very much one-sided.
As stated, I believe that the US will remain the primary global superpower. It is also the world’s only superpower which has demonstrated a commitment to the preservation of Western civilisation. It is in our interest to assist them, but this does not mean we should become a supplicant to Washington. We are objectively the junior partner in the relations but this doesn’t mean that the British state must acquiesce to every demand emanating from Washington when it tramples upon British interests.
Recently, the Conservative Party was able to show a surprising degree of fortitude when it pushed back against President Trump’s demand to exclude Huawei from Britain’s 5G network, fearing that Britain did not have the capability of upgrading the network without the help of the corporation. Obviously this does raise further questions. Why does Britain have to rely upon a corporate appendage of a hostile military regime for its critical infrastructure? And why do we not have our own national equivalent to do the job?
This is a question beyond the scope of this article. The point here is that it is impressive that a British prime minister was able to resist American diplomatic pressure on such a key policy area. It is my hope that this muscle for affirming British interests against Washington can continue being strengthened in the future, and our diplomatic services can demonstrate that we are a nation with an independent foreign policy and not merely some 51st state whose support can be assumed.
Democracy in the democratic recession
The last decades have killed any idea of a so-called ‘end of history.’ Theorised by Francis Fukuyama who declared the inevitable victory of liberal democracy and the end of humanity’s socio-political evolution, this liberal triumphalism has meant that the West has not taken the threat of autocratic subversion seriously.
We now live in an age of ‘democratic recession’, where faith in our governing institutions is at a historical low and outside powers are taking advantage of this by a variety of means to internally weaken the West. These influence campaigns have been matched by aggression in areas as disparate as IP theft, cyber space and global environmental policy.
The United Kingdom has the opportunity to take a leading role among the free world to assemble a coalition of liberal and national democracies to head off the autocratic challenge, where our interests align. Thus far, however, this opportunity has been squandered by successive governments from both major parties. Recently, we have seen an utterly pitiful response from the British state as China slowly strangulates Hong Kong, and almost complete silence as the Kurds are left to fate. The United Kingdom should commit to a reassessment of relations with our more troublesome ‘allies,’ particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
In both cases, moneyed interests within Britain, not least of which is the arms industry, have resulted in us becoming subservient towards powers who continually undermine our way of life. A wannabe sultan currently destabilising Europe via weaponised migration, in one case, and a fundamentalist regime which exports the cancerous ideology of Wahhabism into the West, in the other. Autocrats and tyrants do not see this as clever diplomacy. They see it for what it is: weakness. And they are right to do so.
Britain shouldn’t hesitate to use whatever resources it has at its disposal to reign in these regimes and prevent them from taking actions which destabilise the surrounding security environment. This desire to affirm democracy should not be confused with the crusader mentality which underpins reckless campaigns of “democracy promotion” or any other form of regime change.
We should be immensely skeptical towards all forms of foreign adventurism, simply because it is impossible to artificially implant democratic institutions in a country with no history of it. Attempting to do, as we have seen with numerous interventions within the Muslim world, will only lead to undermining what little security is already there.
At the root of this belief is the recognition that good things can take eons to develop but can be destroyed in less than a generation by people swept away by ideological or emotional contagion. The British state and public seem to have forgotten this truth. Rather, we have assumed that democracy and freedom are a given, and that they will always be around. This is false. We have seen numerous attempts at ideological and political subversion, whether it be the Russian dirty-money which swims throughout the City of London, or radical Saudi clerics teaching in British schools.
Ultimately, our opponents have seen weak points and cleavages within British social life which are ripe of exploiting. It may be the multicultural nature of British social life or it could be a lack of faith in our politicians. Whatever it is, the internet and social links between societies have been effectively weaponised to take advantage of these, and our push back needs to come before we witness fundamental division within our own society.
Global disorder and opportunity
The 21st century has already proven itself replete with continuous challenges for this country, and there is no reason to expect a slowing down in events. All projections, whether they be population, technological evolution or environmental degradation, indicate a global system which will witness further instability.
We have an opportunity to define British grand strategy as being a beacon of stability and order in this rapidly changing world. This is an opportunity that we cannot miss.
