Punching at any weight

These are the thoughts of former UK Ambassador to Russia, Rodric Braithwaite, on UK foreign policy developments over the past two decades.

As a sometime employee of the FCO, I always enjoy reading the (often self justifying thoughts) of former senior officers of the British Diplomatic Service. Rodric Braithwaite's article does not disappoint. As if he, as mere very senior ambassador and Chairman of the JIC in the early 1990s, could have had any influence on, or responsibility for, UK foreign policy over the past 2 decades?

That having been said, I suppose that it would be churlish not to rejoice over a repentant sinner, though I for one wish he was a little more repentant still. He correctly identifies a key fault (the belief that the UK can and should punch above its weight in international affairs) that has bedevilled post-1945 UK foreign policy. Yet he doesn't present a coherent alternative.

Ministers are in a tricky position. On one hand there are the obvious realities that Britain is not the force that it once was in world affairs. Yet on the other ministers are supported by a national security and foreign policy structure that was designed in the immediate post war period when Britain still played a leading role in the world and reflects that understanding of Britain's role. And, inexplicably, Britain still has the second biggest defence budget on the planet (only behind the US).

I think it is time that we had a proper review of all this, so we can decide what are real national interests are in the 21st century and how those should be reflected in our national security structures and strategy. Perhaps a Royal Commission briefed to research these issues with no sacred cows would be a way forward?

The echos of empire

The dreadful situation in Zimbabwe (see this for today's developments) is a reminder that our world is still dominated by the British Empire, despite the fact that the Empire was consigned to history almost half a century ago.

Zim is just one example of the legacy of empire shaping our world. Almost all the major foreign policy issues that dominate news bulletins (Zimbabwe, Iraq, the Arab/Israeli conflict, conflict in India/Pakistan, Sudan) can be traced back to the effects of the various European empires and how they were wound up. There is even a reasonable case to be made that European imperialism is in part responsible for the current terrorism problem.

None of this is to say that all the effects of empire were exclusively negative - they clearly weren't. The British Empire, for example, exported the ideal of the rule of law around the globe, and the world would be an infinitely poorer place without that. Also the European empires played an important historic role by creating the infrastructure of a proper international system which has made global trade and the management of conflict possible.

But despite that, the mistakes made by white men sitting in London or Paris or the other European capitals a couple of hundred years ago continue to echo through time to today. And the biggest mistake was the creation of artificial borders which failed to reflect the cultural/tribal/political reality on the ground. Many of the problems listed above are a direct result of these borders, and our attempts to manage these conflicts will be the dominant foreign policy challenge for the foreseeable future.