This article appears in the Guardian’s Comment is Free
The Tories are foreign-policy lightweights
1 October 2008
Cameron's Conservatives have cobbled together a reactionary set of measures which would weaken the UK's standing abroad
By this stage in the political-electoral cycle it would be reasonable to assume that a coherent international policy would be on offer from the Conservative party. Yet as ambassadors and international observers turn up in Birmingham, they will find prejudice in place of policy and a revival of the worst failures of both John Major's and Margaret Thatcher's foreign policy still embedded in Tory thinking.
Compared to 1995 or 1996, when Tony Blair and Robin Cook had completely reshaped Labour's international rhetoric to ditch the Euroscepticism of the 1980s and the hostility to open trade of the Labour left as well as promoting a strong pro-American partnership, today's Tories have not the hard thinking about what to do if they take control of Britain's foreign policy.
The latest example is the promise by David Cameron, repeated over the weekend by William Hague, to hold a referendum on the all-but-defunct Lisbon treaty. The Irish no vote could in theory be overcome but even the most pro-EU of Irish observers think that if a second referendum were to be held the Irish no would be even stronger.
In 2009, the EU presidency is held first by the Czech Republic then by Sweden. Neither Prague nor Stockholm have ratified the Lisbon treaty nor give much indication that they will. Poland's president Kaczynski is also refusing to sign the treaty.
Yet Cameron and Hague are insisting on a referendum on a dead parrot. Their cynical tactic is obvious – to corral the anti-European votes which might go to UKIP or the BNP. But to commit the first year of a putative Tory government to the passage of a referendum bill and then the organisation of a giant fiesta of anti-European hate in which the tabloids, the BNP, UKIP and the Better-Off-Out Tories can indulge into their xenophobic rhetoric seems an odd choice.
The no camp will win but only to say no to what is not going to happen. Across Europe and in Washington, partners and allies will look aghast at the frivolity of Britain indulging in such pointless plebiscite politics. And since Cameron cannot deliver what UKIP, Open Europe and many of his MPs want – a withdrawal of Britain to the status of Norway outside the EU, he will just make Britain's look foolish as Sarkozy and Merkel and other serious centre-right leaders take over the leadership of Europe and marginalise Britain.
Cameron's other major foreign policy speech was to denounce the politics of interventionism. The difficulties and controversy over Iraq are well known, but the major theatre of interventionism today is Afghanistan, where Britain and allies are trying to stop Taliban Islamist terrorists win power and in parallel move in for the ultimate al-Qaida and Islamist jihadi goal – control of Pakistan and a fundamentalist finger on Pakistan's nuclear button. Already the Conservative Muslim Forum has called for support for Iran's drive to get nuclear weapons and has said a Tory government should lessen support for Israel. Is that Cameron's policy?
The failure to intervene in the Balkans and Rwanda by John Major remains a blot on British foreign policy. A million asylum seekers left the former Yugoslavia because the Conservatives failed to stand up to and face down Milosevic. Not all interventions work but to rule out interventionism on principle, as Cameron appears to have done takes us back to the worst failures of recent Tory foreign policy.
The small "c" conservative London establishment of ex-ambassadors are united in their view that Russia's invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Georgia has to be lived with and that, in the words of Roderic Lyne, a former UK ambassador to Moscow, writing for OpenDemocracy, "Nato enlargement has been a mistake from the beginning." This will strike a chill into the heart of the Poles and the Baltic States. It will also worry the Finns who are now looking seriously at Nato membership to gain extra security after Russia's military assault and establishment of military bases on Georgian territory. Finland, like Georgia, won independence in 1918. Stalin snuffed out Georgia's freedom and Finland now worries that Russia wants to dictate the international relations of its close neighbours. David Cameron made a bellicose cold war speech in Tbilisi, reminiscent of the more extravagant rightwing anti-Soviet rhetoric of the early Thatcher era, but his policy of rejecting cooperation in the fraternity of centre-right governing parties in Europe runs counter to the accepted view that the best way to deal with Russia is to promote an integrated and united EU line on energy policy and on speaking as one to Putin.
This week in Strasbourg at the autumn meeting of 600 MPs from 47 nations grouped in the Council of Europe, Cameron's foreign policy will come under pressure. Tory MPs have been backing the Kremlin's efforts to increase influence in Europe's human rights watchdog assembly. Earlier this year, Conservative MPs were promoting a former KGB staffer, now one of Putin's key aides in Russia's parliament, as president of the Council of Europe. Cameron's team back the Russian position on Kosovo against UK, American and EU policy. As with the odd pronouncements of the Conservative Muslim Forum, it is not clear if Cameron and Hague actually know what Tory MPs and Peers get up to as representatives of their party at home and abroad.
On transatlantic politics, Cameron, Hague and the Tory's defence spokesman, Liam Fox, appear determined to keep the spirit of Dick Cheney alive even as the Bush era becomes history. Both McCain and Obama have spoken of the need for partnership with Europe to tackle world instability. David Howell, the Tory spokesman on foreign affairs in the Lords, and father-in-law of George Osborne, has spent the past 15 years writing that America is turning to Asia and is losing interest in Europe.
Yet the opposite is the case. Whether on terrorism, on financial crises, on Afghanistan, on Turkey, on missile defence, on opening new bases in the Black Sea, we can see America is more involved with the wider Europe than ever before. When Nato was founded nearly 60 years ago, America worried about a small grouping of nations west of the Elbe. Now, from the Caspian to the Atlantic, US interests are ever more co-mingled with Europe. To be sure, the rise of China and India herald a new future, but 60% of world GDP is concentrated in the Euroatlantic region and the Tory incantation that Europe does not matter any more make no sense in Washington or on Wall Street.
Next year, the International Labour Organisation celebrates its 90th birthday. But the only available Tory policy on global social justice is the promise to take Britain out of its social charter obligations which have provided British workers with five week's paid holidays a year. As inequality rises to the top20 of the political agenda, Cameron wants to weaken such modest international work as it exists to promote social justice.
The year 2009 also sees the 60th birthday of the Council of Europe which was brought into being by Winston Churchill's famous Zurich speech calling for European unity. Its most important achievement is the European convention on human rights and the setting up of the European Court of human rights. But a number of senior Tories have called on Britain to withdraw from the ECHR with its obligation to accept refugees fleeing political and religious persecution. And Conservatives have never liked the rulings of the Council of Europe's human rights court banning violence against children (ie corporal punishment in schools) or upholding women's rights.
Next year is also the 60th anniversary of Nato's founding. Today's Nato has to find a way of getting its European members more involved and more willing to share burdens and take risks. Cameron's hostility to European cooperation and party political partnership leaves Britain isolated and unable to influence the future direction of Nato, the EU and the Euroatlantic economic and security community.
None of this will be debated at the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Never has a British political party prepared to ask voters to entrust it with government with such a wrongheaded foreign policy, which if implemented along the lines of current Tory rhetoric, would seriously weaken Britain.
Compared to 1995 or 1996, when Tony Blair and Robin Cook had completely reshaped Labour's international rhetoric to ditch the Euroscepticism of the 1980s and the hostility to open trade of the Labour left as well as promoting a strong pro-American partnership, today's Tories have not the hard thinking about what to do if they take control of Britain's foreign policy.
The latest example is the promise by David Cameron, repeated over the weekend by William Hague, to hold a referendum on the all-but-defunct Lisbon treaty. The Irish no vote could in theory be overcome but even the most pro-EU of Irish observers think that if a second referendum were to be held the Irish no would be even stronger.
In 2009, the EU presidency is held first by the Czech Republic then by Sweden. Neither Prague nor Stockholm have ratified the Lisbon treaty nor give much indication that they will. Poland's president Kaczynski is also refusing to sign the treaty.
Yet Cameron and Hague are insisting on a referendum on a dead parrot. Their cynical tactic is obvious – to corral the anti-European votes which might go to UKIP or the BNP. But to commit the first year of a putative Tory government to the passage of a referendum bill and then the organisation of a giant fiesta of anti-European hate in which the tabloids, the BNP, UKIP and the Better-Off-Out Tories can indulge into their xenophobic rhetoric seems an odd choice.
The no camp will win but only to say no to what is not going to happen. Across Europe and in Washington, partners and allies will look aghast at the frivolity of Britain indulging in such pointless plebiscite politics. And since Cameron cannot deliver what UKIP, Open Europe and many of his MPs want – a withdrawal of Britain to the status of Norway outside the EU, he will just make Britain's look foolish as Sarkozy and Merkel and other serious centre-right leaders take over the leadership of Europe and marginalise Britain.
Cameron's other major foreign policy speech was to denounce the politics of interventionism. The difficulties and controversy over Iraq are well known, but the major theatre of interventionism today is Afghanistan, where Britain and allies are trying to stop Taliban Islamist terrorists win power and in parallel move in for the ultimate al-Qaida and Islamist jihadi goal – control of Pakistan and a fundamentalist finger on Pakistan's nuclear button. Already the Conservative Muslim Forum has called for support for Iran's drive to get nuclear weapons and has said a Tory government should lessen support for Israel. Is that Cameron's policy?
The failure to intervene in the Balkans and Rwanda by John Major remains a blot on British foreign policy. A million asylum seekers left the former Yugoslavia because the Conservatives failed to stand up to and face down Milosevic. Not all interventions work but to rule out interventionism on principle, as Cameron appears to have done takes us back to the worst failures of recent Tory foreign policy.
The small "c" conservative London establishment of ex-ambassadors are united in their view that Russia's invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Georgia has to be lived with and that, in the words of Roderic Lyne, a former UK ambassador to Moscow, writing for OpenDemocracy, "Nato enlargement has been a mistake from the beginning." This will strike a chill into the heart of the Poles and the Baltic States. It will also worry the Finns who are now looking seriously at Nato membership to gain extra security after Russia's military assault and establishment of military bases on Georgian territory. Finland, like Georgia, won independence in 1918. Stalin snuffed out Georgia's freedom and Finland now worries that Russia wants to dictate the international relations of its close neighbours. David Cameron made a bellicose cold war speech in Tbilisi, reminiscent of the more extravagant rightwing anti-Soviet rhetoric of the early Thatcher era, but his policy of rejecting cooperation in the fraternity of centre-right governing parties in Europe runs counter to the accepted view that the best way to deal with Russia is to promote an integrated and united EU line on energy policy and on speaking as one to Putin.
This week in Strasbourg at the autumn meeting of 600 MPs from 47 nations grouped in the Council of Europe, Cameron's foreign policy will come under pressure. Tory MPs have been backing the Kremlin's efforts to increase influence in Europe's human rights watchdog assembly. Earlier this year, Conservative MPs were promoting a former KGB staffer, now one of Putin's key aides in Russia's parliament, as president of the Council of Europe. Cameron's team back the Russian position on Kosovo against UK, American and EU policy. As with the odd pronouncements of the Conservative Muslim Forum, it is not clear if Cameron and Hague actually know what Tory MPs and Peers get up to as representatives of their party at home and abroad.
On transatlantic politics, Cameron, Hague and the Tory's defence spokesman, Liam Fox, appear determined to keep the spirit of Dick Cheney alive even as the Bush era becomes history. Both McCain and Obama have spoken of the need for partnership with Europe to tackle world instability. David Howell, the Tory spokesman on foreign affairs in the Lords, and father-in-law of George Osborne, has spent the past 15 years writing that America is turning to Asia and is losing interest in Europe.
Yet the opposite is the case. Whether on terrorism, on financial crises, on Afghanistan, on Turkey, on missile defence, on opening new bases in the Black Sea, we can see America is more involved with the wider Europe than ever before. When Nato was founded nearly 60 years ago, America worried about a small grouping of nations west of the Elbe. Now, from the Caspian to the Atlantic, US interests are ever more co-mingled with Europe. To be sure, the rise of China and India herald a new future, but 60% of world GDP is concentrated in the Euroatlantic region and the Tory incantation that Europe does not matter any more make no sense in Washington or on Wall Street.
Next year, the International Labour Organisation celebrates its 90th birthday. But the only available Tory policy on global social justice is the promise to take Britain out of its social charter obligations which have provided British workers with five week's paid holidays a year. As inequality rises to the top20 of the political agenda, Cameron wants to weaken such modest international work as it exists to promote social justice.
The year 2009 also sees the 60th birthday of the Council of Europe which was brought into being by Winston Churchill's famous Zurich speech calling for European unity. Its most important achievement is the European convention on human rights and the setting up of the European Court of human rights. But a number of senior Tories have called on Britain to withdraw from the ECHR with its obligation to accept refugees fleeing political and religious persecution. And Conservatives have never liked the rulings of the Council of Europe's human rights court banning violence against children (ie corporal punishment in schools) or upholding women's rights.
Next year is also the 60th anniversary of Nato's founding. Today's Nato has to find a way of getting its European members more involved and more willing to share burdens and take risks. Cameron's hostility to European cooperation and party political partnership leaves Britain isolated and unable to influence the future direction of Nato, the EU and the Euroatlantic economic and security community.
None of this will be debated at the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Never has a British political party prepared to ask voters to entrust it with government with such a wrongheaded foreign policy, which if implemented along the lines of current Tory rhetoric, would seriously weaken Britain.