British foreign policy: a tour d'horizon

Every international security pundit would like to summarise the broad sweep of strategic concerns facing the United Kingdom in a single hour. This is just such a lecture.

Sadly (or, for those of you reading it, happily), this is not mine. My comments are limited to parentheses. At least, not originally. Rather, it is a summary of the hour-long inaugural lecture of Professor Michael Clarke, the new director of the Royal United Services Institute.

Prof. Clarke began with the rather trite comment that this was a very uncertain time in international affairs. At such a time think tanks such as RUSI had a lot to offer, for they had the luxury to stoop and think while politicians were too busy reacting to events.

He began (apologetically) with a biblical quote: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong … [for] … time and chance happeneth to them all”. The them for (and title of) his essay was Strategy and Fortune, for luck as much as good planning played a role in foreign (one might argue all) policy. Good strategies can ride over bad luck, whereas bad strategies were destroyed by it.

Having said this, he turned to a long analysis of the Blair years. Until 1997, UK foreign policy had been shaped by Realist orthodoxy: sovereignty; territorial inviolability; balance-of-power. Blair characterised this as a “doctrine of benign inactivity” (though it was clear that he did not see this as quite so benign, as bystanders watching the tragedies of the Balkans and Rwanda might appreciate).

By comparison, Blair’s own foreign policy would be shaped by three strands:
1) Policy designed around values such as liberty, democracy, tolerance and justice, where “idealism becomes Realpolitik”
2) The integration of “hard power” (the power to compel) with “oft power” (the power to attract)
3) A recognition that the world was not benign to the UK and that we would therefore need to fight for our values: thus the liberal interventionism exemplified in his Chicago Speech.
This liberal interventionism would have to be based on two strategies: Leadership and Positioning. Leadership meant that the UK should be in the foreground – as it was with Kosovo, climate change and Iraq. Positioning meant that the UK’s success would depend on where it stood; in Blair’s view, the best place to be was among democratic allies, shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States.

Clarke then described Blair as a Shakespearian character whose great successes were followed by great tragedy. And he did indeed begin successfully: his first term saw an increased give and take within the EU, more focussed on the bigger picture; successful intervention in Kosovo where British and French leadership – the willingness to break a deadlock by using ground forces – won the war with Milosevic; a textbook humanitarian intervention in Sierra Leone; and Operation Desert Fox, which Clarke argued was in retrospect far more successful than was at first thought – it nearly led to Saddam’s ouster.

But the events of September 11th changed both the world and Blair’s fortune – not because of what Al Qaeda did, but because of America’s reaction to it. Blair’s April 2002 meeting with President Bush at Crawford, Texas left Blair convinced that the US would invade Iraq and that the UK must therefore back them. He therefore came up with a five point plan that highlighted both his focus on positioning and his self-belief (some might argue hubris). He would
1) Get Europe to back the US, which would encourage
2) The US to work though the UN, which would include
3) The US committing to a renewed push for peace in Palestine, which would lead to
4) A regional settlement for the whole Middle East, which would
5) Draw in the Neo-Cons in Washington as it would play into their democratisation agenda.

Eventually (perhaps sadly) he failed on all counts. Consequently the US went it “alone”, and the UK was bound to join them because of Blair’s conviction that this was the position that the UK must adopt if it was to have influence internationally. Four years later the objectives of the coalition have been radically revised, from creating a peaceful, democratic and free Iraq, they are now happy just to retreat with honour from an Iraq stable enough to hold together while Iraqis settle their own differences. The result for Blair was that he lost his power to lead or to take the initiative; indeed, an axis formed against him personally, led by Putin, Schroeder and Chirac. Blair tried to recover. Clarke noted the focus after 2003 on Africa, the environment and global poverty. Gleneagles was a personal triumph for Blair but perhaps also a parting gift from a G8 glad to be seeing the back of him.

The key messages from the Blair era were that
1) Globalisation is not inherently benign (especially if you are from the Third World) and is certainly not equitable
2) The UK is very well placed to benefit from Globalisation because it has an open society and a flexible economy]
3) The UK lives (and dies) by collective action
4) There is a crisis of collective action in the world today.

At this point Clarke turned to the future, and noted that the challenges for the future depended on how one viewed it. Traditional international security problems would focus on the Middle East, a resurgent Russia, Britain’s place in Europe. Trans-national problems included crime, terror, WMDs, energy-, cyber- and food-security. Structural problems include global inequality, climate change, health and failing states. What is not clear is in what way these impact on Britain. What is clear is that the international consensus is weak, unclear and ineffective, and that even the powerful were struggling to impose their will.

In dealing with the apparent problems highlighted above, however, there was a tendency to ignore the problems of international structures – how one achieves an international consensus. There was almost a tragic fatalism that accepted the failure of international institutions since the Cold War, with new sources of legitimacy replacing “clear pillars” with a “subtle constellation of power”; difficulties of control and influence as a result of network, globalised and disaggregated economies; changing “rules of the game” as international law leant more towards human security.

In fact, international law was weaker rather than stronger, and the West only had itself to blame. The West had played fast and loose with international law – acts of humanitarian intervention had undermined legal norms. This was a dangerous game to play, for in what would be the “Asian Century” the West would lose power and influence, and “rules matter most to the least powerful.”

Yet Clarke remained optimistic. He believe that the US would gain from considering and addressing these issues; the UK would gain by working collectively, which it was traditionally good at; the UK remained part of a broad international consensus (if one looked beyond the immediate challenge of Iraq); and the UK had good armed forces. But Britain must be cautious about using them; their very quality led to a tendency to reach for force too soon. He also lamented (as did Lord Ashdown in his recent book) that while the military was more joined up than ever, it was woefully disconnected from humanitarian and civil agencies.

Blair was, in Clarke’s view, correct to position itself beside the US, but the UK must also recognise that the US is entering an introspective stage, and that when it emerges the old certainty that its Janus-faced strategy would always put the Atlantic fist would be gone; in the coming century, America would be a Pacific power first-and-foremost. The UK’s role in the C21st would be to be a hub rather than a pillar of international security, acting to articulate and lead the consensus (as the Stern Review did on climate change).

As for Europe, it would remain peaceful and prosperous, but in the Asian Century, it would increasingly struggle for latitude in which to manoeuvre.

A full transcript is available from RUSI.

Privatised policing

Villagers in Dedham, Essex, are so fed up with vandalism and anti-social behaviour that they have decided to pay for their own policing.

At a cost of £15 per year per household (which the County Council adds to the precept, the Parish Council’s discretionary taxation appended to the Council Tax), the Parish Council will fund a Police Community Support Officer dedicated to the village.

Dedham is a picturesque Essex village

The privatisation of policing tends to cause a visceral fear in most liberals. The state’s monopoly on coercion and violence are rightly viewed as essential safeguards against the brutal anarchy that would ensue if private armies were allowed to proliferate. Yet on the other hand, hiring a bodyguard or security guard is only a natural extension of the individual’s right to self-defence.

This example is actually a half-way house, with the PCSO remaining an officer of the state, but financed and thus deployed by the local community. This is closer to Britain’s policing heritage than our current system; over the past 30 years successive Home Secretaries have extended centralised control over what were a plethora of local police services, developed from local watch committees. This centralisation has not been entirely positive.

Dedham is famous for Constable

Local policing needs to be rooted much more firmly in the community than is currently the case: at present there are Safer Neighbourhoods panels, and local commanders meet with councillors, but we have a far more centralised approach to policing than is common in Europe or America. Rather than having a local constabulary and a national gendarmerie, our police fall between two stools. As a result, they have lost that greatest of all British traditions, the local bobby on the beat who knew his local area, chatted to the residents and deterred crime. The new Safer Neighbourhoods initiative is an attempt to return to community policing, but local elected officials should be given much more control over local policing than is currently the case.

This particular story does raise an issue of equality, however. While I can see no reason why a community should not be allowed to volunteer to pay for extra security, and while it may make sense for that security to be an officer of the state, I am concerned by the report on today’s Times (a column inch of which explains my unerring knowledge of the workings of Dedham Parish Council) that the Parish will only pay half of the costs of the PCSO, with Essex County Council or Essex police presumably picking up the rest of the bill. This raises the spectre of public resources being allocated to where communities are rich enough to bear part of the costs, but are unwilling to bear all. This is in effect a subsidy to the wealthier sectors of society, who can afford to vote for a £15 a year rise in their Council Tax, diverting resources away from poorer areas where money is tighter. What is more, it allocates resources based not on need, but on ability to pay: as Dedham Councillor Lyn West noted, ‘the village would [not] get "value for money" in view of the low level of crime in Dedham’.

There is clearly a middle ground in this issue, whereby communities would have more control over policing and would be able to buy in more if they chose, while poor areas did not subsidise the security of richer neighbours. This is to give more power over policing to local communities, allow them to vote for the amount of investment in policing to be derived from their own taxes, but not subsidise additional local policing from taxes from the wider community. Let the people of the county pay for the policing of county, which is distributed according to priorities set out by the County Council, while local parishes or wards control their own budgets, which they can augment as they see fit from their own resources. This would strengthen the link between the taxpayer and the public service, and ensure that county-wide resources were allocated according to need, and not ability to pay.

These days it's a different type that is getting them excited.

The Al Qaeda franchise

It is a commonplace these days to talk of Al Qaeda as a “franchise”. Osama Bin Laden’s organisation was broken up by the invasion of Afghanistan. While many of its leaders are still at large, and it still has money and committed adherents, its main role is now as a rallying cry and inspiration for jihadist groups across the world. Where in the 1990s it planned, funded and launched specific attacks, it is now more of a “brand” that other Islamist groups use to promote and justify their own acts of terrorism.

While there is undoubtedly truth in this, it is too clean a distinction. The truth is far more terrifying.

A few weeks ago Newsnight showed a Special Report entitled Inside al Qaeda - a spy's story, broadcast on 16 November. Details of the programme are available, as is the full broadcast. It was a truly terrifying look into the heart of this most committed and dangerous of enemies, and one of the most compelling 47 minutes of television I have watched in a long time.

While there was a lot of fascinating detail in the programme, one particular moment stood out. The interviewee, who spied on Islamist groups for many years and infiltrated Al Qaeda in 1995, described his time at an Afghan training camp. A CIA operative confirmed that tens of thousands of young men passed through the Afghan training camps during that time. What was particularly chilling was the interviewees description of how free they then were to take jihad abroad:

“They are just training you and you are free to choose your jihad. You are free – and I repeat, you are free – to say ‘No. I’m not going to fight there. I want to go and fight there.’”

To me, this explained much about the spread of chaos over the past decade. While Al Qaeda were training some particular individuals for special missions, tens or even hundreds of times as many young men were given long periods of military training (based, the CIA operative told us, on US and UK Special Forces training manuals) and ideological indoctrination, before being let loose on the world with no particular plan. These men would then travel to wherever they wished to cause mayhem.

This casts a new light on the tragedy of the July 2005 bombings. There was no need for Al Qaeda to coordinate these missions. Having trained the bombers how to run an operation and convinced them that it would be just, the leadership could release them, confident that they would bring terror to the West. They need not worry whether they would go through with it; if they did not, others would. We may rest far-from-assured that scores if not hundreds have been through these camps and returned to the UK. Even if some are caught it is no great loss to Al Qaeda; because they are autonomous groups, they will not be able to finger one another. This, too, might explain the copycat bombings on 21 July – having seen one group succeed, another was compelled to act.

It is a mercy that these camps have been broken up and that this level of training has ceased, but the danger that they have unleashed will be with us for years to come.

Iraq, the media and the war on terror

Matthew d’Ancona, editor of the Spectator, gave a speech yesterday at Policy Exchange at which he launched a pamphlet entitled Confessions of a Hawkish Hack – the media and the war on terror. He was also interviewed by the New Statesman’s Martin Bright. In what was a generally thoughtful and at times pessimistic discussion, perhaps the most interesting feature was that both the right-wing Mr. d’Ancona and the left-wing Mr. Bright admitted that that they might yet be proved wrong regarding their positions (respectively pro- and anti-) on the “War on Terror” and the Iraq War.

Those of you who now dismiss everything that supporters of the war have to say as though their every utterance is forever tainted should look away now, for this discussion is not for you. It is about you, however, for one of Mr. d’Ancona’s main themes was that one tragedy of the Iraq War is that it has undermined –perhaps destroyed – our society’s ability to engage in much-needed debate about the war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western values.

Mr. d’Ancona’s argued that Tony Blair’s decision to publish the Iraq Dossier both confused intelligence (the art of assessment, interpretation and educated guesswork) with spin (the art of presenting maybes as definites) and made the justification of the war rest on the existence of WMD, rather than Saddam Hussein’s violation of 12 years of Security Council resolutions. “Iraq” had now become shorthand for everything that is wrong with the New Labour project, and for its ultimate failure.

The result was that the much more important debate about how we confront Islamists bent on establishing a global Caliphate (an attitude that some American’s have taken to describing, quite accurately, as “Islamo-fascism”) is now framed in simplistic terms that paint everything as black and white and uses one single battle as a yardstick for the wider debate.

The question one is asked as a matter of course is “Where did you stand on Iraq?”, and how one answers is taken as indicative of where one stands on everything else, and whether one’s judgement is worthy of consideration. Mr. d’Ancona did not use the simile, but it would be like judging one’s position on the liberation of Europe by asking whether one supported the Battle of Arnhem.

Mr. d’Ancona’s fear is that we may be losing a war that many of us refuse to accept exists. While he recognises that “War on Terror” is a vague and unsatisfactory term, he questions what alternative President Bush could have used after 9/11: to name Islam even in context would have stoked the crusade fallacy Bin Laden would have us believe; to refer to it as merely a crime would not have satisfied the horror felt around the world. The enemy certainly views it as a war, and its plans span generations.

“This is the cold sweat war” in which the terrorist first spreads fear and then discord; we fight amongst ourselves, both between and within democracies. Meanwhile governments face the pressure to appear constantly new, constantly interesting, so that priorities become lost in “the quest for the daily mandate”. Governments have become subject to a form of ADHD, constantly flitting from one policy area to the next, frantically legislating and politicking, and journalists are party to it; they demand hyperactivity because it feeds their thirst for rolling-news.

The West is suffering from its own consumer culture (there d’Ancona would agree with both the domestic left and the Islamic far-right). If we don’t like a product we take it back and throw it away. This is liberating where MP3 players and mobile phones are concerned. With political parties it is harmful, and in foreign policy it is disastrous. Politics in general and foreign affairs in particular require strategic thinking; a sense of what we want at the finish and how we will get there. The key to strategy is that we stick to it even when faced with tactical setbacks; Tobruk didn’t make us abandon the North Africa Campaign.

Too many in the West now think that once the “Two madmen” that led us into Iraq have left office we will be able to put the sordid chapter of their folie à deux behind us and return to the norm of peace. This is wrong. “Modern conflicts are not trials of strength but of will”. This war, with a strain of Islam that teaches that the West is decadent and must be overthrown and which trains our own citizens to be its foot-soldiers, will grind on long after Blair and Bush are gone. The question is, do we have the patience we need to save our civilisation?