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British Foreign Policy

British Foreign Policy

J A M I E G A S K A R T H

polity

Copyright © Jamie Gaskarth 2013

The right of Jamie Gaskarth to be identifi ed as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

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v

Contents

Acknowledgements viAbbreviations viii

1 Introduction: analysing British foreign policy 1 2 The actors in British foreign policy 12 3 How is British foreign policy made? 41 4 Self-identity and British foreign policy 59 5 Britain in the world 81 6 The ethics of British foreign policy 96 7 Defence and British foreign policy 120 8 Economics and British foreign policy 145 9 Conclusion: future challenges 175

Notes 185Bibliography 223Index 261

vi

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of individuals whose help and support in the writing of this book have been immense. In the fi rst place, I am grateful to Louise Knight of Polity Press for asking me to undertake this project, to David Winters, who has given me the space to see it through, and to Fiona Sewell for her patient attention to the manuscript’s preparation. As an outsider trying to understand the bureaucratic and political processes that feed into British foreign policymaking, I have relied heavily on the generosity of offi -cials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce and the Ministry of Defence, past and present, who have given me their time and advice freely. To preserve their anonymity I cannot name them here, but their assistance has spared the author’s blushes on more than one occasion through corrective readings and conversations on the manuscript. I am also truly thankful for the oppor-tunity to interview former ministers, including Lord Owen, Lord Howe, Lord Hurd, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Tony Lloyd, Chris Bryant, Margaret Beckett, Bill Rammell and Lord Malloch-Brown. For me, the fact that they were prepared to give their time to speak to a lowly academic speaks volumes about their kindness.

A series of academic colleagues have been extraordinarily generous in reading parts of the book, offering advice or observations or forwarding useful readings, including David Allen, David Armstrong, Klaus Brummer, Jim Buller, Dan Bulley, Stephen Burman, Malcolm Chalmers, Stuart Croft, Oliver Daddow, Theo Farrell, Ian Hall, Patrick Holden, David McCourt, Kai Oppermann and Paul Rogers. A special mention has to go to Mark Bevir, who graciously sponsored my Visiting Scholarship at Berkeley and read far more chapters than I was expecting him to, and whose comments improved the text immensely. The two anonymous reviewers also offered trenchant criti-cisms which I have sought to address, and the book is certainly much better for their insightful comments. Accurate and patient research support was afforded me by Aneta Brockhill, Nichola Harmer and Ben Nutt – who expertly prepared the diagrams. Nichola and Ben also read chapters and provided perceptive advice. Thanks to you all!

I also need to express my deepest gratitude to colleagues at Plymouth Uni-versity for all their help and support over the years; in particular, to Phil Megicks and Kerry Howell for approving the sabbatical that enabled me to

viiAcknowledgements

complete the manuscript. It is easy to moan about the bureaucratic tangles of academic life, but Plymouth is a hugely rewarding place to work, and if this book has any strengths they are due to the time, space and encourage-ment Plymouth offers its staff. In addition, I would like to thank my students on the Foreign Policy Analysis module who have challenged me to think more deeply about many of these issues. Needless to say, any errors made in this book are the author’s alone and should not be attributed to anyone men-tioned above.

Last but not least I have to thank my wonderful family and friends for all their patience and support: my wife Ellie, who is the most lovely, inspiring and beautiful person you could ever meet; my brothers, Mark and Glyn; sister Delphi; sister-in-law Lynne; friends Ian, Ed Brett and the rest; but most of all my mum, to whom this book is dedicated, with love.

viii

A bbreviations

The following list gives abbreviations and acronyms used more than once in the book, other than very widely known ones such as UK, US, EU etc.

APM asymmetric power modelARRC Allied Rapid Reaction CorpsBIS Department for Business, Innovation and SkillsBRIC Brazil, Russia, India and ChinaCAAT Campaign Against Arms TradeCAEC Committees on Arms Export ControlsCAP Common Agricultural PolicyCFSP Common Foreign and Security PolicyCHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government MeetingsCIDT cruel, inhuman and degrading treatmentCOBRA Cabinet Offi ce Briefi ng Room ADFID Department for International DevelopmentDTI Department of Trade and IndustryE3 + 3 Germany, France and the UK plus the US, Russia and ChinaEC European CommunityECOWAS Economic Community of West African StatesEDL English Defence LeagueEEAS European External Action ServiceEEC European Economic CommunityEFTA European Free Trade AssociationERM exchange rate mechanismEU3 Germany, France and the UKFAC Foreign Affairs CommitteeFATA Federally Administered Tribal AreasFCO Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ceFDI foreign direct investmentFPA foreign policy analysisGAB General Arrangements to BorrowGCHQ Government Communications HeadquartersGDP gross domestic productGNI gross national income

ixAbbreviations

GTMO Guantanamo Bay Naval BaseICC International Criminal CourtIISS International Institute for Strategic StudiesIMF International Monetary FundISAF International Security Assistance ForceMFN most favoured nationMOD Ministry of DefenceMNCs multinational corporationsNGO non-governmental organizationNIC National Intelligence CouncilNSC National Security CouncilNSID National Security, International Relations and Development

Cabinet CommitteeODA Overseas Development AdministrationODP Overseas and Defence PolicyOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentOPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting CountriesOPM overseas price mechanismPAC Public Administration CommitteePPP purchasing power parityPSA public service agreementPUS permanent under-secretaryRIIA Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House)SAS Special Air ServiceSDR Strategic Defence ReviewSDSR Strategic Defence and Security ReviewSFO Serious Fraud Offi ceSIS/MI6 Secret Intelligence ServiceSyS Security Service (MI5)UAV unmanned aerial vehiclesUKTI UK Trade and InvestmentUNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission for RwandaWMD weapons of mass destructionWTO World Trade Organization

1

Why bother with a book on British foreign policy? Hasn’t Britain had its day? That was certainly the feedback I received whenever I took a taxi in the United States, as I was writing this book. ‘The sun has set on your Empire’, one driver told me with undisguised relish. The twenty-fi rst century is destined to be an ‘Asian’ century, when the ‘rising powers’ of China and India forge a new locus of infl uence and remake the world according to their own interests and values – with Brazil and Russia contributing to the balance against the former dominance of the United States and Western Europe. ‘The West’ is in decline. Europe is an ageing, fattened continent made lazy on generous welfare systems and living off the wealth and memory of its past industriousness.1 Meanwhi le, Britain is a little island with a big history, borrowing its remain-ing status from the United States in return for unwavering support. At least, that seems to be the received wisdom.

It is an even further folly, perhaps, to wish to analyse foreign policy. Politi-cal scientists have been sounding the death knell of that fi eld of inquiry for over forty years now. Regionalism, multilateralism and globalization are sup-posed to have weakened territorial boundaries, undermined governmental attempts to impose sovereignty, and promoted identities and political consciousness above and below the state – leaving the idea of ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ as quaint, archaic labels. It is a compelling narrative and may well turn out to be true. However, if we stop to analyse the world as it is rather than seek to prejudge how it might be in the future, a different picture emerges.

The recent record of British foreign policy does not imply Britain is an irrelevant anachronism. Indeed, it could be read as suggesting that the UK is a signifi cant actor in world politics. From Tony Blair’s militarism, via Gordon Brown’s leadership of the G20 and the global response of 2008–9 to the fi nan-cial crisis that began the previous year, to the coalition government’s actions in Libya, Britain has arguably occupied a leading role in world affairs. In each case it coordinated its policies with other actors, but this need not diminish our sense that Britain was acting and that its actions made a difference. International politics is a social activity and unilateral behaviour in this sphere is costly. If the UK perceives a problem as affecting its economic,

chapter one

Introduction: analysing British foreign policy

2 British Foreign Policy

military or ethical interest then it is likely other states will too, and that they will want a say in how policies are made and then implemented globally. The fact that states act in concert with others does not mean that their individual contributions are irrelevant. The British government retains the capacity to make political choices and these decisions have important effects.2

To deny this, an d suggest that the actions of states such as the UK are determined by impersonal structural forces, or by more powerful states, may have the comforting benefi t of pricking the pomposity of politicians and their self-aggrandizing statements. However, it also denies the observer the oppor-tunity to critique the political choices and actions of these individuals and, hence, any chance of holding them accountable. This book takes a different approach, one that is unapologetically statist – in the sense that it views states as the primary actors in world politics – and governmental – i.e. its main research focus is the British government’s formulation of foreign policy. In exploring the making of British foreign policy, this book does not disregard the importance of non-state actors, or ignore the policy weakness of the UK government in frameworks where sovereignty is shared or the government’s power is constrained. Rather the book is interested in examining how policy-makers adapt to these setbacks and reinterpret their policies in response.

Before outlining the structure of this text and proceeding with my analysis, this introduction will begin by exploring in more depth why some analysts have questioned the importance of the state and governments in world poli-tics, and critiqued the idea of foreign policy as an appropriate subject of analysis. The introduction will then go on to defend the continuing emphasis on these concepts despite the social, political and technological changes that have arisen in recent decades.

All change?

One of the most fundamental challenges to the idea of the state as the primary political actor in world politics is the contrary notion that other forms of political community are now more important, either in terms of their power, or in their attraction as expressions of political identity. This conceit has emerged in successive waves of scholarship on international affairs. In 1962, Arnold Wolfers posed the rhetorical question: ‘are not national territorial units outdated today and on the way out, now that the age of nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and earth satellites is upon us . . . ?’3 Critics of the idea of states-as-actors highlighted the signifi cance of ‘non-state corporate actors’ such as the United Nations and the Communist International.4 By the early 1970s, the g lobal energy crisis provoked by the cabal of governments in the multinational Organization of Petroleum Export-ing Countries (OPEC)5 led some to see individua l states as being at the mercy of markets and supranational organizations – particularly when this crisis was combined with the growth in multinational corporations (MNCs).6

3Introduction: analysing British foreign policy

In the decades since, the power of individual states has been perceived to be eroded by the forces of multilateralism, globalization and regionalism.7 Multilateralism has result ed in a proliferation of supranational forums for coordinating policy, and with it a profusion of international treaties and commitments that constrain state behaviour.8 Liberal institutionalists argued that international organizations set up to conduct multilateral diplomacy were capable of having an independent effect on policy outcomes and so constituted actors in their own right.9 A transnational class of b ureaucrats and politicians was emerging to staff these corporations and they identifi ed with transnational, rather than national, communities and goals.

Globalization, or the freer movement of people, goods, services and capital across borders – in part spurred by international cooperation and multilater-alism but derived too from technological advances in travel and communica-tion – eroded territorial boundaries. It also highlighted the global nature of many policy challenges, including those surrounding climate change, poverty, economic stability, crime, disease and terrorism. These have been described by Peter Hain as a ‘growing domain of interests that we all share – interests that affect every human being regardless of nationality’.10 As a result, Hain sees ‘new li nkages between people’11 and a ‘globalization of responsi bility’.12 Narrow, national identities bound up with the state are being challenged by transnational forms of political community that would previously have been impossible due to geographical distance. The development of new social media and digital technology is facilitating global protest movements, reli-gious revivals and even acts of terrorism in ways that bypass state structures and control. It is also leading to a growing sense of ‘humanity’ as a commu-nity and identity that trumps nationalism.

Added to these processes is the increasing signifi cance of regionalism, par-ticularly in a European context. The member states of the European Union are now tied together in ways that cut across former boundaries of sover-eignty, from defence and foreign affairs to fi scal and monetary policy. Such linkages arguably undermine the fi ction of states as unitary actors, capable of independent action. Robert Cooper sees European states as increasingly ‘postmodern’, in that they appear to reject the trappings of the modern states-system, from unifi ed national identities and strong militaries in balances of power, to the norms of sovereignty and non-interference in their domestic affairs.13

Coinciding with these changes is the r ise to prominence of non-state actors.14 The number and scope of international organizations have increased in the post-Cold War era.15 European agencies and frameworks of go vernance have deepened and extended their reach beyond the immediate oversight of member states. A nascent global civil society, formed of international pressure groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is shaping the agenda in forums such as the G8, G20 and United Nations.16 At the same time, individuals and smal l groups have achieved political prominence in


international politics thanks to the communicative possibilities of the inter-net. Comparisons are made between the economic wealth of states and those of fi rms, such as Darryl Copeland’s observations that: ‘51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations; Mitsubishi generates more annual economic activity than Indonesia; and sales by the 200 largest fi rms exceeded the combined economies of 182 countries.’17 Such evidence is offered to underscore a new reality, in which the ‘old domain’ of foreign policy, the ‘management of relations between states’, is said to be ‘no longer the cen-trepiece of world politics’.18

As a consequence of the apparent decline of the states-system, scholars have sought to redefi ne the concept and practice of foreign policy. For instance, Ole Waever describes a ‘post foreign policy’ analysis, exemplifi ed, according to Waever, by James Rosenau’s idea of a ‘post-international politics’ made up of ‘sovereignty-free actors’.19 Here the focus of research moves away from the states- system and governments to include sub-state and supranational actors impacting on the global political arena. The emergence of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the European Union under the Maastricht Treaty seemed to problematize the traditional view of foreign policy as about how national governments managed their external relations in a world of states.20 Once a high representative was appointed to coordinate ‘EU’ foreign policy under the Treaty of Amsterdam, the possibility of this regional orga-nization functioning as an independent actor with an identity and policy in its own right appeared to be emerging. Yet in practice the CFSP has remained fi rmly intergovernmental, and attempts to strengthen the position of the high representative have been continually undermined by EU member states.21

The concept of foreign policy has been further redescrib ed by poststructur-alists such as David Campbell, who have divided the idea of foreign policy as cultural mediation from its intergovernmental interpretation.22 Campbell posits ‘Foreign Policy’ as the offi cial governm ental management of a politi-cal community’s relations with other, geographically separate actors in international politics. He then distinguishes this from the social and politi-cal practices of ‘othering’, through which a community defi nes the ‘domes-tic’ and the ‘foreign’. The latter ‘foreign policy’ may involve the formulation of policy towards groups internal to the territory of the state but which are viewed as ‘foreign’ to the dominant culture, as in the case of Native Ameri-cans in the United States. Where common forms of consciousness are emerg-ing in global politics, this idea of a ‘foreign policy’ separate from ‘Foreign Policy’ might also imply a ‘post-foreign’ politics, in which the separation of peoples into discrete political units is out of step with appeals to a wider political community, humanity, where the very idea of foreignness loses its meaning.23

It is important to resist denying the salience of some of these arguments a ltogether. There are more actors engaging in the practice of international politics today. Non-state, sub-state and supranational actors arguably do have


a greater infl uence than at any time since the development of the modern states-system. This has led to confusion over what foreign policy is and who should practise it. However, there are also powerful counter-arguments ques-tioning how far these new developments have changed the character of international relations, whether they really threaten the primacy of the state as the key actor in world politics, and how far they challenge traditional views of foreign policy.

In the fi rst place, it is possible to critique the impression that states were once independent and sovereign and have declined from this former position of power. The Westphalian narrative of states having sovereignty over their particular territory and enjoying the right of non-interference bears scant relation to the actual historical practice of world politics. The great powers regularly redrew the territorial borders of weaker states in Europe, and colo-nies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, in the centuries after the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. Almost as soon as the former colonies achieved their independence from imperial control in the post-1945 period, they found themselves pressured to join Cold War power blocs, subject to structural adjustment programmes if they required International Monetary Fund (IMF) support and censured for human rights abuses by the international commu-nity. Meanwhile, the larger powers have been constrained by market forces and tied to other actors in relations of complex interdependence since at least the growth in world trade in the nineteenth century, if not before.24

In the UK context, British foreign policy was bound by relations of respon-s ibility even at the height of its imperial role and allies frequently had to be consulted before action. Furthermore, prior to the advent of total war in the twentieth century, individuals could often have little contact with the state throughout their lives.25 Whilst the British state did extend its infl uence over the lives of its cit izens in the twentieth century, its sovereignty was severely compromised by economic and military reliance on the United States during and after the Second World War. From this perspective, it is possible to ques-tion how far multilateralism, regionalism and globalization have fundamen-tally altered the nature of states as political communities. For Stephen Krasner, their impact will be to ‘alter the scope of state authority rather than to generate some fundamentally new way to organize political life’.26 Accord-ing to his view, sovereignty was not as inviolable as portrayed under t he Westphalian model, and is not as compromised now, in a globalizing world, as some suggest.27

If the idea of states as being in decline can be challenged, so too can the s ense that they have been supplanted by other actors in global politics.28 As Webber and Smith have argued: ‘the state (and its principal agent, nation al government) still retains a primacy in international life. It is the main subject of international law, the principal member of international orga-nizations and the organising entity of political, military, diplomatic and, to some extent, economic power.’29 For all the talk of multilateralism and


globalization, I have been struck in re searching and interviewing for this book by how fi rmly intergovernmental much of the practice of international politics remains. British diplomats continue to conceive of their interactions in international organizations as about pursuing the ‘national interest’, to see other governments as the primary actors in most situations, and to view it as possible for ministers and offi cials to manage Britain’s external relations, making decisions and seeing them implemented.

This sense of Britain’s ‘actorness’ is perhaps borne out in the everyday practice of its foreign policy. In the post-Cold War era, the structural con-straints of superpower confl ict have given way to a plethora of military actions by British governments. The UK has committed division-sized forces to actions in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 as well as brigade-sized deployments to Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. As a result of Britain’s norma-tive lead on ‘humanitarian intervention’, the international community has outlined a ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine that challenges assumptions about non-interference in the domestic affairs of states.30 The importance of state action to enforce human rights is perhaps underlined by the conse-q uences of the failure to act in Sudan and Syria. In the absence of action by countries such as Britain, human rights abuses were able to occur with little restraint or redress.

The UK has also promoted a series of other international initiatives, from the development of the International Criminal Court in 1998 to ‘drop the debt’ campaigns and calls for increased aid spending since the early 2000s.31 Britain has been instrumental in promoting climate change as a foreign policy priority, chai ring the fi rst UN Security Council debate on this problem in April 2007 and fashioning its presidency of the G8 in 2005 around climate change and development in Africa. In the economic sphere, the UK was a vociferous advocate of freer trade and deregulation of markets during the New Labour era.32 It then dramatically altered its position at the height of the fi nancial crisis in 2008–9, s pearheading extensive government support for banks and promoting economic stimuli to combat a global lack of liquidity and demand. Thus, we could argue that even states such as Britain, which is far from being a superpower, have nevertheless been able to act and exert infl uence on the ideas and conduct of international politics.

In addition, the categories of ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ arguably still retain a social and political power even as new technologies and social forces encour-age transnational feelings of identity and responsibility. As I mention in chapter 4, the majority of individuals polled in the UK still associate them-selves with a British identity. Support for the defence of the human rights of citizens in foreign countries is usually qualifi ed by the belief that this should not come at the cost of British lives. The traditional bureaucracy and govern-mental practices of foreign policy to a large extent persist, even if they have had to adapt to new media and modes of interactions between international actors. Thus, the performance of foreign policy as a governmental activity to


manage and control interactions between domestic actors and international ones, external to the territory of Britain, continues.

Rationale

In the light of these insights, this book aims to explore how the British gov-ernment makes foreign policy, and how far this has changed or remained consistent in the face of new circumstances and new ideas about how states can and should act globally. To do so, it necessarily makes certain assump-tions, the fi rst of which is that there is such a thing as ‘Britain’. In the text, ‘Britain’, ‘Britishness’ and ‘United Kingdom’ are used interchangeably to refer to the political community formally described as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in international politics. The existence of this community is viewed as a social fact in that the UK is recognized by other states in world politics as existing, and is a meaningful community to the overwhelming majority of individuals that constitute its citizens.33 Debates about the nature of this community’s identity and how it should be expressed are explored in chap ters 4 and 5, but these still assume that it is a meaningful category.

The second assumption is that this entity is capable of collective action. The mechanisms by which it is so are viewed by me as overwhelmingly gov-ernmental. Individual citizens may act collectively, apart from the govern-ment’s formulation of policy, at times. One example is perhaps the outburst of charitable donations that followed the Asian tsunami in 2004, with the Disasters Emergency Committee collecting a total of £392 million in dona-tions from the British public.34 However, for the purposes of this text, it is the formal political actions of the UK government that are th e primary locus of discussion and analysis. The British government, according to this view, is still the most potent force for the expression of this community’s political will, and its legitimacy and authority to act are accepted by most of its citizens.

The third assumption is that this collective governmental action, when directed at actors external to Britain’s territory, can be understood as foreign policy. Although the Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce (FCO) does construct policies towards UK citizens at times (as when it seeks to engage with minor-ity groups such as the British Muslim community), and this seems to imply Campbell’s alternative view of foreign policy as the management of cultural difference, it is how the British government interacts with other states and peoples abroad that is the subject of this inquiry. If Britain is capable of acting internationally, and these actions are viewed as having tangible material and political effects, it would seem important to understand how these actions are brought about.

To explore this further, the book begins by establishing some of the essen-tial elements that help to constitute Britain as a foreign policy actor. In


chapter 2, it sets out to describe the primary actors in the British foreign policymaking process and how they infl uence policy practice. Chapter 3 then builds on this framework by analysing foreign policymaking in relation to theories of governance and asks: how is British foreign policy made? Chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with the construction of British identity at home and abroad, outlining some of the mechanisms by which UK foreign policy expresses the collective identity of the British people and locates Britain as an actor within international society. In short, chapters 2–5 aim to outline the political and social background to British foreign policymaking.

The discussion then proceeds with an analysis of how the British govern-ment has constructed its foreign policy in three practical contexts: the ethical, the military and the economic. These examples were chosen as the three most prominent sub-fi elds of foreign policy discussion. By including analysis of these contrasting but also overlapping facets of policy in one volume, I aim to provide a more holistic sense of how foreign policy is practised than a simple focus on diplomacy might have yielded. In each case, I begin by setting out some of the main theoretical arguments concerning governmental policy in the area in question and then examine how these are applicable to the British experience. As such, I aim to provide a sense of the governmentality of British foreign policymaking. Foreign policy may at times involve a greater degree of secrecy than other, domestic fi elds of public policy; however, it is still for the most part concerned with the management of political relations by public offi cials. Therefore, it is perhaps not so different to other forms of governance. Rather than see foreign policy as an inscrutable arena, it is important to highlight the issues of responsibility that arise when the UK government acts in this area. If politicians are to be held to proper account for how they conduct their foreign policy, it is fi rst necessary to provide a fuller understanding of what British foreign policy is, how it has been con-structed in the past, and how this affects expectations about how it should be devised and implemented in the future. In short, we need to set out the parameters of thought and action in this practice before locating and judging policy against these benchmarks.

Methodology

The terrain of foreign policy analysis is vast, and a host of different philoso-phies of research and methods is available to scholars wishing to understand how foreign policy is made. As with other areas of scholarly inquiry in inter-national relations and politics, there is a division between those who seek to emulate the natural sciences and those who see politics as resisting such objective description and analysis.35 The former produce testable hypotheses, often measured and adjusted using quantitative data. Events in time ar e simplifi ed to a few key aspects that are used as points of comparison with


other situations to comprise a dataset of like examples. The aim is to produce generalizable rules about human behaviour. This approach is particularly evident in US scholarship, where an impressive array of equations is employed to explain how foreign policy actions can be aggregated to suggest a formal pattern. Efforts to collate information on the foreign policies of a variety of countries – comparative foreign policy – to build a meta-theory of action in this sphere in the 1970s were unsuccessful and for a brief period the whole fi eld declined in popularity.36 However, other approaches, such as those ana-lysing bureaucratic politics, political processes, groupthink and th e beliefs or images of decisionmakers, have continued to be infl uential.37 More recently, the analysis of foreign policy decisionmaking according to the cognitive ordering principles of l eaders – heuristics – has seen a renaissance.38

Whilst not wishing to diminish these efforts, I am inclined to follow Aris-totle’s observation that politics is no t an exact science and ‘Our account of this science will be adequate if it achieves such clarity as the subject-matter allows.’39 The use of natural scientifi c methods to inquire into political deci-sionmaking has long puzzled analysts from classi cally inspired schools of thought.40 Analysing human beings as if they were animals in the natural world is problematic as the subject and the object are both capable of con-scious refl ection and reinterpretation of their behaviour. Thus, meanings are not fi xed and may shift in time. Moreover, the level of abstraction required to fi t political behaviour into neat theoretical models can lead to academic work becoming detached from the messy reality of foreign policy practice.41

It is not the aim of this book to explain a particular decision in British foreign policy, or to establish a general rule of behaviour in this sphere, but rather to understand how this activity is perceived, rationalized, emoted and performed. Its approach is interpretivist, meaning that the book wishes to explore the beliefs and interpretations of policymakers and academics who study and practise British foreign policy.42 The methods employed are those of contemporary history,43 involving extensive interviews with personnel from the FC O,44 former ministers, former special advisers and fellow aca-demics, as well as substantial reading of offi cial governmen t documents, parliamentary reports, newspapers, biographies, contemporary histories, blogs and journal articles. Peter Hennessey has described this approach (self-deprecatingly since it is one he adopts) as ‘gossip with footnotes’ and avers that: ‘Political scientists have theories, historians don’t.’45 Although this text does not seek to set out or apply a testable hypothesis in search of a general (or specifi c) theory, i t does aim to provide theoretically informed discussion; viewing theories on identity, international action, the state, ethics, the use of force and economics as themselves important to understanding how actors interpret the practice of foreign policy. Whilst it does not see theoreti-cal precision as desirable or possible, it aims, as Aristotle suggested, to be ‘satisfi ed with a broad outline of the truth’,46 of which theory is an impor-tant part.


What it does not do is apply a ‘realist’, ‘liberal’ or ‘constructivist’ interpreta-tio n to British foreign policymaking throughout. These categories are common to international relations and foreign policy scholarship and some excellent overviews have been offered of their main aspects.47 Yet they are not widely apparent in the discourses of policymakers or, arguably, the media. When politicians talk about realism t hey are usually aiming to convey the limits on their ability to infl uence events – they are asking their audience to be ‘real-istic’ about what can be done.48 This does not automatically imply the realist assumptions that states are the main actors, that they defi ne their interests in term s of power, or that success is necessarily related to the distribution of (largely material) capabilities.49 The term ‘liberal’ in British foreign policy circles implies a commitment to human rights, and perhaps free trade. It has become as sociated with military intervention. But it does not require an acceptance that international organizations have an independent effect, or that actors other than states, such as NGOs and private fi rms, are important to the foreign policy process.50 Meanwhile, ‘constructivism’ is a term for the most part unknown to the British foreign policy community. When discuss-ing a seminar on the rising powers and international norms with an FCO offi cial over the telephone, I was interrupted and asked to explain what a norm was.51

I say this not to belittle the importance of such international relations scholarship (or the FCO as an intellectual organization). How ever, if this text is to refl ect the understanding of how British foreign policy is made in the minds of policymakers and infl uential commentators in the UK context, then these terms may not always be to the fore. Instead, I have endeavoured to use the scholarship that is most immediately relevant to each subject area, drawing on specifi c authors to illuminate the political processes under scru-tiny. For instance, as my focus is on the governmental aspects of foreign policymaking, the political science literature on governance has proved particularly useful to my analysis, in chapter 3, of how British foreign policy is made.

Undertaking research in the fi eld of foreign policy is not easy. Practitioners deal with material that is secret and may have a bearing on Britain’s security. They are also conscious that indiscreet comments about other states may have an adverse effect on the UK’s relations with other countries. Similarly, com-ments about other actors in a domestic setting may be politically sensitive. My requests to ministers and offi cials for interviews were often ignored or politely declined. However, a signifi cant number of individuals were kind enough to speak, often on a non-attributable basis. This has informed the discussion, particularly in chapter 2’s breakdown of the actors in foreign policymaking and chapter 3’s analysis of how foreign policy is made. I have kept anonymized citations to a minimum so that others could follow up my research and critique my interpretations if they wished. Such transparency is vital to producing work of recognizable quality.52 Interpretivism is often


situated within the refl ectivist paradigm in US foreign policy analysis.53 A key component of this branch of inqui ry – as the name implies – is that scholars refl ect on their research methods and analyses and ackno wledge the contin-gency of any conclusions. Allowing others to see how I have arrived at my conclusions and what evidence I am able to present in defence of them is central to this process.

To ensure that respondents were comfortable with the way interview data was used, I allowed them to approve a transcript and, where requested, offered interviewees the chance to see how quotations were being employed in the text and to make amendments to the contents of their remarks (though not my analysis). This process was time-consuming but vital to securing the cooperation and candour of participants.54 However, the interpretation of this data and the analysis offered in this text are the responsibility of the author alone and do not refl ect the views of any individual participant or organization.

12

In this chapter, I intend to outline the main actors in British foreign policy-making and give some sense of how they interact to debate, formulate and decide British foreign policies. Britain pursues a series of policy objectives abroad. Each one may involve a different group of actors to a greater or lesser extent and these actors, and the policies they decide to pursue, may confl ict with each other at times. Furthermore, the relationships between these actors can be conducted via a range of informal or formal mechanisms that can be seen to shift over time or according to the issue at hand. The analyst therefore needs to recognize that whilst some actors do have an ongoing infl uence on the patterns of foreign policymaking, these loose structures are continu-ally being challenged and subverted by the untidy reality of international politics.

Nevertheless, the British government is engaged in an ongoing effort to conduct foreign policy, and as it does so we can identify infl uential actors, bureaucratic structures and social forces that combine to construct this social practice. This chapter will examine the most signifi cant actors, to provide a backdrop to the more theoretical chapter that follows, and is aimed at outlin-ing the policy processes of British foreign policy. The current chapter begins by exploring the most commonly identifi ed actors within British domestic politics, before going on to describe the impact of external actors on British foreign policy. The primary actors of foreign policy can be represented pictori-ally as in fi gure 1.

Domestic foreign policy actors

Policymakers

The monarch has an important foreign policy role to play through their con-stitutional position as head of state. Queen Elizabeth II, the current monarch, has been a symbol of Britain, shaping the image of the British state and its people in the minds of foreign statespeople and the general populace in other countries for decades. As Michael Clarke has noted, the queen and the royal family constitute ‘an effective instrument of formal diplomacy through [their] connections, offi cial visits and personal interests’.1 The queen has a

chapter two

The actors in British foreign policy

13The actors in British foreign policy

regular audience with her prime minister and is kept informed of current events and British foreign policy positions. Although t he queen will not speak publicly about political issues, her views are communicated via these meet-ings and through back channels to her government. Given how extensive her meetings with foreign dignitaries have been over more than sixty years, it is remarkable how rarely she has fi gured as a source of controversy. Her husband has occasionally made some ill-judged remarks, referring to Chinese facial characteristics or questioning the extent of the massacre at Amritsar in India in 1919, but the queen herself has been circumspect. Rare glimpses of her views were offered by Clarke, who noted her fury at the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.2 The queen’s invitation to all crowned heads of state to celebrate her diamond jubilee in 2012 proved controversial since the invitees included i ndividuals accused of complicity in human rights abuses and irre-sponsible rule, including the king of Bahrain, Hamad al-Khalifa, and the polygamous king of Swaziland, Mswati III.3

Nevertheless, the queen’s dignity and longevity are key advantages to British foreign policy. Her trip to Ireland in 2011, which included a visit to the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, a memorial to those who died

Britishforeignpolicy

External actorsOther states

UN Security Council and agencies

Commonwealth

G8/G20

European Union

World Bank/IMF

Whitehall actorsPrime Minister’s Office

Cabinet Office

National Security Council/Cabinet committees

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Joint Intelligence Committee

Secret Intelligence Service

and GCHQ

Department for International

Development (DFID)

Ministry of Defence (MoD)

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Non-state actorsBusiness

Media

Civil society actorsNon-governmental

organizations (NGOs)

Diaspora communities

Scientific/academic experts

Think tanks

Westminster actorsCabinet

Political parties

Special advisers

Foreign Affairs Committee

European Scrutiny Committee

European Union Select Committee

Parliamentary lobby

groups

Monarch

(head of state)

Figure 1 The actors in British foreign policy


fi ghting against Britain for independence, had huge signifi cance for relations between Britain and Ireland. In a speech at a state dinner at Dublin Castle, the queen extended her ‘sincere thoughts and deep sympathy’ to those who had suffered in the ‘troubled past’ between the two countries, and in doing so she was seen to recognize that British policies towards Ireland may have been wrong (though no explicit apology was given).4 The loss of her cousin, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, to an IRA bomb in 1979, and her position as the ultimate representative of the British state which was responsible for consid-erable suffering in Ireland over centuries, gave this recognition huge sym-bolic importance.

Whilst the monarch is the head of state and does perform diplomatic func-tions, representing the UK abroad and providing royal assent to interna-tional treaties and agreements, the royal prerogative powers of treaty making, going to war and conducting external relations are in practice dele-gated to the prime minister and their Cabinet. As the head of the UK govern-ment, the prime minister is the primary fi gure coordinating and deciding which policies to pursue and as such is the senior executive responsible for making foreign policy. When and how they choose to exercise these powers has historically depended on the individual offi ce holder. Certain prime ministers, such as William Gladstone, Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, have had a commanding infl uence on the conduct of foreign policy, as Malcolm Rifkind notes: ‘sometimes at the expense of the authority of their foreign secretary’.5 Others, including Clement Attlee, Jim Callaghan and John Major, allowed their foreign secretaries to take the lead in devising and implementing foreign policy. As a rule, the prime minister will concern themselves with the most serious affairs of state (military action, treaties, summits, etc.) and leave routine foreign policy matters to the foreign secretary and the FCO.

Prime-ministerial dominance of the foreign policy agenda has been highly controversial, leading some to see the offi ce as becoming more ‘presidential’. A number of commentators trace this belief to Margaret Thatcher’s period in offi ce. According to John Dickie, the failure of the intelligence services and the FCO to predict the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 led to disillusionment with the British diplomatic machinery. During and after the crisis, Thatcher is said to have treated her foreign secretary, Francis Pym, with ‘ill-concealed contempt’.6 The Foreign Offi ce was dismissed as ‘a load of “pinkos” who only wanted to represent foreigners’7 and an institution for which ‘compromise and negotiation w ere ends in themselves’.8 This attitude was not confi ned to the FCO but refl ected Thatcher’s positio n towards the civil service more widely, contributing to her use of special advisers an d personal confi dantes such as her private secretary Charles Powell and her economics adviser Sir Alan Walters.9

Nevertheless, it was the FCO that would be singled out as an obstacle to the prime minister’s policy agenda. Kavanagh and Seldon note that by the end


of Thatcher’s time in offi ce, policymaking had become so centralized around the Prime Minister’s Offi ce that her foreign policy adviser, Powell, had ‘become akin to the US President’s key National Security Adviser, dealing directly with foreign heads of government and their senior aides rather than, to the annoyance of the FCO mandarins, conducting business through them and the ambassadors on the spot’.10 As such, the FCO was often sidelined and their advice, particularly with regard to policies towards the European Com-munity and German reunifi cation, was ignored. When Thatcher devised her ‘Bruges speech’ in 1988, setting out her ideas on European policy, the FCO was deliberately kept in the dark about its full contents, in the expectation they would not approve.

Ultimately, Thatcher was brought down in part by her former foreign sec-retary, Geoffrey Howe, who resigned from his posts as deputy prime minister and leader of the House of Commons over Britain’s European economic policy, and made a resignation speech that was a catalyst for a rebellion that ended Thatcher’s leadership. Her sense of betrayal was lasting. Her instruc-tions to Tony Blair during a private audience soon after New Labour achieved offi ce in 1997 were: ‘Don’t trust the FCO.’11 Yet, despite this negative attitude towards the organization, Thatcher did not implement any major reforms of the foreign policymaking machinery. When she left offi ce, the FC O returned to a position of infl uence under her successor, John Major. Major’s more consultative leadership style resulted in his delegating the lead on most foreign policy issues to his foreign secretaries, Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind. Distracted by domestic political tensions and with a slim majority, Major was unable to stamp his personal authority on the international stage.12

Accusations of presidentialism would, however, be revived under Tony Blair. Seeing himself as a reforming prime minister, Blair shared Thatcher’s distrust of the civil service , introducing special advisers across government to support ministerial teams and driving for ‘proper coordination through the centre’ – meaning that ministers would have to clear policy announcements with Number 10 Downing Street before they were made public.13 Early in his fi rst term, this did not have a major effect on the FCO’s authority. Blair’s two key advisers – Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and John Holmes, his prin-cipal pr ivate secretary – were from FCO backgrounds. Blair seemed initially uninterested in foreign affairs and left his foreign secretary, Robin Cook, to make much of the running on policies such as arms export control, human rights promotion and counter-proliferation.14 This situation would change dramatically as Blair’s tenure progressed. Oliver Daddow has argued convinc-ingly that the key defi ning moment for Blair was the Kosovo intervention of 1999 .15 Blair’s advocacy of military action in the teeth of domestic and inter-national opposition, and a measure of success in compelling the Serbian leadership to end their operations in Koso vo, gave him confi dence in his ability to shape the foreign policy agenda. At the height of the crisis, Blair gave a speech in Chicago outlining his personal vision for a ‘doctrine of


international community’ without consulting the FCO about its contents – instead using the words of a senior academic, Lawrence Freedman, who was unaware that the briefi ng notes he thought he was providing would become a major policy statement.16

Blair’s involvement in negotiating a number of policies of international signifi cance in his fi rst term, such as the Anglo-French defence agreement at St Malo, the Amsterdam and Nice Treat ies, intervention in Sierra Leone and the Northern Ireland peace process, led him to identify foreign affairs as an arena in which he could achieve policy aims.17 After Blair’s second general election victory, in 2001, David Owen notes that two powerful policymaking structures, the European Secretariat and the Overseas and Defence Secretar-iat, were l ocated in Number 10, which ‘concentrated advice, power and execu-tive command in the person of Tony Blair’.18 From the beginning of his pre-miership, Blair’s leadership style favoured one-to-one discussion over collec-tive formal meetings in the Cabinet. Kavanagh and Seldon note that he held over three times more meetings with individual ministers in his fi rst twenty-fi ve months in offi ce than Major.19 This tendency became increasingly appar-ent when it came to UK policy towards Iraq after 9/11.20 The terms ‘sofa government’ and ‘denocracy’ were applied to Blair’s habit of conducting informal , unminuted meetings with individual ministers and advisers at which policy would be formulated w ithout wider consultation.21

When Britain eventually took part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the basis of inaccurate intelligence, this policymaking style was seen as contribut-ing to the failure to question information on Iraq’s capabilities and suggest alternative responses to military action. Clare Short, secretary of state for international development at the time, argued in her memoirs that ‘Blair handled the whole crisis personally with his entourage.’22 In his report on the use of intelligence in this case, Lord Butler noted: ‘we are concerned that the informality and circumscribed character of the Government’s proce-dures . . . risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgment’.23 Evidence to the Iraq Inquiry has indicated that offi cials were at times unclear about who was responsible for overseeing postwar reconstruction planning on Iraq, and this is seen as part of a wider failur e on the part of the prime minister to establish proper structures of responsibility for policy implemen-tation.24 Furthermore, Blair is reported to have committed the UK to military action with the US against Iraq in April of 2002 personally whilst staying with President Bush at the latter’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. 25

Although Blair’s relations with his foreign secretaries remained cordial, it is notable that each successive secretary of state became progressively less infl uential as Blair’s time in offi ce lengthened. D ickie cites the case of a peace agreement between Uganda and Rwanda in November 2001, ‘brokered by Clare Short with the personal backing of Tony Blair’, as evidence of Jack Straw’s marginalization.26 Margaret Beckett’s policy on rejecting calls for a ceasefi re between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 was viewed as directed by Blair


against the wishes of the FCO.27 Moreover, in addition to his personal control of policy, Blair deployed special envoys, such as his personal friend Lord Levy, special envoy to the Middle East, in roles that would traditionally have been undert aken by former or current FCO staff. This both created duplication of effort and further centred foreign policymaking on Blair.

Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, took a leading role on the international problems of development, climate change and responding to the fi nancial crisis that began in 2007–8. However, in the three years he was in offi ce, it did seem as if his foreign secretary, David Miliband, was allowed to operate with a greater degree of independence in responding to crises, such as those in Georgia in 2008 and Sri Lanka in 2009 – despite the fact that Brown and Miliband did not, apparently, have a good relationship.28 Brown established a National Security, International Relations and Development Cabinet Committee (NSID) designed to provide a more consultative forum for debate on foreign policy. Yet this committee did not have a major effect on policymaking, and was criticized by William Hague in 2009 on the basis that it had only met three times in twenty months.29

Following the formation of the coalition government in May 2010, the prime minister, David Cameron, reorganized the machinery of foreign poli-cymaking. In evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), William Hag ue suggested that ‘Prime Ministers have often got into the habit of not using the Foreign Offi ce to the extent that it should be used.’30 Drawing a contrast between his predecessors and the new administration, Hague argued: ‘it is a characteristic of this Government that the principal adviser to the Prime Minister on foreign policy is the Foreign Secre tary’.31 Hague’s seniority as a former leader of the Conservative Party enhanced the status of the FCO and provided a counter-weight to other sources of foreign policy advice. The current administration has fi ve special represe ntatives in the ‘policy priority’ areas of post-Holocaust issues, climate change, Sudan and South Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and South Caucasus. However, it is clear from the descriptions on the FCO website that the special representatives are expected to coordinate their advice to the prime minister and the foreign secretary through Whitehall departments, particularly the FCO, rather than operating independently.32

That said, the coalition government has introduced some new structures of foreign policymaking that could threaten the FCO’s position as the leading department for foreign policy advice in the long term. To improve the co or-dination of the UK’s foreign policy and defence strategies, Cameron intro-duced a National Security Council (NSC) in May 2010, which takes the place of the NSID. Cameron chairs the NSC, which meets once a week, on a Tuesday, for around an hour or two to discuss the most pressing global issues of the day. The NSC’s members include the prime minister, the deputy prime min-ister, the chancellor, the foreign, defence, home, international development and energy and climate change secretaries, the security minister, the chief

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