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ID:
131439
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In recent commentaries on British foreign policy, the New Labour and coalition governments have been criticized for lacking strategic thinking. Academics describe a 'strategy gap' and note that old ideas about Britain's role in the world, such as Churchill's 1948 reference to 'three circles', continue to be recycled. Parliamentarians bemoan the 'uncritical acceptance of these assumptions' that has led to 'a waning of our interests in, and ability to make, National Strategy'. This article argues that a primary problem has been the lack of consideration of how identity, strategy and action interrelate in foreign policy. Using the insights of role theory, the article seeks to address this by outlining six ideal-type role orientations that the UK might fulfil in world politics, namely: isolate, influential (rule of law state), regional partner, thought leader, opportunist-interventionist power and Great Power. By considering how variations in a state's disposition towards the external environment translate into different policy directions, the article aims both to highlight the range of roles available to policy-makers and to emphasize that policy often involves making a choice between them. Failure to recognize this has resulted in role conflicts and policy confusion. In setting out a variety of different role orientations, the author offers a route to introducing a genuine strategic sensibility to policy-making, one that links identity with policy goals and outcomes.
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| 2 |
ID:
131438
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
How should ethics and values relate to the British national interest? The idea that ethical commitments to distant non-citizens should occupy a position within British foreign policy was a controversial element of Labour's foreign policy during the early part of their 1997-2010 tenure. Rather than undermining traditional national interest concerns, one of the defining themes within Labour's foreign policy was that values and national interests were becoming increasingly merged in a globalized world. The post-2010 coalition government has made distinct efforts to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, crafting a more pragmatic and national interest-based foreign policy approach. Despite this, significant continuities with Labour's 'ethical dimension' are evident and many associated policies and practices have survived the transition. Moreover, the suggestion that British values and interests are interrelated and mutually reinforcing has been re-asserted, with renewed vigour, by coalition policy-makers. The article traces the ways in which values and interests have become increasingly merged in the language of recent British foreign policy and examines the implications for our understanding of the UK's national interest. It argues that the idea of an almost symbiotic relationship between values and interests is fundamentally unhelpful and makes the case for greater disaggregation of the two. Although a zero-sum game need not exist between core national interests and ethical obligations abroad, the suggestion that they are mutually reinforcing obscures the tensions that frequently arise between these different realms of obligation. Using the examples of failed state stabilization and UK arms trade regulation, the article demonstrates how uncritical acceptance of the values-interests merger risks producing unstable policy formulations.
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