Jamie Gaskarth

British foreign policy

Acknowledgements Glossary 1. Introduction 2. The Actors in British foreign policy 3. How is British foreign policy made?. 4. Self-identity and British Foreign Policy 5. Britain in the world 6. Ethics and British foreign policy 7. Defence and British foreign policy 8. Economics and British foreign policy Conclusion: The future of British foreign policy Notes Bibliography Index

Interpreting Ethical Foreign Policy: Traditions and Dilemmas for Policymakers

What are the ethics of foreign policy? How do foreign policymakers decide between competing ethics? Could policymakers make more ethical decisions? These questions achieved prominence in the UK context when Robin Cook—then Foreign Secretary—announced in 1997 that British foreign policy should have an ‘ethical dimension’. Subsequent commentary on New Labours foreign policy would often use the phrase ‘ethical foreign policy’ to disparage the moralistic rhetoric of Tony Blair and Robin Cook. This article utilises interviews with former Foreign Secretaries and Ministers of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explore why ethics should be so controversial in British foreign policy discourse. Using Mark Bevirs concepts of the ‘traditions’ and ‘dilemmas’ of governance, it conducts an interpretivist analysis of this data; aiming to understand how policymakers posit themselves as ethical agents, define what it means to be ethical, and rationalise their own ethical judgments in policymaking.

The virtues in international society

Although there has been a significant growth in the literature on the ethics of international politics in recent years, much of this has focused on the normative structure of international relations and has downplayed the role of individuals in constituting the understandings and actions in this practice. However, individual agency and accountability are apparent in recent world events. Meanwhile, developments in moral philosophy have increasingly led scholars to re-examine the role that individual character traits — virtues — have in affecting how norms are selected and operationalized. Building on these insights, I argue here that a fully realized appreciation of the morality of international politics requires us to consider what character traits — virtues — its individual participants are expected to exhibit to support and realize its norms. To do so, I begin by outlining how the virtues are deemed to underpin ethical practice and highlight two forms of analysis that may be used to explore this: decision-oriented virtue ethics and constitutive virtue ethics. I then suggest that these can be used to analyse the ethical foundations of international society. Specifically, I adopt a constitutive virtue ethics approach to show how the virtues help to constitute international society using the case study of the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In the process, I aim to highlight both the extent to which the virtues are a feature of the rhetoric of global politics, and — more importantly — how they play a significant role in normative practice.

The fiasco of the 2013 Syria votes: decline and denial in British foreign policy

ABSTRACT On 29 August 2013, the British parliament voted against two motions to censure the Syrian government which were expected to lead to military action. The result was a shock to external commentators and quickly interpreted as a fiasco. This article charts the construction of the severity and agency involved in this fiasco and notes the extremely personal nature of efforts to attribute blame for the outcome. It argues that this process enabled policy-makers to ignore underlying trends impacting on foreign policy, including the breakdown of bipartisanship, increasing public scepticism about government use of intelligence and the utility of force, severe reductions in Britains capacity to act, as well as a deeper identity crisis about what kind of actor Britain should be in the world. Constructing this event as a fiasco can be seen as a form of denial of Britains loss of agency in global affairs.

Strategizing Britain's role in the world

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 Britains role in the world, such as Churchills 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 states 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.

Where would we be without rules? A virtue ethics approach to foreign policy analysis

Recent decades have seen a heightened interest in the ethics of foreign policymaking. This literature has overwhelmingly explored the ethical dilemmas faced by policymakers in terms of situations and the structures – either political/economic, normative and/or linguistic – that shape actions. The subjective experience of ethical decisionmaking in this arena and the character of the individuals making policy choices have been largely neglected. However, the apparently greater scope for moral action in the post-Cold War era, combined with the growth in global institutions designed to enforce individual accountability – such as the International Criminal Court – suggest that more effort should be placed on understanding ethics in terms of the individual. This article seeks to combine the work of political and social psychologists with the philosophical literature on virtue theory to see what new insights these might offer into the ethics of foreign policy. It argues that virtue ethics provide an effective means to critique the morality of foreign policy decisions. This is evinced by an exploration of Tony Blairs decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003.

Ethical policies or empty promises? New labour and human rights in British foreign policymaking

Abstract Since the announcement of a mission statement for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in May 1997, debates on British foreign policy have tended to focus on the ideas of ‘ethical foreign policy’ or ‘ethical dimensions’ and evaluated policy decisions according to how they fit with these frames. However, human rights were a key component of New Labours approach to foreign policy. By analysing the differing treatment of human rights between the Conservative and New Labour administrations, this article seeks to assess how far policy attitudes have changed in this respect. It also notes the bureaucratic effects that persist – despite an apparent decline in ministerial support.

Introduction: Blair, Brown and New Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1997–2010

Hindsight rarely delivers definitive answers, but now New Labour’s period in government has drawn to a close it is an apt moment to step back and ask what the party achieved across its suite of domestic and foreign policies from 1997–2010. Any investigation into this topic needs to be stimulated by more than academic curiosity because it reaches to the heart of helping us understand both the ‘New Labour project’ and the painful realities of Britain’s position in the contemporary global arena. As the above words from Tony Blair in 1997 indicate, New Labour was rarely modest about its achievements or its potential to make Britain fit for life in the twenty-first century. Having been in power for just six months, Blair triumphantly proclaimed that the government had helped make Britain ‘great’ again after what he routinely depicted as years of drift, delay and decline during the John Major years, 1990–1997. His government pledged to build on that new-found confidence in the nation’s greatness to fashion a new understanding of Britain’s place in the world. This meant re-visioning everything from what it meant to be British to how Britain should deal with other nations and international organizations on the world stage. New Labour’s thinking on how to achieve its lofty ambitions for British foreign policy was predicated on two overlapping concepts.

British Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring

The British government’s varied responses to the popular uprisings of the “Arab Spring” have been criticised for being inconsistent and/or selective. British actions ranged from providing substantial military support for the rebels in Libya to offering notably muted reactions to government suppression of protests in Bahrain. On assuming office, the new foreign secretary, William Hague, suggested that Britain would have a networked approach to foreign policy with a greater awareness of the bilateral interests that Britain had with other countries around the world. This analysis offers a provisional examination of the security, economic, and societal networks that Britain holds with states in the Arab world and, in doing so, tests whether these have any correlation with the British government’s policy towards protests in the region.

Strategy in a Complex World

Although it is commonplace to describe todays security environment as ‘complex’, there are still pockets of coherence around which policy-makers can anchor their strategy. Jamie Gaskarth argues that attempts to mirror the supposedly disorderly global security world with a disorderly strategy have led only to confusion, inefficiency and declining public support. Instead, the government needs to grapple with British identity and link this to a coherent narrative about how and why it wants to act in the future.