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"GASKARTH, JAMIE"
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The dilemma of Brexit: hard choices in the narrow context of British foreign policy traditions
Brexit threatens to disrupt the fabric of British foreign policy thinking. For decades, policymakers identified membership of the European Community as one of two pillars of British influence (the other being the ‘Special Relationship’ with the United States). Together, they allowed Britain to exercise power on a global as well as regional scale. These assumptions were repeated so often that the UK was regularly criticised for lacking policy imagination and avoiding hard choices when the interests of Europe and the United States conflicted. Brexit presents an unavoidable dilemma for policymakers as they chart a new course for British foreign policy. Interpretivism, as set out by Bevir and Rhodes (2003), offers a route to understanding how actors interpret and respond to such dilemmas, via reference to traditions. This article uses their approach to examine the expression of beliefs about Brexit and British foreign policy. In particular, it focuses on two datasets, one a ‘control sample’ of commentary since 2016, the other, the parliamentary debates on the first EU Withdrawal Bill in December 2018 and January 2019. We find a contrasting willingness to evoke traditions in a substantive fashion to understand and justify political choices. In particular, parliamentarians utilise one particular tradition, pragmatism, to marginalise the expression of abstract belief. In the process, they reduce discussion to a technocratic exercise that is unable to manage the conflicts Brexit has brought about. Meanwhile, those MPs that are most creative in their expression of traditions tend to be from smaller regional parties or on the political periphery. The resulting deadlock is evidence of the importance of traditions to interpreting and managing dilemmas of social change.
Journal Article
British foreign policy and the national interest : identity, strategy and security
\"For over a decade, British foreign policy has been criticised for lacking strategic thinking. Academics describe a 'strategy gap' and note that old ideas about Britain's role in the world continue to be recycled even today. This collection aims to address this issue by re-examining the ideas of Britain's national interest and their impact on strategy, to challenge current thinking and practice in the making of foreign policy. Applying interdisciplinary approaches to British foreign policy, this volume analyses a range of issues asking: Whose interests does British foreign policy serve? Is the national interest a useful explanatory tool for foreign policy analysts? How can policymakers reconnect with this idea to devise better strategies to cope with the complex policy environment of the twenty-first century? Drawing on links between academics, policymakers and other stakeholders, it provides a practical discussion of theories on global change, globalization, ethics, and security to enliven debate about how to forge a foreign policy that advances the interests of the UK whilst also holding policy-makers and officials to account for their actions\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
China, India and the future of international society
China and India have huge potential to exert global influence due to their geography, population size and material resources. Now their spectacular economic growth has led many commentators to predict a shift in power from West to East and the dawn of an “Asian century” based on Asian values. But what are these values? Does economic power neatly translate into political power? Will China and India wish to challenge the existing ethical framework of international society? This volume argues that it is vital to understand how China and India view international society in order to anticipate their impact as they achieve ascendancy. It explores the evolution of these states’ attitudes towards concepts such as sovereignty, international society, power transitions, normative power, and ethical trends, and addresses how they have sought to promote their own normative identities and policy agenda thus far. Unpicking common assumptions about these rising powers, this book engages in a systematic consideration of the ethical attitudes of China and India in the national context and goes on to examine how those translate into their interactions with international society.
eBook
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 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.
Journal Article
Rising Powers, Responsibility, and International Society
Responsibility is a key theme of recent debates over the ethics of international society. In particular, rising powers such as Brazil, China, and India regularly reject the idea that coercion should be a feature of world politics, and they portray military intervention as irresponsible. But this raises the problem of how a society's norms can be upheld without coercive measures. Critics have accused them of “free riding” on existing great powers and failing to address the dilemma of how to deal with actors undermining societal values. This article examines writing on responsibility and international society, with particular reference to the English School, to identify why the willingness and capacity to use force—as well as creative thinking in this regard—are seen as important aspects of responsibility internationally. It then explores statements made by Brazil, China, and India in UN Security Council meetings between 2011 and 2016 to identify which actors they see as responsible and how they define responsible action. In doing so, it pinpoints areas of concurrence as well as disagreements in their understandings of the concept of responsibility, and concludes that Brazil and India have a more coherent and practical understanding of the concept than China, which risks incurring the label “great irresponsible.”
Journal Article
Entangling alliances? The UK's complicity in torture in the global war on terrorism
The global war on terrorism gives rise to a range of legal, political and ethical problems. One major concern for UK policy-makers is the extent to which the government may be held responsible for the illegal and/or unethical behaviour of allies in intelligence gathering—the subject of the forthcoming Gibson inquiry. The UK government has been criticized by NGOs, parliamentary committees and the media for cooperating with states that are alleged to use cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT) or torture to gain information about possible terrorist threats. Many commentators argue that the UK's intelligence sharing arrangements leave it open to charges of complicity with such behaviour. Some even suggest the UK should refuse to share intelligence with countries that torture. This article refutes this latter view by exploring the legal understanding of complicity in the common law system and comparing its more limited view of responsibility—especially the 'merchant's defence'—with the wider definition implied in political commentary. The legal view, it is argued, offers a more practical guide for policy-makers seeking to discourage torture while still protecting their citizens from terrorist threats. It also provides a fuller framework for assessing the complicity of policy-makers and officials. Legal commentary considers complicity in relation to five key points: identifying blame; weighing the contribution made; evaluating the level of intent; establishing knowledge; or, where the latter is uncertain, positing recklessness. Using this schema, the article indicates ways in which the UK has arguably been complicit in torture, or at least CIDT, based on the information publicly available. However, it concludes that the UK was justified in maintaining intelligence cooperation with transgressing states due to the overriding public interest in preventing terrorist attacks.
Journal Article
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 Blair's decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003.
Journal Article
British foreign policy and the national interest
British foreign policy is often criticized for lacking strategic thinking. Academics describe a 'strategy gap', noting that outdated ideas about Britain's role in the world continue to be recycled to confront the new challenges of the twenty-first century. This is despite regular efforts by government to articulate strategies for dealing with international problems. Prime ministers and foreign secretaries will periodically offer panoramic surveys of the foreign policy environment, and how the UK should interact with it. Departmental Reports, National Security Strategies and policy papers across government aspire to inject some sense of control and direction into foreign policy-making. Yet uncertainty remains over the rationale for policy, how it connects to the interests and values of the British people, and what choices need to be made. As policy and academic commentators have observed, what seems to be lacking is a sense of the overarching public interest in the UK's foreign policy actions -- in other words, a coherent idea of the national interest. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article