The fall of Kabul exposed the intellectual void at the heart of British foreign policy

[ad_1]

The State Department never knew what to do with Dominic Raab. On the other hand, his entire career has been a long apprenticeship for Foreign Secretary: he spent some time as a barrister in The Hague, and was a back-room official, advising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on the East. the East. On the other hand, he is a supporter of Brexit in a department where the vote to leave is still seen as a double shock, first because the UK voted to reject the EU, and second because the Cabinet Office, not the Foreign Office, is appointed in charge About exit talks.

Opinion was divided when Rapp announced, shortly after his arrival in July 2019, that officials should strive to keep his foreign trips short to allow him to see his young family. Some civil servants saw this as the work of a progressive minister. Others saw it as evidence that the new foreign minister was not enthusiastic about the role.

[See also: Afghanistan Diary: The fall of Kabul was predictable – if you were there]

The confusion continues. Raab has fulfilled the long-held dream of some Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials of regaining control of the aid budget and getting the Department for International Development back on track. But he also agreed to reduce the international development budget to 0.5 percent of GDP from 0.7 percent, at a time the FCO had hoped to use to set British foreign policy priorities (and restore some FCO influence in Whitehall). . Some compare him lightly to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Therese Coffey, who by contrast is believed to be struggling hard to prevent the global credit cut from moving forward.

Raab is the cabinet minister who, more than anyone else, takes personal credit for the UK’s generous offer to refugees fleeing Hong Kong in the wake of the Chinese government’s crackdown on life and freedom there. But he is also the foreign minister who is said to have gone abroad for his holidays while British and US forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving the door open for the Taliban to take back the country.

There’s no doubt that Rap’s holiday (which coincided with the prime minister’s holiday) was a poor political look, not least because it compares starkly to the heroism of the UK’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, who stayed in Kabul to help others out. from the state. The embarrassment of the politicians’ recess meant that the recall of Parliament on August 18 looked like a government with its back. But the hard truth is that both Raab and Johnson may also have stayed ashore because of all the influence they, or any British minister, had on events in Afghanistan.

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, similar to that of Germany and Australia, was ultimately decided not in London but in Washington. Donald Trump negotiated an exit deal with the Taliban, and Joe Biden chose to go ahead with it. Ben Wallace, the UK’s defense minister, argued that the British should go on regardless, but the truth, another cabinet minister said, is that “without the Americans, there is no show”.

[See also: Joe Biden passes the buck over the Afghanistan crisis]

This revealed another unpalatable truth for the UK government: it lacks the ability to act alone in foreign affairs, and even if it could, its foreign policy strategy is not clear. Policy choices made over the past eleven years have reduced British power abroad: Conservative spending has reduced the armed forces to their smallest since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Last year, decade-long cuts to “hard power” were coupled with new cuts to the UK’s “soft power” in the form of its foreign aid budget. The problem can be addressed in part simply through spending, but the intellectual void in British foreign policy runs deeper.

Since the Conservatives are back in office, the party has been more clear about what it is against than in favor, and even then, it hasn’t been particularly consistent. In 2008, as the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron said: “We must accept that we cannot impose democracy under the barrel of a gun; that we cannot bring down democracy from 10,000 feet nor should we try.” This was before Cameron, as prime minister, launched missile strikes on Libya in 2011 and attempted to intervene in Syria in 2013.

Under Johnson (a particularly undistinguished former foreign secretary), the Conservative government has superficially abandoned the close relationship Cameron sought with China, but the government’s new Chinese skepticism is absent when the question of foreign aid cuts arises. (The UK spending cuts will give China more freedom to use the “Belt and Road” initiative to expand its influence in less developed countries.)

Johnson wants to work with France, Italy and Germany as part of the new D10 group of major democracies, but remains at odds with them over the European Union and the Northern Ireland protocol. Likewise, the British government is committed to working on climate change – but not to protecting foreign aid or cooperation with the EU.

In the absence of general guidance from Downing Street, individual foreign ministers acted like junior ministers, adopting noteworthy projects such as William Hague’s efforts to reduce violence against women and girls in conflict areas and Raab’s endorsement of Hong Kong citizens. Instead, the task of providing the strategy was left to the Prime Minister. But neither Cameron nor Theresa May was willing or able to provide that, and there’s little prospect of Johnson doing so either.

The most embarrassing aspect of the Johnson and Rabe holidays is that it is unclear what they have accomplished by ending early – and even more so what they intend to achieve when they return to the new parliamentary session in September.

[See also: The fall of Afghanistan: all the New Statesman’s coverage]

This article appeared in the August 18, 2021 issue of The New Statesman, The Great Betrayal

.

[ad_2]