Time for a more practical approach to foreign policy

Our departure from the EU is an opportunity to rethink our foreign policy to suit our national interests better. Pretty much since the Suez crisis, Britain has lost its sense of international independence, becoming first a vassal of the United States and then half-heartedly pretending it was a proponent of the European project.

Our foreign policy as it stands is contradictory and filled with moralising hypocrisy. We condemn Russia for aggression in Ukraine, but ignore Saudi aggression in Yemen or indeed our own destabilising conduct in Iraq and Libya. We’re willing to use air-power to combat a now thankfully dying ISIL, but tacitly support ISIL’s ideological cousins by jumping on the anti-Assad regime change bandwagon.

British foreign policy is absent of coherence or a well defined purpose. Practicality, not virtue signalling, should characterise the way we deal on the world stage. There will always be bad regimes, despots and thugs in positions of power. We cannot topple them all.

The next time the US decides to overthrow a regime abroad, we should steer well clear. The Cold War is over. There is no serious threat of communist infiltration. We have nothing to gain by joining in, in a geopolitical struggle between the US and Russia, supposedly over the liberty of Ukraine, but in actuality about the strategic balance of power in Europe. The civil war in Syria is tragic, but at heart it is an internal political and sectarian struggle which we would be well advised to avoid meddling in, unless national security justifies it so.

It is time to be more neutralist, rather than picking sides in big struggles which do not directly concern us, and to do what’s in our national interest first over that of others.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 1

Napp

I dont disagree with your post persay but I feel obliged to point out its unsuitability in the modern era.
Britain is no longer independently militarily strong. Indeed only the USA, Russia and China are considered to be in that category. In the proceeding decades we've reformed our military [aside from being a husk] to function as a part of NATO or in other collaboratory efforts. We're for all intents and purposes completely incapable of acting solely within our own interests these days and I dont envisage that changing any time soon.

Reply 2

DJKL

Original post by Sycatonne23

We have nothing to gain by joining in, in a geopolitical struggle between the US and Russia, supposedly over the liberty of Ukraine, but in actuality about the strategic balance of power in Europe.

Apart, of course, from the strategic balance of power in Europe. And I suppose it depends what you mean by joining in.

At a time when we have a flip flop US President, who has already questioned (possibly rightly) the European input into its own defence, it does appear that maybe one needs to keep the USA on one's side.

Now if the European countries, including UK, are prepared to spend a fair bit more on their own defence, and correspondingly reduce expenditure on things they find precious, fair enough, but if one is taking the USA's shilling one needs to do some marching with the US, otherwise they might decide to give up and leave us to our own defences, and the cost of same.

There is no free lunch.