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Ethics in foreign policy

To what extent has Britain developed an ethical foreign policy?

• They did sign up to ICC and are committed to it. Also attempted to encourage the US to sign
• Development – advancement of cause of debt relief etc, esp. Gordon Brown.
• Tony Blair – “Africa is a scar on the face of humanity.” Also the creation of the development portfolio in Cabinet (Claire Short was the first one)
• Roadmap in Israel - Tony Blair especially is extremely involved and keen to push a two-state solution
• Environment – Kyoto
• Blair’s interventionist tendencies
• Ottawa agreement banning import and export of landmines
• However, the War in Iraq goes against ALL of Robin Cook’s ideas on the ethical dimension and Cook resigned over the War. (Cook's ideas were about promoting security through liberal internationalist values (e.g. IGOs), promoting respect through human rights etc)
• Furthermore, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are hardly ethical
• Africa Commission could be seen as being a merely cynical use of power and development agenda does not go anywhere near far enough
• Still no intervention in various places e.g. Darfur, Zimbabwe, Chechnya
• Lack of respect domestically for human rights (the anti-terrorism legislation, religious hatred bill, id cards etc)
• Cutting off aid to Palestinians through EU – not an honest broker in conflict (which Blair likes to believe he is)
• “Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves” Robin Cook, May 1997
• The former Conservative Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, predicted the phrase would land Robin Cook in trouble: “We’ve always had an ethical foreign policy, but he will run into quite a lot of difficulty about exports and retaliation. It’s much better to do these things without a great fanfare”
• During Cook’s four year term as Foreign Secretary the phrase did come back to haunt him:
  • Over Britain’s decision to honour a contract supplying hawk jets to Indonesia
  • Over military action in Kosovo – the aim was humanitarian, to get President Milosevic to stop the repression in Kosovo so that the refugees could return, but the immediate effect was actually to increase the number of refugees, threatening to destabilise neighbouring Balkan states.
  • Over the Sandline affair in Sierra Leone, when mercenary soldiers who helped restore the elected government there claimed they had backing from the British government
• At the 2001 Labour Party Conference Tony Blair proclaimed a moral duty to intervene across the world whenever necessary: “If Rwanda happened again today, as it did in 1993, when a million people were slaughtered in cold blood, we would have a moral duty to act there also”
• According to former foreign secretary Lord Owen “sometimes unpalatable decisions have to be taken, in the national interest” (BBC)
• The Blair approach is that globalisation means that no country can afford to ignore famine, war or human rights abuse anywhere in the world
• “To fight terrorism and weapons of mass destruction effectively over the long term, we must actively promote the rule of law, good governance and human rights” (Jack Straw, March 2004)
• “There’s always been a moral dimension to foreign policy. Take, for instance, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Atrocities.” (Victor Bulmer-Thomas)
• “The Prime Minister has a strong moral streak” (Victor Bulmer-Thomas)
• Britain has championed the UN’s ICC
• “In East Timor, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe Britain’s actions have gone well beyond narrowly defined national interest. Its position was all the stronger for being morally just” (The Guardian 2001)
• According to the Guardian, “Mr Cook’s words have not been reflected in policy in Iraq, in Kurdish areas of Turkey and in respect of Israel’s conduct in Palestine. Draft arms exports regulations have been slow in coming and contain serious loopholes. And Britain is still reluctant to criticise Saudi Arabia and the US over such matters as the death penalty”
• Economic interests of UK still came first. Arms export is a large industry in UK and so government is somewhat reluctant to limit that area. E.g.
  • Manufacture and exporting of parts that will be used to make F16s for Israel
  • The decision not to completely halt all arms exports to India and Pakistan
  • Arms-to-Africa affair
• If arms deals don’t go ahead, British jobs will be threatened
• “It is a choice between British jobs and relations with allies against the possible loss of Palestinian lives” (BBC)
• According to Dunne and Wheeler “The government has no choice but to have an ethical foreign policy. Despite the criticism heaped upon it for proclaiming an ethical foreign policy, the government was right to do so. At the most basic level, it is hard to conceive of a democratic state having an unethical foreign policy”
• According to Dunne and Wheeler “Any government that regularly deploys moral arguments will inevitably be charged with double standards. The Labour government could rebut this charge by claiming that the best that can be achieved is coherence and not consistency”
• The Department for International Development (DFID) set up by New Labour is a United Kingdom government department, the function of which is "to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty".
• Iraq has seriously weakened UK credibility as ethical FP maker as they misled people, invaded for false reasons, created a mess, and possibly broke international law. All this led to the resignation of Robin Cook
• According to Dunne and Wheeler “In the aftermath of the Iraq war, the UK government lacks credibility internationally for its claim to uphold ethical commitments to internationalism and multilateralism”
• “make Britain once again a force for good in the worlds” Cook 1997
• The arms industry according to some estimates is worth around £5 billion a year for the UK economy
• Set up the Foreign Policy Centre

Comments

These notes are aimed at people studying for Edexcel A Level Politics, module 5 and 6, route D, but will be suitable for other people too.

Originally submitted by joker13na on TSR Forums.