British Foreign Policy After Brexit E-Book

David Owen

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

At a time of alarming global instability, amid shocking terrorist attacks in Europe and mounting tensions between the USA and North Korea, a clear and focused foreign and defence policy is now more critical than ever. Now that departure is under way, what happens next? Against this unpredictable geopolitical backdrop, Britain's position in the world needs to be recalibrated to take account of a range of new realities. Now is the time to move forward, to define a positive, outward-looking role in this post-Brexit world. British Foreign Policy After Brexit examines what lies ahead, encompassing a diplomatic, security, development and trade agenda based on hard-headed realism. Former Foreign Secretary David Owen and former diplomat David Ludlow, who backed opposite sides in the referendum, together argue that Britain's global role and influence can be enhanced, rather than diminished, post-Brexit.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title PageIntroduction  Part 1: Strategic PerspectivesChapter 1 A Foundation for Global Diplomacy Chapter 2 The UK’s Role in Global Security Chapter 3 Building a Prosperous Future Chapter 4 Coordinating and Implementing Policy  Part 2: Near Term Challenges & OpportunitiesChapter 5 Russia and Stability in Wider Europe Chapter 6 The Challenges of the Middle East Chapter 7 China and its Neighbours Chapter 8 Dealing with Europe  Index Copyright

INTRODUCTION

‘AN INDEPENDENT BRITISH VOICE’. HENRY KISSINGER

In the midst of the UK referendum campaign in 2016, I visited Canada to discuss future trading arrangements and visited New York to call on the former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, whom I have known since I was appointed Foreign Secretary in February 1977. He told me on 3 May that he was facing a deadline to decide before the end of the day whether to sign a letter with other prominent members of the American foreign policy establishment, arguing that Britain should not leave the EU. It soon became clear that he had no intention of signing and his reasoning was clear and simple: ‘I do not want a world in which there is not an independent British voice.’

I wrote to him to seek his agreement before recording his view in this book, and he wrote back on 20 December: ‘The quote is exactly correct. It is what I said and what I felt. You have my permission to use it.’ It is to help establish that independent British voice in 2017 and beyond that this book is written. In doing so, I am fortunate to have as a co-author someone twenty-five years younger and with far more recent experience of working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), who voted to ‘remain’.

We want to demonstrate that after leaving the EU, the UK can confidently play a full and constructive role in a shifting global environment, while shaping a new relationship of mutual benefit with our twenty-seven former partners in the EU, and ultimately building a more prosperous and secure country.

Neither of us are federalists and we explain what that term means in concrete terms in this book. In my case, the rejection of federalism dates back to what Hugh Gaitskell, the then Leader of the Opposition, said in 1962 when we were applying to join the Common Market. It also dates back to the strategy paper that, as Foreign Secretary, I wrote for the Cabinet in the summer of 1977. Nevertheless, my opposition to federalism did not affect a longstanding friendship with Michel Rocard, an ardent federalist, who served as Prime Minister under President Mitterrand. In January 2013, when I was in Paris to discuss my recent book Europe Restructured, Michael publicly called for he UK to leave the EU with friendship.1 He put me in touch with Emmanuel Macron, then in the Elysée under President Hollande, and we exchanged letters and had a telephone conversation. I was left in no doubt after this that Macron broadly shared Michel’s view about the need for a federalist future for France, and he demonstrated that in his successful Presidential election campaign by playing the ‘Ode to Joy’, the anthem of the European Union, alongside the French national anthem and flying the European flag alongside the tricolour. I, nevertheless, wanted him to become President. He is highly intelligent and dedicated to a reform of the Eurozone, which is in everyone’s interests.

In this book we have not set out to present a comprehensive review of all aspects of the UK’s international activities, but rather focus on those areas where we see the greatest challenges, where there are lessons to be learnt, and where there is potential for that independent British voice to bring new ideas to the table. Nor are we attempting to write a diplomatic history of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, we have given weight to the historical background where we feel it appropriate, sharing the view of former chief FCO historian Gill Bennett when she writes: ‘There is no doubt that in the realm of foreign making, history can be a constructive tool rather than a misleading guide.’2

David Ludlow and I worked together for two years from 1992 when I was the EU Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. He returned to the FCO, subsequently working for Schroders (later acquired by Citigroup) in London and Dubai and then Standard Chartered Bank. He came back to London in 2014 to work for two years for the UK’s export credit agency as Head of Business Development, which took him to many of the high-growth markets that are now a target for British businesses. We have written this book together in the time since he left that role at the end of 2016.

I also went into business after my tenure in the former Yugoslavia. From 1995 to 2006, I served as chairman of UK-based company GNE, which invested in a modern steel plant in Russia and petrol stations in the UK. From 2006 to 2015, I was chairman of Europe Steel, which traded steel and iron ore and was owned by the Russian company Mettaloinvest, as well as being a consultant for various companies. I was also chairman of Yukos International for three years and served as a non-executive director of Coats Viyella in London for six years, Abbott Laboratories in Chicago for fifteen years, and Hyperdynamics in Houston for seven years.

This book is not about the Article 50 process. The UK will, as a result of the 2017 election manifesto commitments of the Conservative Party, Labour Party and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from Northern Ireland, leave the EU at the end of March 2019, unless another general election takes place before that date. However, during any such election, the Conservative and Labour manifestos are unlikely to change in relation to the referendum decision to leave the EU. So whichever party were to win an early election, we as a nation are going to leave the EU. Only the much hyped new ‘EU party’ – which never emerged in 2017 – would be likely to fight a new election on a commitment to stay in the EU, and the chances of it being established were reduced following the Liberal Democrats’ election performance.

Where the argument between the parties has a renewed strength is around what sort of access the UK should try to establish with the EU’s single market. Here, the arguments of the ten DUP MPs, who do not want the return of a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, deserve serious consideration; likewise those of the twelve new Conservative MPs from Scotland, who will want to demonstrate they best represent the interests of Scotland rather than the Scottish National Party (SNP), whose number of MPs has fallen sharply to thirty-five. Scottish Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs will also want to do the same.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, who skilfully handled his party’s manifesto position, must in a hung parliament be given access to more confidential information, as before the talks are completed he could be responsible in government for negotiating on behalf of us all. Traditionally when international negotiations are underway, there are regular exchanges of information with the official opposition, and David Davis has a good record of openness. After both the 2016 referendum and the 2017 general election, Brexit has become an issue where the national interest must now predominate. Some who voted Remain are still not ready to accept the referendum result; that is their constitutional right and their views deserve respect. The unelected House of Lords, however, can no longer claim any right to block Brexit. Under the Salisbury Convention – agreed after the 1945 Labour landslide victory – manifesto commitments cannot be overturned by the Lords.

The really substantive issue, however, is: after leaving the EU in March 2019, how does the UK negotiate for the implementation of a lasting EU–UK trade agreement? I believe the UK should remain a Contracting Party to the EEA Agreement during this transition period. There is nothing in the Agreement’s provisions that convincingly serves to establish that the UK will cease to be a Contracting Party on withdrawal from the Treaty of Lisbon and leaving the EU. The significance of this interpretation is that it is consistent with the purposes of the EEA and with the Vienna Conventions on disputes over international treaties,3 and is difficult to overstate. Continuing as a Contracting Party would avoid any cliff edge which the EU Article 50 procedures might force upon us in ways potentially very damaging to UK interests.

The overall UK strategy should be to exit the Lisbon Treaty in March 2019 as a first step, continue as a Non-EU Contracting Party to the EEAA as a second step and negotiate trading agreements with the EU and with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein as the third step, while being ready to give a year’s notice of leaving the EEAA when appropriate in relation to the trade negotiations before or during 2022. To pave the way for this in the summer of 2017, the UK should tell the EU and the Non EU Contracting Parties to the EEA Agreement that we consent to be bound by the Law on Succession of States 1978 (Article 2.1 (g)).4 We should also indicate that while we do not accept the validity of an exit tax in any shape or form, we are ready to pay the cost of compensating UK citizens who have been employed by the EU and whose job prospects are affected by our leaving. Also for the duration of any ‘implementation period’ as a Non-EU Contracting Party to the EEA Agreement, we are ready, following precedent, to voluntarily pay a financial contribution.

Successful negotiations with the EU over the next four to five years will need clarity of purpose, to build on precedent and to follow the wording of Article 8 in the Treaty of Lisbon on good neighbourliness that is spelt out in practical terms throughout this book. They will also need a close degree of cross-party cooperation.

David Owen

June 2017

Notes

1 David Owen, Europe Restructured: The Eurozone crisis and its Aftermath, Methuen, 2012.

2 Gill Bennett, Six Moments of Crisis, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 175.

3 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties ‘Part V: Invalidity, Termination and Suspension of the Operation of Treaties’, Article 42 – Article 72, pp. 342–9.

4 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties. Vienna, 23 August 1978. Relevant extracts available on www.lorddavidowen.co.uk

PART 1

STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES

…The world is a tough, complicated, messy, mean place, and full of hardship and tragedy. And in order to advance both our security interests and those ideals and values that we care about, we’ve got to be hardheaded at the same time as we are bighearted, and pick and choose our spots, and recognise that there are going to be times where the best that we can do is to shine a spotlight on something that’s terrible, but not believe that we can automatically solve it. There are going to be times where our security interests conflict with our concerns about human rights. There are going to be times where we can do something about innocent people being killed, but there are going to be times where we can’t.

President Obama, The Atlantic, March 2016

CHAPTER 1

A FOUNDATION FOR GLOBAL DIPLOMACY

As we leave the EU – to whose Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Common Security and Defence Policy we devoted so much diplomatic and military energy in the recent past – we must take the opportunity now, urgently, to redirect that energy into policies which allow us to move forward and face the future with confidence, delivering on the UK citizens’ understandable aspiration for greater prosperity and security. The 2016 referendum decision was not just a decision to leave the EU and invoke Article 50 in the Treaty of Lisbon; it was a decision to mark a change in the UK’s relationship with the world. As the historian Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield said in a House of Lords debate on 20 February 2017 on Article 50:

It is a key element in what will be the fourth of our country’s great geopolitical shifts since 1945. The first was the protracted withdrawal from Empire – from India in 1947 to Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1980. The second was joining the European Economic Community in 1973 – or ‘Brentry’ as the Economist rather neatly described it the other day. The third was the ending of the Cold War between 1989 and 1991.

The challenge presented by this fourth great shift is to move the emphasis from a European focus on world events, to a global focus through diplomacy, military support and free trade.

Brexit involved a choice. We could – and many wanted to – stay with the European focus on our economic and foreign policy that started in 1973. Or we could choose – for mixed motives and with differing priorities, as in any referendum – to restore a global orientation. Many who hoped to stay in the EU, warts and all, understandably feel rejected and bruised. Many important decisions are taken on the margin. This should be respected. We must learn to live with and respect each other’s views. Practically no argument is won by a 100 per cent majority. Indeed, the referendum was decisive but the margin not great. The spirit of the country, however, is to get on with the task ahead. The overriding task facing the UK now is to make a success of Brexit, economically, socially, politically and in terms of national security.

There is a sense of adventure in taking to the high seas again, developing ‘blue water diplomacy’ and worldwide commerce. But there is a danger in overstretching our capacity. We have to be selective, and we will be helped in doing that by returning to being a nation that has greater control of its own destiny. There is a hard-headed calculation to be made concerning what sort of role we wish to play in the world, and how we can be best positioned to achieve our goals. As Prime Minister Theresa May said in her speech in the US in January 2017,1 the UK sees itself as ‘by instinct and history a great, global nation that recognises its responsibilities to the world’. We share this view.

Brexit means Britain is freer to work through global policies we wish to espouse; to gain some of the clarity or harder edge that cannot usually be found in an EU policy agreed amongst twenty-seven other countries. It would be foolish to give the impression that everything will suddenly change. EU policies may still be appropriate, and we in the UK have benefited from pooling knowledge on foreign and security policy with other EU member states. Post-Brexit the UK will not be developing policies on our own. We will be cooperating within NATO at a more intensive level and we will be stepping up our activity under the UN Charter and within the UN Security Council. This chapter focuses on the United Nations and the next on NATO.

For all its acknowledged shortcomings, the UN sits at the centre of many key aspects of multilateral diplomacy, including conflict resolution and peacekeeping, and provides a focal point for the rules-based international system. It is also where we continue to hold the much-envied position as one of the permanent five (P5),* veto-wielding, members of the UN Security Council.

In the search for unifying themes in foreign policy within the UN for the UK after Brexit, some urge the primacy of security; others the primacy of democracy, despite democracy not being mentioned in the UN Charter; while others believe there can be no lasting security or democracy without the underpinning of human rights.

In Europe, many take human rights for granted as having been in existence since the dawn of time. However, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin made clear ‘the notion of individual rights was absent from the legal conceptions of the Romans and the Greeks; this seems to hold equally of the Jewish, Chinese and all other ancient civilisations…’2 We, in the UK, tend to look back to clause thirty-nine of the Magna Carta of 1215, which gave all ‘free men’ the right to justice and a fair trial. There is a general sense in the New World that the concept of human rights was the product of Europe and the Enlightenment. This came specifically to prominence in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, adopted in revolutionary Paris on 26 August 1789, which in its first article states that, ‘Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.’ This was followed on 15 December 1791 by a US Bill of Rights. A strong stance in support of human rights as a continuing guide to British foreign policy in 2017 cannot be a mere add-on. While much has been achieved by the UK’s efforts in the UN, a lot remains to be done, for example, in the area of women’s rights, where there are still many serious abuses, particularly where rights conflict with religious practices. This is a matter in which the UK has shown a readiness to take a lead, such as with its work on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. It also has to be recognised that any human rights-based policy creates conflicts of interest and a lot of compromises, some of them embarrassing. But far better that a dialogue and debate takes place than sweep issues under the carpet.