The Future of British Foreign Policy E-Book

Christopher Hill

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 386

Beschreibung

Since 1945, Britain has had to cope with a slow descent from international primacy. The decline in global influence was intended to be offset by the United Kingdom's entry into Europe in 1975, with the result that national foreign policy came to rest on the two pillars of the Atlantic alliance and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. Yet, with Brexit, one of these pillars is now being removed, leaving Britain facing some serious challenges arising from the prospect of independence. In this incisive book, Christopher Hill explores what lies ahead for British foreign policy in the shadows of Brexit and a more distant and protectionist America under Donald Trump. While there is much talk of a renewed global profile for the UK, Hill cautions that this is going to be difficult to turn into practical reality. Geography, history and limited resources mean that Britain is doomed to seek a continued foreign policy partnership with the Member States of the Union - only now it will be from outside the room looking in. As a result, there is the distinct possibility that both British and European foreign policies will end up worse off as the result of their divorce.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Preface and Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1

:

Brexit and UK Foreign Policy

Notes

2

:

Falling Back on Europe

Notes

3

:

Does Britain Need European Foreign Policy?

Notes

4

:

Britain's à La Carte Menu

Notes

5

:

Regional or Global?

Notes

6

:

A Tale of Two Special Relationships – Paris and Washington

Notes

7

:

Nothing Good Out of Europe?

Notes

Further Reading

References for Further Reading

Index

End User License Agreement

List of tables

Table 5.1 Top twelve diplomatic networks by size among the group of OECD and G20…

Table 5.2 Top 20 recipients of UK bilateral aid 2016 (in millions £)

Table 6.1 France and the United Kingdom: selected socio-economic indicators (201…

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

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The Future of British Foreign Policy

Security and Diplomacy in a World after Brexit

Christopher Hill

polity

Copyright © Christopher Hill 2019

The right of Christopher Hill to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2019 by Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2461-7 (hardback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2462-4 (paperback)

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Writing a book about a moving target is always a high-risk strategy, let alone in conditions of speeded-up politics like the present. It is quite possible that by the time the present volume is published there will have been further sea-changes in Britain's relationship with the European Union as the result of the volatile interactions between the Article 50 negotiations and domestic politics. But how can I not write about such an important subject as my country's decision to leave the most significant cooperative endeavour yet created by sovereign states in favour of an unknown voyage on the open seas of international politics? This is especially the case given that the flood of writing which Brexit has engendered is in large part concerned with the issues – vital as they are – of economics, sovereignty, migration and the Irish border? Foreign policy has been relatively neglected, even though the professionals in government, and those outside who follow these things, know that the decision to leave the EU represents a foreign policy shift of the first magnitude, both in the general sense of our ‘place in the world’ and technically, in terms of the policy-making process. These issues too need serious discussion.

I have been writing about British foreign policy for all my professional life, which has coincided almost exactly with the United Kingdom's membership of the EC/EU. For much of the time I have also focused on Europe's attempts to coordinate national foreign policies so as to ‘speak with one voice’ in relations with third parties. I have always been sceptical of the view that a European superpower could and should be created but at the same time have recognized that Britain's ability to influence events alone is increasingly limited. This is the starting-point of the analysis in this short book, which seeks to be even-handed in assessing the dilemmas facing British foreign policy as a result of the referendum vote in 2016, but at the same time argues that – in or out of the EU – we are first and foremost a European power. What happens in Europe and its neighbourhood is both a major concern for the UK and the theatre in which our foreign policy is most likely to be effective.

In order to limit the vulnerability of the book to new events I have chosen an historical and thematic approach. This places UK foreign policy in the context of Britain's gradual, often reluctant, move towards the project of European integration, showing that foreign policy was the only area in which it was ‘present at the creation’, and which (not coincidentally) turned out to cause fewest clashes with other Member States. The book analyses in Chapter 3 the nature of the system of cooperation in classical diplomacy known first as European Political Cooperation and then as the Common Foreign and Security Policy, showing that it allowed Britain to enjoy both influence and independence. The discussion then opens up to focus on the wider concept of ‘external relations’, which includes such things as monetary diplomacy, enlargement policy, security in the broadest sense and migration. Here the UK has been able to pursue, with relative success, what I term an à la carte approach, opting in to some common systems and opting out of others.

Moving back towards a macro perspective, that of how Britain operates on the international scene more generally, Chapter 5 takes on the dilemma of regionalism versus globalism – is it possible or desirable to be a global power, inside or outside the EU, or is a regional destiny more practicable, even inevitable? That issue in turn leads in Chapter 6 to an assessment of Britain's principal bilateral relationships, with France and with the United States. France is a close analogue country for the UK and will face similar foreign policy issues in the future even as an EU member. As for the United States, it has had the paradoxical impact on Britain of both encouraging its EU membership and on occasions drawing it into global geopolitics in ways which have created tensions on the European front. The book ends with a consideration of whether a country which enjoyed opt-outs as a Member State finds itself in the position, now that it is facing life outside the Union, of seeking opt-ins to foreign and security policy cooperation, and whether that is a feasible or desirable outcome. Is Britain therefore indelibly ‘European’ from a geopolitical point of view? What are the interests that British governments, and the British people, seek to pursue through foreign policy?

In completing this project, many debts have been accumulated. I am first of all most grateful to Louise Knight, my editor at Polity, for her invitation to write the book and for her encouragement throughout. Her colleague Nekane Tanaka Galdos has also been both patient and professional in providing the support that every author needs. On the academic front I was fortunate in the immediate aftermath of my retirement from Cambridge University in being offered the post of the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Chair of International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Bologna. In the Fall semester of 2017 I ran a European Research Seminar on the subject of this book with some excellent master's students, who contributed a great deal to my thinking by their sharp insights, enthusiasm and external perspectives on UK foreign policy. So my gratitude goes to: Vassilis Coutifaris, Francesco Diegoli, Malte Helligsøe, Caroline Mayr, Ginevra Poli, Juan Manuel Reyes, Umberto Speranza, Xiuqun Sun, Veerle Verhey and Lucie Webster. Also at SAIS, my colleagues Bart Drakulich, Erik Jones and Filippo Taddei have provided many stimulating ideas and discussion. Mark Gilbert took the time to read the historical part of the text and to make invaluable comments. I am also most grateful to SAIS Director Professor Michael Plummer for his welcome and assistance, and to Paolo Forlani, Gail Martin, Bernadette O'Toole and Barbara Wiza for indispensable and friendly administrative support.

Cambridge University's Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) is my other academic home. There my colleagues Chris Bickerton, Geoffrey Edwards, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Brendan Simms, Julie Smith and Helen Thompson represent a formidable concentration of expertise in British and European politics on which I have been fortunate enough to draw. As a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College I also benefit from regular contact with James Mayall, whose judgement on international politics is always to be trusted. The College environment also means I can lean on the expertise of colleagues from other disciplines such as Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European Law and Eugenio Biagini, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History. I am grateful to the Master of Sidney Sussex, Richard Penty, for permission to spend the autumn at SAIS, and to Robbie Duschinsky, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Bernhard Fulda, James Mayall and Rupert Stasch for kindly having covered for my supervising and interviewing duties during that term.

Lastly, I must thank a range of colleagues who have advised me on particular aspects of this work, encouraged me in various ways to proceed, or simply challenged my views. They might not always realize how helpful they have been, but I have not forgotten. So I acknowledge with sincere thanks my debts to: David Allen, Massimo Ambrosetti, Fraser Cameron, Charles Clarke, Marta Dassù, Renaud Dehousse, Helen Drake, Spyros Economides, Georgios Evangelopoulos, Andrew Geddes, Catherine Gegout, Charles Grant, Michel Kenny, Alan Knight, Christian Lequesne, Benjamin Martill, Maria Grazia Melchionni, Anand Menon, Anthony Milton, Tariq Modood, Robin Niblett, Tim Oliver, Alice Pannier, Mario and Annalisa Poli, Karen Smith, Michael Smith, Rick Stanwood, Eva Stolte, Nathalie Tocci, Uta Staiger, Richard Whitman and Jan Zielonka.

I am also indebted to various organizations for their invitations to speak during recent years on subjects related to the theme of this book, notably St Antony's College, Oxford, the London School of Economics (both its European Institute and its Diplomacy Commission), the University of Cologne, the Franco-British Council, the Greek Public Policy Forum in Chania, Crete, the Hay Literary Festival, the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, Guido Carli (LUISS), Rome, and the SAIS Alumni Association, Washington DC.

My fondest thanks, however, as always, go to my wife Maria McKay, who shows true devotion in reading everything I write and in putting up with the private agonizings of the author. We met as History students at Oxford at a time when Britain's attempt to join the EEC finally looked like succeeding. Our grown-up off-spring, Alice and Dominic, are fully European in their outlook. We only hope that the open Europe we benefited from will survive for them and for future generations.

Christopher Hill

12 June 2018

Abbreviations

ACP

African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries

ASEAN

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

BRICS

Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa

CANZUK

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom

CAP

Common Agricultural Policy

CFSP

Common Foreign and Security Policy

CSDP

Common Security and Defence Policy

CSSF

Conflict, Security and Stability Fund

COREU

CORrespondance EUropéenne

DEXIT

Department for Exiting the EU

DFID

Department for International Development

EAW

European Arrest Warrant

EC

European Community/Communities

ECOWAS

Economic Community of West African States

ECSC

European Coal and Steel and Community

EDC

European Defence Community

EDF

European Development Fund

EEA

European Economic Area

EEAS

European External Action Service

EEC

European Economic Community

EFP

European Foreign Policy

EFTA

European Free Trade Association

EMU

European Monetary Union

ERM

Exchange Rate Mechanism

EU

European Union

EU-27

European Union of 27 Member States (i.e. without the UK)

EURATOM

European Atomic Energy Community

FCO

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

G7

Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, USA)

G20

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, UK, USA, plus the EU)

GA

General Assembly of the UN

GCHQ

Government Communications Headquarters

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

GKN

Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds engineering company

GNI

Gross National Income

HMG

Her Majesty's Government

IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency

IGC

Intergovernmental Conference

IGO

Intergovernmental Organization

JCPOA

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran nuclear deal)

MEP

Member of the European Parliament

MERCOSUR

Common Market of the Southern Cone

MOD

Ministry of Defence

NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO

Nongovernmental Organization

NPT

Non-Proliferation Treaty

NSC

National Security Council

ODA

Official Development Assistance

OECD

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

OPEC

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

OSCE

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

ONS

Office for National Statistics

PESCO

Permanent Structured Cooperation on Security and Defence

PSC

Political and Security Committee

SACEUR

Supreme Allied Commander Europe

SEM

Single European Market

SIS

Schengen Information System

UDI

Unilateral Declaration of Independence

UKIP

United Kingdom Independence Party

UNSC

United Nations Security Council

WEU

Western European Union

1 Brexit and UK Foreign Policy

All kinds of metaphors can be used to describe Britain's relationship with European integration since the start of the process in 1950 – we have missed the bus, dragged our feet and tried to slow down the Franco–German locomotive driving the project forward. Finally, in 2016, the British people voted clearly, if by a small majority, to get off the train altogether. In our various moods, and by means of governments from both major parties, we had persistently and with some success attempted to put a brake on integration over 43 years of membership. But whether because Britain itself had changed, with hardening views towards Europe, or because the European Union (EU) itself had run into ever more serious problems, this strategy was deemed insufficient. Britain would have to leave, to renegotiate fundamentally its relationship with its closest neighbours, and thus to seek both a new identity and a new role in world politics.

In this book I focus on the foreign policy dimension of the decision to leave, looking first backward, then at the uncertainties that face the country in the process of departing from the EU, and finally at the likely longer term consequences of such a seismic event. This is at once a large task and a limited one. Large, because foreign policy has come to encompass a wide range of issues, many bridging the external and internal divide. Limited, because it is neither possible nor desirable in a short book to cover every aspect of the United Kingdom's (UK's) relationship with the EU and of the agonizing negotiations over its departure. The negotiations focus mostly on finance, on the Irish border, on the rights of citizenship and on a post-Brexit trading deal. All of these have foreign policy aspects and implications that will occupy much of the energy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but they are highly technical and space-consuming questions. How they are settled will certainly shape Britain's future role in the world but, until then, our thinking about foreign policy is better focused on the broader questions of orientation, identity, security and power.

This is, in part, a work of futurology. As it seeks to identify the likely effects of Brexit on Britain's foreign policy it is subject to the vicissitudes of events. Brexit might mean ‘Brexit’, as Prime Minister Theresa May initially asserted but, as there are no precedents for a sovereign state seceding from the EU we cannot – by definition – know what that entails in detail. Britain faces a moving target and a ‘journey to an unknown destination’, to adapt Andrew Shonfield's famous characterization of the European Community.1

The journey might entail a complete break with the Single European Market and the ‘four freedoms’ of movement for people, goods, services and finance, or it might involve any number of intermediate positions between that and EU membership, especially given the need for a transition period. After the divisions and deadlock evident in the result of the general election of 8 June 2017, called by Mrs May to give her a free hand in the negotiations, it might even mean no Brexit at all, or (after a brief intermission) a Brit-turn.

Yet, despite these uncertainties and the fast-moving nature of events it should still be possible to analyse systematically the parameters of the problem, meaning the country's historical relationship with Europe, the ‘givens’ of its geographical and power position, the domestic drivers and constraints of policy, and the attitudes of third states towards what is increasingly a dis-United Kingdom. The distance provided by an academic perspective should provide some buffer against the intrusion of polemics in what is the longest-running issue of contention in British politics.

If the UK is undergoing the most momentous transition in its relations with the outside world since EEC entry in 1973, and arguably since the Second World War, then, once that is over, the scope and targets of its foreign policy will by definition have changed. Pressed against the windows of the Europa Building in Brussels as Council meetings proceed inside without them, British diplomats will have to get used to treating the EU and its Member States as objects of ‘foreign’ policy – whereas for decades now the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and its embassies around Europe have been used to a multilateral, semi-internalized system of diplomacy in which they have often made the running. They will also be excluded from the European External Action Service (EEAS), which seeks to produce common positions both in Brussels and in the capitals of non-EU states, and in principle from decision-making in relation to the various missions sent abroad by the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

More generally, the Brexit decision means that the common tendency of the British to refer to ‘Europe’ as something ‘over there’ will take on a distinctly practical meaning. The UK population will no longer be part of a common endeavour and will depend for travel and economic activity on particular arrangements, which may well be subject to periodic change. It might be that France and Belgium will no longer operate UK passport controls in Paris, Brussels and the Channel ports, leading to longer queues at home. Unless the UK joins the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and the European Economic Area (EEA), or negotiates some unusually favourable conditions, Britons will no longer be able to identify themselves as European citizens, let alone have access to the rights that status bestows in terms of access to healthcare, education, residence and driving licences. In short, Europe and the EU will move from being a central part of our political, legal and institutional life into our external environment, to become a foreign policy problem. This is, of course, precisely how the ‘leave’ campaigners have viewed them, rejecting the narrative of amity and partnership created over nearly half a century.

The basic questions driving this inquiry, therefore, are: what will Britain's position in the world be after Brexit is achieved, and what choices exist for the country in that new environment? Are there alternative multilateral fora in which shelter may be found? Which bilateral relationships will be crucial, and how much continuity will there be in that respect? What will be the balance between new freedoms and new vulnerabilities? Will the government need to devote more, less or the same amount of resource to foreign and security policy? These questions have received much less attention than those of sovereignty, regulation, migration and freedom of movement in the referendum campaign and that of the 2017 general election, but they are just as important in the long term.2 The European Union is the most developed form of multilateralism in which the UK has participated, and its absence will be felt in diplomacy and security as much as in economics. In response, Conservatives tend to argue that a new ‘global Britain’ will emerge, the Liberal Democrats foresee only isolation and weakness and the Labour Party has avoided concrete predictions, while stressing its commitment to internationalism, and to an ‘ethical’ foreign policy.

Given that the political debate has been so inadequate on the foreign policy side, it falls to academics to make up the deficit. Some foundations have already been made. The book-length analysis by Michael Emerson and colleagues of the issues facing voters in the 2016 referendum contained a sharp treatment of the foreign and security policy dimension.3 The overview of UK foreign policy by Jamie Gaskarth raises some of the key strategic issues, although it was written three years before the Brexit vote.4 Brendan Simms' invigorating historical treatise is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the past, present and perhaps the future trajectories of the country's role.5 Julie Smith focuses on party politics, which is integral to our understanding of why Europe has been such a source of suspicion for many, internationally as much as domestically.6 Inevitably there is also much coverage by journalists, commentators and experts, which is in the nature of things ephemeral. But some represents a significant contribution to the debate, as in the discussions of the possible impact of Brexit on European security, and in Kenneth Armstrong's breaking down of the issues chronologically and conceptually.7 The essays in the collection edited by Benjamin Martill and Uta Steiger address the various levels of interconnection between Britain's future and that of the EU, Brexit or no Brexit.8

The world after Brexit

The British, like everyone else but a touch more so, tend to exaggerate their own importance in the eyes of the rest of the world. Most people would be surprised at how little attention the US media pay to events in the UK (apart from the doings of the royal family) and indeed to Europe more generally.9 Even inside the EU, Brexit has come to be regarded as a nuisance to be got out of the way as quickly as possible, and as by no means the most serious of the problems facing the Member States. In the wider world it is being followed with interest and some degree of concern by those who have major trade and foreign policy dealings with Britain and/or the EU, but it is rare for anyone to have the feeling that a great deal hangs on the outcome, as New Zealand did over Britain's original entry to the EC in 1973. No one is eagerly expecting great gains from relations with a ‘liberated’ UK.

The divisions inside the country have been so severe as to produce a collective solipsism, which inevitably increases the chances of neglecting or misperceiving events in the external world. While the UK is preoccupied with internal debate and with the transaction costs of the complex leave negotiations, other states inside and outside Europe are able to focus on more substantive economic and political issues. All states turn inwards from time to time, as Turkey did after the attempted coup of 2017, but there are few examples of a stable democracy undergoing major upheaval internally and externally of its own volition.

It is to be doubted that many of those voting to leave in 2016 were concerned about the possible diplomatic losses entailed in a Brexit. The informed minority would have expected Britain's place in NATO and its good bilateral relations with some of its European partners to have continued – the historic maritime ties to Portugal, the geographical and military closeness to Belgium and the Netherlands, the shared sense of a peripheral status with Norway. And these might indeed survive, for what they are worth. But the two critical relationships – those with France and Germany – are far less certain, as we shall see in more detail later in this book. One of the reasons for Britain's semi-detached posture within the EU has long been its inability to work as well with either Paris or Berlin as those two do with each other. Whether this is a cause or an effect of British distancing is difficult to ascertain – probably both. What is certain is that leaving the EU will not make it easier for London to develop those important bilateral ties, while it will definitively rule out any possibility of a European leadership triumvirate. As for the EU itself, while it is possible in time that the UK will be able to square the circle of its wish to have both independence and effective cooperation, the conflictual nature of the exit negotiations is likely to reverberate for some time.

The British need to realize that they have become a considerable source of irritation to those remaining in the EU, who resent the political energy absorbed by the referendum and its fallout, the damage done to the stability, budget and profile of the organization, and the sheer distraction from other pressing problems. Among these are the troubles of the eurozone, the migration crisis, relations with Russia and the USA, and a highly unstable neighbourhood. In this context Brexit looks like a relatively minor shock, but an immensely time-consuming one. Even before 19 June 2017, when the formal negotations began, European Council members had made it clear that there was much other business to be conducted. Just running the EU on a daily basis is a complex and burdensome task, quite apart from the need to consider strategy, to manage existing crises and to avert future ones. They are all familiar with the warnings of past leaders like Harold Macmillan and James Callaghan that it is the unforeseen or apparently minor event that can end by blowing policy off course.10 European leaders themselves are all too aware, given the Russian invasion of the Crimea in 2014 and the dramatic exodus of Syrian refugees in September 2015, that ‘life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans’.11 The officials of the FCO, DEXIT (Department for Exiting the European Union) and the Department of Trade, therefore, will be operating on the assumption that the hopes of their political masters for a rapid and clear process of disengagement are likely to be disappointed, as other priorities start to push the British question away from the centre of EU concerns.

Inside and outside reframed

However tiresome they are, the problems over negotiating an exit from the EU must eventually come to an end, and even the elements of ill-will generated on both sides will fade. Yet British foreign policy will then have to grapple with some rather more fundamental consequences and dilemmas, all of them crossing the conventional divide between internal and external policies and thus creating confusion over how and where they should be handled. They can be divided into four categories: (i) the scope of foreign policy, given that issues previously intra-EU now need a new definition; (ii) decision-making, or the changing responsibilities of the great departments of state; (iii) society, meaning how citizens might relate to the outside world once they have lost the extra protective shelter (and constraint) of the European Union; and (iv) identity, which here refers to the collective need for a new self-understanding, incorporating not only Britain's new outsider status but also its centuries of shared history with continental neighbours.

To begin with the scope of foreign policy: we have already seen that in principle the EU and its Member States will move from the current grey area, where they are half familiar, half-alien to each other, into the realm of foreign policy proper. The UK will also miss the economics and politics of scale associated with participation in the collective exercise, through regular meetings of foreign ministers (formal and informal) and of heads of government, and through access to shared reporting from missions in third countries, most recently via the European External Action Service (EEAS). If joining the European Community in 1973 was partly designed to find a new role, Britain having lost its empire, then leaving it will resurrect that dilemma by casting the country adrift from its major multilateral framework of action. Winston Churchill talked in 1946 of Britain's unique position at the intersection of three circles – Atlantic, imperial and European. Of these only the Atlantic and the Commonwealth will remain post-Brexit, and even the nostalgics rarely argue that either represents a solid platform for British foreign policy in the twenty-first century.12 Isolationism, in the sense of keeping external commitments to the minimum and always giving obvious domestic needs the priority, is a theoretical possibility but unlikely ever to be seriously considered in a country of Britain's history and cosmopolitan character. This leaves as the only option, at least in terms of looking for a distinctive ‘role’, that of ‘global Britain’, espoused by the pro-Brexit camp, and picked up by the May government in its struggle to find a way forward. It is a conception that appeals to various constituencies, but is difficult to define in structural terms. What, indeed, would not be included in such an approach?

Yet the close institutional networks of a regional organization might not be as necessary to conduct a successful foreign policy as the enthusiasts for the EU have come to believe. Given Britain's inevitable continued profile as a leading Western state, it could benefit from an increased flexibility within its general orientation. For example, practical cooperation will probably continue on the ground with other European states in third countries, particularly where conditions are testing, while the UK will doubtless regularly align itself with them in the many international organizations, especially under the UN umbrella, where they all participate. In that sense nothing much might change, since every Member State has always had the capacity to defect from any common position in the strictly intergovernmental system of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which Britain has never felt constrained by. On the one hand Britain cannot, any more than other rich states, escape its image in the world as a capitalist liberal democracy. It has a long history, which has earned both respect and anger, depending on who is talking. These mixed memories, of power and responsibility but also empire and oppression, can fade only over the course of generations. They define Britons’ self-images as well as those held by outsiders. On the other hand, even within the EU Britain has retained full sovereignty over its foreign and defence policies. Indeed, its sovereignty (meaning the ultimate ability to make one's own decisions) has only been qualified with respect to trade, agriculture, fisheries and the Single Market – admittedly things that 52 per cent of those voting in the 2016 referendum saw as critical impediments to their democratic rights.

Given this historical matrix Britain has a limited but real margin of diplomatic manoeuvre, which has been evident throughout its membership of the EU, and arguably might be enlarged after its departure. If it can avoid the sycophantic clichés of the ‘special relationship’ it should still be able to benefit from a pattern of cooperation with the United States that has now lasted nearly eighty years, even if much depends on the variable of US foreign policy, itself in part a function of the personality of the president. On this side of the Atlantic the Europeans may well be tired with the difficulties Britain has caused them but they will not treat it as a pariah, especially in matters of geopolitics. Casting the net more widely, even if new strategic partnerships are unlikely, London should still be able to work closely with familiar partners like Australia, Canada, India, Nigeria and South Africa according to the issue of the moment. Commonwealth membership does not guarantee interests in common, but it does facilitate cooperation once that has been identified as desirable.

This potentially positive scenario is overshadowed, however, by the conundrum of how far Britain should attempt to keep the states of the European region in the innermost circle of its foreign policy. Are the 49 years of diplomatic cooperation a mere wasting asset, or can they be used to maintain privileged partnerships? The answer varies according to the bilateral relationship in question – given the various rounds of EU enlargement some states have been partners for longer than others, just as historical closeness has varied. But it seems unlikely that any British government would wilfully throw away the painful gains achieved since 1945 in building closer relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, or in managing the always brittle entente with France. Italy, Poland and Spain have also become countries with whom good working relations are necessary. In fact there are few European capitals in which British diplomacy could afford to be inactive even outside the EU.

Decision-making on foreign policy will present future governments at Westminster with some interesting choices – even assuming that by then Scotland will not be en route to independence. The FCO has had to surrender its monopoly on dealings with the outside world over the last half century as advances in communications have enabled other government departments to make direct contacts with their equivalents abroad. This role will not be coming back. But membership of the EC/EU opened new doors for the FCO, given the key role of foreign ministers first in European Political Cooperation (EPC) and then in European law through the role of foreign ministers in the General Affairs Council. British diplomats soon earned a high reputation for professional competence in Brussels, backed by the weight that their state carried. Thus the FCO carved out a new function for itself as the coordinator of the diverse strands of UK external relations. The European system was its primary focus but, given the acceptance after 1968 that a truly world role had been consigned to the past, and the growing degree of coordination between European embassies in third countries, this meant that it continued to hold a strategic position in Whitehall. The Cabinet Office, in conjunction with the Prime Minister's office and the prominence there of special (political) advisers (SpAds), has naturally come to see itself as the primary coordinating body, but limitations of space and staff mean that it still relies heavily on the FCO for external policy. After all, no one else specializes in ‘the international’.

This has not prevented the inhabitants of King Charles's Street from regularly being denigrated, in the press, in parliament, and even by a few of its own, as being unfit for modern purpose and as having lost their high standing in the Cabinet room.13 Once Britain has left the EU, this view will have to be faced. Despite being denuded of much of its daily rationale, the FCO will have no choice but to present itself as the only ministry capable not just of coordinating policies across the board, but also of helping the National Security Council (NSC) to provide strategic direction – unless it loses its nerve and surrenders external policy to Number 10 and to its bureaucratic rivals. The Prime Minister, like most of her recent predecessors, will seek to determine the grandes lignes of British diplomacy, leaving Cabinet colleagues to fight over implementation and resources – in the shadow of the Treasury's administrative primacy. The Foreign Office will be only one player, with the Ministry of Defence also a potential source of policy initiatives towards the outside world, given its direct links to the military inside various important states, notably the USA. Another system in parallel is inhabited by the intelligence services, even if they, like the defence diplomats, need the FCO's network of embassies as the elephant perch from which to observe other states and societies.

These are the traditional turf rivals over foreign policy, whose position will not change markedly after Brexit given that the EU has never made serious inroads into national defence and intelligence activity. But others will be advantaged, at least in the narrow departmental sense, by the change. The National Security Council, for example, established in 2010, consists not only of the PM, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary but also the Home Secretary, Attorney General, and the Secretaries of State for International Development, and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with others attending on an issue-related basis. Leaving the EU will remove an important set of pressures to present a coherent face in external policy, a process in which the FCO played a central part. It thus opens the door for other departments to behave more independently.

The Department of International Development, for example, is already a significant rival given the large budget at its disposal and the increasing tendency to see development as a critical means of pre-empting radicalization, conflict and migratory pressures. It has been a major player in EU development policy, setting norms and contributing (in 2014) 14.7 per cent of the total European Development Fund (EDF), which was the third largest share behind Germany and France.14 This money, amounting to more than 10 per cent of the UK's overall Official Development Assistance (ODA), will come back into the budget of the Department for International Development (DfID) as a virtually untouchable instrument of policy, given that Parliament has legislated to commit the UK to spending at least 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid.

Although development specialists complain about conditionality and the diversion of money to help refugees settle in the UK, such politicization gives DfID the right to a say in the setting of external policy goals. Other ministries too will look for seats at the table when major international issues are discussed. In the case of the Department of Trade, limited to export promotion by the existence of the EU's Common Commercial Policy, the referendum vote has already given it a strategic responsibility for securing deals with the states or regions that might prove key markets or sources of raw materials for the UK economy. The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will also have a high global profile assuming that government policy continues to take climate change seriously. Food security and the many health issues associated with it must require complex discussions with other states, with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization – and with the EU, given the influence its Common Agricultural Policy has on world food trade. Such matters have long involved direct relations between specialists, which is why so many home civil servants have been seconded to the UK's permanent representations in Brussels and Geneva, and to embassies like Washington or Tokyo. But they have worked under the supervision of the FCO and its diplomats, a process made easier by the existence of the EU and the way it operates. What is more, while home civil servants may feel at their ease in comfortable Western capitals, being posted to Abuja, Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi or many others is a different story. The Foreign Office will have to fight its corner in the post-Brexit administrative free for all, but Whitehall's loss of the domesticated environment of the EU will arguably place a premium on specialist diplomatic knowledge of the diversity present in the international system.

The first issue to be raised once the prospect of negotiations over Brexit had become real was the fate of the people whose status would change. Inside the UK the position of the three million or so citizens of other EU countries living here was suddenly thrown into doubt just as the Britons living in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere on the continent were alarmed at the prospect of losing residence rights and access to welfare – particularly as over 20 per cent of the expatriates are pensioners.15 Many expected humanitarian gestures on both sides of the negotiating table to settle the matter. Indeed, the Joint Report issued in December 2017 at the end of the preliminary Brexit negotiations did commit to allowing EU citizens resident in the UK, and UK citizens resident elsewhere in the EU, at the time of withdrawal, to stay. But important uncertainties remained, with legal wrangles certain for years to come, regardless of the final UK–EU deal. Much hinges on the bigger issue of Britain's access to the Single Market, with its commitment to the free movement of peoples, and on the practical consequences of labour market needs in Britain and on the continent.

Another dimension of this problem for UK citizens is their ease and safety of travel. Unless the UK accepts the need to be part of the EEA, with all the qualifications of a Brexit that entails, the British are unlikely to be able to use the ‘EU citizens’ line at airports. At present this facility means that despite being outside the Schengen zone they suffer minimal inconvenience. The return to a national (blue) passport after relinquishing the maroon EU format will please some but it will also pick out British citizens more easily in any context with the potential for hostility to the old imperial power. They will be identified more with their own country's foreign policy (and that of the United States, with which it often aligns) rather than being able to shelter under the cover of Europe. In the most extreme circumstances, of being taken hostage, or as visitors in a conflict zone, this could even prove fatal.16

Less dramatically, the increasing tendency for EU Member States to cooperate in helping each other's citizens in third states, which could lead to common consular services in future, might not be available to UK citizens, although the tendency of developed democracies to show solidarity in emergencies would probably over-ride that theoretical disadvantage. Visas are another matter. As the UK has never entered the Schengen system of open borders it has also not used the common visa scheme that Schengen operates, and which led to 13.9 million visas being granted in 2016 (out of 15.2 million applied for) allowing their holders to travel freely within most of the EU for a limited period.17 The UK has preferred to take on the extra work of issuing its own visas, forcing foreign visitors who then want to travel on to, say, France to go to the trouble of obtaining another document. It makes sense to have Europe-wide agreement on which nationalities should and should not have visa-free access, so Britain is likely to continue to shadow such EU decisions as the 2017 removal of the visa requirement for Ukrainians. It might prove diplomatically awkward if London has a different line from the majority, but that is the price of autonomy.