Earlier this week, a former British Minister gave a presentation to a friendship society on British Foreign Policy in the Middle East. This writer walked away with the sense that that foreign policy was now virtually bankrupt, reduced to irritated whining about American failure to listen and a desperate attempt to Europeanise policy as Britain's great power status proved less and less tenable. This effect was enhanced by a naive concentration on the rather dubious proposition that, because the world spoke English, it meant that the 'mother country' had some sort of decisive diplomatic advantage that it could turn to good effect. 

This interpretation was not intended by the former Minister although it was shared by others in the Reception afterwards. The bankruptcy lay less in her vision (which seemed just a tired late acceptance that many well meant Blairite initiatives has quite simply not worked) than in the realisation that it is our Foreign and Commonwealth Office that is bereft of ideas.  Why should this be?

Yesterday's Men (and Women)

The FCO suffers profoundly from group-think. Just as it took time after Suez for much of the British Establishment to accommodate the end of an imperial role, so it will take time after Iraq for the UK to understand that it cannot keep fighting the Cold War and push the advantage of 'liberal values' without unacceptable strain on its own resources. The Macmillan strategy of being Greece, guiding hand, to America's Rome was always a short term expedient and a long term fantasy by which a fading establishment could hold on to a shared illusion of continuing influence. The last four years have proven that this particular Emperor stalks unclothed amongst his indifferent people.  Britons just want to do business and have fun in a global economy without worrying too much about some kind of moral manifest destiny.

One particular aspect of this week's lecture demonstrated just how at sea the British are.  The lecturer mentioned Washington and Paris, America and Europe, spoke of the Peace Process, the Maghreb and the Gulf (scarcely mentioned Iraq), even of China and India, but the 'dog that failed to bark' was Russia. Why this state of denial refusing to recognise that Russia is now a major player in the Middle Eastern game? Why can British policymakers not cope with the fact that the bear is back and in a far more sophisticated form than that of a Tsar or a Soviet Politburo?

Perhaps this is the problem - that UK 'group-think' cannot free itself from its own learned responses. Just as imperial analyses (the oppressive Tsar, the Crimea and the Great Game) merged into the responses of the Cold War (wicked communism, '56 and '68 and Afghanistan) so the responses of the Cold War are merging with new concerns - part of the chaotic shift towards new policy priorities that emphasise working through the US, UN and Europe to effect national interest ends.

Russia - Ghost at the European Feast

An overseas ambassador at the lecture, during questions, raised the speaker's lack of reference to the emergence of a new diplomatic dynamic between regional powers operating regardless of the pretensions of the 'international community' (aka the Western wing of the '45 powers). He referred to the lack of mention of Russia and pre-empted our own question.

Russia is a problem for the Foreign Office precisely to the degree that the essential interests of Europe and of America are different. It is not so much a case of Russia and America tussling over the soul of Europe (the 'cold war' dynamic) as one of Europeans who still think in Cold War terms tussling with those Europeans who have a more pragmatic approach to continental energy and trade requirements. Russia is just an existent fact in European calculations whereas America is still trying to hang on to its leadership position on the basis of 'values'. Unfortunately, Washington has lost much of the negotiating power it once had in terms of strategic need, economic necessity and popular support (that is, outside the far reaches of the European Right and the smaller Eastern European states carved out of the old Soviet Empire).

The question is - which Europe is it in the UK's national interest to espouse? The answer within the British liberal establishment tends to be unequivocally the liberal American one. It sees Europe as partner to the US in managing the world under a regime of liberal values. In the long run, some of the assumptions behind this choice may have to go the way of empire, being the free world's aircraft carrier and active participant in the war on terror East of Suez as policies that are redundant. Continental and national economic realities, centred on energy, may dictate that other policies have to be formulated in due course.

The Russian-US Impasse Over Missile Defence

These ruminations arose not so much from the lecture but from President Putin's visit to Iran which was undoubtedly related not only to growing Russian influence in the Middle East but also to the politics of the US Missile Shield and to Russia's potential stranglehold over energy supply into industrial Europe.

President Putin not only visited Iran but he invited President Ahmadinejad back to Moscow – as far as the world was concerned, Russia was telling the US (and, indirectly, a wobbly Europe) that it would not merely veto any UN support for a strike against Tehran but that it could exploit any global feeling against unilateral action by the US. The two camps are now lining up and this may be the lowest point of pre-Bush PNAC strategy with a strengthening Russia and China and a divided Europe facing off a weakened US a full twenty five years ahead of plan. Behind the headlines, a great deal of the post-imperial third world and 'White Commonwealth' is much more well disposed to the US than the media might suggest.  The point here is not that the US cannot and will not recover much of its global hegemony (it will) but that it is losing that hegemony in Northern Eurasia and the Middle East.

The US has now revealed that, when US officials met Putin last week, it had offered to scale back its missile defence plans in Europe if Iran halted its nuclear programme. The US claims the threat from Iran as the justification for its missile defence system whereas Russia, not entirely unreasonably, sees it as directed at itself. It does not believe (any more than we do) that Iran is either a necessary or short term threat.

In fact, the US promised Russia very little. It did not say it would end the missile defence programme but only that it might not need to be quite so extensive or expensive. It also offered collaboration on early warning systems. The Russians did not seem impressed.

The European Union Struggles With Iran

As Putin prepared to go to Tehran, the European Union began to bend to US and French pressure and start to talk about beefing up anti-Iranian sanctions. At the time of writing, it is simply talk but Europeans, pusillanimous and confused at the best of times, always find it hard to resist a demand from ‘big brother’. Having promised help and whined about the difficulties, they will then try and find some mealy-mouthed or weasel way to deliver sufficient propaganda benefit to Washington without actually giving up on vital trade links. The details of any European proposals, when they arrive, will be for the political nerds. Solana is being sent to talk to the Iranians as much to get the Iranians to help Europe out of a hole as to effect any material change in Iranian geo-political strategy.

The weakness of the European elite in defending its own trading interests is puzzling until you realize that it still shelters under a massive strategic nuclear umbrella (an irony in view of the non-proliferation aspects of the case) paid for largely by American taxpayers. Direct payment for European defence would have very serious effects indeed on its liberal structures and peace time economy. It would be a ripe plum ready to fall into the hands of Russian energy strategists.

So, we have the current compromise ‘under which the EU will first wait to see what action is taken by the UN after the IAEA reports’ [The Financial Times reporting the usual unnamed EU diplomat] which we can translate as ‘for god’s sake, let’s not deal with this until we have to but, if Iran stays intransigent and Russia and China don’t play ball, we are going to have to choose between the hardliners in the rest of the West and the UN (which the Anglo-Saxons usually manage to deliver but, horror of horrors, may not do this time around). Oh, bugger!”

Breaking Old Habits ...

The question now being asked in London, in all seriousness, is whether Europe (of which the UK is a part) will become irreversibly dependent on Russia. If London is asking that question, then the question is going to be even more carefully considered in Berlin, the engine of European prosperity and a country that seems to have been relatively unaffected in economic terms by the credit crisis. Germany might, however, be devastated by high energy prices or disruptions in supply.

FCO 'group-think' now sees British foreign policy as increasingly one to be Europeanised. The trend is for Atlanticism to be constantly diluted on a case-by-case basis to give Europe the ability to engage more effectively in projects regarded as of vital interest to the UK. Most notable amongst these is the Middle East Peace Process. The small print in the recent lecture suggested that the FCO had finally given up and accepted that the US is not going to deliver the goodies. Europe (they seem to believe) must now come into play because the UK (Blair's Special Envoy position notwithstanding) has, in itself, little leverage except as conduit for Arab opinion - certainly now that some sixty years has passed since the end of its Palestine Mandate.

Recent events – Turkish (and Azeri) disenchantment with the West, Russian-Iranian rapprochement, the downgrading of gas supply from Qatar – might suggest that the defensive umbrella offered to Europeans by the US may be fine against Soviet military threat but next to useless against economic threat.  They might suggest that the best way forward could be negotiation and partnership with Russia rather than confrontation. A realist European might say that being stuffy about other people’s constitutional arrangements, in the Anglo-Saxon manner, is not very helpful so long as you maintain your own in good order. These are not yet the majority views and face formidable cultural obstacles but there is a certain logic to them.

A Tentative Conclusion

And so we return to the theme with which we started. Is our British foreign policy establishment intellectually flexible enough to deal with these new realities? Can it retain the liberal global alliance that underpins its trading relationships and also recognise that there must be a Eurasian rapprochement between industrial Europe and Russia? Is potential Russian (and perhaps Chinese) influence in its own key target diplomatic markets in the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Gulf, a threat or an opportunity?

These particular circles can be squared but only with some radical re-thinking of the national interest and the jettisoning of some familiar and cuddly assumptions about national power, influence and interests. This week's lecture was, sadly, not encouraging.

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