A progressive foreign policy should be different from a conservative or reactionary foreign policy. It should be different because it should be based on universalist principles rather than simply national. At the heart of a progressive foreign policy is the victim of gross human rights violations wherever that victim is found. We shape a progressive foreign policy by being forthright about our victim-centred approach to the world.
A conservative foreign policy is one that will place national interest always and everywhere above anything else. If we believe that this is the beginning and the end of the foreign policy question then we should accept that the attempt to construct an ethical foreign policy is impossible. It is worth pausing on this question for a moment. Is social democracy about building walls around our own polity to defend ourselves and keep our people safe from various threats? If so, we should venture out from this little island only when material threats exist to ourselves. So, when civil war breaks out in Yugoslavia, we should be with the Tories and do nothing. Of course we should leave the Iraq people living under a genocidal dictator. And today we should be arguing hard against any form of intervention against the Khartoum government. If that is what, as progressives we want, then let us say so.
A conservative foreign policy is one that expresses that national interest in terms beyond just security, but includes the economic interest of a broad entity called the west. Therefore it will pursue intervention on the basis of the control of resources like oil, because of the pressing political and economic need to deliver stable supplies. Economic interests should not determine a progressive foreign policy.
A conservative foreign policy is one that will act unilaterally or, more often, work hard to stop collective action through the United Nations when it does not see vital economic or strategic gains for the UK. Ideally a progressive foreign policy should be conducted through the United Nations and in line with international law and international humanitarian law. I say ideally because it can be argued that the responsibility to protect and the rights of victims to be saved from gross violations of human rights are more important in certain circumstances that the mechanisms of international law. We should also see the responsibility to protect as an umbrella concept that involves not only prevention of harm and rescue but also a long term commitment to reconstruction.
So we shape a progressive foreign policy by putting victims first, by understanding our national interest in terms of promoting, protecting and enforcing human rights around the world and by working through the mechanisms of international law and the United Nations.
Then we come up against cases. Take Darfur. We all agree thatgross human rights violations in Darfur should be stopped, but how?
The African Union force that has pushed the Janagweed back does not have enough money or equipment to do their job properly. They do not have planes to enforce the no fly zone. They are constantly being attacked by the rebels and by the government’s militia. In one report last night they do not have sufficient funds to withdraw.
The best option is for a UN force to replace the AU peace keepers. But this is real dilemma the UN system faces us with. Resolutions have authorised the sending of a peacekeeping force to the Darfur region. That force cannot go to Darfur unless the Khartoum government agrees to their entry. This government, which is a coalition and not an Islamic government but which is targeting its African population in Darfur, has broken many agreements. Yesterday, Kofi Annan said: ‘The message I have tried to get to the Sudanese government is that the international community is not coming in as an invading force, but basically to help them protect the people … If the government had been able to do it itself, I don’t think we would be having this debate.’
The rebels fighting the government who did not sign the peace agreement have committed their own atrocities. It is worth noting that all the perpetrators and all the victims in this conflict are Muslims. In response the Khartoum government is organising a force of 10,000 to move south. A Human Rights Watch report on the 6th stated that the government was indiscriminately bombing civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held North of Darfur. The African director of the HRW Africa said: ‘Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for civilian lives. A penalty for indiscriminate bombing in Darfur is UN Security Council sanctions, which should be imposed now.’ But would the impositions of sanctions make the deployment of a UN force more or less likely?
The HRW reports goes on: ‘Firsthand sources report flight crews rolling bombs out the back ramps of Antonovs, a means of targeting that was often practiced by government forces in their 21 year civil war with rebels in southern Sudan. This method is so inaccurate that it cannot strike at military targets without a substantial risk of harm to civilians. International humanitarian law prohibits such attacks, which can constitute war crimes. Deliberately attacking civilians is in all circumstances prohibited and a war crime.’
So here is the rub – the government that plans on ethically cleansing part of its territory as a ‘counter-insurgency’ operation is the government that can say yes or no to a UN force intervening to stop the genocide.
A progressive response should be that international law ought to be enforced; that the structures exist and need to be used; and that these need to be made to work.
That is what was said in Rwanda in 1994. Then we had a Tory government indifferent to the fate of the Rwandans and instrumental in blocking intervention. Now we have a Labour government that is deeply concerned with the fate of the people but is not prepared to go down the NATO road again, although this has been suggested by the US administration in the past. What should a progressive think – that it is okay for between 250,000 to 400,000 Muslims to die while the legal structures that should deal with this situation are not allowed to work?
In this case there seems to me to be a need to square the circle – to accept that some states can sacrifice their sovereignty when they fail to protect their own citizens or when they are attacking their own citizens. The ethical debate for progressives should be about what the threshold of violence is beyond which a state no longer has the right to agree or disagree to intervention. The ICC could be the institution that makes such a decision. This should not then necessarily lead to a full-scale invasion. There are many measures that can be taken short of that. But they must be taken in line with international law, or else like Kosovo they will not be repeatable.
This is the key – the victim centred progressive foreign policy we need is one that is permanent, repeatable, enforceable and predictable. Only international law can give us these things and the only way international law can be made to work is if it recognises that some states do not belong in the community of nations.
This article is a version of a speech given by Brian Brivati at Progress annual conference on Saturday 9 September 2006