In the midst of the sectarian chaos in Iraq and a bloody fight for democracy in Afghanistan, some would claim Labour’s foreign policy has been a failure. Although it’s hard to be totally objective about international affairs, a rational assessment would pit the continuing difficulties against many successes – fewer wars than in 1997, fewer people living on less than $1 a day, more being treated for HIV/AIDs, debt to the poorest countries written off, landmines banned, dictators removed and the EU expanded and more prosperous. However, these many successes will seem less significant if the result of the invasion of Iraq is to stymie the cause of liberal intervention for a generation.

Gordon Brown has sought to redefine British foreign policy on a more popular tack – while British troops are given an exit strategy from Iraq, his international stance is focussed on the promotion of human rights but without committing additional British troops – so the new ‘Axis of Evil’ is not Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, no matter how many lines of conference speeches or paragraphs in Le Monde are expounded on these dictatorships, it is hard to imagine how change can be implemented without committing British troops into battle.

Intervention is never easy, but it would be the greatest mistake if, at the beginning of the 21st century, the lesson we learned was that we must retreat from challenging tyrants and human rights abusers. It is foolish to think that Iraq or Afghanistan’s problems simply stem from an invasion by an external power. Yes, serious mistakes were made in the initial occupations, but the conflicts run far deeper than that. They are fuelled by a bloodthirsty ideology that seeks to overthrow democracies and replace them with medieval theocrats; ethnic tensions that were brutally suppressed by the ruthless use of a police state; and naked hunger for the riches of the state, masquerading as ethnic identification. And we should remember the successful interventions – the Kosovan refugees protected, Sierra Leone’s democratic government maintained and the cruel barbarism of the Taliban removed.

The new government will hope to focus on domestic affairs. But as any one who has read Alastair Campbell’s diaries will come to realise, it is impossible for the leader of the world’s fifth largest economy to not get sucked into spending most of the working day dealing with global issues. And with the boundaries between domestic and foreign policy forever blurred, it is self-evident that what happens in Pakistan or China, for example, reverberates on our streets. This is foreign policy on our doorstep.

Another classic distinction looks less relevant in an interdependent era – the divide between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ foreign policy. Joseph Nye’s definition of ‘hard power’ in general as military intervention, and ‘soft power’ as cultural relations or development spending, was never intended to be an either/or distinction. When it comes to dealing with dictators, terrorism or climate security, there are no soft options.

There is a dangerous parallel from history. In the aftermath of the conflict in Vietnam – a costly, bloody war that damaged America’s international standing – the US retreated from making tough foreign policy choices. When Jimmy Carter became president he sought to make human rights his guiding principle, but with it he seemed to emphasise a kind of ideological relativism that had no clarity of purpose. In 1977, he said: ‘This does not mean that we can conduct our foreign policy by rigid moral maxims. We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect – a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused.’

As the former Foreign Office minister, Denis MacShane, warns: ‘The danger to avoid is the ‘Jimmy Carterisation’ of foreign policy – of trying to replace hard choices with soft fuzzy warm words about human rights and development. Britain’s allies, neutral partners, opponents and enemies (and yes, we do have the latter) need certainty. Carter offered waffle and good will.’

There are more options available today to presidents and prime ministers than in the 1970s, but we need to consider whether such approaches are effective in achieving our aims.

The most obvious form of non-military pressure is sanctions. Sanctions can take different forms, and be targeted in different ways – like airborne weapons, there is everything from smart precision guided missiles, to carpet bombing. Like an aerial bombardment, the danger is collateral damage – or civilian casualties to use non-military speak. The kind of widespread economic sanctions that were used against Saddam Hussein’s regime were regularly criticised for harming some of the poorest people in Iraq. Then there are narrow, focused sanctions such as those in place against the Iranian regime which may have an effect on their nuclear programme, but are unlikely to damage the power of the overall system.
The major problem with sanctions is that they take so long to have any effect, often fail to produce any long-term results, and lots of people die in the meantime. Looking at history, we can say that only sanctions against South Africa had any effect – and that was a comprehensive boycott against a country that valued its cultural and economic links to the west. They’ve not worked anywhere else.

No-fly zones can be a relatively risk-free way of protecting people from some of the worst bombardments by conventional or even chemical weapons. Such a zone was highly effective in protecting the Kurds from attack by Saddam Hussein, and did much to engender Kurdish self confidence and autonomy – part of the reason why the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq is the most stable part of the country. Of course, they can only effectively protect against attacks from the air, but when the Sudanese airforce has used its bombers against Darfuri civilians (both in Sudan and in Chad), it begs the question as to why NATO, the EU or the UN can’t police a no-fly zone to protect civilians from aerial attack.

If intervention on the ground is not possible for political or military means, then the international community should be doing more to build up the institutions for international justice. No longer should dictators be allowed to retire in luxury with their Swiss bank accounts – they must pay for their crimes, even if it is long after they have left office. The fear of languishing in a jail in the Hague should become a deterrent for their successors.

There are many other tools in the armoury of a modern state. Public diplomacy – the art of promoting the values of your nation to an outside public through the means of modern communication tools – is a relatively new concept that is being used in innovative ways such as the Foreign Office’s Arabic website, or the new BBC Persian Service. And new technologies can be used for more nefarious ends – ‘cyber wars’ are becoming the new style of warfare as the internet and email become a battleground for states, terrorists and any individual with a grievance. The recent exposure of groups allegedly linked to the Chinese government exploiting security breaches in Whitehall computers is a sign of things to come.

Military intervention is not fundamental to humanitarian action, but the challenge for the government is not only to consider the range of alternative options available, but to again convince a sceptical public of the case for liberal intervention.