Getting our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: the Inside Story of British Diplomacy
Christopher Meyer
320pp
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
£18.99
An Israeli diplomat representing his country at a meeting of a UN sub-committee dealing with some trivial issue was surprised to hear that there was going to be a vote. Having no instructions on how he was to vote, the diplomat rang the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Unfortunately it was Jewish New Year and there was nobody there in any condition to help. He was simply told to vote the same way as the US. Unfortunately the US delegate had also been taken by surprise by the vote. So the two diplomats decided to ask the British delegate. When they located him, they found there was a queue. The representative from the Foreign Office was calmly letting scores of other delegates know which way they were going to be voting from an immaculately prepared list of each country’s position.
This story, related by an Israeli diplomat in a spirit of admiration for British efficiency and attention to detail, might well strike a chord with Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to the US, whose new book, Getting Our Way – 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: The Inside Story of British Diplomacy, notes with pride the reputation that British diplomats enjoy among their counterparts from other countries. While such professionalism is indeed to be admired, however, is it really of much relevance to the substance of international relations? This is a question that could also be asked of Getting Our Way. And the answer has implications for Labour’s approach to foreign policy.
In Getting Our Way, Meyer uses nine historical case studies to argue for the revival of British diplomacy and ‘a coherent foreign policy under a re-energised Foreign Office, driven by a clear-eyed vision of the national interest’. Britain must return, Meyer contends, to a foreign policy that begins and ends with the national interest, rather than notions of the post-modern state and global values. At its core, there is something to be said for this idea. However, there are major flaws in the detail of Meyer’s argument which provide an opportunity for progressives to articulate a more compelling vision for the future of British foreign policy.
To start with, Meyer has a tendency to concentrate on seemingly trivial aspects of diplomatic life and practice. For example, he provides much detail on the social scene and gossip surrounding the Congress of Vienna in 1814, while giving little sense that any of this made any difference to the outcome of negotiations. Furthermore, while the nine case studies have been selected precisely to further Meyer’s case about the centrality of diplomacy to foreign policy, in few of the cases does diplomacy seem to exercise any decisive influence on the eventual outcome. The Nassau deal in 1962 and the handover of Hong Kong are notable exceptions. In most of the other cases the outcomes seem determined by the relative power and interests of the actors involved, with skilled diplomacy adding little.
More significant than the failure to make a convincing case for diplomacy, however, is the way in which Meyer deals with Britain’s national interest. Beyond stating that the national interest consists of security, prosperity and (to a lesser extent) values, Meyer does not set out clearly what Britain’s national interest today is. Instead, the reader is left to piece together Meyer’s vision of the national interest from the occasional policy recommendation and some seemingly offhand remarks. The results of this are not encouraging. For example, Meyer repeats favourably Canning’s assertion that Britain’s ‘true policy [is] not to interfere except in great emergencies, and then with commanding force’, before hinting that British security and prosperity require neither closer integration with Europe nor so strong a transatlantic alliance. The first part of this is questionable enough: intervening only in ‘great emergencies’ entails acting only when you can do least good, with the greatest difficulty and at the most expense. But the idea of Britain going it alone in international affairs makes sense only if we are prepared to pursue the most narrow of interests internationally. It is this that provides an opportunity for progressives to shape the debate.
For all its faults, Getting Our Way’s central argument that we need a coherent foreign policy based on a clear-eyed vision of the national interest is sound. The challenge for the Labour party is to develop such a vision. Too often discussion of international affairs among progressives begins from the perspective of morally interesting single issues, with little consideration of how they relate to British interests and capabilities. By bringing discussion of international affairs back to British foreign policy and how it relates to the issues that are of most concern to the public, however, we can develop a vision of the national interest that is broader and ultimately better for Britain and the world than that suggested by Meyer. What emerges from Getting Our Way is a vision of the national interest that would leave Britain continually reacting to events, unable to exercise any significant influence on its wider strategic environment. Labour must be able to put forward an alternative vision, based not simply on using skilful diplomacy to get our way, but on using all aspects of our power and working with international partners to shape our world.