A favoured cliché among British foreign policy commentators is the idea that we ‘punch above our weight’ in global affairs. The UK has disproportionate impact and influence, the argument goes, due to our unique combination of assets and alliances. Douglas Hurd first used the metaphor in 1993, and it has been trotted out on a nauseatingly regular basis ever since. It is often used with great success by defenders of particular policies or resource allocations. For example:
‘We must retain our nuclear deterrent/UN Security Council permanent seat/aircraft carrier/consular network/amphibious landing craft/higher-education sector/special relationship with Washington/world-class financial sector … because it enables us to punch above our weight in the world.’
It is a cynical but effective ploy: to disagree involves delving into the murky world of counterfactuals and hypothetical questions.
But when it comes Britain’s European Union membership, it is undeniably true. Our membership of the world’s largest trading bloc and regional power centre is an incredibly useful force-multiplier. We have a say in what the EU does around the world; and the EU does far more than we could ever do on our own.
As well as the obvious ways the EU helps us project influence (negotiating market access with the developing powers; pooling development spending to achieve scale; collaborating on international crime and climate change), there is another more subtle way that the EU enables Britain to increase its impact: it allows us to act on the world stage without the baggage of our past.
How can Britain negotiate on trade with China without reference to the Opium Wars? Through the EU trade commissioner. How can the UK improve defence relations with Latin American countries that support Argentina’s position on the Falklands? Though EU joint operations. How can Britain prevent its stance on human rights in Kenya being undermined by Mau Mau veterans’ lawsuits? By working through EU emissaries.
Alone in the world we would merely be Britain, the post-post-imperial state that many countries believe should get what’s coming to it. We would forever be constrained by our history and our limited resources compared with the Asian giants, the United States, or our former EU partners working together. But under the EU flag we have far more influence than we ever could in isolation, and we can continue to go toe-to-toe with the world heavyweights on our own terms.
However, member states have yet to work out how to effectively harness the EU’s collective heft to serve our military and foreign policy goals. True, the Lisbon Treaty introduced the European External Action Service, and Catherine Ashton now speaks for the EU’s international interests. But the EEAS still sits uncomfortably next to members’ national foreign services, including our own, world-class Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We need to be clear, not least to taxpayers, about the EEAS’ role and added value.
Similarly, EU cooperation on military affairs remains underdeveloped, largely because the continued role of Nato and the US in safeguarding European security. But in an era of constrained defence budgets and widespread unwillingness to engage in expeditionary operations, perhaps it is time to revisit how military-military relations, research and development and joint procurement can be improved via Brussels.
The Lisbon Treaty’s allowance for ‘permanent structured cooperation’ – like-minded members grouping together to drive closer defence cooperation – signalled opportunities for improvement, but significant progress has yet to be made. A joint European defence might still be an unpalatable prospect, but cost savings on new assets (something for which own MoD has a less than stellar record) are surely welcome.
In foreign affairs, like most areas, the EU remains an unfinished project. But Britain’s involvement not only enables us to better safeguard our international interests, it also provides a route for us to engage on issues that our imperial past would otherwise rule off limits. It’s time to embrace the cliché: without the EU we would be featherweights, knocked out for the count.
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Greg Falconer is a foreign policy expert and former Whitehall civil servant. He tweets at @gregfalconer
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Well, Greg certainly shows his colours when he insists that the UK must try to pressure the independent government of Kenya by dodging the issue – somewhat relevant, a mere ignoramus like myself would have thought – of the veterans of the Land Freedom Army (let’s not use the Daily Express smear name of Mau Mau) suits against the colonial power that instituted concentration camps (far from unknown in the British Empire – remember the second war against the Afrikaners and Emily Hobhouse’s expose’ – not to mention Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman’s repudiation of methods of barbarism?). Does he really think the Kenyan government will be deceived by this cynical manoeuvre? Does he think they are unaware of the records of at least the Germans (Namibia) French (Algeria and much of West Africa) Belgium (the Congo) Portugal (Mozambique, Angola…) Netherlands (Dutch East Indies/Indonesia) Italy (Libya, Ethiopia…) Spain (Franco won his spurs murdering the Moroccan Riffs); DAnish imperialism in W Africa was shortlived. And WITHIN Europe: Swedish atrocities against mainly Germans, but also Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukrainians throughout the C17, Polish repression of much of Ukraine( around 1667, 1920-1939)….? Rumanian atrocities against Jews which appalled Hitler’s SS, Venizelos’ war of destruction against Anatolian Turks 1921-3, Czech atrocities against German women and children 1945-6 – now sanctified by the EU…..Yes the EU, declared that the Sudetens had no right to claim their property from the thieving and murdering Czech pogrom (see R.M. Douglass : ORDERLY AND HUMANE – expulsion of the Germans 1945-6, Yale UP 2012).{{{ Better scholars than I will fill in the picture on the Finns, the 3 Baltics, and the atrocities of the Bulgarians against the Byzantine empire – not to mention their ruthless ethnic cleansing of their long-established Turkish citizens during the 1990’s. }}}.
Then the EU under the Badinter doctrine that the Yugoslav boundaries based on the anti-Serb internal balance of modern Yugoslavia, created by the more-=than-Stalinist dictator Tito, should become interNATIONAL boundaries, produced more than a decade of mutual slaughter.
THIS is the institution behind whose holy skirts Falconer hopes to hide while advancing his imperialist plans for world domination? Come off it, Greg, you won’t fool anyone who has a second to think….
(sorry, forgot Luxemburg, Slovenia and Slovenia)