UK in a Changing Europe (a clumsily named think tank) has published three blog posts recently on Britain’s international role after Brexit. They’re all interesting in a way, suggesting that we once had real global influence but accepting that we aren’t the economic and military power we once were. One says our foreign policy is becoming “increasingly performative” which is a nice way of putting it. I confess I’ve always bothered more about Brexit’s impact on trade, but it’s unarguable that it’s also affected our diplomatic status too.
You can read the blogs HERE, HERE, and HERE. One of the authors of one post, Mark Webber, uses a paper of his published in July (Identity, status and role in UK foreign policy: Brexit and beyond) which you can read HERE. He quotes others describing Brexit as ‘the greatest strategic and economic change in the status of [the UK] for well over half a century’.
I don't believe the great majority of voters (and most of the leading advocates, certainly not BoJo) who entered polling booths across these islands on 23 June 2016 appreciated just what an upheaval it was going to be.
I mention this because I recall Brexiteers saying Brexit wouldn’t change Britain’s position as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), the real powerhouse inside the organisation. That was true and not just because we have a veto, like Russia, so can’t be removed. We still have some diplomatic clout in drafting resolutions. But I question what that's actually worth.
The two huge conflicts going on at the moment in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza with millions of innocent civilians killed in horrifying ways, suffering life-changing injuries, or being displaced from their homes, show that the UN itself is a completely powerless, almost irrelevant body. The General Secretary António Guterres, a former PM of Portugal, is reduced to pleading with the participants to comply with International Humanitarian law or the Geneva Convention. He seems to me to be even less effective than some of his predecessors.
This isn’t a surprise, or even much of a criticism of Mr Guterres, the five permanent members like it as it is for the very reason that it is simply a talking shop. So, what’s the point of being at the top of a useless organisation? It is mainly performative.
It suits them so they themselves can posture while continuing to do as they like. For China, the USA, and Russia this means throwing their economic and military weight around. France, still a member of the EU has enormous influence in Brussels and now occupies the EU’s only seat on the UNSC. The EU while not a military power (yet) carries a lot of economic muscle. Being sanctioned by the EU really hurts.
What do we have? We have cut Overseas Development Aid (ODA) by 30% which impacts negatively on our international reputation and leverage, while China is spending vast sums in Africa and elsewhere. Our military capability is pathetic. Britain has 227 Challenger 2 main battle tanks - about the same as Russia's weekly losses in Ukraine. We sent the Ukrainians 14 of them.
Economically, we are now a minnow compared to the US, China, and the EU.
Strangely, Brexiteers accept that being a member of NATO is good, being a permanent member of the UNSC is not just good, but a selling point for Global Britain's new role in the world, but EU membership with all the extra economic and diplomatic weight it can provide is seen as a big negative. It really makes little sense to me.
We are now a diminished voice in a talking shop.
The three blog posts and Webber's paper don't draw conclusions and the paper itself draws on other academic papers, but this quote I found interesting:
"At first sight, Brexit appears contradictory. Siren warnings that Brexit placed the UK’s good standing in jeopardy were made clear to London by its (then) fellow EU member states following the 2016 referendum.
"The search for a role post-Brexit has thus been about preserving a status for the UK that was, ironically, placed in jeopardy by the very act of leaving the EU in the first place. This seemingly contradictory occurrence might simply be explained away by the turbulence of British domestic politics. An irrational foreign policy act was the outcome of domestic political division, ill-judged decision-making by flawed leaders and a form of perverse path dependence whereby a process was set in motion that proved impossible to reverse even when its negative consequences became clear.
"Having crossed the threshold and exited the EU, foreign policy then became geared towards limiting the damage of Brexit and urgently seeking out new international opportunities. The articulation of the UK’s post-Brexit role—whether as ‘global trading state, great power, faithful ally to the USA, regional partner to the EU and leader of the Commonwealth’—thus took on a decidedly instrumental nature."
We are still thrashing around looking for that role.
