UK Foreign Policy

[Kenm]

@Pjen

For many years I have advocated that it is in Britain’s interest to decommission its nuclear weapons and reduce its armed forces to those necessary for protection of the home islands.

There goes the Sudetenland.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Pjen

Relative Peace??? The twentieth and Twenty first centuries have seen more real wars than any previous centuries- and many more deaths in wars.

1905-1914 and 1945-1950 were quite war free.

Then we had Korea, Indonesia, East Africa, Suez, Vietnam, Israel/Egypt, Cambodia, Laos, and then a short term lapse from 1975 to 1980 and since then, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.

Not exactly a peaceful era.

We’ve also avoided any great power war for over two generations and this looks likely to continue for the forseeable future.

@Pjen

Interesting then how Germany has done so well with a total ban on armed forces for a decade, followed my sixty years with a minimal set of armed forces. Same for other large European countries ( except France).

The Bundeswehr is hardly “minimal”.

@Martin_Hyde

It’s also worth noting, there is a contradictory line of thought. There are IR idealists (I won’t use the term “liberals” because people will think I’m being political) who feel great powers have an obligation to “do something” about humanitarian abuses.

These are people that said we should have been there in Rwanda with boots on the ground, that advocated getting involved in the Balkans to stop ethnic cleansing and some who say we should be in Syria to stop humanitarian abuses. Strangely this same group of people feel international action in regards to such things must go through the UN.

But it simply cannot be, those two beliefs are not compatible, because as long as China and Russia (who care nothing about human rights in other countries) have permanent SC member status the UN simply cannot be viewed as the appropriate body to respond to humanitarian abuses.

I agree absolutely with your statements actually. Which is why, while I’d prefer getting SC approval for political cover, I’m perfectly willing that the US go in unilaterally in a sufficiently horrific situation (like the Rwanda genocide).

[filmstar-en]

I guess you would be the first to complain if the lights went out because the supply of gas was cut off from the Middle East if the shipping lanes were blockaded because of war. That is a scenario that is becoming increasingly worrisome for energy policy strategists.

Maybe do a deal with the nice Mr Putin?

Or maybe domestic fracking will come to our rescue?

Someone has to think this through and decide what is in the national interest. Having a military card to play is quite an advantage in the international diplomatic poker game.

[Martin_Hyde]

@filmstar-en

I guess you would be the first to complain if the lights went out because the supply of gas was cut off from the Middle East if the shipping lanes were blockaded because of war. That is a scenario that is becoming increasingly worrisome for energy policy strategists.

Maybe do a deal with the nice Mr Putin?

Or maybe domestic fracking will come to our rescue?

Someone has to think this through and decide what is in the national interest. Having a military card to play is quite an advantage in the international diplomatic poker game.

Where would the lights go out? Not here in the United States, we are not at all dependent on Middle Eastern petroleum to keep the lights on. Also, who would blockade them? Iran? That’s unlikely as it would hurt them more than anyone else, and we showed during the Iran-Iraq War we’d put a lot of resources into keeping those shipping lanes open.

[RedFury]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

We’ve also avoided any great power war for over two generations and this looks likely to continue for the forseeable future…

Obviously you know whose’s toes you can step on. I consider NK one of the biggest dangers that exist todat – why not go mess with that?

Or is the Star Spangled Banner always on while you take on all of these Third World Nations that you know you’ll annihilate before hand? Grenada & Panama…awesome foes. Or even Iraq & Afghanistan, two of your longest ever wars – and yet you couldn’t win either.

So much for “Great Power” – you are looking at the embers of it.

Now if you said 1945 I may have agreed. But get real…and check today’s date.

[Malden_Capell]

@Pjen

At much greater risk now of not being able to get retrospective assent from Parliament or the country. That was Blair’s downfall- he lost the assent of the country and then lost office.

Blair got assent to military action in advance of the attack on Iraq. He then went on to win the 2005 General Election.

[Malden_Capell]

@Pjen

Relative Peace??? The twentieth and Twenty first centuries have seen more real wars than any previous centuries- and many more deaths in wars.

If you note what I said, I said relative peace compared to what could have been; imagine if the UK’s and US’s armed forces were suddenly, magically reduced to self-defence forces only. How stable do you think the world’s crisis zones would be?

And yes, the Twentieth Century was a horrific bloodfest from start to finish. But observe the case of the Second World War, where hotly felt pacifism meant that the forces of Britain and the US, particularly of land and air, were extremely tiny and, frankly, pathetic at the start. It was this unpreparedness that allowed the dictators to get away with what they did, and to swamp much of Europe in the early part of the war while our industry scrambled to catch up. If we’d had a force from the start, capable of a devastating attack, war could have been avoided, or at least limited.

1905-1914 and 1945-1950 were quite war free.

1905-14 because of the intense feelings of the time, 1945-50 because a) the world was exhausted and b) the US was even more powerful, comparatively, than it currently is.

Then we had Korea, Indonesia, East Africa, Suez, Vietnam, Israel/Egypt, Cambodia, Laos, and then a short term lapse from 1975 to 1980 and since then, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.

Not exactly a peaceful era.

I never said it was. I said that it could well have been a lot worse. There’s a lot to be said for the fact that the Cold War could have been a lot more violent if the superpowers hadn’t used their overwhelming might to clamp down on emerging crises and ensure restraint.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@RedFury

Obviously you know whose’s toes you can step on. I consider NK one of the biggest dangers that exist todat – why not go mess with that?

Or is the Star Spangled Banner always on while you take on all of these Third World Nations that you know you’ll annihilate before hand? Grenada & Panama…awesome foes. Or even Iraq & Afghanistan, two of your longest ever wars – and yet you couldn’t win either.

What is your definition of victory? In Iraq we managed to stem the insurgency and left Iraq with a government that seems able to manage its terrorist threat while in Afghanistan we have decimated Al Qaeda’s ranks.

So much for “Great Power” – you are looking at the embers of it.

Now if you said 1945 I may have agreed. But get real…and check today’s date.

So is this a coherent response

[Pjen]

@Martin_Hyde

I think the UN serves good purposes, I was responding to Pjen who was pushing the concept of UN as world government, with EU like or greater powers sort of thing and where more and more countries have “permanent SC status.” Maybe that wasn’t what he was arguing, but it seemed his initial posts were very much in the vein of “world government rah rah!” Like you say, in terms of that sort of thing the UN is basically a joke. I wasn’t actually insulting it when I said it was a League of Nations body–while it failed to prevent WWII the League served some purposes just as the UN does. But people who expect(ed) it to be anything more are deluding themselves.

Perhaps you could point out where exactly I was pushing the UN as a world Government.

I do not believe that and have not said that.

I was talking about its credibility, not its legal status.

[Pjen]

@Malden_Capell

Blair got assent to military action in advance of the attack on Iraq. He then went on to win the 2005 General Election.

Mainly because the Tories were unelectable. His credibility in his own party never recovered from the Iraq fiasco. If that had not been hung round his neck like an albatross, Gordon Brown would never have been given his chance to mess up as PM, and Blair would probably have won in 2010- it was a close run thing and Brown messed up his two years and the campaign.

[Bozuit]

@Martin_Hyde

I’m not sure if it’s just part of the British natural character to be self-deprecating, but as an outsider I don’t think it’s so simple as “we’re a great power” or “we’re nothing but a small country in the northern Atlantic.”

The United States is obviously (still) the world’s lone superpower. China is rapidly ascending, but still lack much force projection capability outside of their Pacific sphere of influence. Russia has built political alliances around the world now, many of them apparently directed at limiting or curtailing U.S. influence in certain regions–but Russia does not have the force projection capabilities it did as the Soviet Union.

The United Kingdom is not as large obviously as Russia, China, or the U.S. However, it has the fourth-highest military budget in the world. While degraded in recent years, I would also argue that since it has clear technological sophistication over the Chinese, and since it spends much more per soldier than Russia or China the U.K.'s military is more powerful than it might seem at first glance. For example while it’s come up a lot in recent years that it’s questionable if the British could defend the Falklands if they were attacked again, I’d argue the British aside from the United States probably have the most credible ability to project force around the world. Not nearly as much force as the United States can, obviously–but the UK has the know-how and arguably the equipment it would need to deploy troops almost anywhere.

Mostly this. Firstly, you’re very right about self-deprecation. We’re probably the most (pseudo-*)cynical and self-deprecating nation on Earth. No government is ever good, all our politicians are liars, the Empire was an embarrassment, etc.

When people say the UK should accept its position, stop pretending, etc., I wonder what they’re comparing us to. We’re flooded with US media of course - much of it quite flattering of the US military and US intelligence - so I think a lot of people have quite an unrealistic impression of what else is out there.

@Ryan_Liam

economic downturns and downsizing of the military happens all the time, in fact, the downsizing in the military is only happening due to the relative peace in world affairs (barring the middle east) which is guaranteed by the US umbrella, I can guarantee if that was removed, we’d be looking at an even bigger UK military budget to make up for the short fall.

I somewhat agree with this. I’m not sure to what extent the US guarantees security (or how much less secure the UK would be without the US) but the assumption (whether realized or not) at the basis of ideas of a smaller UK military seems to be that the Americans will make up for it. I know the various advantages to the US of doing so, but it seems to me to be, well, unfair.

@RedFury

Or even Iraq & Afghanistan, two of your longest ever wars – and yet you couldn’t win either.

Entirely because of self-imposed limitations. It wouldn’t be all that hard for the US to eliminate its enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan if they were unconcerned by collateral damage and civilian casualties.

• I say “pseudo-” because I believe a large part of this cynicism is simply fashionable, brainless and regurgitated.