In search of a coherent British foreign policy

Last week Gordon Brown gave his first big speech on global affairs. A few days later David Miliband, the foreign secretary, offered a prospectus for the European Union. So now we have it: Britain’s post-Blair foreign policy. Perhaps I have missed something, but I still do not get it.

My confusion is due only in part to the Whitehall kerfuffle that accompanied Mr Miliband’s speech. The precise details are contested, but suffice it to say that a briefing from the prime minister’s office prompted banner headlines declaring Mr Miliband’s enthusiasm for closer European defence collaboration had been slapped down by Mr Brown. The foreign secretary, his aides said, was not best pleased.

Mr Brown’s impatience with Brussels is well known. It is about culture as well as substance. The Union is rooted in consensus and compromise. Britain’s prime minister plays politics only to win. Why, if he has the right position, should he bend to someone else?

Domestic controversy over the EU’s constitutional reform treaty reinforces the instinctive disdain. Mr Brown faces a bruising ratification battle after refusing the referendum promised for the treaty’s ill-fated predecessor. So he wants nothing to disturb his argument that in this new treaty Britain has halted the tide of integration.

Keeping Britain at arm’s length, though, sits ill with the notion, recognised by Mr Brown, that the new mood of Atlanticism in Berlin and Paris has given Europe’s big three a moment of opportunity to restore the health of the western alliance after the divisions over Iraq. For now at least, that circle remains unsquared.

Mr Brown’s speech instead reflected a series of positions he has set out during his first months in Downing Street. Thus Britain will stay close to the US, but not too close to George W. Bush. It will be tough on terrorism, but eschew the language of a global war on terror. Withdrawal from Iraq will be mirrored by a continuing commitment fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Britain backs tougher sanctions against Iran.

Mr Brown is more attuned than most leaders to the need to remake global institutions in the image of new economic and geopolitical realities. His evocation of a new global society tries to make sense of the interdependence in a world of diminished nation states. He wants less emphasis on deposing tyrants, more on rebuilding failed states.

There is a break here with Tony Blair, but not a rupture. There is also something missing. A collection of policies does not add up to a foreign policy. Mr Brown has set out his ambitions, but shed little light on how they might be pursued. To have meaning, the “what” of foreign policy must be attached to the “how”.

How, for example, do the objectives connect with Britain’s most important relationships. Mr Blair’s characterisation of Britain as the vital bridge between Europe and the US buckled under the weight of Iraq. Many in Whitehall never much liked the metaphor anyway. But what does Mr Brown intend should replace it?

The romantic in Mr Brown, I suspect, still hankers for Britain in its Churchillian guise: a global beacon at the intersection of three sets of relationships. The US and Europe are unavoidable partners, but Britain’s heritage, embedded in the Commonwealth, also gives it a unique place in the developing world.

Mr Miliband’s purpose, by contrast, was to assert the relevance and utility of the European Union. In speaking at the College of Europe in Bruges he retraced the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher. It was there, nearly 20 years ago, she conjured up the eurosceptic nightmare of a Britain submerged in a European superstate. Mr Miliband wanted to put the demons to rest.

His thesis was that the Union could now turn its back on institutional introspection and look to threats and opportunities beyond its borders. “Global Europe” has become a familiar British theme. It is no less valid for that. The future prosperity and security of Europe does indeed depend on how effectively it manages to promote them in a turbulent world beyond its borders.

The EU is at once a vehicle and a model in the effort to combat climate change, to manage migration, to spread the benefits of liberal trade and to defeat disorder and terrorism. For that, it needs to deploy the soft power of example alongside the hard of sanctions and military force. It was nice to hear a British foreign secretary say as much.

Nice but not enough. We are back to the “how”. If Mr Miliband is obliged to delete from his scripts even the most innocuous references to closer European collaboration on defence, what chance of turning such fine abstractions into action? Much easier to talk about what Europe could be doing in 2030 than to address the decisions Britain and its partners should be taking now.

This Europeanism still sounds apologetic: as much about the superstate it will not be, as the force for stability and democracy it might be. Mr Miliband has a choice. He can settle for the quiet life, cossetted by the grand trappings of past power. Or he can strike the bargains that would maximise Britain’s present influence.