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Foreign Policy

My Lords, by the noble ““it's a bit of a muddle”” Lord, and concentrate on the others. First, the speech interestingly opens with Kosovo. The Prime Minister said: "““This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values””." He continued: "““We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand””." Whichever way one looks at it, the Prime Minister's influence on Kosovo and its outcome, which is still not completely resolved and remains in the forefront, was fundamental. I think it was he who influenced President Clinton at least to contemplate the use of ground troops there, which was one of the main levers persuading Mr Milosevic to back down and, eventually, brought the conflict to an end. That is the principle of liberal interventionism which has been mentioned several times. Secondly, he quite rightly said that globalisation has transformed the nature of foreign policy. It is hard to think back because it is now so familiar, but it is clear that the difference between domestic and foreign policy has narrowed massively in a globalised world. They overlap much more. The Prime Minister said: "““We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist””." In that world, we still have to promote our national interest, but the nature of national interest has plainly changed. It will not be the narrow kind of national interest of a nation-state-based world; it has to be more global. Thirdly, there is a very strong plea for multilateralism to which the unmentioned Lord has already referred, and the Prime Minister said: "““We need new rules for international co-operation and new ways of organising our international institutions””." That became the label for the speech—the new doctrine of the international community. The Prime Minister said that the United Nations has to be at the core of this reworked international community. Inhis words, it has to be ““the central pillar””. He also mentioned reforming the WTO, third world debt and so forth. Fourthly, Russia was mentioned several times. At that time it was teetering on the edge of economic ruin and, as has been mentioned, is now a much more forceful actor on the global stage because of rising revenues coming from mineral resources and because of President Putin's position, which has restored a great deal of the pride of Russians in the world community, whatever else one thinks about it. Here, the Prime Minister said: "““We simply cannot stand back and watch that great nation teeter on the brink of ruin””." He went on to say that, "““we will all benefit hugely from a thriving Russia””." He mentioned the changing structure of world power with the rise of India and China and the fact that the geopolitical system has shifted appreciably away from the past. Finally, he said that we need to reconcile transatlantic friendship with active membership of the EU. He said: "““We have finally done away with the false proposition that we must choose between two diverging paths—the Transatlantic relationship or Europe””." I suggest that all those principles apply today in what I will go on to argue is a very different world situation from 1999. The unnamed Lord put the matter far more persuasively than I can in terms of the need not to abandon the principle of liberal interventionism. The tragedy that is unfolding in Iraq—and we have to recognise that it is a tragedy—should not be used as a basis for a new isolationism. There could be a kind of double tragedy if the world stood by in situations where intervention by the world community could avert thousands of deaths. Arguably, such a situation is happening in certain parts of the world at the moment. The principle of liberal interventionism—after all, it is interventionism detached from the aspiration to acquire territory—should still stand in a globalised world, although the conditions under which it is applied are difficult and complex and will vary from situation to situation. The world has changed substantially since 1999—not so much because of Iraq as because of the wider consequences of American policy under the current American Administration. The major mistake that Labour foreign policy has made over the periodmay have been not to recognise fully enough the extent of the ideological difference between that Administration and the principles that the Prime Minister enunciated in his 1999 Chicago speech. The American Government set out a very different viewof the world. Condoleezza Rice spoke of what she called the ““illusory international community””. The American Government showed something close to disavowal of—I will not say contempt for—the United Nations as a major force in world governance. They backed down from certain treaties that were a key part of the multilateral outlook on the world and, most importantly, redefined the world again as a system of power relations in which American interests should have primacy. That is quite different fromthe Wilsonian traditions of American international diplomacy that have been so important in building multilateral institutions in the first place. We deal with a different world now, and part of that is the result of the failures of American foreign policy. We face a world in which American power, far from expanding, has shrunk. Everyone can see that no matter how mighty the American war machine, it cannot bring peace even in a single country. The American military cannot fight two full-scale wars at the same time. The idea that the United States wields hard power whereas Europe has a kind of namby-pamby soft power is now thoroughly discredited. For better or for worse, we are in a more multi-polar world, which will not be safer. We need to return to enlightened American global leadership. I would like to say how much I disagreed with some of the concluding sections of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. First, it is utterly mistaken to suppose that we live in a world of international economic connections that override regionalism. The world economy is a long way from being a wholly integrated marketplace. It is heavily regionalised, and we stand to gain enormously economically from our proximity to the European Community and the European single market. Think of a country such as Norway that is not a member of the European Union but is forced to sign up to most of its economic provisions. Secondly, his best case scenario would be my worst case scenario, in which Britain pulls back from the United States and has no influence in Europe. The kinds of view of Europe that he enunciated would be the death of British influence in Europe.