The government should focus its foreign policy on six priority areas where the combination of its resources and credibility will enable the UK to have most impact.
As Britain reaches out to the world on its own, the government’s international goals should prioritize issues that most reflect a combination of three factors: their importance to the country’s interests given the splintered international context; the UK’s ability to bring assets to bear to make a difference; and whether the government carries the domestic credibility, including popular licence, to act. What, then, should the UK’s main goals be? The following sections outline six priorities that meet these criteria.
Human rights and democracy
First, the UK should protect human rights and liberal democracy around the world, and help other countries undertake their own journeys to systems of democratic governance. This is not a utopian aspiration; it is a realist goal rooted in the national interest. The UK will not want the world dominated by a growing number of insecure autocracies that, in almost all cases, struggle to meet the needs of their people and pay little attention to shared global problems. It makes more sense for the UK to be an anchor for liberal democracies at a time when these are under threat in many countries. Their health and survival will ensure the UK continues to have allies and partners who support a rules-based approach to international relations, thereby lessening the risk of conflict and instability; whose systems of political checks and balances, in challenging leaders who pursue personal enrichment at the expense of the public interest, provide more likely partners in tackling shared global challenges; and whose politicians and businesses come under pressure from civil society to combat rather than condone corruption, thereby also allowing UK companies to compete more effectively.
The UK brings significant assets to the pursuit of this goal. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it has an important voice in supporting the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a core member of the Commonwealth, it has a regular forum in which to promote norms of accountable governance. As the leading member of NATO after the US and as commander of NATO’s Joint Expeditionary Force with a sizeable forward deployment of forces in the ‘High North’, Britain plays an important role in protecting some of Europe’s most geographically exposed democracies. Hosting one of the world’s leading financial centres, it has the capacity to sanction – alone and alongside others – individuals or governments that seek to undermine democracy at home or abroad.
Hosting one of the world’s leading financial centres, the UK has the capacity to sanction – alone and alongside others – individuals or governments that seek to undermine democracy at home or abroad.
The UK government has stated that supporting liberal democracy and human rights is one of its central goals, along with promoting free trade and the international rule of law. It has taken a number of concrete steps in support of this goal in the past year and a half. In mid-2019, in conjunction with the Canadian government, the UK launched an initiative on global media freedom. And it has taken a more proactive stance since the UK’s departure from the EU on calling out human rights abuses. It introduced new so-called ‘Magnitsky provisions’ as part of its new post-EU Sanctions Act, targeting individuals involved in human rights abuses in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and North Korea. In June 2020, it convinced other G7 members to issue a statement critical of China, following the Chinese government’s imposition of the draconian national security law on Hong Kong. It followed this by offering a pathway to citizenship for all Hong Kong British National Overseas passport-holders, plus the 2.2 million entitled to apply for one; suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong; and including the territory in the British arms embargo with mainland China. In September, the UK government also began sanctions proceedings, ahead of the then-gridlocked EU, against individuals in the government of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus, in response to the regime’s political suppression following disputed elections.
Notwithstanding the indifference that at least a third of the public conveys about the government pursuing a values-free foreign policy, a principled approach to human rights would be aligned with the growing popular demand for greater domestic equity and justice. And the UK has the interests, resources and credibility to make support for liberal democracy one of its priorities for the future. The arrival of the Biden administration also creates an opportunity for the UK to support the US’s possible return to the UN Human Rights Council as part of a team of countries committed to upholding the council’s true principles.
Peace and security
The goal of upholding and supporting liberal democracy is connected to what should be a second principal foreign policy objective, which is for the UK to support the emergence and maintenance of peaceful and thriving societies around the world. Increased geopolitical competition, failures of governance and growing environmental stresses are undermining international peace and security, especially in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Yet an expansion in the number of societies living in peace and security would have direct benefits for Britain’s own security and prosperity. It would ease the pressures contributing to illegal migration flows; it would limit the appeal of diverse forms of violent extremism and the risks to the UK from international terrorism; it would reduce the risk that communicable diseases overwhelm weak health systems and spread to the UK; and it would expand the potential circle of Britain’s economic partners.
Given the institutional, security and environmental challenges facing their rapidly growing populations, as well as their relative proximity to the UK, countries in sub-Saharan Africa should continue to be Britain’s main priority in this context.
The steps needed to progress towards this objective are well known. They are encapsulated in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 16 (‘peace, justice and strong institutions’), which the UK and all other states have signed up to. The UK is well placed to support other countries in working towards the SDGs. Britain’s large foreign assistance budget gives it a strong voice in the UN’s multilateral development agencies, even after the announcement of a supposedly temporary fall to 0.5 per cent of gross national income (GNI) in the government’s November 2020 Spending Review. The country’s world-leading humanitarian and development NGOs bring important experience, strong networks and their own funding to local projects. In addition, the government has recently pledged £515 million to help more than 12 million children, half of them girls, go to school.
The UK is known internationally for the close collaboration between its diplomats, development officials and military in fragile environments – reflected in the work of its cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit. The establishment of the FCDO offers the potential for Britain to integrate even more deeply its diplomatic resources, its work on the linkages between security and development, and its world-leading knowledge of the inner political workings of partner countries with the resources to help them make changes for the better. The UK already spends some 45 per cent of its foreign aid budget on fragile and conflict-affected countries. And as one of the world’s main military actors, the UK engages preventively – through deployment of military training missions in countries where it has good diplomatic relations – and reactively to try to uphold security or try to bring peace to conflict situations.
While there have been notable failures, such as in Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa offers examples of the UK’s potential positive impacts. In recent years, the UK has provided military training in Kenya, anti-poaching support in Malawi and Gabon, counterterrorism support via Djibouti and Somalia and, as part of its role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, troops to monitor the situation in South Sudan. Since 2018, the UK has also significantly increased its diplomatic, development and military presence in the Sahel, as well as the number of staff working on the region from London, in response to the continued worsening of the security situation there. The UK has been one of the largest development and humanitarian donors to the region, providing over £500 million in humanitarian assistance since 2015. Given the institutional, security and environmental challenges facing their rapidly growing populations, as well as their relative proximity to the UK, countries in sub-Saharan Africa should continue to be Britain’s main priority in this context.
Climate change
This brings us to the next set of priorities for UK foreign policy, which is to help address more effectively the biggest challenges to the world’s collective prosperity and security. The UK’s exposure to the world – through its reliance on trade, investment and financial flows, its openness to tourism and migration, and its active diasporas – means that it suffers as much as, or more than, most other countries from a worsening of the state of the global commons. The sharp economic contractions it has suffered as a result of the 2008–10 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic confirm this point.
The question then arises: where should the UK put its effort? At the top of the list should be helping to tackle climate change. Climate change is already bringing devastating impacts through changing weather patterns, as seen in the 2020 hurricane and wildfire seasons. Such impacts are likely to grow for the foreseeable future, even if the world meets the aspirations of the Paris Agreement. If it does not, earth–atmosphere feedbacks could create runaway climate change, leading to existential threats to societies, as explained in the recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Britain has international credibility on climate issues and can leverage its commitments as an example to others.
Climate change will hit the UK hard at all levels: through damage to domestic infrastructure and agricultural production; through weaker global economic growth; through conflict, instability and climate refugee flows in the UK’s neighbourhood; and through disruption to global supply chains. The UK has already taken a global lead on climate policy by introducing legislation in 2008 that binds the country to its climate goals, as well as by making the transition to more renewable energy, especially through offshore wind power. The Bank of England and the City of London are also combining to promote new instruments for green finance. This means Britain has international credibility on climate issues and can leverage its commitments as an example to others. As noted earlier, there is strong public support for making climate policy a national priority. Doing so, moreover, closely interconnects with the UK’s peace and security agenda described above.
The UK has a unique and immediate opportunity to step up to this challenge, given its role as co-chair of the COP26 summit scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November 2021. The UK will need to use its full suite of diplomatic tools and networks over the next 10 months to help the international community achieve meaningful progress. President Xi Jinping’s announcement in September 2020 that China aims to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2060, and the election of Joe Biden as US president, have improved the political context for COP26. If the UK can help convince these two governments to commit in Glasgow to more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions, then global mitigation plans could start to come into line with the objective of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius. The UK could also seek a formal financial package to support low-income countries in their energy transitions and climate resilience and find agreement on a series of nature-based solutions, such as reforestation and measures to prevent further biodiversity loss.
Global health
Also on the list of national priorities should be improving standards and coordination on global health. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the central role that health resilience will play in future global economic and social stability. The risk of new zoonotic virus transmission will increase alongside the continued growth in human populations in Africa and parts of Asia. Risk will be linked principally to trade and travel, but also to the industrialization of animal husbandry and accelerated human encroachment on animal habitats. Human vulnerability to disease outbreaks has been exacerbated by the pressures of modern life, such as poor diet, poor air quality in congested urban areas, and the spread of disease and ill health from climate change. While the UK will try to enhance its resilience to future pandemics after COVID-19, even the most effective measures will not be enough to shield it from the indirect effects of a new global outbreak.
The UK is in a strong position to enable greater global health resilience. It is a world leader in medical research, vaccine development and (through the National Health Service) efficient and equitable healthcare delivery. The government is also one of the main funders of multilateral health programmes: it has pledged to increase funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) by 30 per cent over the next four years; it is also the largest single funder of both the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and GAVI, the global vaccines alliance. Together, these attributes mean the UK can play a central role in reforming WHO, to give the organization the resources and power it needs to address its three interconnected strategic priorities: achieving universal health coverage, preventing and responding to health emergencies, and promoting healthier populations.
Championing universal health coverage (including pandemic preparedness) as a flagship development policy could reap dividends not just for the countries that the UK supports, but also for British health security over the long term. This also makes political sense domestically, as the COVID-19 crisis appears to have intensified British public support for international health cooperation. Helping low-income countries launch and sustain their own universal health systems could therefore represent a productive and mutually beneficial investment.
A more transparent global economy
Britain also needs to champion a more transparent and equitable approach to global economic progress. The Johnson government trumpets its vision of ‘Global Britain’ as a leading voice in sustaining free trade. Striking bilateral trade deals that go beyond those it enjoyed previously as an EU member is a priority. And, as a sovereign member again of the WTO, the UK will try to rebuild support for trade multilateralism. But despite the imminent change in US administration, it is hard to see WTO members initiating a new multilateral effort to open up global trade in the coming decade. The WTO is more likely to focus on preventing the rise of protectionism and defending against erosion of the existing norms and structures of global trade.
At the heart of the problem lies the corrosive impact on popular support for trade and open markets, in the UK and the West in general, that has arisen from inequitable globalization. In response, the UK is supporting the ongoing efforts to reform the WTO’s outdated approach to the rights of semi-developed non-market economies such as China. It could also use its climate credentials to support the development of new trade regimes that help tackle climate change. But these steps are unlikely to address popular frustrations about globalization. Its critics argue that footloose multinational companies and financial institutions have been able to game the current system, moving jobs, capital and production to jurisdictions where they can secure greatest advantage, often at the expense of workers and taxpayers. Disputes over tax-shopping by multinationals are likely to become even more toxic in the post-COVID-19 context, as governments try to replenish depleted revenues and as citizens rebel against a further widening of income inequality.
Rather than play to the negative stereotype of Brexit Britain as a rapacious privateer in the global trading system, UK policymakers should align their desired leadership in global economic policy with public demand for greater social and economic equality.
Whereas the UK will struggle to play a leading role alongside the EU, the US and China on issues such as WTO reform or border carbon adjustments, there is one area where it brings specific expertise and experience. Under David Cameron, Britain used its G8 presidency in 2013 to agree new measures to tackle international tax evasion. The measures included promoting transparency on company ownership, and on payments by extractive companies to governments in whose countries they invest. The OECD has since intensified its efforts to negotiate an international agreement on corporate taxation. For its part, in 2018 the British parliament passed the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, requiring the UK’s 14 Overseas Territories – which include three of the world’s least transparent financial centres – to publish by the end of 2020 details on the ownership of companies incorporated in their jurisdictions. Britain’s three Crown Dependencies, also regularly cited as having contributed to the unravelling of the corporate tax system, have agreed voluntarily to deliver corporate transparency by 2023.
Rather than play to the negative stereotype of Brexit Britain as a rapacious privateer in the global trading system, therefore, UK policymakers should align their desired leadership in global economic policy with public demand for greater social and economic equality. They could leverage the country’s position as home to one of the world’s largest financial centres and most respected central banks, and as governor of several of the world’s best-known offshore tax havens, to build a coalition of states willing to abide by the highest standards of tax equity and transparency. Such a coalition could seek to crack down on money-laundering, tax evasion and financial corruption. Without tackling the dark side of globalization, the UK government is unlikely to build sustainable public support for its trade liberalization agenda.
Defending cyberspace
Britain can play a central role in defending cyberspace, both among its allies and in partner countries short on expertise and resources, as it has done via the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London in 2018. This includes developing tools and processes to counter and deter the spread of state-sponsored and criminal cyberattacks and digital disinformation. Credible cybersecurity will be essential if the UK and others are to leverage the full potential of new digital businesses and employment opportunities. The integrity and public trustworthiness of cyber infrastructure will also be central to democratic governance, to public uptake of track-and-trace systems to monitor COVID-19 and potentially other diseases, and to the resilience of the flexible online working practices that future pandemics may demand.
Britain brings unique assets to this important frontier of national and international security, given its position as one of the top players in the field of signals intelligence, electronic surveillance, intelligence-gathering, and cyber defence and offence. As the Snowden papers revealed, the UK often serves as an equal or superior partner to the US in these fields. On 19 November 2020, the government revealed the creation of a National Cyber Force, linking GCHQ, the Secret Intelligence Services and the Ministry of Defence’s UK Strategic Command into a new unified command capable of disrupting, degrading and destroying the communications capabilities of state and non-state actors posing threats to the UK and its allies.
Looking ahead, the UK needs to ensure that its cyber capabilities buy it a seat at what is likely to become an increasingly intense, and potentially acrimonious, debate between the US and the EU over the privacy dimensions of cybersecurity. Logically the EU, which is evolving into a digital regulatory superpower, and the US, home to the world’s largest digital companies, should be aligning their approaches. This is especially important in the face of concerted attempts by China to establish state-led surveillance as the bedrock of future cyber standards and laws. However, profound divergences in EU and US policy have so far blocked transatlantic convergence on digital regulation. This creates an opening for the UK to convene a broader cyber alliance of democracies, committed to defending the integrity of each party’s cyber domains while ensuring enhanced digital rights for citizens.
Next steps
These six goals are ambitious, individually and collectively, but they address the contemporary international context, are aligned with Britain’s national interests and capabilities, and are policy areas where Britain brings the domestic credibility and cross-party political support to act. The critical question is how to pursue them most effectively. The first thing to recognize is that there is no past model to return to. The UK will not be a powerful enough country to make much of a difference on its own, especially at a time of heightened geopolitical competition. British citizens and their political leaders need to accept that their country is a different sort of power to the one that entered the EU hopeful that it could leverage membership to retain some of its past glory. Britain will fail if it now tries to reincarnate itself as an independently influential miniature great power. It should focus instead on being an enabler of positive international outcomes on these six goals for others as well as for itself.
Britain will fail if it tries to reincarnate itself as an independently influential miniature great power. It should focus instead on being an enabler of positive international outcomes for itself and others.
Such an approach cannot be dependent on the UK’s raw economic or military power, which will remain constrained in the future. Nor must it rely on consensus in the world’s major multilateral institutions, which is unlikely to be achieved. Instead, the UK will need a multilayered network of allies and partners, and a diverse and flexible set of institutional relationships. One of the most challenging elements of this approach will be the need to engage not just with like-minded allies but also with countries that do not share the UK’s values, but whose impact on some of the outcomes that matter to British interests means they cannot be ignored.
