The UK government should be a valued contributor to the major institutions of which it is a member. But the more it can also broker creative new groupings, the more successful its global agenda is likely to be.
Contributing and connecting
If Britain is to pursue its global goals effectively, with a more diverse range of established and new partners, but with limited resources, it needs to remain a well-integrated and valued contributor to the multilateral institutions of which it is already a member – whether the UN and Bretton Woods institutions, the G7 and G20 groupings, or the Commonwealth. Each has a mandate that is supportive of Britain’s goals: the UN and WHO are central to its development, health and climate agendas; the IMF and World Bank can be influential in promoting financial transparency and stronger environmental standards in financial governance; likewise the G20. The Commonwealth links the UK to some of the most dynamic economies in the world, as well as some of the most fragile. Britain can offer ideas as an independent member of the WTO on how to reform the rules which allow China and other mixed economies to subsidize state-owned companies.
The UK could also play an informal convening role among bespoke groups of member countries of these institutions around particular topics at appropriate moments in the calendar. For example, it could convene groups of democratic members of the G20 ahead of G20 summits or ministerial meetings, whenever there is an issue where preparatory conversations among a more concentrated group would be helpful. After all, democracies, whether fragile or embedded, make up the majority of G20 members, providing plenty of options to construct coalitions of the like-minded depending on the prevailing conditions and policy agenda.
But on Britain’s goal to promote peace and security, these large and diverse institutions will struggle to be constructive in the current competitive geopolitical environment. The two institutions that will remain most directly relevant to the UK in this context will be the two closest to home: NATO and the EU. The challenge for British policymakers will be to treat these two institutions, only one of which the UK now belongs to, as a continuum interlinking all domains of British and European security.
NATO serves today more to guarantee the political and economic sovereignty of its members than their physical security. To the extent that small countries on Europe’s frontier with Russia feel that they form part of a credible military alliance, their political systems will be more resilient. This depends in turn on the credibility of NATO members’ collective deterrent capabilities, but not just in terms of the military force they can bring to bear in the event of conflict. They must also work together to prevent Russia or any other rival shape their daily security environment through ‘sub-threshold’ or ‘hybrid’ applications of pressure. As the Asia-Pacific takes up more of the US’s strategic attention and resources, the UK has the vision, in its new Integrated Operating Concept, as well as growing capabilities to enhance NATO’s modern deterrence. The country can be a leading contributor to NATO’s cybersecurity capabilities, to its command-and-control infrastructure, and to the space, air, maritime and ground surveillance systems necessary to respond effectively to Russia’s ongoing probes and provocations.
With one of NATO’s most deployable militaries, Britain should put itself at the heart of a more networked and flexible approach to security in and around Europe.
At a time when the commitments in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty are unlikely to be put to the test through an all-of-alliance mobilization, NATO will continue as a hub for coalitions of the willing for out-of-area operations – as was the case in the Libya conflict of 2012 and the operation to defeat ISIS in Syria. With one of the alliance’s most deployable militaries, Britain should put itself at the heart of a more networked and flexible approach to security in and around Europe: one in which the lines between EU and NATO competence become more flexible, and the two institutions more mutually supportive. Alongside NATO ally Norway, the UK could intensify consultations with the Northern Group and the Joint Expeditionary Force, whose memberships straddle NATO and EU states. And the UK will be a natural partner in informal transatlantic groupings of states that draw on national and NATO assets in order to deal with security challenges outside the Euro-Atlantic space, such as protecting freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The Biden administration and its successors will be looking not only for more burden-sharing from the UK and its European allies, but also for more risk-sharing. The UK needs to be prepared to respond to this demand if the US is to retain its long-term commitment to British and European security.
Existing now outside the EU, the UK therefore needs to build up rapidly practical working relationships on security issues with the EU and its member states. The Johnson government has been criticized for not following through on Theresa May’s commitment to agree a formal treaty with the EU on foreign and security policy cooperation. But the EU is itself undergoing institutional change in this domain as it designs, argues over and tries to implement what it calls greater strategic autonomy. In the absence of meaningful EU autonomy in security, more informal arrangements could provide useful docking stations for the UK to contribute to meaningful European strategic autonomy – in particular the ‘E3’, which links France, Germany and the UK with the EU foreign policymaking machinery; and France’s idea of a multinational European Intervention Initiative.
From the British perspective, the E3 is the sort of pragmatic and practical institutional arrangement that makes sense for its post-EU future. For France and Germany, however, foreign policy coordination with the UK as a non-EU member inevitably causes tensions with their EU partners. Why should the UK receive this special privilege now that it has left the EU? What does this say about France and Germany’s commitment to closer EU foreign and security policy coordination? And how could the EU be integrated into E3 coordination and policy implementation, as it was during the Iran nuclear negotiations, when the UK has no right or purview over EU sanctions or access to the EU market, which was a key part of the package on offer to Iran? One potential answer to these questions would be to expand the E3 to an E5, for example, in order to raise the EU representation in the grouping. But who to add? If it were Italy and Spain, this would underscore its West European bias and cause resentment among Central and Eastern European EU members. If it were Italy and Poland, it would frustrate smaller, important UK security allies like Denmark and the Netherlands.
A necessary, if time-intensive, approach will be for the UK to engage in foreign policy coordination with the EU in a regular but even more flexible manner. It should accept invitations to EU discussions on the preparation and implementation of policies towards shared challenges, such as upholding a peace agreement in Libya or supporting a de-escalation of tensions in the eastern Mediterranean. The UK could then coordinate its own response with or join EU-led initiatives or coalitions addressing these challenges, including military or civilian deployments, as it does currently in West Africa and the Sahel. Such steps would be strengthened by accepting EU secondments to the FCDO and Ministry of Defence planning groups and offering to second British officials to the EU’s European External Action Service and its Joint Support Coordination Cell.
Coordination with the EU on international issues will also be strengthened by plans to cultivate stronger bilateral relations with individual members. Upgrading the Lancaster House Agreement with France and developing a parallel but different set of commitments with Germany are already at the top of the Johnson government’s to-do list. It would be worth exploring some sort of similar agreement with one or two other EU member states where more regular and predictable coordination would be helpful – for example with Italy, which shares British perspectives on North Africa, and Greece, given the UK’s commitments in Cyprus and interests in the Balkans.
Britain as a global broker
The impression of the Johnson government in the first 12 months since the general election of December 2019 is that it wants to go beyond being a member in good standing of existing institutions; it also wants to be a pioneer of new institutional mechanisms for consultation and collective action, especially regarding China’s rise. One example relates to the so-called Five Eyes alliance, under which Australia, Canada and New Zealand form part of the 1946 UK–US agreement on sharing signals intelligence. Sharing this sort of highly classified material has underpinned and underscored the deep security relationship between these five Anglophone countries. Prime Minister Johnson has now recommended deeper collaboration among the Five Eyes members on basic research and advanced technology development.
Including India in a D10 at this time could make building any meaningful consensus on policy or joint actions that much harder.
But it is hard to envisage how this forum could play the more meaningful role the government envisages. The suggestion to enlarge the group to include Japan, in order to deepen the technological talent pool and expand the range of participants anxious to mitigate risks from Chinese technology and supply chains, carries a superficial appeal. But it would reveal the difficulty of developing uniform responses among countries with such differing exposure to Chinese markets and suppliers. Moreover, adding one or two countries to what is at heart an English-speaking alliance would send an exclusionary signal to many other like-minded countries whose close support will be important to the UK in the future.
Another institution receiving particular attention is the G7, whose rotating presidency the UK holds in 2021. The hope is that, once Joe Biden enters the White House, Britain can help the G7 recover its important role caucusing views and developing common positions on global economic and foreign policy questions among this group of the world’s leading democracies. With this in mind, the Johnson government has prepared an ambitious agenda for its G7 presidency, to help deliver a successful COP26 summit in November, improve global coordination on confronting COVID-19 and develop momentum for WTO reform.
The more strategic question, however, is whether to use this moment to enlarge the G7, whose membership still reflects an era when North America and Europe dominated the global economy and international order. President Trump suggested in June 2020 that Australia, India and South Korea, as well as Russia, be formally invited to become members. Johnson was one of the most outspoken in rightly rejecting the idea of Russia – an authoritarian state – rejoining a grouping of liberal democracies. Instead, in the first half of 2020, Johnson floated the idea of enlarging the G7 into a ‘Democratic 10’ or ‘D10’ comprising the G7 nations plus Australia, India and South Korea, so as to strengthen the voice of the liberal democratic camp in tackling global challenges. The D10 would focus initially on developing alternative 5G technologies and other forms of high-tech cooperation.
But this proposal faces similar limitations to those associated with the idea of enlarging the Five Eyes alliance. The most obvious is its selectivity: why add only these three countries to this grouping if the purpose is to create a new democratic network of countries with 5G systems? Why not include Finland and Sweden, home to two of the three main non-Chinese companies competing with Huawei and other Chinese firms in the roll-out of 5G technology? Even then, what are the prospects of creating a D10 technology champion in the market-based contexts that all these countries share? And, if the idea is to trial a D10 that could tackle a broader policy agenda in the future, then what does this particular selection of countries say to leading democracies in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, other than that they remain on the periphery of the democratic community of states?
One solution would be to invite a broader group of democracies, including other EU member states, as guests to future G7 meetings. But offering two tiers of participation tends to create resentment, something the UK should seek to avoid at all costs as it embarks on its post-EU journey. And if it tried to go beyond a D10 and form, say, a D15, with a more representative group of democracies from other regions of the world, then the UK would need to ensure its ideas did not overlap with existing initiatives, such as the Community of Democracies (conceived and established by the Clinton administration in the US in 2000) or the Alliance for Multilateralism, which France and Germany recently established to help strengthen rules-based multilateral governance.
The current British proposal contains one further complication. Including India in a D10 at this time could make building any meaningful consensus on policy or joint actions that much harder. India has a long and consistent record of resisting being corralled into a ‘Western’ camp. It led the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War and, in 2017, India formally joined the China- and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Today the government of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, brings at best an ambivalent approach to the human rights abuses by other states that should preoccupy a group of committed democracies. Despite a deterioration in relations with China over border clashes and growing penetration of India by Chinese technology companies, India did not join the group of countries that criticized China at the UN in July 2019 over human rights violations in Xinjiang. India has also been muted in its criticism of the passage of the new national security law in Hong Kong. With Indian domestic politics also having entered a more ethno-nationalist phase, as noted earlier, a D10 might end up functioning as a D9 at some point in the future, with all the damaging knock-on effects this would have on the UK’s relations with India.
The UK could use its G7 presidency in 2021 to introduce itself as the broker for less formal but potentially more meaningful cooperation among like-minded states.
Trying to corral groups of states into new, fixed caucuses is rife with difficulties. The so-called MIKTA initiative stands out as a cautionary example. Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia launched the initiative during the UN General Assembly in 2013 as a forum for a geographically diverse grouping of middle-sized G20 countries to develop joint initiatives. Since then, however, the international policy horizons of the MIKTA members have shortened sharply, as the US and China have pursued more assertive foreign policies and sucked these and other mid-sized countries into their great power rivalries, leaving little space for joint policy coordination. Similarly, the policy priorities of two of Britain’s main Asian democratic partners, Japan and South Korea, oscillate between needing to demonstrate loyalty to the US, on which both countries rely for security, and not undermining economic relations with China, on which they partly rely for material prosperity. This balancing act was on full display on 14 November 2020, when Japan and South Korea became founding members of the RCEP alongside China and 12 other Southeast Asian and Australasian nations.
Rather than try to play catch-up with the US, France or Germany in convening a permanent new grouping, the UK could use its G7 presidency in 2021 to introduce itself as the broker for less formal but potentially more meaningful cooperation among like-minded states. In the near term, it could use its G7 presidency as a prelude to the proposed Summit for Democracy, which Joe Biden has committed to hosting in his first year in office. This summit promises to be geographically inclusive, allowing the UK to open conversations with a more diverse list of democracies than the D10 concept implies. Biden’s proposed summit also rightly promises to concentrate on the serious challenges that democracies face at home from the rise of misinformation and disinformation. Britain could help define this agenda by hosting G7 planning meetings between officials, NGOs and US technology giants, which the Biden plan suggests bringing together as part of the process. Otherwise, the Summit for Democracy may prove to be a recipe for contentious debate rather than action.
Synchronizing the US and British plans would at the very least avoid the risk of the two governments launching overlapping initiatives. If they can go further and integrate their democracy agendas around meaningful steps, then the US and UK would show that their special relationship reaches beyond the practical realms of military, intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation. The two countries would also be cooperating to bring about the sort of liberal democratic world order that both envision.
In parallel, the UK could start planning future agendas and meetings focused on its other five global goals. The climate agenda will take up most of its bandwidth in 2021, with the UK needing to be the broker of compromises rather than the instigator of new initiatives. Nevertheless, it could use British expertise in the financial and macroeconomic dimensions of combating climate change and its voice in related institutions – such as the Financial Stability Board and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures – to build parallel support for COP26. In addition, as one of the biggest financial contributors to the World Bank and an early member of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the UK can serve as a bridge between the two institutions, promoting adherence to high financial standards and developing stronger commitments by both institutions to avoid locking in high-carbon-emitting infrastructure in the countries they support.
