Abstract
This chapter explores the main objectives, assumptions and commitments that guided Labour’s foreign policy during its first two terms. To do so, it proceeds in three parts. The first section provides an overview of four of Labour’s most important attempts to publicly articulate its foreign policy objectives. This is followed by a discussion of the constitutive elements of the Blair government’s foreign policies in light of the Labour party’s tradition of liberal internationalism. Put another way, it asks what was new about ‘new’ Labour’s foreign policies? Not surprisingly, I suggest that Blair’s administration exhibited elements of both continuity and change with old Labour’s liberal internationalism. The final section suggests that the main constitutive themes of UK foreign policy under new Labour can be understood as multilateralism, Atlanticism, neoliberalism and moralism.
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Notes
Robin Cook, ‘British Foreign Policy’, FCO, 12 May 1997.
Ken Booth, ‘Exporting ethics in place of arms’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 Nov. 1997.
Richard Little, ‘Conclusions’, in Richard Little and Mark Wickham-Jones (eds), New Labour’s Foreign Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 251.
Sally Morphet, ‘British foreign policy and human rights’, in David Forsythe (ed.), Human Rights and Comparative Foreign Policy (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2000), p. 97.
See Mark Wickham Jones, ‘Labour party politics and foreign policy’, in Little and Wickham-Jones (eds), New Labour’s Foreign Policy, pp. 101–5.
John Kampfner, Robin Cook (London: Phoenix, 1999), p. 104.
John Coles, Making Foreign Policy (London: John Murray, 2000), p. 191. Apparently Cook had three lengthy meetings with Coles prior to becoming Foreign Secretary. John Dickie, The New Mandarins (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p. 85.
Vickram Dodd and Ewan MacAskill, ‘Labour drops ethical tag’, Guardian, 4 Sept. 2000.
Robin Harris, ‘Blair’s “ethical” foreign policy’, The National Interest, 63 (2001), pp. 25–36.
UK of Ficials, especially Blair’s former adviser, Robert Cooper, also played important roles in shaping the EU’s post-9/11 reflections upon its own foreign and security policy. The resulting European Security Strategy: A Secure Europe in a Better World (Brussels: Dec. 2003) shared many elements with the UK International Priorities document.
Geof F Hoon, ‘This fight will be long and hard’, speech to the Labour party conference, Brighton, 2 Oct. 2001.
See Martin Walker, ‘Mind the Gap’, World Today, 60: 1 (2004), pp. 11–12.
See Tim Dunne, “When the shooting starts”: Atlanticism in British security strategy’, International Affairs, 80: 5 (2004), pp. 893–909.
Rhiannon Vickers, The Labour Party and the World: Volume 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 5–9.
Tony Blair, ‘The global threat of terrorism’, speech, Sedgefield, 5 March 2004. For an overview of this ‘sovereignty as responsibility approach’ see the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Council, 2001).
Liberal market democracies are states with both a liberal democratic polity and a market-oriented economy. This form of government has been extensively (and persuasively) critiqued under a variety of labels including ‘low intensity democracy’ and ‘polyarchy’. See Barry K. Gills and Joel Rocamora (eds), Low Intensity Democracy (London: Pluto, 1993); William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Roland Paris, At War’s End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
See Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History’, The National Interest, 16 (1989) pp. 3–15.
See Rita Abrahamsen and Paul Williams, ‘Ethics and foreign policy: the antinomies of New Labour’s “Third Way” in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Political Studies, 49: 2 (2001) pp. 249–64; Rita Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy (London: Zed Books, 2000).
Robert Cooper, ‘Why we still need empires’, Observer, 7 Apr. 2002. For more detail see Cooper’s The Breaking of Nations (London: Atlantic Books, 2003).
Blair, ‘The global threat of terrorism’.
See Tony Blair, ‘Let us reorder this world’, speech to the Labour party Conference, Brighton, 2 Oct. 2001; Robin Cook, ‘Guiding humanitarian intervention’, speech to the American Bar Association, London, 19 July 2000.
See Robert Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), pp. 11–19; Barry Buzan, ‘Interdependence and Britain’s external relations’, in Lawrence Freedman and Michael Clarke (eds), Britain in the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 14–25.
See Colin Hay and Matthew Watson, ‘Diminishing expectations: the strategic discourse of globalization in the political economy of New Labour’, in Alan W. Cafruny and Magnus Ryner (eds), A Ruined Fortress? Neoliberal Hegemony and Transformation in Europe (Lanham, US: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 147–72.
See Buzan, ‘Interdependence’, p. 41 and, for example, Michael Jay, head of the diplomatic service, ‘Foreign policy affects us all’, speech to the Multicultural Business Dinner, Bolton, 19 May 2004.
See, for example, Richard Falk, Predatory Globalisation (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); James Mittleman (ed.), Globalization: Critical Reflections (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997).
George Robertson, ‘Introduction’ to The Strategic Defence Review: Supporting Essays (London: TSO/MOD, 1998), p. 2.
Jane M. O. Sharp, ‘Tony Blair, Iraq and the special relationship’, International Journal, 59: 1 (2003–04), p. 86.
Chris Brown, Do great powers have great responsibilities? Great powers and moral agency’, Global Society, 18: 1 (2004), p. 19.
See Colin Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); John Gray, ‘Blair’s project in retrospect’, International Affairs,fairs, 80: 1 (2004), pp. 39–48.
See Neil Williams, ‘Modernising government: policy-making within Whitehall’, Political Quarterly, 70: 4 (1999), pp. 452–9.
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© 2005 Paul D. Williams
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Williams, P.D. (2005). Understanding Labour’s Foreign Policy. In: British Foreign Policy Under New Labour, 1997–2005. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_2
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