Timothy Garton Ash: Britain Has Spent 50 Years Hunting in Vain for Its Role
[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.]
Foxhunting may have been curbed, but some Brits are back at another of their traditional pastimes: role-hunting. It's nearly 50 years since the American secretary of state Dean Acheson whipped up a storm by saying that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. Role-hunting has been a British sport ever since. Tally-ho! goes up the cry, every time we have a new government, and off they gallop, led by the prime minister and the foreign secretary, with a field of smartly-suited ambassadors and ex-ambassadors riding hard behind. The fox usually gets away in the end, and Britain sinks back into doing whatever it does.
Actually, most people in Britain don't notice there's a hunt on anyway. They are too busy watching their compatriots lose at football, or tennis, or cricket. Role-hunting remains very much an elite sport: the polo of British politics.
Tony Blair led the last big hunt, with his 1999 Chicago speech as its most resounding tally-ho! before losing his way in the sands of Iraq. Now it's David Cameron, Nick Clegg and William Hague who are up for the chase. Off on his first trip to China and Japan as Britain's new foreign secretary, Hague, in particular, is in full Foreign Office role-hunting cry. Unofficial master of hounds is Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House – the most venerable of Britain's foreign policy thinktanks – which this week held a major conference on the subject as part of an impressive larger project.
The context, however, is a sobering one – perhaps the most sobering for Britain since its loss of empire in the years after the second world war. First of all, Britain's already stretched resources for power projection of all kinds are now threatened with a fearsome round of public spending cuts, frankly described by defence secretary Liam Fox at the Chatham House conference as "the mother of horrors". An overdue strategic defence and security review will in truth be inseparable from the Treasury-led spending review, due to be published in October.
Hague promises to defend the Foreign Office from the most savage cuts, but almost every aspect of Britain's power projection will be shaved back. From classical diplomacy and the armed forces, through trade and investment support, the British Council and the BBC's worldwide services, to university places for foreign students (which are, by the way, soft power in spades) and our cheap'n'cheerful London Olympics: all will suffer. The one, signal exception – the NHS of foreign policy – is spending on international development aid, which this government has promised to keep increasing towards the international target of 0.7% of GDP.
Beyond this, there are fears for Britain's economic recovery, the spectre of government debt being downgraded by the ratings agencies, and the associated worries about sterling. The problems of the eurozone are Britain's, too. Meanwhile, unless the whole fleet of global capitalism sinks, the developing economies of Asia will continue to catch up at a rate of knots. That points to the wider context, which is the historic power shift from west to east (China, India), to some extent from north to south (Brazil, South Africa), and from a bi- or (fleetingly) unipolar world to a multi- or no-polar world.
The consequence of this, in turn, is that the United States is more focused on those emerging powers, as well as the wider Middle East, and therefore relatively less interested in Britain and Europe – unless they can show they can be useful. The Obama administration, led by a hard-pressed, pragmatic president, less sentimentally connected to Europe than any of his predecessors, is not impressed by history or precedent. Washington's question is: what can you do for us today?...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Foxhunting may have been curbed, but some Brits are back at another of their traditional pastimes: role-hunting. It's nearly 50 years since the American secretary of state Dean Acheson whipped up a storm by saying that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. Role-hunting has been a British sport ever since. Tally-ho! goes up the cry, every time we have a new government, and off they gallop, led by the prime minister and the foreign secretary, with a field of smartly-suited ambassadors and ex-ambassadors riding hard behind. The fox usually gets away in the end, and Britain sinks back into doing whatever it does.
Actually, most people in Britain don't notice there's a hunt on anyway. They are too busy watching their compatriots lose at football, or tennis, or cricket. Role-hunting remains very much an elite sport: the polo of British politics.
Tony Blair led the last big hunt, with his 1999 Chicago speech as its most resounding tally-ho! before losing his way in the sands of Iraq. Now it's David Cameron, Nick Clegg and William Hague who are up for the chase. Off on his first trip to China and Japan as Britain's new foreign secretary, Hague, in particular, is in full Foreign Office role-hunting cry. Unofficial master of hounds is Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House – the most venerable of Britain's foreign policy thinktanks – which this week held a major conference on the subject as part of an impressive larger project.
The context, however, is a sobering one – perhaps the most sobering for Britain since its loss of empire in the years after the second world war. First of all, Britain's already stretched resources for power projection of all kinds are now threatened with a fearsome round of public spending cuts, frankly described by defence secretary Liam Fox at the Chatham House conference as "the mother of horrors". An overdue strategic defence and security review will in truth be inseparable from the Treasury-led spending review, due to be published in October.
Hague promises to defend the Foreign Office from the most savage cuts, but almost every aspect of Britain's power projection will be shaved back. From classical diplomacy and the armed forces, through trade and investment support, the British Council and the BBC's worldwide services, to university places for foreign students (which are, by the way, soft power in spades) and our cheap'n'cheerful London Olympics: all will suffer. The one, signal exception – the NHS of foreign policy – is spending on international development aid, which this government has promised to keep increasing towards the international target of 0.7% of GDP.
Beyond this, there are fears for Britain's economic recovery, the spectre of government debt being downgraded by the ratings agencies, and the associated worries about sterling. The problems of the eurozone are Britain's, too. Meanwhile, unless the whole fleet of global capitalism sinks, the developing economies of Asia will continue to catch up at a rate of knots. That points to the wider context, which is the historic power shift from west to east (China, India), to some extent from north to south (Brazil, South Africa), and from a bi- or (fleetingly) unipolar world to a multi- or no-polar world.
The consequence of this, in turn, is that the United States is more focused on those emerging powers, as well as the wider Middle East, and therefore relatively less interested in Britain and Europe – unless they can show they can be useful. The Obama administration, led by a hard-pressed, pragmatic president, less sentimentally connected to Europe than any of his predecessors, is not impressed by history or precedent. Washington's question is: what can you do for us today?...