UK in the Middle East
The ‘Arab Spring’ has been the British coalition government’s first major foreign policy test. Challenges and expectations on both shores are enormous. How can it support processes of political transition in line with core values whilst facing economic austerity at home? Blinkered by a decade of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, overly Gulf-centred and heavily bilateral, British foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is in a process of reappraisal.
This reappraisal must lead to a consistent narrative of support for political and economic reform in line with EU policy approaches. On the one hand, the UK’s response to the Arab Spring so far has been less ambivalent than other member states. Britain has led in demanding economic sanctions, freezing assets, and implementing NATOcoordinated operations in Libya. Soft power initiatives such as the ‘Arab Partnership’ are laudable approaches, though funding levels, and hence impact potential, remain limited. In order to maximise impact in a region vital to its energy, export and security interests, the UK should seek to feed its experience of decades of bilateral relations with the Gulf countries into the revision of broader EU policies that aim to support political transitions.
On the other hand, the UK is subject to increasing scrutiny for its role in selling weapons to repressive regimes. Faced with an image problem, the UK is seeking to portray its lucrative trade relations with the Gulf as part of Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘commercial diplomacy’ approach to foreign policy. The government argues that Britain’s national security interests are best served through commercial cooperation with strategic political partners.
In trying to find the right tone for British foreign policyas popular uprisings spread across the MENA,
Cameron has oscillated from realism to idealism, a balancing act mirroring the Conservative-Liberal
Democrat coalition he leads. The result, ‘muscular liberalism’, is a foreign policy more pragmatic than that of the Blair-Brown years, but not entirely distinct. Cultivating bilateral relations in the ‘networked world’ is essential to avoid what Foreign Secretary William Hague terms ‘strategic shrinkage’.
Yet economic austerity at home, political sidelining at the EU level, and new players vying for influence in the MENA risk widening the discord between Britain’s determination and ability to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment