John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
This week at the UN Security Council, Britain affirmed its support for the expansion of the body.
Our senior diplomat at the body reaffirmed our commitment to reforms, which would include the incorporation of Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and an African nation as permanent members, as well as an increase in the number of rotating seats on the body. It is not a new plan, and it was supported by the Tories when they were in power.
It points, however, to an increasingly weak thinking in the way we handle our overseas affairs.
Few would say the UN Security Council works well presently. The veto system has left it largely powerless in the face of major crises. Russia, of course, has been able to prevent any censorship of itself over Ukraine. China can do the same for any resolutions related to Taiwan. The Western powers, of course, use the same power in their own interests. Expansion, however, looks unlikely to solve these problems and seems like the increasingly typical British approach of giving up tangible power for the hope of something down the line.
Britain’s permanent seat on the Council is perhaps a relic of its post-war power when the body was convened. It gives us an influence above other nations and, perhaps, above our station. By dent of simple arithmetic, expanding the UNSC would dilute this role. More than that, there is an obvious diplomatic blunder in the proposals. Two of the countries named for expansion are BRICS members, and they have remained close to Russia through the recent conflict. Rather than empowering the UN, this feels like boosting those who often act against or indifferent to Western interests.
It is also unclear what Britain gains from this. Like a lot of our diplomatic decisions, the quid is front-loaded, and the pro quo ambiguous. Proponents couch these in terms of soft power, but this remains a nebulous concept that looks a lot like Britain giving things away in the hope the rest of the world might like us. The recent decision to give away the Chagos Islands (now potentially subject to a Trump veto) looks to have been made on the same rationale. It has become the default thinking in much of our foreign policy establishment but risks being predicated on entirely wishful thinking.
As ConservativeHome’s Deputy Editor Henry Hill wrote recently, soft power is not inherently stupid. You can have diplomatic advantages because countries think well of you or your culture. I once heard that MI6 found it easier than other agencies to recruit foreign assets because the thrill of working with “James Bond” had a certain cache to the treacherously inclined. Equally, Britain has benefitted over the years from Anglophilia in other leaders or the appeal of the pomp of a full state visit, especially when Her Late Majesty Elizabeth II was perhaps the globe’s most iconic ruler. Yet this is something that goes in tandem with, rather than replaces, hard power.
In recent years, Britain’s biggest diplomatic success has been our influence in Ukraine. This has demonstrated us to be a loyal and powerful ally. This isn’t about Ukrainian appreciation of our culture (though they do). It is because we equipped them to eliminate their enemies. It was the combination of the effective weapons produced by our defence sector, the high-quality training our military could provide, and our political willingness to deploy it. This was driven in part by the moral call to support Ukraine but also by our interests as a nation.
After all, that is what should be at the heart of our diplomatic position: securing the best position for Britain. Often, this will overlap with allies and other nations, but at times, it will diverge, and we should be quick to understand that and to press when it does. We also need to be clinical about what gets countries on our side and what is a wasted concession.
Too much of our approach currently seems to be the latter. It is rooted in altruism or some sense that if we are just generous enough or contrite enough about our history, then it will reap dividends at some future date. Rarely do these seem to materialise, instead positioning us as a mark, giving away unneeded concessions to countries that are far more cynical than us. This threatens to happen again as countries push again for reparations for the slave trade. These are likely to be expensive, but they will buy us no great diplomatic benefit.
Most other countries are far more self-centred in their foreign policy dealings. Russia has traded mercenaries for economic and diplomatic links through sub-Saharan Africa. China has spent a decade pouring $1 trillion into the Belt and Road initiative, extending its diplomatic and economic reach. These are real shows of heft, often with strings attached. While they appeal to the receiving country, they also put the donor in a strong position rather than hoping to store up credit for future use.
Underneath all this is another awkward truth. As much as we like to hope other nations are striding towards liberal democracy and will come quicker with our encouragement, that’s often not true. There’s a large chunk of the world’s nations who are ambiguous at best about democracy, happy to deal with autocrats, and themselves remain authoritarian. We have to engage with them on those terms and push our own interests rather than hoping that we can demurely coax them to our way of seeing.
A further reminder of this came this week at the COP meeting. While Western nations arrived in Baku with ambitious plans for climate change, the host, the autocratic and oil-rich Azerbaijan President, used the platform to attack France and the Netherlands for maintaining overseas territories. This follows the country meddling in New Caledonia in revenge for French support for Armenia. It is unclear what aspects of soft power would assuage such attacks.
As the world becomes more uncertain, Britain needs to be more explicit about its role. It has benefits to be a country that is respected, even loved, by those overseas. However, achieving that is not simply about altruism. We should carefully consider what we give away and what we concede, as well as where we draw the balance between soft power and hard.
It is not a time to be diluting our influence unnecessarily.