The two faces of foreign policy

We imagine a choice between ethical idealism and amoral pragmatism, but in reality foreign policy is a difficult mixture of the two, and we need to understand that

The re-election for a third term of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt is not the most surprising news of the week. Admittedly, the 69-year-old had a relatively tense time of it, winning only 89.65 per cent of the vote to beat Hazem Omar of the Republican People’s Party; at the last contest in 2018, Sisi collected 97 per cent of the vote, after coming to power in 2014 with 96.9 per cent.

Of course it is widely accepted that the election was not free and fair. The leading opposition candidate, Ahmed Tantawi, withdrew from the election on October after his phone was hacked and he was only able to collect 14,000 signatures in nomination, well short of the 25,000 required by electoral law. Tantawi’s supporters claim that they have been subject to widespread intimidation and harassment, including assault, by the authorities.

Sisi is generally regarded as an authoritarian ruler; a field marshal and former defence minister and director of military intelligence, he has been described as more autocratic than his deposed predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. Human Rights Watch alleges the imprisonment of political opponents and journalists, repression of minorities, torture and extrajudicial killings. But the president remains a solid ally of the United States, as Mubarak was before him. Since 1978, Egypt has received $50 billion in military aid and $30 billion in economic assistance; although the current administration withheld $85 million this year because of human rights violations, it was granted the vast bulk of the scheduled $1.3 billion. The State Department could have withheld an additional $235 million in the absence of progress on human rights, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, waived this option.

The United States regards Egypt as important because of its influence in the Middle East among other Arab nations and a long track record of being reliably supportive of American interests. A State Department official said “Egypt’s voice is a crucial one, on so many issues across the region that we’re trying to work together in the spirit of regional peace and security”. Particularly important is Egypt’s work in counter-terrorism in the Sinai peninsula and Gaza, which are vital to Israel’s security, and Sisi’s government has also been a key player in a transition of power to civilian leadership in Sudan.

There are voices in Washington which want the US to be more critical of Egypt. In August, Rep. Gregory Weeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for some aid to be withheld until the human rights situation improved. In October, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a conformation hearing for the new ambassador to Egypt, Herro Mustafa Garg, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) expressed doubts that the Egyptian military “is aligned with US values”, and argued that “we are in a fight to try to make sure that our dollars ultimately try to press and enact real reform”. But the State Department’s official policy remains that co-operation is aimed at reforming and liberalising Egypt.

We maintain an active dialogue that seeks to reinforce tangible steps to promote freedom of expression, end political detention and strengthen the rule of law, and undertake critical judicial reforms, including with respect to pre-trial detention reforms, in line with Egypt’s National Strategy on Human Rights.

Older UK readers will remember the furore which greeted the Labour government in 1997 and the announcement of the new foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook, that he would pursue a foreign policy with “an ethical dimension”. This was not merely a high-minded philosophical declaration. Cook did emphasise the influence of growing media exposure, which brought foreign policy crises into voters’ homes much more directly than ever before.

We are instant witness in our sitting rooms through the medium of television to human tragedy in distant lands, and are therefore obliged to accept moral responsibility for our response.

We have to remember that Cook was speaking only three years after the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, during which perhaps 800,000 men, women and children, mainly from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, were killed in the space of 99 days. The calamity was the more shocking because so many of the victims were killed at close quarters, hacked to death with machetes, often after being subjected to appalling sexual violence. A year later, in July 1995, 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by soldiers from the Army of Republika Srpska in Srebrenica. These were grim times, and a helpless moral responsibility weighed heavily on the governments of the West.

There were more acutely political motivations behind Cook’s stance too. There was a feeling that the preceding Conservative government had become transactional and cynical in its relations with foreign countries: the Overseas Development Adminstration had given £238 million in aid to Malaysia, in return for which the Malaysian government agreed a £1.3 billion arms deal with UK manufacturers British Aerospace and GEC, an arrangement conducted in secret but exposed and then declared unlawful by the High Court in 1994. Then, in February 1996, a judicial inquiry by Sir Richard Scott, then a lord justice of appeal, had delivered a report which revealed that the government had allowed the export of arms to Iraq by British companies in violation of an embargo on Saddam Hussein’s régime. This was the context against which Cook was setting out his stall.

Only months after Cook’s speech, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee had begun an inquiry into foreign policy and human rights. Its report, published in December 1998, broadly supported the notion that ethical considerations should be critical to the formulation of foreign policy.

We approve of the Government’s support for the universal observance of human rights standards. We recommend that the Government gives its full support to all campaigns for the universal ratification of human rights instruments, initiating such campaigns where appropriate, and that it takes every opportunity to encourage ratification by those states not yet party to all the core United Nations and ILO instruments (recognising that the United Kingdom itself has not ratified two out of the seven core ILO Conventions). This should be a major obligation of United Kingdom Missions in the countries concerned.

The committee was not completely unrealistic. It noted “We recognise that it is impossible to treat human rights issues as columns on a balance-sheet”, but “acknowledged that certain companies see a need to operate within countries whose human rights record leaves much to be desired”, and accepted that “the Government does not ‘dictate Western values to developing societies’.”

The chairman of the committee, Labour MP Donald Anderson, had first been elected to the House in 1966, and although he had only ever risen to be a parliamentary private secretary in government, he had been an opposition foreign affairs spokesman from 1983 to 1992 and had then spoken on defence, disarmament and arms control from 1993 to 1994. He was hardly a naïf idealist. The members also included former Conservative cabinet minister Virginia Bottomley, ex-armed forced minister Sir John Stanley and one-time Foreign Office minister Ted Rowlands.

Some have taken the view that an ethical foreign policy was not incompatible with what might have seemed a more old-fashioned, muscular projection of power. When NATO intervened militarily in Kosovo in 1999 to protect the ethnic Albanian population against violent repression by the Yugoslav Army, Tony Blair, then prime minister, framed the action as being “for the sake of humanity and for the sake of the future safety of our region and the world”. In a nationwide television broadcast, in his strange but often effective marriage of high rhetoric and folksy charm, he concluded:

We are doing what is right, for Britain, for Europe, for a world that must know that barbarity cannot be allowed to defeat justice. That is simply the right thing to do.

This demonstrated a fundamental and enduring truth, that there is rarely a clearly defined line between “ethical” policy and realpolitik. Each can encroach on the other, and policy-makers should in general seek to find the best compromise. Moreover, each country has its own national interests, and it is neither ignoble nor immoral to pursue and protect those. The great Victorian diplomatist Lord Palmerston, three times foreign secretary and twice prime minister, told the House of Commons in March 1848:

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. When we find other countries marching in the same course, and pursuing the same objects as ourselves, we consider them as our friends, and we think for the moment that we are on the most cordial footing; when we find other countries that take a different view, and thwart us in the object we pursue, it is our duty to make allowance for the different manner in which they may follow out the same objects.

Those words may have been spoken nearly two centuries ago but they retain much force and good sense.

We began with Egypt, and let us look at the Middle East to demonstrate the approach I think it is necessary to adopt. The United States and the United Kingdom have sought to exercise influence in the region since at least the decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918-22; indeed, in the case of Britain, for much longer. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had created a vital strategic route from Europe to Britain’s imperial possessions in India and the Far East, and in 1875 the khedive of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, had sought to raise money by selling his shares in the Suez Canal Company, which controlled operated the waterway, to the UK government for £3,976,582. From 1882 to 1922, Egypt was essentially under British control: the khedive was the nominal ruler, but real power was exercised by the British consul general (later high commissioner).

After the First World War and the partitioning of the former Ottoman territories, partly dictated by the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, Britain took on League of Nations mandates over Mesopotamia and Palestine. Our wartime ally Ibn Saud controlled most of what became Saudi Arabia while Sharif Hussein ruled Mecca and Hejaz. The presence of oil in the Middle East, which makes the region strategically and economically vital today, had been suspected from the 1890s. The Admiralty had intervened to ensure that Burmah Oil, which supplied the Royal Navy with fuel from Rangoon, secured access to the first major concession at Masjed Soleyman in Persia through its subsidiary the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, founded in 1909 (the navy committed to switching exclusively to oil in 1912).

It is well known that the US and the UK have sometimes pursued policies in the Middle East which have antagonised, undermined and compromised other countries. The CIA and SIS conspired to overthrow the Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, in 1953 after he sought to nationalise the oil industry; the United Kingdom invaded Egypt in 1956 after the new president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, seized control of the Suez Canal and asserted Egypt’s sovereignty over it; the United States was a staunch supporter of the increasingly authoritarian rule of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, until his overthrow in 1979. Most damaging to the West’s reputation, however, has been the 2003 invasion of Iraq which led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

(Some readers will be aware than I take the view that the initial military intervention in Iraq was not only justifiable but had some unquestionable benefits, not least bringing about the end of Saddam’s appallingly barbaric and murderous régime; undoubtedly the period of the occupation after full-scale hostilities ended was poorly planned and badly mismanaged, but I am relaxed about the notion that we as an international coalition attempted to replace Saddam with some kind of democratic government. I discussed this in 2022.)

Over the past 100 years since the end of the First World War, the UK has managed alliances with different countries in the Middle East in order to promote our national interests. Since the 1980s, however, we have regarded Saudi Arabia as a significant ally. In 1986, the UK signed the first deal with Saudi known as Al Yamamah (“The Dove”) which created a long-term sales contract between British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) and the Saudi government which has resulted in tens of billions of pounds in arms sales. It is the UK’s biggest export agreement ever.

There are 30,000 UK nationals living in Saudi Arabia, and 100,000 Saudi nationals in the UK. Since 1986, we have maintained a Ministry of Defence Saudi Armed Forces Projects (MODSAP) which involves more than 200 military and civilian personnel: in 2020, there were 34 military and 68 civilian personnel in the UK, and 67 military and 38 civilian staff based in Saudi Arabia. In addition, British military personnel serve in the Joint Combined Planning Cell and Saudi Air Operations Centre, and we have provided a British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. In short, the UK’s political, strategic, military and economic relationship with Saudi has been extensive and long-standing.

In the past decade, there have been two major issues which have disrupted UK-Saudi relations. The first has been the conflict in Yemen. In 2015, the president of Yemen, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, was forced from office by a Shia Islamist movement of members of the Houthi tribe known as Anṣār Allāh, “Supporters of God”. A coalition of Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia imposed a naval blockade on Yemen and began a bombing campaign against the Houthi, and the UK was initially supportive of Saudi Arabia’s actions. However, there have been growing concerns about the conduct of the Saudi Arabian armed forces, with the use of cluster munitions and substantial civilian casualties followed by famine. Britain has repeatedly refused to suspend arms sales to Saudi; in September 2016, then foreign secretary Boris Johnson described accusations of breaches of humanitarian law as unproven and suggested that such charges were more appropriately investigated by Saudi itself.

The UK has consistently declined to condemn the conduct of the war in Yemen or distance itself from its Saudi allies. This stance has attracted a great deal of criticism from others, especially NGOs, but the United Kingdom is unlikely to change its stance, at least this side of a general election. The situation has been exacerbated in recent weeks by Houthi firing missiles or deploying drones against international shipping in the Red Sea. At the weekend, HMS Diamond, a Type 45 destroyer, brought down an armed drone with its new Sea Viper missile system, the Royal Navy’s first aerial engagement since 1991; this extension of the scope of the conflict by the Houthi is likely to make the UK more, rather than less, sympathetic to the Saudi point of view.

The second complicating factor was the murder in October 2018 of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul when arranging documentation for his planned marriage. It quickly became evident that Khashoggi had been assassinated by the Saudi régime, and Western intelligence satisfied itself that the murder had been ordered by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince. While MBS, as he is known, presides over an authoritarian rule, he lifted the ban on women driving alone, reduced the powers of the religious police and weakened the system of male guardianship. He has also embraced the concept of economic reform and has been considering the possible future of the kingdom in a post-fossil fuel climate. So he was initially a relatively attractive ally for Western countries, a man with whom we could do business.

The murder of Khashoggi made MBS for a time persona non grata internationally. As a long-standing ally of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom was placed in a difficult position. The government rejected calls to suspend arms sales to Saudi, and the foreign secretary at the time, Jeremy Hunt, stated that the bilateral relationship relied on “shared values”. This was both warning and reassurance: we wanted the relationship to continue, but the Saudis had to make an effort. Hunt kept saying that there needed to be answers and a full explanation of Khashoggi’s death, but in fact he was pretending not to see what was a straightforward explanation: that he had been killed on the orders of MBS.

There were immediate consequences. The same month that Khashoggi was killed, Riyadh hosted the second Future Investment Initiative Institute conference, an annual summit under the aegis of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and designed to promote progress and prosperity in line with MBS’s Saudi Vision 2030 programme. It had been dubbed “Davos in the Desert”, but in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder, many sponsors, companies and delegates decided not to attend. Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, cancelled his plans to go, as did the US Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin; the Department for International Trade did not send officials, although the UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Simon Collis, and the government’s trade commissioner for the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Simon Penney, did go to the conference.

There has been a gradual rapproachement. Boris Johnson as prime minister visited Saudi Arabia in March 2022 and met the crown prince, clearing the way for President Joe Biden to visit in July, while MBS was welcomed in Paris by Emmanuel, Macron, president of the French Republic, the same month. The UK also began negotiations towards a free trade agreement with Saudi Arabia and the other member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council. The kingdom has expressed an interest in joining the UK, Italy and Japan in the Global Air Combat Programme to develop a sixth-generation fighter aircraft, and, while Japan has considerable reservations, the UK is keen to see Saudi Arabia participate.

How we should interact with Saudi Arabia is a good way of illustrating the difficult of maintaining an effective foreign policy while still having regard to ethical concerns like human rights. Clearly, Saudi is not a democracy: there are no national elections nor any political parties, and in 2022 The Economist ranked it 150th out of 167 countries in its Democracy Index. The Integrated Review Refresh, the blueprint for our foreign and security policy published this March, talked about the UK’s ambition to “play an active role in defence of openness, freedom and the rule of law”, which would seem something of a contradiction to our close alliance with Saudi Arabia. Remember, too, that Saudi is not committed to (or interested in) pursuing the path of Western pluralist liberal democracy. Its Saudi Vision 2030 refers to “social reform”, defined as “women’s empowerment and youth engagement”, and it aspires to see its citizens “becoming more engaged in volunteering and charitable initiatives”. But there is no hint of desiring a transition to anything like a free and fair democratic society.

However, the United Kingdom is not simply faced with the dilemma of an unapologetically authoritarian society with whom we enjoy a healthy trade relationship. We have to look at the wider context: geopolitically, the Middle East—with the obvious exception of Israel—is effectively a power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The latter, of course, is the leading Shia Muslim power, while the former sees itself as the representative of Sunni Islam. The rivalry between the two countries underpins most conflicts in the region. Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, funds and supplies Hezbollah and Hamas and is allied with the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Saudi Arabia, by constrast, enjoys good relationships with its fellow GCC members, with the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan and with Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq. It is also claimed that the rebel group Jaish ul-Adl in Iran is supported by Saudi Arabia.

It sounds crude and simplistic, but if the UK wants to exercise any influence at all in the Middle East, we have to pick a side in this rivalry. That being the case, the choice is, I think, actually very straightforward: we choose Riyadh over Tehran every time. Reducing the problem to that essential decision puts other considerations into context. Saudi Arabia is not everything we might want in a strategic partner in terms of democracy, openness, the rule of law and human rights, but Iran is a long-term sponsor of terrorism, a committed enemy of Western democracies and an aspirant nuclear power.

Is foreign policy reduced to such simple but pragmatic binaries? Not entirely, I don’t think. Deciding that Saudi Arabia is our regional partner does not mean we need to abandon any hopes of influencing the kingdom. After all, the better angels of our natures are often revealed more effectively by the encouragement of a friend than the chastisement of a rival or foe. What we need to understand is that our relationships with countries whose support we need in the international community will always be complex and multilayered. We must embrace Realpolitik insofar as there will always be decisions, like choosing between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which cannot be ducked, but that shouldn’t mean we simply and mutely accept the status quo.

It is, frustratingly, a matter of seeking a very delicate balance which will always be contextual and temporary. It is impossible and unrealistic to expect to be able to conduct a working foreign policy only talking to those whom you find morally unimpeachable and spotless in thought and deed, except perhaps as a country of extreme isolationism and self-sufficiency. Equally there must surely be an element of judgement and virtue in how you relate to other countries; I have a particular dislike for the kind of mindset which thinks that its cynicism, with all moral consideration stripped out, is somehow sophisticated and benefits from facing harsh truths which others cannot or will not contemplate. There will always be red lines, but these will nt be absolute, and may not even be perpetual. In some ways the motto of diplomacy and international relations should be “It depends”.

So we come back to Egypt: an authoritarian dictatorship which seems to have blood on its hands, yet a key ally of the United States (and therefore the West) which is a recipient of billions of dollars of economic aid and military assistance. The argument that some money should be withheld to encourage “better” behaviour is not a stupid one (nor is it overwhelming), but I think we have to maintain a very clear distinction between the world as it is and the world as we would wish it to be. The latter can be a factor in determining our foreign policy, but here, now, in the last days of 2023, the United States judges—almost certainly correctly—that Egypt, even under Sisi’s imperfect presidency, is a partner it needs to advance its interests in the Middle East.

There are other arguments which extend from this: the emptiness of, for example, the Scottish Parliament, which has no competence in foreign affairs debating the desirability of a ceasefire in Gaza; or the base and shameful stupidity and arrogance of the Munich Agreement in 1938 whereby Britain and France gifted the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany not only without even consulting the Czechoslovak government but in the egregiously naïf belief that this would somehow satisfy Hitler. Those will have to wait for another day. So too will the awkward interface between the simplistic popular politics of foreign policy and the delicate, unhurried, nuanced practice of diplomacy; and the tendency of the foreign policy community to act as a guild, exclusionary to those it deems inexpert or unsuitable.

When he resigned as chancellor of the Exchequer in 1989, Nigel Lawson famously quoted the French politician Pierre Mendès France: “to govern is to choose”. As with governing, so with conducting foreign policy. The United States has had to choose whether or not to maintain a close relationship with Egypt, and we have to choose how to manage our existing partnership with Saudi Arabia. It is often difficult and the wrong decisions are often made. But choosing is essential and one must do it with as much self-awareness and realism as possible.