Power and values in European foreign policy

In democratic societies, we often like to think that we use our power for a higher purpose—like making the world a better place. Indeed, this has been an overriding principle of foreign policy for many of the most powerful western societies since the early nineteenth century. Policies aimed at fighting piracy, ending slavery, frustrating the schemes of dictatorships, and supporting democratic leaders, have a long and noble history. American presidents Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Jonh F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, to varying degrees, all subscribed to the idea. British leaders, like George Canning, Viscount Palmserston, William Gladstone, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher also thought the idea of an enlightened foreign policy was worth more than a pinch of salt. Tony Blair, the erstwhile British prime minister, possibly took the idea to its logical conclusion. As he told the U.S. Congress:

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.

A values-based foreign policy has also been at the core of the enterprise of European unification. As early as 1941, one of the grand architects of European integration, Altiero Spinelli, argued in the Ventotene Declaration that a state cannot ignore the political constitution of its neighbours. And the more recent European Security Strategy even uses the phrase ‘A Secure Europe in a better world’ in its subtitle, as if the two automatically run together.

There is certainly a lot of evidence to support the so-called ‘democratic peace theory’. It is the closest thing that we have to an ‘iron law’ in the study of international relations. That is to say, democracies tend not to go to war with one another; no mature democratic state has ever attacked another; and lesser political conflict between democracies is less frequent. In short, the assumption follows that in order to make the world safe for our way of life, we must assertively spread our values as far and wide as we can.

But is this necessarily the case? Can a political community only be safer if the world itself is a better, liberal and more democratic place? Nicholas Spykman, one of my favourite geostrategists, suggests that this liberal approach is wrong. According to him, democracy and moral values do not ultimately matter when statesmen craft and execute foreign policy. Instead, what really matters is power—relative power. This is what he had to say in his magnum opus, America’s Strategy in World Politics, back in 1941:

The statesman who conducts foreign policy can concern himself with values of justice, fairness, and tolerance only to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere with the power objective. They can be used instrumentally as moral justification for the power quest, but they must be discarded the moment their application brings weakness. The search for power is not made for the achievement of moral values; moral values are used to facilitate the attainment of power.

Let us be clear: Prof. Spykman is not arguing that statesmen should no longer try and make the international system less volatile. He is also not saying that democratic countries should not try to spread their advanced way of life abroad. Nor is he suggesting that governments should not provide aid or military assistance to other countries during times of conflict, tension or natural disaster or manmade difficulty. What he is saying, however, is that statesmen should pursue certain values and principles only if they do not damage the power and position of their own respective political community. States should therefore seek to acquire more power over other states, rather than attempting to diffuse their values overseas. This is because values, unless undergirded with power—like a strong military—cannot be protected if an adversary seeks to usurp them.

We Europeans would do well to bear this in mind today. Some of us are often too keen to forget how important military power actually is—and will remain for the foreseeable future. The current financial crisis may encourage many European governments to cut military spending even further, with the active support of the European people. But what will we do if a predatory regime emerges over the horizon? Point to ‘European values’ and issue a statement—and ask the nasty regime to be nice? In such an instance, as many societies have discovered previously, relying only on one’s values could turn out to be a house of cards.

Addressing the European Parliament

On Monday, 30th March, I found myself speaking at a workshop arranged by the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Security and Defence in Brussels. With my colleague, Luis Simón, I was giving a presentation to the Sub-Committee’s MEPs on ‘Geostrategy and the Future of European Security and Defence Policy’. We were focussing on the location and utility of the Member States’ overseas military installations—especially those of France and the United Kingdom—and how they might be used in the coming years to boost the geographical and functional expansion of European foreign, security and defence policy.

• The workshop was put on to allow us to present our report on European overseas military installations, which was commissioned by the European Parliament in November 2008, directly to the MEPs. Please click here to download and read the PDF version of our report.

Unfortunately, certain elements of the British media picked up on the event, and misrepresented the facts in the pursuit of their usual anti-European agenda. It is fair to say that their reporting, particularly from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, was very biased and it seemed as if their reporters had not even bothered to read, let alone comprehend, the information contained within our report. Both papers carried an inaccurate headline, stating that the European Union wanted to take over British and French overseas military installations. This is complete nonsense; the European Union wants to do nothing of the sort! Our Briefing Paper was written independently for the European Parliament, and was more of a discussion piece to provoke debate at the Sub-Committee’s final plenary session of the current parliament, than a set of concrete proposals to be put to the vote. And both newspapers carried lots of quotes only from anti-Europeans, thereby failing to provide contending viewpoints, many of which were expressed by other MEPs at the workshop.

Most amusingly, Geoffrey Van Orden MEP asked us during the workshop why we wanted to have European flags hoisted-up over British military bases overseas, seemingly ignorant to the fact that American flags are already raised over at least two of them. Indeed, as Glyn Ford MEP responded in the workshop, Britain seems to have little knowledge of what even goes on in its base at Diego Garcia, which is leased to the United States until at least 2017. It is even suspected of having been involved in the ‘extraordinary renditions’ scandal. We can only wonder why Mr. Van Orden would prefer a foreign power to have control over British territory, but not the European Union, of which Britain is a part—and a very influential part, particularly where security and defence policy are concerned. And much like an airy cherub who pops up at every meeting and whispers ‘NATO, NATO, NATO’ to anyone bored enough to listen, he also failed to understand the central premise of our argument; that is, that as the geopolitical balance of power changes in Eurasia, the United States will no longer be in a position to underpin NATO, meaning that Europeans will have to take care of themselves. Indeed, it is only by strengthening the European Union that the Atlantic Alliance will continue to have relevance for the Americans, who will not want to be holding Europeans’ hands when they have bigger fish to fry elsewhere—like East Asia.

Liam Fox, the Tory shadow defence secretary, also somehow got in on the act and was mentioned in both the reports by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, even though we did not see him at the workshop. His absense probably explains his misunderstanding over who was responsible for commissioning our report in the first place. According to Liam: ‘This talk of grand strategy betrays the real intentions of the European Commission.’ The European Commission?! Had he bothered to check his facts, the poor Dr. Fox might have realised that the European Commission had absolutely nothing whatsover to do with our report, which—as we pointed out previously—was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Security and Defence.

Liam Fox was also quoted in both newspapers as having said: ‘The idea that we might turn our military bases over to the EU, for projects the British people have never given their assent to, is a twisted fantasy.’ This is good as far as it goes, but we can only wonder why, as with Mr. Van Orden, the shadow defence secretary has not raised similar objections as to the existence of United States military facilities on British soil, some of which still remain on the British home islands. Given that the British people have never provided their assent to the stationing of American forces in the United Kingdom, will he, as future defence secretary, order all American forces out of British territory too?

The thoroughly anti-European EU Referendum blog also had to have its own little say, by dismissing our presentation as ‘something and nothing’. And in one of the comment posts, it even dared to produce an extremely useful nugget of information: that Luis Simón—my co-author—was ‘a real person.’ Go figure!

On the other hand, the prestigious Jane’s International Defence Digest provided a much more accurate and thoughtful piece on the content of both our presentation and our report, with thoroughly precise reporting, good background context, and a wide range of viewpoints expressed with regards to our proposals. The reporter, Brooks Tigner, was even present on the day of the workshop itself. Unfortunately, however, the report is only available by subscription, although the introduction can be read by non-subscribers as well.

• You can also watch the entire workshop—please click here.