Whose side am I on now?
Like US, top British parties have 'switched roles' on foreign policy.
As the British campaign season heats up after Prime Minister Tony Blair's
call Tuesday for general elections on May 5, longtime supporters of the country's major parties may be a bit confused as to which party's foreign policies they agree with most these days.
Which staunch Labour supporter, for instance, would have thought ten years ago that his or her party leader now would carry the Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher's torch for increased support of an aggressive US foreign policy?
And which conservative Republican in the United States would have thought that his or her party would have found itself aggressively promoting democracy-building projects in the Middle East and beyond? That would have sounded suspiciously like liberal internationalism, not traditionally a key plank of the Republican Party's platform, to say the least.
The terror attacks of 9/11 and the decision to go to war in Iraq have caused major political parties in both countries to essentially change sides on core foreign policy issues that have helped define them for decades.
The war and its aftermath took center stage in the US presidential election last fall, and is certain to play a prominent role in Britain's election next month.
If Mr. Blair's Labour Party wins a third term, which most analysts expect, it would be despite his staunch support for the US-led war in Iraq, which has been deeply unpopular and led to a
loss of trust among many.
Labour is "expected to win a record third term in office in upcoming elections, but a
loss of trust in leader Tony Blair and a revamped opposition may severely reduce their grip on power," reports the South African daily
Pretoria News.
Paul Reynolds, Foreign affairs correspondent for the
BBC News website writes: "It is one of the ironic features of modern British politics that the
two major parties have switched roles on foreign policy over recent years."
Tony Blair and his foreign secretary Jack Straw say nice things about the American president George Bush that might make even Mrs. Thatcher blush. Half a century and more after Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt formed the "special relationship," it is a Labour government that has kept it alive. The comings and goings indicate just how uncertain Britain really is about its place in the world.
In that piece Mr. Reynolds details the way the parties have shifted in their support for the US and Europe over the decades.
And so the pendulum has swung back and forth. In one decade, Labour is anti-Europe. In the next, it is pro. And the same for the Conservatives. ...
Come back in ten years and it might have changed again.
Longtime
Christian Science Monitor columnist Godfrey Sperling asserts that Bush's critics on the left, who, as recently as last November, were loathe to allow Bush to claim the internationalist mantle, are
beginning to accept the idea.
I'm seeing signs that influential Democrats and liberal critics in the media are beginning to acknowledge - at least by implication - that Bush is playing the internationalist role with increasing success.
In an opinion piece in the
International Herald Tribune, Henry Nau writes that Bush is "a
conservative internationalist," which, however unusual, is not a new breed.
Europeans have heard of liberal internationalists, such as Bill Clinton. And they know about conservative nationalists such as Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot.
But they have probably never heard of conservative internationalists. Indeed they might think, as many liberal Americans do, that the term is an oxymoron.
Well, it's not. Conservative internationalists exist in the American diplomatic tradition, and Europeans - as well as liberal Americans - should recognize this school of diplomacy even if they disagree with it.
Mr. Nau lists Anrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, and Ronald Reagan as examples former leaders who displayed features of conservative internationalism.
Suzanne Nossel, former Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the US mission to the UN from 1999 to 2001, sought to
explain the different forms of internationalism in a
Foreign Affairs piece last spring.
To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century US foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war. ... Unlike conservatives, who rely on military power as the main tool of statecraft, liberal internationalists see trade, diplomacy, foreign aid, and the spread of American values as equally important. Ms. Nossel also assert that conservatives have hijacked internationalism and misapplied it by relying too much on force.
To reinvent liberal internationalism for the twenty-first century, progressives must wrest it back from Republican policymakers who have misapplied it. Whether the Democrats failed in their attempts trade the "nuanced dissent" Nossel described for a "compelling vision," or whether Americans simply preferred Bush's conservative internationalism, their candidate John Kerry lost last fall in an election that was first and foremost a referendum on the war on terror, particularly the Iraq war.
Whether Britons vote for Blair on March 5 remains to be seen. But a few things seem certain: the Iraq war will be one of the most important issues, and, when it comes to foreign policy, the game has changed.
Also...
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UK fears Madrid-style election terrorism attack (
Daily Times, Pakistan)
•
Blair and Brown ram home message on economy (
Financial Times)
•
Hold your nose, vote Blair and Brown will be the victor (
The Guardian)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Matthew Clark.
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