The Old English First Foreign Policy
Part one of a guest essay by Owen Edwards
This, in which I place something more than a common interest, was the memorable aera of England's glory. But that aera is past...the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away... Let us examine what is left, with a manly and determined courage... Let us feel our calamities—let us bear them too, like men.
Pitt the Younger
Britain is in its Century of Humiliations. The spectacle of Britain trying to bribe a sunny island kleptocracy into taking away our own land, by doubling an already outrageous sum, to the moral nausea of every other interested party; the awarding by our own courts of £100,000 to a foreign criminal because she had felt treated like a criminal; the adjudication by the High Court itself that it was unlawful to shoot armed terrorists who had just fired on British subjects – these have all happened in the week prior to my finishing this piece. I do not even mention the sundry domestic and economic disasters, the scale of perverse horrors discovered in scores of our towns and cities, and the long litany listed in the newspapers every day – I only mention, here, a few recent shocks that sump up our decrepitude, our inability and refusal to deal with threats without and within.
We may hope that this decrepitude is well advanced, and that these late pathetic spasms are the final expiry of the old straggled firebird, our present self-immolation the flame to heat the new egg to hatching; we may, I say, hope that soon we shall see this nation rise like the phoenix – but there is no sound policy in just hoping for the best.
Considering not just Pitt, but his father, and Wellington, and Palmerston, we shall try to draw out what they might say if faced with problems like those described: problems of borders, security, and foreign policy.
Whatever solutions must, can, and will be found will be new ones, cloth cut for our barbarian days – but though specific policy is mutable, the principles of policy are permanent, and so wisdom compels us to turn to those British leaders who succeeded where our leaders utterly fail. On that basis, we will consider four heads:
What the first and chief principle of British foreign policy must be – Britain’s interests
The central importance of peace to our interests
How we attain that peace
What we do when peace fails
The First and Chief Principle
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. ... And if I might be allowed to express in one sentence the principle which I think ought to guide an English Minister, I would adopt the expression of Canning, and say that with every British Minister the interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of his policy.
Palmerston
This is the original of the more famous phrase “England has no permanent allies, only permanent interests”. A nation must look to its own needs first and foremost; a state exists for its constituents, not its neighbours. Sometimes a person may say “but isn’t our nation so wealthy, oughtn’t we look out for others?”; they may consider looking out for one’s own interests first and foremost selfish (and, for those so minded, unChristian).
To establish the need, briefly, to act this way, virtually every day even the kindest anonymous saint and the most radical Twitter Marxist both up and eat their own breakfast first; the former serves the forgotten and the latter seeks to save the whole world, but neither neglects their opening bacon and eggs (or plant-based substitute, for the latter). No man hates his own body, we are told; where we care for others it is precisely on the same principle as we care for ourselves, and because in some sense we are caught up in the whole human race.
It is also only rarely the case that well-meaning suburban liberals abandon their families to starvation so that they can spend more time feeding orphan refugees or advocating bombing naughty regimes. Ordinarily, Marina from Tonbridge picks the kids up from school and gives them a Capri Sun prior to resuming her campaign to move the needle on trans rights. Only the most demented doubt the rightness of this; who else will provide Fabian with his Capri Sun? No, indeed – acidity aside, virtually all of us know that the natural bond of parent and child is prior to other bonds.
The individual must ensure their own health before they look to the health of another. The same individual must care for their own children and their own elders before sorting out the neglected waifs next door. So with the state – the state is another level in the hierarchy, and its natural sphere of care is its own people. That does not mean that there may not be moral courses of actions for a state to pursue beyond its borders, but these are always subordinated to providing for the needs of its own first.
Britain does not exist as a registered charity, to extract wealth from donors (its own people) to spend elsewhere for the good of other people; any state is much more in the nature of a mutual, with common investment and pooling of both risk and benefit. The common investment and common risk I take is for myself and more urgently for my children, and where extension exists, for my neighbour and their children in my village, and in linked chain to all the others holding to a common culture and history. No one can be offended that I want the boundaries set upon my liberty and the money raised from my labour by the state to be used in the interest of my people!
Should Britain aid others? Whose aid should we in turn seek? It might be nice to determine whoever has the most Nice Points (however we are supposed to measure them) and reward them – but Nice Points are not fungible. Nice Points will not protect our interests abroad or offer return on investment for blood and gold. We need our government, when staking our treasure upon foreign policy, to look that it turns to our profit. Now, indeed, this does not excuse breaches of the ius gentium, or basic morality But if a nation acts as our rival, be they never so Nice or Oppressed, we must look for allies against them – because their Niceness or Oppression are only acting as cover to harm us.
Britain must look to its own interests, then. It must seek alliance and undertake specific policy in pursuit of measurable and sensible ends, seeking to benefit its people. So what is the measure of Britain’s interest?