Ed Cairns attended Oxfam’s foreign policy debate on Monday. Whose side did he come down on?
Let’s not be naïve. I never expected any serious discussion about foreign policy in the election. And there wasn’t any. Thank goodness that silence is over. Tonight the BBC’s World Tonight and Chatham House debate Britain’s role in the world. But Oxfam pipped them to the post on Monday with a lively debate, hosted by the BBC’s own Jeremy Bowen, on whether foreign policy can be ethical and in the national interest at the same time.
The last Tory government accused Bowen, reporting from the bloody Bosnian conflict of the 90s, of being a “fully paid up member of the something-must-be-done club”. Oxfam’s Barbara Stocking would be an active member too. But she argued at the debate that we must stop the raping and killing in modern day Srebrenicas not just because it is right – obviously Oxfam’s motive – but also because it raises the UK’s “moral authority”.
The Telegraph’s Mary Riddell argued the same, stating that neither Tories nor Labour have a “monopoly on bad foreign policy,” but the new coalition government could get it right in the future. Just when you thought “ethical foreign policy” was dead, she said, it was back – rebranded as “enlightened self interest” – and because we live in a small world where violence, like climate change, knows no borders.
Academic David Chandler was having none of it. “Moralising makes irrational policy,” he said, claiming the disastrous Iraq war was driven by ethics, not politics – perverse ethics, but ethics.
The Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne had more time for the “something-must-be-done club”. He just thought we should have the sense to know the limits of what can be done.
Who was right? Stocking and Riddell of course. But I’m biased. I work for Oxfam.
Something must be done. But it must be well thought-out and honest. And far more about tough diplomacy than the half-baked invasion of Iraq.
Thank goodness at least that the election is over, and we can talk about these things again.