Web Of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy

by Mark Curtis

  Linda Melvern notes that, especially in the early stages of the genocide, the press insisted on reporting events as ‘chaos and anarchy’, not a systematic campaign well planned in advance by Hutu extremists. In her view, ‘the media’s failure to report that genocide was taking place, and thereby generate public pressure for something to be done to stop it, contributed to international indifference and inaction, and possibly to the crime itself’.

  There was only one press article I could find that went into any detail on Britain’s role on the security council. It noted that Britain’s ambassador at the UN was still dealing regularly with the ambassador of the government engaged in state-sponsored genocide.4

  Neither did the mother of parliaments attempt to address the British role in genocide – either at the time, or since. A debate in the House of Commons did not take place until nearly two months after the slaughter began. According to Melvern, ‘the Labour party waited until May before putting pressure on the government to act, and then only because Oxfam telephoned the office of David Clark, shadow secretary of state for defence’.

  Ethical foreign policies

  Even the government’s contribution to something as massive as the slaughter of a million people can be buried across the entire mainstream political culture. With this background, the prospects for reporting accurately on the policies of New Labour were not great. But if anything, the media has sunk to new depths.

  There was previously much comment in the media on the government’s claim to be pursuing an ‘ethical’ dimension to foreign policy. But there was a usual pattern to this comment. The starting point was accepting that the government was serious about wanting to promote an ‘ethical foreign policy’. In many articles this term was used without quotation marks, suggesting that it actually existed. Most articles then went on to say that in one or two ‘hard cases’ (for example, arms exports to Indonesia), the government was failing to live up to its rhetoric, with the conclusion that it was guilty of double standards. Another common conclusion was that promoting the ‘ethical foreign policy’ was not ‘practical’ given Britain’s other policies, such as arms exports. Again, the commitment to promoting such a policy is not questioned, while one or two policies that might deviate from this lofty goal showed the ‘exception’ to the rule. There were some deviations from this pattern of reporting, but not many.

  It is interesting that journalists often chose arms exports to Indonesia to show Britain’s ‘double standards’. Yet in policy towards Indonesia, Britain has been dogged in pursuing a single standard for thirty years – support to Jakarta during gross repression in Indonesia and mass murder in East Timor. Arms exports are just one facet of this basic support. However, even pointing out this example gives the impression of an unethical exception to an ethical rule, whereas Britain actually supports repressive regimes across the world as a matter of course, selling arms to them in the process, as noted in several other chapters in this book.

  The reality is that Britain clearly has a generally unethical foreign policy, easily seen if we peer even slightly beneath the veil. The hard task is to spot the ethical bits. The idea that the government has been, or ever seriously intended to be, promoting an ‘ethical foreign policy’ is so laughable that it is seriously hard to address the point. But let us try to do so, nonetheless.

  The ‘ethical dimension’ to foreign policy announced by New Labour was simply a government fabrication, surely plain for anyone to see. ‘Anyone’ that is, except virtually the entire mainstream media, who, although often criticising whether it was being fully implemented, both played along with the fabrication and also played it up, dubbing it the ‘ethical foreign policy’ (the government has never used this term; it was invented by the media). As a construct of New Labour’s propagandists and the media, it provides an interesting example of how propaganda is manufactured in the British ideological system.

  One only needed to read Foreign Secretary Robin Cook’s speech in July 1997, a few weeks after the election victory, where he outlined this ‘ethical dimension’. The speech is very low key in content. Of the ‘twelve-point plan’ of exceedingly minor changes, one way of promoting an ‘ethical dimension’ was, Cook said, to continue sanctions against Iraq! (One might think this point alone would have alerted journalists to how the government understood ‘ethical’.) Other points included condemning gross human rights abusers (naming only Nigeria), refusing to supply military equipment to some regimes and reviewing the British military training policy.5

  Cook’s points were consistent with Labour’s election manifesto, and mainly continued the policies of the Major government. In three years as shadow Foreign Secretary until the election victory, Cook gave no hint of wanting to pursue an ‘ethical dimension’ to foreign policy. When the time came, the government simply played to the public, trying to depict themselves as different from the Tories, and more moral. Labour propagandists deliberately blew up Cook’s speech to emphasise a mythical radical break with the past.6

  This invention was taken seriously throughout the media. The Financial Times referred to ‘the new doctrine’. A leading liberal commentator, John Lloyd, said it was ‘one of the boldest initiatives taken by a major state to shift foreign policy on to new tracks’.7

  The government played along with the construct of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ for a while, since it allowed it to bask beneath a cloak of morality while promoting, with minor exceptions, the same policies as the previous government. But it soon became a political liability, with simply too many commentators pointing out ‘exceptions’ to where Britain departed from otherwise promoting democracy, human rights and peace on Earth (‘double standards’). The totalitarian mind is apt not to tolerate any criticism at all; and even New Labour propagandists were not able to hide completely some of their unethical policies, even with a media willing to be generally deluded.

  The ‘ethical dimension’ to foreign policy that was born in July 1997 died a death in September 2000, when the government abandoned it. This abandonment was extraordinary. The Guardian announced on 4 September 2000 that ‘Labour’s ethical foreign policy … is to be dropped for the next general election’. It said that the policy ‘is said to have become a “millstone” around the neck of the foreign secretary’. A 32-page document of the party’s national policy forum ‘fails to mention the ethical foreign policy or ethical dimension’.8

  From the perspective of the mainstream media, which had viewed the ‘ethical foreign policy’ as official policy, the government’s abandonment of it should surely have been newsworthy. Considering that every Labour minister from Blair downwards over the past three years had claimed that Labour was promoting the highest moral principles across all its policies, now suddenly saying this was no longer on, was surely worthy of note. But not so. There was barely a murmur of discussion in the media. Under the media’s previous framing, the government was saying that from now on, ethics did not matter. So what? Saddam Hussein’s journalists would have been proud.

  Labour’s announcement is new in modern democracy. There is surely no other case of a government explicitly serving notice that it will not promote ethical policies. Even though the government has made this announcement, its propaganda continues and minister after minister continues to express commitment to the highest values, as normal. The media continues to take this seriously, and has not noticed that the game is over. The ideological system, at root, is really very crude.

  The abandonment of the ‘ethical dimension’ may have pleased many in the media and political class who do not want Britain to promote this ethical nonsense anyway. For example, the editors of the Independent on Sunday noted shortly after Cook’s original speech that it would be ‘welcome’ if British officials thought about the human rights consequences of their actions, ‘but Foreign Secretaries need to take care’. ‘An unstintingly ethical approach to foreign affairs would forbid trade with China and make negotiation with [Congo president] Laurent Kabila tricky; yet both ar
e necessary, for the sake of British interests.’9

  A more extreme view came from Bruce Anderson, writing in the Spectator, who noted that ‘humanitarian considerations should not be a major priority’ in guiding British policy towards Kosovo. The reason was that no national interests were at stake as they were in, say, 1939. ‘We fought Hitler because he was a threat to Britain’, Anderson notes; ‘we did not declare war against Hitler because he was a bloodstained dictator’.10

  Eradicating poverty (from the mind)

  In previous chapters I have looked at the media’s ideological treatment of British foreign policy in the bombing of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and in the Israel–Palestine conflict. Let us consider briefly some other cases of how the media is in effect keeping the public in the dark.

  Global poverty has not been eradicated from the world, but it has been largely eradicated from public view. The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) has recently conducted several analyses of media reporting on the developing world. It concludes that:

  Audiences are misinformed about the developing world because of the low level of explanations and context which is given in television reporting and because some explanations which are present are partial and informed by what might be termed ‘post-colonial’ beliefs.

  In particular, little effort is made to explain the background to conflicts, with struggles often portrayed simply as the result of ‘tribal passions’. Television audiences therefore ‘have in general very little understanding of events in the developing world or of major international institutions or relationships’, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Much reporting promotes the view of ‘the innate faults of Africans’.

  The GUMG’s research with BBC journalists shows that explaining the link between those conflicts and Northern countries’ policies can produce a distinct change in the understanding and attitudes of audiences.11 This is precisely the point: people appear more interested in foreign news stories when there is a link with Britain. But even though there is a media incentive to provide this link, it still rarely happens.

  The reality is that British governments bear significant responsibility for global poverty – not only as a former colonial power that shaped many of the current unjust structures, but in their championing of a world trade system and economic ideology that enriches the few and impoverishes many more; in exporting arms that contribute to repression and worsen conflict; in supporting repressive regimes; and in undermining many popular, democratic political forces that try to address poverty.

  Yet I do not think I have ever seen a media article that mentions that Britain might in some way systematically contribute to poverty in the world. Is this not extraordinary? Britain’s partial responsibility for maintaining and deepening poverty globally is unmentionable.

  I believe it is especially extraordinary, since poverty is surely the dominating fact of our world. One half of our species – over two and a half billion people – lives on $2 a day; poverty by any measure. Yet the public in Northern countries is largely protected even from seeing this everyday poverty, let alone the idea that their government might bear any responsibility for it. In other words, the single most important issue in today’s world is kept from proper public understanding.

  Consider how many wildlife programmes there are set in Kenya. The BBC must have a special deal with British Airways to Nairobi. And we should all by now have expert knowledge of the mating habits of cheetahs. But television audiences will know nothing of human poverty in Kenya, even though many of the political and economic structures maintaining it were shaped by the British. And they must know almost nothing about the massive human rights atrocities committed by British forces in Kenya in the 1950s, for which Kenyans are currently seeking justice through the British courts (see chapter 15).

  One area where Britain and other Northern countries are sometimes criticised in the media is in ‘neglecting’ or ‘forgetting’ Africa. There is some truth in this, especially concerning the reduction of aid and the marginalisation of Africa from international decision-making. But the sense, and often overt message, behind these articles is that Britain is not engaged enough in Africa, as though more of its policies are needed; if only we paid them more attention, they would be better off. The opposite is the case. The belief that greater Western engagement in Africa is a solution is a staggering conclusion to reach after hundreds of years of Western impoverishment of poor countries. How much faith can be left that Western countries will promote anything short of further misery in the areas of the world where they seriously engage?

  Britain is in fact already heavily engaged in Africa; its economic interventionism has been stepped up under New Labour. It is a leading champion of rewriting the rules of the global economy to benefit transnational business and to lock in African countries to promote further ‘neo-liberal’ economic strategies which have already had devastating consequences in poor countries. The basic problem is that Britain is too engaged in Africa – it would be more useful to remove the British boot from the poor countries’ necks, and conduct a withdrawal.

  In chapter 9, I outlined the government’s pursuit of worldwide economic ‘liberalisation’, especially through the WTO. This is already having enormous impact, often increasing poverty and inequality, with matters likely to get worse. It is not difficult to detect this strategy of promoting a fundamental reshaping of the global economy; reading ministerial speeches is a good starting point. There is little that is covert about government policy; ministers are specifically saying what their intentions are.

  Yet this story is simply not covered in the media. Rather, the line continues to be peddled that the government is committed to development, that Clare Short is a staunch defender of the poor and that the government has a jolly good record on debt relief and so on. With no effective scrutiny of government policy, the media is surely guilty here – as in the Rwanda genocide, according to Linda Melvern noted above – of helping to exacerbate human misery.

  The one international trade policy that receives regular media coverage is the protectionist barriers raised by the EU to restrict poor countries’ key exports from reaching EU markets. This happens to be the one major trade policy the British elite wants to change, since removing EU trade barriers will make it easier to force developing countries to remove theirs, thus securing Western access to their markets. There are other Northern trade policies that have far greater impact on the poor and that developing countries want to change – such as actually being able to protect and subsidise their infant industries. However, the British elite is completely opposed to these, and they are largely ignored in the media.

  The only stories in the media that criticise reporting on the developing world are those saying that coverage is dramatically falling. This is true, but misses the more important point. Media coverage of the developing world is so distorted, and plays so much into the hands of elite priorities, that it may well be better to have less coverage.

  Third World development issues provide a good example of how the media parrots the government’s line and generally accepts its stated aims as true. A Guardian editorial in November 1997, for example, begins: ‘The government’s new white paper on international development was presented yesterday by Clare Short with genuine commitment to the world’s poor.’ It notes that the first section of the White Paper ‘lays out the dimensions of the problem facing the world with unusual clarity: it could serve as a study text for anyone – from sixth former to journalist trying to understand what development is all about’.12

  It is comforting to note that Guardian journalists might be understanding ‘what development is all about’ by reading the government’s view. Strangely, that view does not include noting that the government is itself a major part of the problem. And how, exactly, is the Guardian convinced, as stated in its first line, that the government has a ‘genuine commitment to the world’s poor’? Simply because the government has said it?

  Similarly, another article begi
ns: ‘Clare Short, the international development secretary, will announce plans today for a wide-ranging autumn white paper on managing globalisation as the centrepiece of a government strategy to ensure that the world’s poor benefit from economic changes’. The article proceeds to offer nothing to counter this grand assertion. Instead, it quotes Short rubbishing protectionism and refers blandly to the government’s desire for new ‘rules on global investment’. Readers are given no sense that these new rules might just not quite work to the advantage of the poor.13

  Reporting more generally sometimes reaches North Korean levels of wonderment at our leaders’ commitment to high values. Consider the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee on Blair’s speech at the October 2001 Labour party conference, outlining a vision of a ‘world acting as a community’. The speech ‘will stand’, she wrote, ‘as a moment British politics became vigorously, unashamedly, social democratic. The day it became missionary and almost Swedish in pursuit of universal justice’. Toynbee mentioned Blair’s ‘noble sentiments for a new world order’, and that he declared ‘war on poverty, tyranny and injustice while barely using the word “war” at all’. The article was entitled: ‘He promised to take on the world. And I believed him’.14

  Similarly, the Guardian’s Hugo Young has asserted that Blair’s vision of intervention for humanitarian purposes extends to ‘anywhere the world might be made a better place by the benign intervention of a good, stable, rich and militarily capable country like Britain’. Blair’s is a ‘vision of the moralist’, according to Young, who then goes on to criticise the Blair commitment to such military humanitarianism as ‘terrifyingly naive’.15 Thus our leaders are viewed as benign and sincere in their commitment to the highest values; they just won’t in practice be able to achieve these lofty goals. This ridiculous view is the usual framing of foreign policy throughout the British ideological system.