Of course, as soon as we discuss freedom in terms of rights rather than duties, classical liberalism slips easily into soft socialism with all kinds of ‘rights’ being claimed with little regard for the cost or even the possibility of fulfilling them. These ‘rights’, to the extent that they are even theoretically attainable, can in practice only be fulfilled if the state coerces other individuals by regulations, controls and taxes. By this point one has, in fact, moved the whole distance from liberalism to socialism. Moreover, by granting outside bodies the power to intervene on almost the whole of domestic social and economic policy, the liberal human rights approach does not so much intrude upon national sovereignty as abolish it outright.
If then advancing human rights as traditionally defined is a legitimate aim of foreign policy, what in general is the best way to achieve it? We are fortunate that in the post-Cold War world, new opportunities for freedom have opened up. As the revolution in the technology of communications, the opening of world markets and the opportunities for greater mobility of capital and people all put authoritarian rulers under greater pressure, it will be increasingly hard for them to resist pressures to liberalize their regimes. This, in fact, is why in seeking to advance democracy and human rights, high regard must be paid to the wider impact of economic freedom.
Even countries which maintain a fairly free economy — with a sound currency, limited government intervention, low taxes, private property and mobility of labour — but which for a time experience authoritarian rule, as for example did Chile under General Pinochet, find relatively few difficulties in developing political freedoms later. But, as the experience of Russia shows, without a framework of law, an understanding of the limits of government, private property and a living tradition of enterprise, it is extremely difficult in these conditions to build democratic institutions. Recognizing this, the conservative — as opposed to the liberal-left — enthusiast for human rights will not make the mistake of underrating the progress towards the goal of political freedom which the growth of market capitalism brings with it.
It is this consideration, quite apart from my concerns for the long-term future of Hong Kong, which has led me to oppose linking human rights issues in China with trade issues. We need consistently to press the Chinese to end human rights abuses and to observe civilized standards in their dealings with Tibet, the Christian churches, and dissidents if China is to enjoy the full practical benefits which a relationship of respect brings with it. But it would be counter-productive to slow down the rate of progress towards an open, free economy by seeking to cut China off from trade, investment and outside influence, since these are roads to freedom.
Having said all of which, I would note that policy in regard to human rights is a great deal more complicated in theory than it is in practice. Politicians and diplomats generally know by instinct the cases in which Western influence can be usefully exercised and how best to exercise it. I must add, however, that they sometimes need a kick from public opinion.
STRONG DEFENCE
These four principles have one thing, above all, in common: they can only be given effect by a fifth principle of strong defence. The same arguments which Ronald Reagan and I used during the 1980s still apply. Defence spending is an investment in peace because it is not armaments of themselves which cause wars: wars arise because potential aggressors believe they have sufficient military superiority to succeed in their aggression. Such investment has to go on year after year, even when threats seem vague or remote, because high-technology defence programmes only yield results over a lengthy period. And the only ‘peace dividend’ we have a right to expect from victory in the Cold War is peace itself — rather than the opportunity to spend more on welfare benefits and the dependency culture.
Admittedly, it was right that Western countries should reexamine their defence spending as a result of the dramatic changes which flowed from the fall of communist Eastern Europe, the ending of the Warsaw Pact and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But I now believe that the plans for reduced spending which were announced when I was Prime Minister as Options for Change went too far; subsequent announcements have, of course, gone further still. Personally, I did not share all the optimism which characterized political discussion of defence at that time. But I did overestimate the rate of likely progress in turning the Soviet Union (or Russia) into an ‘ordinary country’, a stable liberal democracy which posed no special threat to the West.
We cannot know whether Russia will ultimately go in the direction of democracy and free enterprise. If Russia were to embark on a course of restoring the old Soviet Union as a new Russian Empire this could not happen peacefully. Nor could it leave Russian relations with the West unchanged. In any event, it would clearly be against our strategic interests if Russian power were once again to move close to the heart of Europe. Similarly, Russia’s commitment of scarce resources to any such imperial strategy would inevitably mean abandonment of the continuing tasks of economic reform and political liberalism. We could thus expect both external and internal policies to revert towards those of the old USSR. And Russia is still a formidable military power.
Already, the various crises and disarray which affected the countries of the former Soviet Union have resulted in a large outflow of advanced weaponry, which was then eagerly acquired by other rogue powers, further increasing the threats we face. Clearly, the West must maintain its defences.
Since 1989/90 it has not been possible to base our defence calculations almost exclusively on assessment of the threat from just one direction — the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. That necessarily makes the task a good deal more complicated. In such circumstances, the temptations are great for politicians to try to balance the different lobbies rather than to take a long-term strategic view of likely threats and the required response. A further difficulty has been that it is not just Britain but also the United States, France, Germany and Italy which have been cutting back. Those in a position to know now claim that even if we had the front-line equipment to intervene where required, there would be big problems in supporting and supplying it. Combined with the unsatisfactory outcomes of UN-authorized interventions, these cutbacks have given the impression of a weakness of resolve and commitment.
Another element of uncertainty has concerned the future role of NATO. As I have suggested, it was right and necessary for this to be re-assessed. In particular, the political impact of NATO as a force for stabilization and strengthening transatlantic links had to be more fully exploited and developed. This has not, however, occurred as I envisaged. In particular, partly as a result of federalist impulses in Europe and partly as a result of different approaches over Bosnia, NATO is no longer satisfactorily fulfilling the crucial task of sustaining American commitment to Europe’s defence. Indeed, NATO itself has been seriously undermined.
NATO should also have welcomed the Central European countries — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — into full membership, as they requested. Combined with the European Community’s slow and hesitant approach to bringing those countries in as full EC members, NATO’s decision has come as a blow to the pro-Western democratic forces in the region. Partnership for Peace, which treats a country like Poland as having the same relationship with the West as, say, a member state of the former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, only serves to confuse the degree of commitment NATO is making. The fact that NATO has allowed Russia — or more precisely the anti-Western influences in Russia — to determine its decisions on this matter is all the more serious. It does Moscow’s democrats no good to bend in this way, because it suggests that those who threaten are more likely to be listened to than those who cooperate.
Expanding NATO would be more than a military move. It would confirm the independent and ‘European’ status of the Central European states. Even countries, like Ukraine and probably the Baltic states, which would not (initially at least) be on the right side of the ‘line’ that NATO would draw on its eastern border, have
now lost out. It has been well argued that ‘merely having NATO close at hand… would affect the political psychology in the belt of states between the Baltic and the Black Seas, imparting more confidence to their liberal political forces’.[89] All these developments would have tended to put European peace on a much sounder footing.
They are all the more desirable because the Gulf War demonstrated something which I had already believed necessary — namely that NATO forces must be able to operate ‘out of area’.[90] The range of potential serious threats is now truly global. That does not mean that NATO forces should be deployed whenever some local crisis in a far-flung country occurs. But it does mean that major regional threats must concern us. Some potentially serious risks are already apparent.
And where there is a clear case of aggression and our interests are involved, military interventions, whether under UN, NATO or other auspices, should be strong, swift and effective. Objectives must be clear, risks weighed and as far as possible countered and the resources deployed sufficient. Of course, every international crisis is different. Rules have to be adapted to circumstances. But the temptations to guard against are always the same — namely, ill-thought-out goals, too much reliance on total consensus before action, and the use of insufficient force.
Unfortunately, in their different ways all the major military interventions carried out under UN authority since the end of the Cold War have suffered from some or all of these problems. The Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in power with sufficient weapons and resources to terrorize the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs and continue to test the international community’s resolve. This crucial misjudgement was principally the result of a lack of clarity about objectives and excessive emphasis given to the search for international agreement rather than victory. But at least Desert Storm was effective in ensuring that Iraq yielded up Kuwait.
As I have suggested earlier, in spite of the personal qualities and, on occasion, the heroism of some of those involved, little can be said in praise of the international intervention in the former Yugoslavia. The justification for intervention was at least as clear as in the case of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. A well-armed aggressor — Serbia initially acting under the institutional guise of Yugoslavia — attacked first Slovenia, then Croatia and finally Bosnia. But what should have been a clear policy of arming the victim and assisting him with air strikes on military targets was distorted into a peacekeeping and humanitarian venture.
This policy was an illusion. There was no peace to keep. Hence the humanitarian force would either fail to aid the victims or come into conflict with the aggressors. A Western diplomacy that forswore effective military action had no real power to force an aggressor to negotiate seriously, and an arms embargo, impartially applied, meant in effect intervening on the side of a well-armed aggressor against an ill-armed victim. In fact, there is hardly a moral principle or a practical rule which has not been broken in handling this crisis: it should at least provide the next generation of statesmen with a case study of what not to do.
Was it shame at events in Bosnia and Croatia which prompted the UN, under American leadership, to intervene in Somalia in December 1992? No one could criticize the humane impulse to step in and relieve the appalling suffering created by — what was in this case accurately described as — civil war. But insufficient attention was given to the political and military problems involved. It soon became clear that the humanitarian effort could not enjoy long-term success without a return to civil order. But there seemed no internal force able to supply this.
Hence, the intervention created its own painful choice: either the UN would make Somalia into a colony and spend decades engaged in ‘nation-building’, or the UN forces would withdraw in due course and Somalia revert to its prior anarchy. In the former case, since the Americans have no taste for imperial ventures, the UN would have to vest any new trusteeship either in a local power like the Egyptians or in a former colonial power, presumably in this case the Italians. If this is unlikely to happen — and it is — then the job of feeding the hungry and helping the sick must in future be left to civilian aid agencies and private charities. Military intervention without an attainable purpose creates as many problems as it solves.
The combined effect of interventions in Bosnia, Somalia and, indeed, Rwanda has been to shake the self-confidence of key Western powers and to tarnish the reputation of the UN. Yet a dangerous trend is increasingly evident: over the last few years, culminating in the latest intervention in Haiti in September 1994, the Security Council seems prepared to widen the legal basis for intervention. We are seeing, in fact, that classically dangerous combination — a growing disproportion between theoretical claims and practical means. All this may have further unwelcome consequences in the longer term.
If there is now a threat approaching the gravity of the Cold War, it is that of Islamic fundamentalism. The concern of policy-makers is certainly justified. The implications for Europe, the Middle East and Russia alike if more moderate or secular Muslim countries should fall under Islamic extremist regimes are indeed serious.
But it is one thing to estimate a danger, quite another to know how best to overcome it. The West has in the past disastrously misjudged the political potential of Islam. It has been well observed that: ‘The two Middle East countries most torn apart by violence and civil strife since the mid-1970s were among those previously regarded as the most stable, modernized, and Western-oriented — Lebanon and Iran.’[91] There is a risk that in discussing ‘fundamentalism’ we will come to regard conservative-minded Muslim countries as inevitable hotbeds of Islamic revolution. Yet the success of Islamic parties does not always reflect the religious commitment of their supporters; rather, it reflects the fact that communism is now discredited, leaving Islamic oppositions to benefit from discontent with the incompetence and corruption of existing governments. In fact, the umbrella of ‘fundamentalism’ shelters a range of distinct and often mutually opposed phenomena, from Gulf and Lebanese Shiites with links to Iran, to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, to the mish-mash of elements woven together in Colonel Qaddafi’s ‘Third Way’ — quite apart from many pious Muslims who are only ‘fundamentalist’ in that they are seeking a return to austere Islamic practice.
Within the Islamic world, Iran has, of course, a special position. It has acquired — and continues to acquire — weapons of mass destruction from Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea and elsewhere. It has moved into nuclear research. It has close links with terrorist organizations and seems to feel no inhibitions about intervening to achieve its objectives from Lebanon to Argentina. And in addition to these material threats, Iran is the standard-bearer of a kind of Islam that is both revolutionary and traditional and that puts it at odds with most Arab rulers. Like Revolutionary France, Iran is the bearer of what Burke called an ‘armed doctrine’. The international community has no ideal way of dealing with this phenomenon. But the best available model seems that of containment.
Otherwise, the tensions between Islam on the one hand and modern, Western liberalism on the other will ultimately have to be worked out by Muslims themselves. The West, for its part, must respect the values, traditions and beliefs of Islam — while insisting that basic human rights should be honoured and aggressive policies forsworn.
I have set out what I consider the tenets of a conservative foreign policy should be. But there is really no substitute for commonsense. In my years as Prime Minister I was always convinced that aggression must not be allowed to pay. If it did, automatically the threat to our peace and security would increase. I also reckoned that would-be aggressors are a great deal more rational than most people imagine. They ask themselves whether those of us likely to oppose them have the weapons to do so, the means of deploying those weapons sufficiently quickly, and above all the resolve. So we must make our resolve plain.
And finally, there was what I came to call Thatcher’s law: ‘No matter how well prepared you are, the unexpected happens.’ How you
cope then remains, of course, the real test.
CHAPTER XV
Virtue’s Rewards
Policies to strengthen the family, curb welfare dependency and reduce crime
A CONTINUING DEBATE
Social issues usually loom larger in political debate when economic problems, particularly the problem of inflation, are less of a worry. Low inflation and rapid economic growth were the background to the preoccupation with the environment, urban renewal and the Health Service which dominated politics after the 1987 general election. Low inflation and resumed economic growth in 1994 have had the same effect.
There are, however, three differences between the two periods. First, whatever the economic future holds, it seems unlikely that the arguments about social policy (which have opened up on both sides of the Atlantic) will peter out inconclusively, because too many raw nerves have already been struck. Secondly, in contrast to the years 1987 to 1989, these debates are now taking place on the traditional conservative territory of law and order, welfare dependency and the family. Thirdly, there is a new understanding of the economic consequences of crime, unchecked expenditure on welfare benefits and family breakdown. Company executives are unwilling to move to areas of high crime and delinquent schools. The explosion of spending on one-parent families forces Social Security budgets — and ultimately taxes — inexorably upwards. Above all, there are fears that the growing welfare dependency will demotivate and demoralize young men and women on whose contributions in the workforce industrial expansion and advance depend. Even hard-nosed men of the world, more interested in growth rates than crime rates, are having to take social policy seriously.
It is, therefore, the more surprising that with a few notable exceptions, political leaders have been reluctant to frame policies based on the remarkably similar analyses of academics and commentators; partly, perhaps, because those who have tentatively sought to do so have incurred instant vilification on both sides of the Atlantic. Vice-President Quayle and Peter Lilley were similarly pilloried for saying things which are now generally agreed to be commonsense: namely that the growth of single parenthood is bad for the children growing up without a father, and imposes heavy costs on society. Yet as long ago as 1987, for example, Michael Novak and several other distinguished scholars of different viewpoints agreed a number of challenging conclusions in a publication called The New Consensus on Family and Welfare. Among these were: ‘money alone will not cure poverty; internalized values are also needed’ and ‘the national ethos must encourage self-reliance and responsibility’.
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