Keir Starmer’s foreign policy concept is on the rocks already

DAVID BLAGDEN and PATRICK PORTER

Whatever happened to progressive realism? As you may recall, that was the foreign policy doctrine declared by the incoming Labour government’s foreign secretary, David Lammy. The short answer is that it — or at least, the government’s current version of it — foundered somewhere in the Chagos archipelago.

From every angle, Britain’s deal with Mauritius over the Chagos islands is bad, a cure worse than the disease. Britain hands over the islands for free, then leases them back at the cost of billions of pounds, to preserve a military base. It does so ostensibly in the name of reconciling several things: preserving access to a base, international law, Britain’s reputation, decolonisation, and possible future threats of international censure by multilateral bodies for insufficient action on the preceding three fronts. Never mind that the position in international law derives merely from advisory opinions — themselves derived from the historical coincidence that imperial Britain once administered Chagos from Mauritius, for mere efficiency’s sake — or that the same government is less absolute in its concern for international law with regard to, say, arms export licences to Israel. Never mind either that the ICJ advisory position was highly politicised, pushed (funnily enough) by the Court’s Chinese and Russian delegates, who proved mysteriously “helpful” in advocates’ case to dislodge Western powers from the Indian Ocean. The actual historic victims, the Chagossian population that was expelled decades ago, do not get sovereignty over an inch of territory. The government barely consulted them. The mistreated people’s homeland will instead transfer to another external power that never even governed it in the first place, Mauritius.

Meet the new boss, then. Only the new boss is worse than the old boss. Mauritius has criminalised dissent over the status of the islands, which is bad news for Chagossians. It’s also building ever-closer ties with the People’s Republic of China, that benign champion of anticolonial justice from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. And — irony of ironies — Mauritius is displacing parts of the population on one of its own islands to make way for an Indian military facility. Unsurprisingly, many representatives of Chagossian opinion oppose the arrangement. If you hold the purist position, that powers even on the suggestion of illegality should relinquish every piece of real estate they acquired by force back to their original inhabitants, this is not that. It is more a lopsided imperial transfer, and a triumph of legalism over decency.

There was an alternative course: just saying “no.” A more brazen imperial policy, whereby the UK put the national interest above the letter of international law, refused to reconsider the sovereignty issue and instead offered Chagossians jobs and a return home — there are civilian jobs at the base on Diego Garcia, in addition to any other work that might be generated — would have yielded more justice. But instead, Britain prioritised being legally right, while failing to be morally effective.

Leasing back the military base, then to sub-let it to the United States, might retain the main strategic value of the islands. Yet it now becomes more precarious, not less. As the Suez crisis of 1956 should remind us, new owners who have the backing of rival great powers who also eye a foothold in the area, and who pretend to object to empire, may turn out to be bad sharers, and could cancel (or not renew) the agreement. Even short of the catastrophic outcome of direct expulsion — after all, it would be very hard for even a China-backed Mauritius to expel the US military at anything close to their current relative power relationships — the US and UK strategic position on Diego Garcia could still be made much worse if the owner of the rest of the archipelago chose to make it so, either for interest or for profit.

All of this would be bad enough, were it merely inexpensive. However you do the sums, though, the terms of the lease are exorbitant. Even pricing in U.S. rents for the base and the spreading of transfers over time, this is at least billions that Britain forgoes at the very time the government pleads shortage and urges citizens patriotically to take the economic pain. Nine billion pounds, or something around that ballpark, is roughly equivalent to the total bill of Britain’s war in Iraq, another one of National Security Advisor and New Machiavelli Jonathan Powell’s historic projects. The Mauritian prime minister’s claims that that reported figure will be “doubled” and front-loaded to accommodate future inflation — figures that HM Government moved to deny, while still refusing to share any specific numbers with their own citizens — has spurred further incredulity at the price-tag, as well as reflecting the spirit in which Port Louis has negotiated (i.e. embarrassing their UK counterparts for domestic-political effect).

Might the deal, though, have a diplomatic payoff, helping tilt India onto Britain’s side internationally, given Delhi’s anti-colonial posture? Could it at least nullify an accusation and a headache for the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office? Might it remove an intolerable thorn that prevents the region’s states swinging decisively behind US/UK efforts to contain China and grow their Indo-Pacific commerce? Doubtful. India is not a moralist project that makes policy according to a Dow Jones index of postcolonial do-gooding. It is run by unsentimental Hindu supremacists who press on with a settler-colonial campaign in Kashmir, conduct extrajudicial assassinations abroad from Pakistan to Canada, commit human rights violations internally against Muslims, and happily bargain with Russia even while it straightforwardly occupies and pillages Ukraine. Do you still think the deal will reliably put Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his heirs — or other similarly ruthless states — in Britain’s column in situations where their interests otherwise diverge? If so, we have islands to sell you.

As for the claim that the deal takes a troublesome issue off the table, how is that faring? If anything, the issue is now larger and more consuming. No matter how often Starmer insists that people are misinformed or not fully briefed, it will require explaining, and in politics if you are explaining you are failing. Chagos could become a catch-cry, connecting a sell-out overseas to the struggles of the working poor, and thus damage the government’s ability to conduct policy anywhere. Every time Starmer claims austerity demands sacrifice, his opponents will make merry with Chagos. The issue will move from the peripheries of public life to the centre.

The deal may also have reputational effects, but not the benign ones that the FCDO claims. Better to be suspected abroad of flouting international law in one instance than proving yourself to be an imprudent state, oblivious to the actual dispossessed, and yet ripe for the fleecing. Other countries, including those of the so-called Global South, will know a self-inflicted extortion when they see one, and won’t think twice about opportunities to exact tribute from a government anxious to look virtuous. And why not? How do we expect an increasingly assertive, unapologetically coercive United States to react to a British broker that so easily sells the farm that it needs for its base, meanwhile, or rather gives the farm away to rent it back on such unfavourable terms?

If this version of progressive realism fails, there is a better, more prudent form to be rediscovered

The Chagos deal is a stress test for progressive realism in foreign policy — at least on its recent articulation — because it brings together the various parts of that doctrine: a regard for international law and humanitarian progress married to a muscular sense of the national interest and the limits of power, a fusion of Realpolitik with Moralpolitik. This version of progressive realism, as some of us warned, was always prone to the legalism spearheaded by the likes of international lawyer Philippe Sands, who somehow believe that a planet without a sovereign can still be tamed by international law. Bluntly, the doctrine fails hands down. The botched, self-harming, and wasteful deal betrays every cause it is supposed to serve: anticolonial principle, securing a strategic foothold, and reducing the load of policy problems.

If this version of progressive realism fails, there is a better, more prudent form to be rediscovered — and contemporary strategic circumstances demand that the current UK government should do so, quickly. There was a British progressive realism that was not as distorted by legalism, not as fixated on pleasing a global audience, and less prone to setting rhetorical and idealistic standards it was bound to flunk. It still strived to build a more egalitarian society for its flock at home, while seeing with clear eyes the ways of the world around it, containing wolves that care little for principle. It was the democratic socialism of the Attlee government. Navigating foreign affairs is harder and more brutal than reading international documents and following technical briefings. For whatever else remains to be litigated and disputed, one thing is now clear. You cannot run foreign policy Philippe Sands’ way.

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This article (Has the Chagos Islands deal killed progressive realism?) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author David Blagden and Patrick Porter

Featured image: Getty Images 

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