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Saturday, Sep 11, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Punching above its weight?

By Hasan Suroor

More than 50 years after it lost the empire, Britain appears desperate to find a new role for itself.

SOME YEARS ago, a certain Indian Prime Minister caused a furore when he called Britain a "third-rate power," prompting murmurs of disapproval in polite circles. But since then others, including critics at home, have questioned what they see as Britain's increasing tendency to punch above its weight in international affairs.

Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, who wants to go down in history as a latter-day Churchill, British intervention abroad in military terms alone has increased significantly whether it is on humanitarian grounds as in Kosovo and Bosnia or to fight terrorism as in Afghanistan or simply naked aggression as in Iraq. No other British Prime Minister in modern times has been involved in as many wars as Mr. Blair has been within a span of just seven years. There is even a best-selling book on "Blair's wars."

Britain's vaulting ambition to influence world events has also been in evidence on the diplomatic front, and, today, there is hardly any part of the globe where, overtly or covertly, it is not "engaged." It is said to have played a crucial role in bringing Libya out of the cold and, currently, its diplomatic energies are directed at dissuading Iran and North Korea from pursuing their nuclear ambitions.

On the Palestinian issue, Britain claims credit for getting America to accept the two-state formula, besides trying hard to give a push to the peace process. In Zimbabwe it is engaged in "ridding" the country of President Robert Mugabe's "undemocratic" regime; and in Sudan it is supplementing the efforts of the European Union and the United Nations to bring the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to an end.

The Indian subcontinent, of course, has always been a familiar playground for British diplomacy and, given a chance, Britain would love to play a "role" over Kashmir, though Indian sensitivities have cramped its style. Indeed, Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, made no secret of Britain's desire to play the mediator but was duly snubbed by New Delhi. At the height of the India-Pakistan tensions two years ago, apart from America, Britain was the only other Western power that made it its business to broker peace between the two countries.

For anyone sitting in London, it is impossible to miss the sense that more than 50 years after it lost the empire, Britain is desperate to find a new role for itself. The entire Iraq saga and the constant talk of Britain acting as a "bridge" between Europe and America are seen as part of a "New Britain" project aimed at putting Britain back on the world stage. As the once- dominant colonial power in Asia, Africa and the "Middle East," Britain believes it understands these regions and the sensitivities of their people and leaders better than America does. It also believes it has an advantage over other former European colonial powers because the decolonisation process in its own colonies was relatively less messy, and it still maintains close relations with many of them, including India. All this — the logic goes — gives Britain a leverage in many parts of the globe, which entitles it to play a bigger role in international affairs.

In the build-up to the Iraq invasion, Mr. Blair took it upon himself to "soften" the Muslim states, and personally visited the region to drum up support for the U.S.-British plans for a regime change in Baghdad but was met with the sort of response you get when the audience knows that it is not listening to a friend it once knew but to his master's voice. He was seen as the U.S. President George W. Bush's envoy and treated as such — with polite contempt. In Syria, the country's young President gave him a public roasting at a press conference, which made for embarrassing headlines back home.

To some extent, it is true that Britain has been able to maintain links with its former colonies in a way that other European countries have not and, at a certain level, London still has a kind of appeal for many of those it once subjugated, that Paris, Lisbon or Madrid do not. But whether it necessarily translates into political influence is debatable because having goodwill for a country (because of its great institutions or traditions) is not the same thing as sharing its worldview, especially, if it is seen to be at odds with the very factors that generated the goodwill in the first place.

At one level, Britain's belief in its political clout in the erstwhile "raj" countries assumes a static world and misses the point that these countries are no longer client states. There is a psychological barrier at many levels of British society to face up to the new realities, and accept the fact that these are now independent countries, with their own political systems and national interests which do not always coincide with what Britain sees as its national interest. To put it crudely, like any master who believes that he can still call his former slaves to attention, Britain has a blind spot when it comes to relating to its former colonies on an equal footing.

"Britain has a long history of imperial arrogance and it has deepened under Blair," says Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, an Indian academic and analyst of India-U.K. relations pointing out that British assumptions of its standing in the world bear no resemblance to how it is perceived by others.

Even the Americans, for all the talk of a "special relationship," do not take Britain as seriously as Mr. Blair assumes they do — and Washington has demonstrated this time and again. When it comes to its own national interests, America does what it thinks is best irrespective of how it would affect Britain — as, for instance, when it controversially decided to hike import tariffs on steel to protect its own domestic steel industry. It went ahead despite protests from Britain and knowing full well that the move could kill whatever remained of the British steel industry. America was forced to climb down only after major European countries rose up against it and threatened a boycott of American goods.

On political issues, too, America has shown little consideration for British sensitivities. On the Palestinian crisis, despite Mr. Blair's persistent efforts and genuine desire for more even-handedness the Americans have done pretty much their own thing while paying lip-service to the British position. On Iraq, Washington ignored Britain's plea that a military intervention without a U.N. mandate was not a good idea, and the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, made clear that America was happy to go it alone if Britain did not want to join. Within hours, an embarrassed London fell in line.

Elsewhere around the world, it is being asked whether Britain is even entitled to continue as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council while other — more populous and potentially important — regional powers are not on it. "There are countries which are seriously asking how a tiny island with little economic or political clout sits on the Security Council while countries like Germany and India are kept out," says a former U.N. diplomat.

Britain's ambition to play a bigger role in world affairs sits oddly with its rather modest economic status. Although, apparently, it is the world's fourth richest country, Britain's industrial base has shrunk to the point that the entire edifice now stands only on the services industry and the financial sector. Its once-strong manufacturing sector, which gave it the economic muscle to become a major colonial power, has all but disappeared and these days it is almost impossible to find anything worthwhile that is "Made in England."

A country widely seen to be living in an economic "bubble" is hardly likely to inspire confidence as a political power, even if it once commanded an empire. It was Mr. Blair's old friend, Bill Clinton, the former U.S. President, who famously said: "It's the economy, stupid." For a nation of famous shopkeepers it should not be too difficult to get the point.

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