We are pleased to republish below a series of three articles by Kenny Coyle analysing the new Labour government’s foreign policy, in particular the “progressive realism” espoused by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

This putatively “clear-eyed approach to international relations” shares a great deal with the pro-Washington, pro-NATO, hawkish foreign policy of recent Conservative governments. Kenny notes that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to commit 2.5 percent of GDP to military spending, and Lammy’s critique of his Tory predecessor at the Foreign Office is largely focused on the need for a more aggressive stance against China, Russia and Syria.

Lammy praises Ernest Bevin, Labour foreign secretary from 1945 to 1951, for “bringing us the NATO alliance that is still the bedrock of our security” and “fighting for a nuclear bomb as he put it with the Union Jack on top”. Meanwhile, Lammy’s most coherent policy in relation to the Global South is to develop deeper relations with India. As Kenny points out, “clearly this is part of Western efforts to woo India away from its close relations with Russia and to maintain a level of mistrust between Delhi and Beijing”.

Labour is proposing to intensify Britain’s involvement in the U.S.-led campaign of China encirclement. Lammy makes clear his support for the AUKUS nuclear pact, demanding that it be considered “as a floor, not a ceiling” for the UK’s military posture in the Pacific. He also calls for deepening Britain’s military coordination with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, with the obvious aim of contributing to the U.S.’s island chain strategy against China.

Meanwhile there seem to be shifts occurring in Labour’s position with regard to Taiwan Province, including the establishment of Labour Friends of Taiwan in March 2023 and a recent Labour Party delegation to the island led by Lord Leong. Kenny writes: “The danger is that a current or future British government will abandon [its] One China positions and lean toward the ‘One China, One Taiwan’ policy that is gaining ground in Washington. The emergence of a generously funded Taiwan lobby within the Labour Party and at an all-party level needs to be further exposed.”

The series concludes:

Whoever enters the White House, the cosmetic modifications on offer from Starmer and Lammy commit Britain to a dangerous path in the Asia-Pacific, particularly the under-the-radar military agreements with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The left needs to ensure that the arguments against ‘progressive realism’ reach deep into the labour and peace movements.

The articles were originally published in the Morning Star in August 2024.

A new window on the world?

The guiding philosophy of Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign policy has been described by Foreign Secretary David Lammy as “a clear-eyed approach to international relations: progressive realism.”

In a series of speeches, interviews, articles and pamphlets over the past year or so, Lammy has elaborated this apparently innovative outlook in British foreign policy.

The most substantial of these were an article for the influential U.S. journal Foreign Affairs in May, The Case for Progressive Realism, Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course later republished in The Guardian, and a 2023 pamphlet for the Fabian Society, Britain Reconnected A Foreign Policy for Security and Prosperity at Home.

“Progressive Realism” is designed to meet the challenge of a whole range of global issues, including, AI, climate change, international economic supply-chains and development.

However, since Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to commit 2.5 per cent of GDP to military spending and to conduct a thorough security and defence review, it’s essential to analyse the military and diplomatic aspects of what this new Labour government stands for on the international scene.

Lammy’s two oft-mentioned influences are interesting; former Labour foreign secretaries Ernest Bevin—a dyed-in-the-wool cold warrior—and Robin Cook, who resigned as leader of the House of Commons over New Labour’s illegal war in Iraq.

Lammy says that Labour in government must think and act “in the spirit of Bevin, it must be realistic about the state of the world and the country’s role in it. Yet, like Cook, the country should adopt a progressive belief in its capacity to champion multilateral causes, build institutions, defend democracy, stand up for the rule of law, combat poverty and fight climate change.”

However, just as many of Starmer’s criticisms of previous Tory governments’ domestic policies focus on differences in detail rather than fundamentals, Lammy is in general agreement with the contours of previous Tory foreign policy thinking.

“Much of the analysis in the [Tory] government’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy was sound,” he writes.

When he did criticise the review on some details, for example not mentioning Taiwan or failing to predict the Russian-Ukraine war, the implication was that the Tories were too soft or too distracted to pay enough attention to these emerging threats.

Labour and multipolarity

Nonetheless Lammy stresses several new features of the world situation, often explicitly contrasting them with the Blairite era and claiming, selectively and with little substance, that today’s Labour right-wing leadership has learned the lessons from some of the notable debacles of Labour governments from 1997 to 2010.

In his Fabian pamphlet, Lammy conceded:

We no longer live in a unipolar world defined by the UK’s most important bilateral ally the United States. Instead, the world has become multipolar.

Lammy argues that the multipolar world is not due simply to China’s rise, although he notes that when Tony Blair entered No 10 in 1997, Britain’s GDP was twice that of China while today Chinese GDP is more than five times that of the UK. Lammy additionally mentions the greater autonomy and “increased leverage” of what he calls “middle powers.”

“Geo-political competition” is a recurring phrase, although Lammy presents this largely as a binary China-U.S. contest.

Somewhat strangely, Lammy does not refer to the Brics+ grouping in either the Fabian pamphlet or the Foreign Affairs piece, although the anxiety over the gradual realignment of these middle powers and the global South behind a growing China is evident.

“China is not the world’s only rising power,” Lammy writes.

A broadening group of states—including Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—have claimed seats at the table. They and others have the power to shape their regional environments, and they ignore the European Union, Britain and the U.S. ever more frequently.In the 20th century, some of these states aligned with rival superpower-led blocs. But today, to maximise their autonomy, they strike deals with all the great powers.

Although tentatively distancing “progressive realism” from the Blairite “liberal interventionism,” this approach seems to be based on the obvious results of the failures and defeats of Western policies rather than questioning the interests and delusions that fuelled the foreign policy crises of New Labour in the first place.

Specifically, the Western-led wars of the 21st century are seen as disastrous not because they were immoral, unjust, illegal or examples of imperialist arrogance but because they failed to achieve their desired outcomes and alienated formerly dependable allies.

Lammy is particularly concerned that many countries no longer automatically fall in line with Washington’s foreign policy. Lammy laments:

Their noted indifference to many U.S. pleas is partly the result of the chaotic Western military interventions during the first decades of this century. The failures of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya undermined the idea that liberal interventionism was, as Blair remarked in 1999, ‘a more subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose.’ Instead, it came to be seen as a recipe for disorder.

Chaos and disorder, not carnage and death, are the outcomes to be deplored. In fact, these past military debacles had the effect, in Lammy’s view, of inhibiting other, presumably more orderly, interventions elsewhere.

Lammy is more hawkish than both the Obama and Biden administrations, chiding them for failing to act more decisively inside Syria and over Ukraine.

“A British government that adheres to progressive realism will not repeat these errors,” Lammy argues.

That said, the last decade has made it clear that inaction has high costs, too. The fact that the U.S. did not police its redline against the use of chemical weapons in Syria not only entrenched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s monstrous regime; it also emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Noticeably, Lammy ignores New Labour’s prosecution of the 1999 NATO war against Yugoslavia, a war on European soil that has been conveniently forgotten—at least in the West.

However, look through the major speeches by Russian leader Vladimir Putin justifying his invasion of Ukraine and count how many times he refers to the NATO war over Kosovo both as an example of NATO’s early “out-of-theatre” operations and its push to the east, and as an example of Western hypocrisy over separatism and sovereignty.

China has certainly not forgotten nor forgiven the NATO bombing of its Belgrade embassy. Perhaps Robin Cook’s involvement in that war is a factor in Lammy’s memory lapse.

He’s certainly not alone. This collective amnesia also extends to Richard Thornton, author of Progressive Realist Peacemaking: A New Strategic Priority for UK Foreign Policy, published by the right-wing think tank Labour Together.

In a section ironically entitled Lessons of History, Thornton claimed:

In 1995, the Dayton Agreement brought the bloody wars in Yugoslavia to an end.

Thornton’s memory-wipe goes back further. Britain’s actual historical role over the past few centuries is scrubbed clean as is the record of previous Labour governments.

He says: “The UK’s security services and military are models of respect for human rights and the rule of law,” and “Britain’s hard-won reputation for competence, fair play and the rule of law has taken a severe hit over the last decade.”

Thornton even talks of a “decade of spectacularly costly failures in state-building” as if the Blair and Brown governments were wholly innocent and these disasters can be laid solely at the feet of the past 10 years or so of Tory rule.

NATO, nukes and a new cold war

August 3 (Morning Star)—David Lammy praises Ernest Bevin for his key role in the early years of the cold war.

He says that Bevin: “brought us the NATO alliance that is still the bedrock of our security and fought for a nuclear bomb as he put it with the Union Jack on top. A deterrent that remains a key element of Britain’s foreign and security policy today.”

The reality, of course, is that Britain’s “independent” nuclear forces are almost entirely dependent on the Stars and Stripes rather than the “Butcher’s Apron,” and NATO’s military command structure, rather than its toothless political one, has been under continued U.S. control since 1949.

Courting India

Lammy makes a particular point of improving relations with Narendra Modi’s India, clearly this is part of Western efforts to woo India away from its close relations with Russia and to maintain a level of mistrust between Delhi and Beijing.

He writes:

To deliver prosperity at home, Britain must re-establish itself as a trusted and reliable partner—particularly with allies. That is why Labour will seek to improve the country’s trade and investment relationship with Europe, as well as with India and the United States.

To sweeten the relationship, there is the promise that Labour will speedily conclude a Free Trade Agreement with India, after 14 rounds of negotiation under the Tories failed to reach a conclusion.

Lammy says:

India, with which the United Kingdom is intimately connected through countless family ties, is set to be the world’s third-largest economy by 2030. But the British [Tory] government has still failed to deliver a long-promised trade deal with New Delhi.

Militarizing the ‘Indo-Pacific’

Labour commits itself to pushing ahead with the dangerous Aukus alliance, headed by the United States, to build nuclear-powered submarines designed to tie Australia further into a base for U.S. influence in the southern Pacific.

Lammy says:

Realism also means recognizing that the Indo-Pacific will be fundamental to global prosperity and security in the decades ahead, so the United Kingdom must strengthen its engagement with that region, as well. The country made a good start by helping establish Aukus, a nuclear submarine and technology pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

But Britain’s military adventures won’t end there, says Lammy:

… the British government should treat the co-operation of Aukus as a floor, not a ceiling. It must also build up other regional relationships, including by deepening its security partnerships with Japan and South Korea.

The extension of the U.S.-led network of military alliances to include Japan (in violation of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution) and South Korea is clearly directed at China.

In 2023, Britain became the first European country to sign a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan, the most important military treaty between Britain and Japan since 1902. The agreement allows Britain and Japan to deploy armed forces in one another’s countries.

Also in 2023, Britain and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) agreed the Downing Street Accord, which among other areas of military co-operation proposed to:

Conduct joint UK-ROK sanctions enforcement patrols against DPRK (North Korea), to strengthen and support UNSC resolutions to limit funding to DPRK’s ballistic missile and nuclear programmes.

This is a perilous path. The Korean peninsula is a potential flashpoint, with U.S. bases in South Korea on the one hand balanced against a Mutual Defence Treaty between the DPRK and China on the other. The main maritime zones are the Yellow Sea, which borders the Korean peninsula and the People’s Republic of China, and the East China Sea, which is surrounded by mainland China, the Korean peninsula, the island of Taiwan and Japan.

As in the South China Sea, there are also competing maritime and territorial claims that, by error or design, could erupt into open conflict.

The Royal Navy has allocated two ships, HMS Spey and HMS Tamar, “to a five-year mission to the Asia-Pacific in support of the UK interests in the region, as well as supporting our friends and allies. Together the vessels mark the first permanent Royal Navy presence in the region since Hong Kong was returned to China a quarter of a century ago,” according to the British MoD.

This takes us to yet another potential hotspot, the Philippines, which is pursuing an aggressively pro-Washington turn against China over disputed territories in the South China Sea.

In January, the Philippines Department of National Defence and Britain’s Ministry of Defence signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on military co-operation for a five-year period. The Philippines News Agency quoted from a British embassy statement:

The UK/Philippines MOU on Defence Co-operation is the cornerstone of our defence relationship.

It outlines the intent of our defence engagement for the next five years across a range of areas including military exercises, training and modernisation efforts. We can expect this engagement to focus on the maritime domain, Exclusive Economic Zone, hydrography and UK participation in future military exercises.

In February this year, HMS Spey visited Manila where the British ambassador Laure Beaufils said:

The third visit of a Royal Navy ship to the Philippines in the past 18 months is a clear demonstration of our strengthening defence relationship. We deeply value co-operation and growing interoperability with the Philippines on maritime issues. This supports security and our shared commitment to upholding the rules-based international system, as well as of trade and environmental protection.

The commanding officer of HMS Spey, Commander Paul Caddy, added:

It is excellent to visit Manila and improve our ability to work together with colleagues from the Philippine Navy and Philippine coastguard. This is part of an increasing level of engagement.

With Spey recently taking part in the multinational exercise SAMA SAMA for the second time, it is clear that the relationship is only going to grow. The UK and Philippines firmly believe in, and promote the rules-based international system; we share an interest in upholding international maritime law and supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific.

SAMA SAMA (which means “Together” in Tagalog) is a regular military exercise organised by the Filipino and U.S. navies. In its October 2023 edition, Japan, Canada and Britain participated.

Another feature of the February mission was selling weapons. The Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has committed the poverty-ridden country to a decade-long $35 billion “Re-Horizon 3” programme to re-equip its armed forces.

The British mission included representation from the UK Defence and Security Exports organization,

Showcasing the wares of 13 premier UK companies in the defence sector, including BAE Systems, Thales and Leonardo.

Britain is also a founding member of the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) including the former British colonies of Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. During a meeting in Singapore in May, the five agreed “to stage more complex military drills in the region this year involving drones, fifth-generation fighter planes and surveillance aircraft.”

“British representative Paul Wyatt, director-general for security policy, said Britain planned sending an aircraft carrier to the region in 2025 and had discussed how the tour might fit with the FPDA’s exercise programme,” according to Reuters.

A dangerous path in the Asia-Pacific: China branded a ‘systemic challenge’

August 5 (Morning Star)—Having made clear Labour’s voluntary enlistment in a new round of militarisation openly directed against China, David Lammy talks of its importance to the British economy and the need to co-operate with China to meet “global threats.” Lammy believes this is a “more consistent” approach than previous Tory policy toward China.

Lammy writes:

The United Kingdom’s approach to the country has oscillated wildly over the past 14 years. Former prime minister David Cameron sought to create what he called a ‘golden era’ of engagement with Beijing in 2015, which swung to overt hostility when Liz Truss became prime minister in September 2022. British policy has shifted again under prime minister Rishi Sunak, who made Cameron his foreign secretary in late 2023, into confused ambiguity.

The United Kingdom must instead adopt a more consistent strategy, one that simultaneously challenges, competes against, and co-operates with China as appropriate. Such an approach would recognise that Beijing poses a systemic challenge for British interests and that the Chinese Communist Party poses real security threats. But it would also recognise China’s importance to the British economy. It would accept that no grouping of states can address the global threats of the climate crisis, pandemics, and artificial intelligence unless it co-operates with Beijing. There is a crucial difference between “de-risking” and decoupling, and it is in everyone’s interest that China’s relationship with the West endure and evolve.

Taiwan

While Lammy gives no sign of a change in the formal position of the British government that Taiwan is part of China, behind the scenes shifts are occurring.

In April a Labour Party delegation led by Lord Leong visited Taiwan and met outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, and other officials including Taipei’s foreign minister and the speaker of the Taiwanese parliament.

According to the parliamentary register of members’ interests, all flights and accommodation costs were met by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mofa), Republic of China (Taiwan).

According to the Taiwanese Mofa press statement, Tsai spoke to the delegation as follows:

I extend a very warm welcome to The [sic] Lord Leong CBE, co-chair of Labour Friends of Taiwan and shadow spokesperson for business and trade, as he leads this parliamentary delegation from the Labour Party to Taiwan. I believe this visit will enhance mutual understanding between Taiwan and the UK and promote even closer co-operation going forward.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the delegation for establishing Labour Friends of Taiwan in March 2023. This helps strengthen UK support for Taiwan and continues to boost Taiwan-UK parliamentary exchanges.”

Lord Leong’s response is also quoted by the Mofa: “Lord Leong then delivered remarks, saying he brings greetings from the UK Labour Party. He said he is proud to address such an illustrious group of people on behalf of his delegation, especially as the Labour Party’s first ever east Asian member of the House of Lords.

Lord Leong stated that it has been equally fascinating and inspiring to witness the energy, drive and economic success that has been delivered in the past eight years under the Democratic Progressive Party and President Tsai’s leadership. He pointed out that President Tsai has shown that political stability encourages long-term strategic thinking and investment, which is vital for economic success in a competitive and rapidly changing global climate, and that many in the Labour Party are looking at this very closely…

Lord Leong closed by wishing Taiwan every success under President-elect Lai Ching-te, and expressed hope that he and his delegation may visit again as government ministers, rather than as shadow ministers, to continue to strengthen commercial, educational, and cultural ties between Taiwan and the UK as we learn from one another.

Also in attendance at the meeting were House of Lords Members Lord Grantchester and [former Labour general secretary] Lord McNicol, and House of Commons Members Sharon Hodgson, Diana Johnson, Navendu Mishra and Andrew Western. The delegation was accompanied to the Presidential Office by British Office Taipei Representative John Dennis [effectively the most senior UK diplomat in Taiwan].”

If quoted correctly, Leong may be speaking out of turn regarding future ministerial visits, which would imply de facto government-government contacts. Leong did go on to say that he “acknowledges China’s position as far as Taiwan is concerned.” This is evasive language common among U.S. State Department officials.

However, the established British position since 1972 has been that:

the government of the United Kingdom acknowledge the position of the Chinese government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China. Both the government of the People’s Republic of China and Taipei maintain that Taiwan is a part of China. We held the view both at Cairo and at Potsdam that Taiwan should be restored to China. That view has not changed. We think that the Taiwan question is China’s internal affair to be settled by the Chinese people themselves.

The danger is that a current or future British government will abandon these “One China” positions and lean toward the “One China, One Taiwan” policy that is gaining ground in Washington. The emergence of a generously funded Taiwan lobby within the Labour Party and at an all-party level needs to be further exposed.

Hong Kong

Labour’s position on China generally and Hong Kong in particular has been to try to outflank the Tories from the right. China is alleged to be interfering in British politics, which is unacceptable, while the Tories were accused of weakening “British influence” over the former colony.

The Tories were charged with failing to properly protect British “national security interests,” while China is condemned for protecting its own security, by extending its national security legislation to cover the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In a parliamentary question on March 20 2024, Lammy asked a proxy question to his opposite number Lord Cameron:

And in his constant absence, can I ask the minister whether the Foreign Secretary accepts that his golden era with China was a strategic mistake… which undermined British influence over Hong Kong, set us on a rodeo of inconsistency towards China, and failed to stand up for the UK’s national security interests. And whether we can really expect him to deliver the strong, clear-eyed and consistent approach that is needed?

Conclusion

Labour’s “progressive realism” highlights that while the world has indeed changed dramatically, Labour’s pro-Washington and pro-NATO policies have not. It is currently unclear how the Labour leadership would navigate a possible second Trump presidency.

This could expose Keir Starmer’s and Lammy’s instinctive dependence on guidance from Washington to an administration whose erratic policies on Korea, Taiwan and NATO can only be guessed at for now.

Whoever enters the White House, the cosmetic modifications on offer from Starmer and Lammy commit Britain to a dangerous path in the Asia-Pacific, particularly the under-the-radar military agreements with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The left needs to ensure that the arguments against “progressive realism” reach deep into the labour and peace movements.