Post-Brexit Dreams of Global Britain Won’t Come Cheap
Britain will need to make significant investments in its defense capabilities and foreign network
Theresa May last week set out her vision for Britain’s future trading relationship with the European Union. It was an overdue moment of clarity that may go some way toward unblocking stalled Brexit negotiations. But the U.K. Prime Minister has yet to provide any answer to a more fundamental question at the heart of Brexit: how does she see Britain’s future place in the world?
Brexiters insist that the decision to quit the EU was no act of isolationism or protectionism. They claim it was instead a vote for “global Britain” with “the freedom to make its own way in the world”. But what does global Britain mean in practice? And what will it do with this new-found freedom?
Of course, the U.K. is already a significant player on the global stage—and the British government wants it to stay that way. The U.K. is one of only two European countries with an independent nuclear deterrent and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council; it has one of Europe’s largest diplomatic networks; it is a leading NATO member; and it is the only major Western economy that spends both 2% of national output on defense and 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid.
Even so, doubts about the U.K.’s commitment to its global role were emerging even before the Brexit referendum. The U.K. has played little role in efforts to resolve the Ukraine crisis, leaving the task to France and Germany. It has also been a bystander in the Syrian crisis since 2013, when Parliament refused to back airstrikes against the Assad regime. The U.K.’s only major foreign-policy initiative in recent years was its ill-fated 2011 attack on Libya, a strategic disaster that left the country a failed state, allowing it to become a major transit route for migrants entering the EU.
Recent British inaction has been matched by a reluctance to invest. The Foreign Office budget has been slashed by half since 2010, with many embassies closed or downsized. The British army already has fewer than 78,000 full-time soldiers, the lowest in modern peacetime history. The Royal Navy surface fleet comprises just 19 ships, compared with 50 in 1990, none of which at one point in December were deployed outside British waters; the first of two new aircraft carriers won’t deploy until 2020 and even then won’t carry a full complement of aircraft until the mid-2020s. Now further military cuts are needed to fill a £20 billion ($27 billion) shortfall in the defense budget.
Meanwhile, the U.K. may already be paying a price for Brexit in terms of lost influence. As of last week, there is no longer a British judge at the International Court of Justice for the first time since the U.N. judicial body was established in 1946, after the British candidate lost out to an Indian judge in a vote at the U.N. General Assembly.
The U.K. was also defeated on another vote at the General Assembly last year in a longstanding dispute over the status of the Chagos Islands, which were detached from Mauritius three years before it became independent in 1968 to allow for the creation of a British military base. Worryingly for the U.K., several EU countries abstained rather than back Britain.
British officials believe that shortsighted political decisions contributed to these defeats. They note that 14 of the 17 African countries in which the U.K. no longer has any diplomatic representation voted against the British candidate at the ICJ. They also note that the latest escalation of the dispute with Mauritius came months after the U.K. scrapped its development program in the country. They fear that Brexit may deepen these strains: the Foreign Office is redeploying around 100 staff to Europe to meet the need for more intense bilateral contacts with EU governments, potentially further weakening British influence elsewhere.
How can the U.K. avoid further damage to its global standing? Its most urgent task is to find a new model for its relationship with the EU. In the aftermath of the referendum, Brexiters argued that the U.K. had a “security surplus” with the EU which could be used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations.
But today, there is wider acknowledgment that the EU has been a “multiplier” for British foreign policy. Prime Minister Theresa May made clear in a speech last month that she wants a new security partnership that will preserve as much as possible existing EU foreign- and security-policy cooperation—though finding new mechanisms to achieve this won’t be easy.
The U.K. has even signaled it may be open to participating in future EU defense-integration initiatives and a European defense fund, policies it had previously opposed.
But if “global Britain” is to be anything more than a slogan, the U.K. will face some tough decisions. Significant investment will be needed in its defense capabilities and foreign network to maintain global influence. Outside the EU, the U.K. will want to beef up its presence in other multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the U.N. It will also need to consider more strategic use its aid budget, which is currently spent in fewer than 40 out of 140 eligible countries. One way to boost its global profile would be to take on the leadership of international peacekeeping missions.
Brexiters may claim that Brexit wasn’t a retreat from the world—but can they persuade voters to stump up the cash to make their dream of global Britain a reality?