Statecraft. Margaret Thatcher
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For as long as there have been states, there has been discussion of statecraft or statesmanship.* The emphasis has changed over the centuries, as ideas of the state itself have changed – from the Greek city-state (or polis) with its narrow (and naturally all-male) citizenship; to the vastness of the Roman Empire with its enthronement of law; to the idealised, if not always idealistic, rulers of medieval Christendom; to the rumbustious politics of Renaissance Italy, home to Machiavelli’s Prince; to the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ages of Richelieu and Frederick the Great; to the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleon, the clashing European empires, and the competing nationalisms of the nineteenth century; and to the democratic concepts and the welfare state of the twentieth century. To plot the course of statecraft over so long a period would require skills that I, for one, do not possess.† Yet just the sense of so much history lying behind the tasks and goals of statesmen today is sobering and provides perspective.
The early twenty-first century also has its distinctive features that govern the nature of statecraft now. These can conveniently, if not altogether satisfactorily, be summed up by the expression ‘globalism’. In the course of the rest of this book I shall examine, test and explore the realities behind that term in its application to strategy, international interventions, justice and economics. And I shall do this for different countries and continents.
I must start, though, with the state itself. If you were to heed some commentators you would believe that globalisation spells the end of the state as we have known it over the centuries. But they are wrong: it does not. What it actually does is to prevent – in some degree – the state from doing things which it should never have been doing in the first place. And that is something rather different.
A world of mobile capital, of international integration of markets, of instant communication, of information available to all at the click of a mouse, and of (fairly) open borders, is certainly a long way from that world favoured by statists, of whatever political colour, in the past. It is nowadays, as a result, more difficult for governments to misrule their peoples and mismanage their resources without quickly running into problems. Unfortunately, though, it is still not impossible. Many African governments get away with kleptocracy. Several Asian governments get away with disrespect for fundamental human rights. Most European governments get away with high taxation and over-regulation. Bad policies inflict damage on those who practise them, as well as those on whose behalf they are practised, but bad government is still eminently possible.
That somewhat gloomy reflection should be balanced, though, by three much more positive ones. States retain their fundamental importance, first, because they alone set legal frameworks, and having the right legal framework is enormously important – probably more important than ever – for both society and the economy. Second, states are important because they help provide a sense of identity – particularly when their borders coincide with those of a nation – and the more ‘globalised’ the world becomes the more people want to hang on to such identity. Third, states alone retain a monopoly of legitimate coercive power – the power required to suppress crime at home and to maintain security against threats abroad.* This final coercive function of the state, although it may in practice involve a degree of contracting out to private enterprise, can and must never be yielded up. The state is something different from society; it is ultimately the servant not the master of individual human beings; its potential for inflicting horrors remains as great as ever. All these things are true. But we need states and we always will.†
It is on the state’s role in the maintenance of international security that I concentrate in this book. This, in itself – at least until the events of Tuesday, 11 September 2001 – was slightly unfashionable. Today’s politicians, at least in the democracies, had become almost exclusively interested in domestic politics. Of course, in one sense that was understandable. In a democracy we first have to win the votes of the electorate before we strut the world stage – unless we are European Commissioners. As Disraeli once put it, a majority is the ‘best repartee’, and he might have added the ‘best basis for diplomacy’. But the fact remains that the great issues of war and peace which traditionally commanded the attention of statesmen down the ages should again command them today – and to a greater extent than they have in recent years. Riots, epidemics, financial crashes – all can be very frightening and disruptive. But war is still the most terrifying and destructive experience known to man.
Foreign and security policy, though, concerns much more than the two opposing poles of war and peace. It concerns the whole range of risks and opportunities which the far-sighted statesman must appreciate and evaluate in the conduct of his craft. Above all, foreign and security policy is about the use of power in order to achieve a state’s goals in its relations with other states. As a conservative, I have no squeamishness about stating this. I leave it to others to try to achieve the results they seek in international affairs without reference to power. They always fail. And their failures often lead to outcomes more damaging than pursuit of national interest through the normal means of the balance of power and resolute defence would ever have done. It is, indeed, a recurring theme in Western liberal democracies, this mixture of naïve idealism with a distaste for power – and we should be on our guard against it.*
One example. In 1910 Norman Angell, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote a celebrated book called The Great Illusion. In this he argued that because of global economic interdependence – particularly between the great powers – and because the real sources of wealth that lie in trade cannot ultimately be captured, warfare conducted for material advantage is always pointless. There is a small kernel of truth in this. Peace, not war, promotes commerce, and commerce is the driving force for prosperity – other things being equal. But in the real world other things are quite often not at all equal. Aggression may make perfect sense to a tyrant or a well-armed fanatic in certain circumstances. It may even appeal to a whole nation. Trade protectionism, which stops countries from having access to the commodities they need for their industries, may also lead political leaders to launch ‘rational’ wars. In any of these conditions there is precious little point in either victims or onlookers protesting that everyone would be better off without war. The only alternatives on offer are to fight, or to raise the white flag. Concerns for a safer world and attempts to secure it are admirable. But when, as in the case of Norman Angell, they lead a writer to believe, four years before the most terrible conflict the world has known, that ‘it is absolutely certain – and even the militarists … admit this – that the natural tendencies of the average man are setting more and more away from war’ – then something is badly wrong.†
It is sometimes suggested, or at least implied, that the only alternative to such dangerous high-mindedness as this in foreign policy is the total abandonment of moral standards. The thought behind Sir Henry Wotton’s well-known definition of a diplomat as ‘a good man sent abroad to lie for his country’ has been applied more widely.* Yet I am not one of those who believe that statecraft should concern power without principle. For a start, pure Realpolitik – that is, foreign policy based on calculations