Boris Johnson may go but even a moderate change in UK foreign policy?..Unlikely...

By Kailash Kutwaroo, Independent researcher

The British political landscape is again in something of a tumult.?Boris Johnson’s recent endorsement by his own Parliamentary MPs has been now followed now by two By elections defeats to the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties respectively, all against a profoundly dispiriting backdrop.?The country’s formidable problems include here but are not confined too; a cost-of-living crisis whether from the rising price of energy or other inflationary pressures; post economic Covid and Brexit readjustment; a resurgent Scottish question and the global crisis effected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the British State’s robust if not open-ended support for the latter.?The spectre of global economic recession also looms on the horizon.

It would be fair to say that whatever the quality of the current incumbent in Number 10 now these would be complex issues to resolve or forge some reasonable progress upon in the short term.?Nonetheless, Johnson’s position appears, despite his seeming bellicosity, precarious.?Yet let’s just suggest the possibility that the Prime Minister cannot survive how would this affect the trajectory of say core British foreign policy???....

In all the key areas not very much…! Firstly, if an internal coup was staged against Johnson, it would not lead to a replacement in the form of Dominic Rabb, Rishi Sunak or Sajid Khan (or the other Tory contenders) that would be anything other than fully supportive of the US ‘special relationship’, of Brexit withdrawal (including the likely termination of the Northern Ireland protocol) and NATO as the fulcrum of regional defence in Europe.

So, they would be no obvious changes here.?Yet if say the all-encompassing Ukraine conflict drags into its first year might that bring a change in government approach over this major international crisis? The answer again is a firm no.?If we just take the current British foreign secretary Liz Truss’s (who is also a contender for the Tory crown) special hostility to Russia whether it is urging fighting volunteers for the Ukraine war effort or making it clear that nothing less than a Moscow defeat would be acceptable as an outcome to the current conflict (parroting Johnson’s present line) are collectively unsuggestive of any real potential for a shift in UK strategic thinking either now or twelve months from now.?Palpably, there is no evidence that any other Tory incumbent favours any deviance from this stance either.

Moreover, even if the Russian forces had emerged victorious by that stage (which presently appears very likely) the UK government seems pledged to the ‘long haul’ of attrition.?This seems to be reflected in its unwavering aversion to Ukraine neutrality or ceding lands to the Russian State acquired post 23 February invasion (even in the Donbass region and its Russian speaking populations) with Truss even suggesting that includes the return of the Crimea, an area that was never part of the original Ukrainian State anyway but deep seated historical and anthropological knowledge of the issue is evidently not a barrier to current UK foreign policy making!

All of this is more easily rationalised if we grasp that a major current of Western foreign policy (indeed a long-held feature of Western Imperial power) including that of the British State is premised upon the notion of ‘credibility’.?By ‘standing up to Russia’, the Johnson administration and the British ruling establishment are also ‘standing up to China’ and ‘sending a message’ that the aggression of the Russian State will be faced down (hint; Chinese designs in Taiwan will also be thwarted). The Afghan Mission failure in 2021 has only reinforced not diminished the belief that 'global respect' needs to be restored.?Yet its entire premise is becoming brutally exposed as an empty doctrine against an enemy whose military competencies and global resources are considerable.

Nowhere is this more than evident in a dissection of UK strategy on Ukraine. The British policy of arms exports and covert support even when situated within the wider US-NATO and European Union largesse to the Zelensky government is progressively, (along with other facets of Western strategy) unravelling as it seems unable to alter the battlefield realities of ascendant Russian forces measured in terms of land conquests in the East or South of the country.?Moreover, these much-vaunted supplies are simply not arriving in the quantities or quality (long range artillery systems) that look like they could help reverse the Moscow gains at some later date or enough space to allow a re-quipping and retraining of Ukrainian forces to use them.?Sanctions, are also proving, as feared, a double-edged sword.?When coupled with the daily losses of Ukrainian manpower and its growing reliance on national guard and territorial forces to seal gaps in its perforating frontlines, there is not significant grounds for British let alone wider Western optimism for a Ukrainian ‘turning of the tide’.?In truth, the Russian forces are cutting and depleting their enemy down to size.

This may well change and there is already talk of the US supplying modern anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, thus the situation is still to some degree fluid.?Yet British thinking, like that of the West generally is basically incapacitated by its unwillingness to move beyond indirect assistance to undertake a direct conventional military commitment to the conflict which for obvious reasons (nuclear exchange) and less obvious, (it simply does not have the capabilities or size in its fighting forces) to undertake.?This is as disquietingly true of the NATO alliance as it is for the UK or even the US superpower individually.

If the alternative approach preferred by the British State (and its key Western ally, the US and regional allies like Poland) is to transform Ukraine via financial and material transfers into a long-term insurgency from which the Russian State will eventually, as in Afghanistan, implode upon thus paving the way to the demise of Putin himself, the acerbic commentator Anatol Lieven has warned of the repercussions of that approach.?The West’s contribution to the Soviet Union’s ‘defeat’ through arms, covert training of the Mujahedeen and financial support of various sorts left a legacy of a million dead, an uprooted State, as well as a vacant playground for global jihadism that it would exploit with consequences in time for the West and its own populations.?We must also recall the US and British efforts to build a National Afghan Army post 2002 had by 2021 comprehensively failed plus such ‘support’ for Ukraine might allow ultra nationalist militias to prosper regionally one day.?If this is the Johnson ‘vision’ which is inherited, it needs to be dropped or at least confronted though the political decision-making circles around both either US leader Joe Biden (Blinken/Austin) and the British Prime Minister seem sadly to have no notion of a backward gear or the required intellectual agility to revaluate present stances.

So, whether Johnson stays or goes the aim of British policy in Ukraine, appears to be to uphold Western ‘credibility’ and NATO (thus US dominance) of the continental space through enlargement against its Russian adversary, neither of which will be sacrificed by any refashioned Tory leadership.?Yet with the severe shortcomings evident in the British government’s approach (not just in Ukraine but in other areas) could a triumphant political opposition (exploiting an array of domestic issues) bring with it new perspectives into a contested external realm following a general election victory in 2023 or 2024?

Unlikely.?The British Labour party has firmly eschewed an alternative critique of Western power since its leader, Keir Starmer post Corbyn has made it clear whether its NATO membership, support for Israel and ongoing upward growth in military spending that he is returning Labour to its orthodox establishment positions much beloved of Tony Blair and the Parliamentary Labour Party, (less we forget that it was Labour Statesman Ernest Bevin who was a instrumental figure in the genesis of the NATO alliance itself in the late 1940s).?The party fell quickly into line over the British government’s support for Ukraine and did not even argue for the possibility of a peace plan or diplomatic pathways in conjunction with its condemnation of the Russian assault.?The Liberal Democrats have been similarly acquiescent. Elsewhere, possibly most disappointingly, the SNP rapid endorsement of the UK establishment narrative when only in 2012 it had discarded its previous opposition to NATO membership with not even a sniff to suggest by its leader Nicola Sturgeon that the former’s expansion might have played a central role in the crisis.?None of this augur well for a truly Independent Scottish foreign policy (or a new mindset in global affairs) following a successful Indyref 2 victory.

Johnson’s demise should not therefore be interpreted as the starting point of any elite rethink over the Ukraine crisis (less we also forget that the Integrated 2021 review made it clear that China and Russia were key national security threats) and indeed any new Tory leader may well beat the war drum harder and louder over the need to ‘crush’ Russia.?We should not be under illusion that key sections of the British establishment including the hysterical elements of the right-wing press (Con Coughlin’s calls in the Daily Telegraph just a few days ago calling for war between the UK and Russia stands out) do indeed seek the wholesale defeat of Putin.?The British hostility to Russia after all is not merely party political, but historic and cultural (possibly not helped by the Soviet State’s 1918 execution of the Romanovs and the UK's overlooked role between 1918-1920 in trying through expeditionary forces to terminate at its early stages, the Bolshevik’s rule and thus seek initially re-engagement against German forces on the Eastern Front with whom the former had struck a separate peace with in 1918 ending its involvement in the First World War). And yet it is the Russian State that has adroitly sowed both diplomatic and economic divisions among the Western powers as well as utilizing its own global levers in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas (and not only India and China) that has stymied the former’s efforts at ‘Isolation’ and which the British State has played the leading role in Europe.

The story is not entirely a gloomy one.?Any successor to Johnson will find that disentangling itself from the flawed 2020 Brexit deal (through say removing as Ann Widdecombe has suggested VAT from energy bills) may yield sizeable electoral dividends from those who voted to leave in 2016. They also be a more robust approach to the post Brexit future Johnson had originally advocated in terms of more creative trading ties with the Non European world including Latin America, a showdown over the NI Protocol and a desire to build out of the UK's not unimpressive record on the global battle against Climate Change and remain a key international influencer on this seminal issue...And yet on Ukraine the British ruling classes irrespective of its political orientation seem incapable of thinking in ways that might reject either militarism or confrontation with designated ‘national enemies’.?

Are there grounds for optimism??Yes, but it will originate from the same popular movements that stirred consciousness over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and which have been relatively slow to stir over the Russian invasion possibly because of the rightful outburst of European sympathy and solidarity for the Ukrainian populace. An increasingly tenuous economic backdrop may also refocus obligations on national needs not external ones. Yet as the wheels of Western policy start to wobble the case for peace, military disengagement, and non-violent settlement of such regional conflicts (as well as innovative thinking on new security structures in Europe) can start to force their way back onto the domestic and international agenda and to the much-needed attention of our political rulers both here and abroad.