If Gordon Brown becomes the next prime minister, what would this mean for Britain's foreign policy? Over nine years as chancellor, he has rarely spoken out on foreign affairs. And despite recent speeches on Britishness, national security and climate change, it is far from clear what Brown really thinks about the wider global policy agenda.
A qualified exception to this is Africa. We know that Brown is committed to tackling poverty on the continent, and has backed this commitment with significant extra money. Even on Africa, however, there is a lot that we don't know. Brown is comfortable talking about aid, debt relief and trade, but what is his agenda for dealing with autocratic governments and failing states? What would Brown do differently about Darfur or the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Brown will want to act in these cases, and be seen to act, but he may be more hesitant than Blair about the costs and complexities of intervention.
The chastening experience of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to shape Brown's attitude towards Iran. Here it is possible to imagine him pursuing a somewhat different approach. While Blair has refused to rule out military action, it is almost inconceivable that a Brown government would support such action—not least because of his greater sensitivity to the economic implications. Indeed, Brown might draw on his economic experience to make the international case for more carrot and less stick in dealing with Iran.
The other issue in the middle east where Brown would need to develop fresh thinking is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last year Brown asked his closest confidant, Ed Balls MP, to draft a short report for the treasury on the economic aspects of peace in the middle east, linked to the British chairmanship of the G7 finance ministers. Although it pre-dates the election of Hamas, the report is a useful starting point for a Brown government. It highlights the extent to which Israel's multiple restrictions on movement and access are damaging Palestinian economic development. A critical test for Brown would be the stance he takes on Israel's illegal settlements and the separation barrier in the occupied territories—given the obstacle that these represent to a two-state solution.
There is also scope for Brown to develop a new stance on tackling terrorism. Immediately after 9/11 he talked about the need to address the underlying causes of conflict and extremism. But he said very little about these issues in his recent national security speech at the Royal United Services Institute, and he appears to take an identical line to Blair on the balance between human rights and anti-terrorism legislation.
All of this has implications for British policy towards the US. Brown is an admirer of many aspects of US society and a regular visitor there. And there is nothing in his history to suggest a radical shift in the terms of the Anglo-American relationship. But at the margin, he would probably want to distance himself from aspects of Bush's foreign policy—Guantánamo, the practice of extraordinary rendition and US hostility towards the UN. Early on, we should expect small but symbolic statements on these sorts of issues, although the relationship would become closer again if a Democrat becomes president in 2008.
Brown has been active in the debate on reforming global financial institutions. It would be a natural extension for his foreign policy to address broader reforms to the structures of multilateral governance, including the UN and the G8. Brown is alive to the economic challenge posed by China and India, but there are huge political and strategic dimensions to this. For example, would Brown support these two states becoming part of a new international grouping that replaces the G8, or India's permanent membership of the UN security council?
If Brown wants to tweak the nature of the US relationship and press for stronger multilateral governance, what about Europe? As chancellor, he has been an outspoken critic of the EU. He views the dominant European economic model as sclerotic and he finds much of the EU's institutional bureaucracy ponderous and ineffective. But Brown might yet surprise us on Europe. To push the cause of effective multilateralism, he would need to act in a more collegiate way himself. On many of the issues where he would want to develop new thinking—UN reform, non-proliferation, climate change, Iran, the middle east peace process—he needs European allies. And the consensus position in Europe on these questions may be closer to Brown's thinking than the views coming from Washington, particularly while Bush remains president. Brown's recent meeting with Angela Merkel may be a sign of things to come: a pragmatic attempt to forge new alliances in Europe to help secure Britain's diplomatic as well as economic objectives.
Brown's foreign policy would not be markedly different from Blair's. But there is scope for new accents. Brown's thinking on these questions is still developing, and will do so rapidly in office. But as a rough checklist, a Brown foreign policy is likely to be slightly less pro-American, more hesitant about the deployment of British troops overseas, more explicitly multilateralist and more engaged with the global justice agenda than that of the current occupant of No 10.
