Towards a British Role in Foreign Affairs*

Abstract

IN politics as in scentific research, it often happens that many people are thinking on the same lines. There have been several indications, since I started cogitating about this lecture, that it is true of the subject which I have chosen. This shows at least that the subject is one relevant to our present condition. The question is whether we can satisfactorily define what our role should be in precise terms. We can learn from the late Abdul Nasser to be cautious in trying to define a poli-tical role in foreign affairs, for his concept of Egypt as the meeting point of three circles, Arab, African and Islamic, was soon seen to be beyond the political and military strength of his country, and quickly disappeared without trace. As Lord Harlech hlas reminded us, Dean Acheson remarked pertinently that Britain had lost an empire, but had not yet found a role. He was attacked for saying it, but it was and perhaps still is true. Since that date we have with some difficulty oonvinced ourselves that we have lost an empire, but we have not progressed much further than assessmg the more obvious consequences of our bereavement and enjoying the masochistic pleasure of mourig for the departed. Lord Harlech put it in another way-that we are still reacting to the discovery of our new situation, but have not started to act on fresh lines. The approach of the Contral Policy Review Staff is that we have sunk to point X in the League table of economic performance. The resources which we apply to foreign affairs must therefore be reduced and reallocated, in order to prevent waste, to concentrate on the promotion of our exports and to ensure that the standard of our expenditure is lowered to a point which accurately reflects our relative poverty. This is in practice little different from the exercises which the department carries out regularly as part of its normal functions, even though an old diplomat like me, steeped in ancient prejudices and with little experience of the new diplomacy, will nurse doubts about the Review Staff's basic premises and question the narrowness of their computer's outlook. Whatever view one takes of the formidable results of the Review Staff's labours, they have not covered the whole picture, and we need