United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for initiating this debate, which has been wide ranging and important. One of the good things about House of Lords debates on subjects such as this are that we are not confined. We hear from a wide range of expertise on a number of subjects. I particularly welcome the excellent maiden speech by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond. As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said, he is a welcome addition to our military Benches, and I look forward to his future contributions.

[Noble Lords]

Warrior Benches!

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

Was it warrior Benches? There you go: that shows the difference between us. I will not go any further.

Trump’s attack today on the free press, backed by Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, is full of irony. Twelve months ago, the Chatham House report on America’s international role under Trump said that his foreign policy path would be hard to predict. It pointed out his fondness for,

“unpredictability—a characteristic long noted as dangerous in foreign policy—and has a tendency towards inflammatory and escalatory rhetoric. He is transactional and short-termist in outlook, has little respect for long-standing alliances and partnerships”.

Twelve months on, Trump started 2018 with a flurry of tweets that sparked protests across the world, caught allies off guard and further divided opinion in Washington. As we heard in this debate this afternoon, he has split the international community and inflamed Palestinians when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital by moving the embassy. He then threatened to punish those who voted against the move at the United Nations General Assembly by cutting aid.

I say all this because the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Robertson was a telling point about this debate. We need to focus on the reactions to these things, not just what Trump intended. There is a positive reaction. It causes us to focus on what we have and the important things that we value. Trump’s own view of his first 12 months was to praise his own Administration for victories against ISIS in the Middle East and for bringing unprecedented pressure to bear on the North Korean regime. The national security strategy unveiled in December also labelled Russia and China among the chief challenges facing the US, despite Trump’s overtures towards their leaders. That has been reflected in today’s debate.

Ryan Crocker, the former US ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, who served both the George Bush and the Obama Administrations, said:

“Other than the neo-isolationism I do not think there is a pattern to his foreign policy … I think he is purely reactive”.


But our reaction must be about what that vacuum is creating. That is the important role of Britain internationally in supporting a rules-based system and human rights. In our debates on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill this week, I was pleased that this House focused on the importance of championing human rights, which will be at the core of our activity.

Another consequence of Trump’s actions over the past 12 months has been the deep cuts to the State Department budget and the dearth of high-level diplomatic appointments—the failure to make key important appointments. As my noble friend Lord Robertson reflected, we have also seen cuts to our foreign and diplomatic services which will impact on our ability to fill that vacuum. There is no doubt that Trump’s lack of interest in established diplomatic protocols has put a strain on the close relationship between No. 10 and the White House. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, pointed out, UK national security strategy is largely designed to work this special relationship from force structure to intelligence sharing. It is critical.

On Trump’s “America first” agenda and the new national security strategy published at the end of last year, we have heard, as the US National Security Adviser Lieutenant-General HR McMaster said last year, that “America First Doesn’t Mean America Alone”, and that the US would continue to work closely with allies in pursuit of a global leadership. That is another key element of today’s debate. We have the rhetoric and the tweets, but we also have effective co-ordination at a range of levels in our special relationship, which is something that we should not miss.

The highest priority in the strategy was given to the protection of the American homeland from attack. Another overriding theme was a focus on American prosperity as the core national security goal. I welcome the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He is absolutely right that there is an additional threat to the rules-based system, which is about trade. Trade has become one of the key focuses of President Trump. It fits in well with the presidential election narrative targeted at the working classes in the US with growing concerns about stagnation and declining competitiveness. I will return to this theme at the end of my speech.

One of the things we have seen in the excellent House of Lords briefing that we had for this debate are Professor John Bew’s observations that one can see subtler themes in the strategy that McMaster highlighted. They are talking about peace through strength—a conscious sort of reminder of the Reagan era, reflecting Trump’s demands for more effectiveness and utility in the international game. McMaster is also keen to stress that the US will expect reciprocity from its allies in terms of supporting NATO for example, as we have heard in this debate.

From our point of view there are synergies in terms of our concerns, particularly about the security challenge posed to American interests referred to in its national security strategy, and to its allies by Russia. From our point of view, that also links to cyber and the policing of the internet, which is becoming an increasingly important aspect, not only of defence issues but of defending our liberal democracy and the values that we have talked about.

The Doug Stokes article in the latest volume of International Affairs, published by Chatham House, said that Trump’s administration,

“combines elements of isolationism with cost-benefit bilateralism and, most strongly of all, a deep ambivalence towards the liberal international regimes that America has helped bring to birth and sustain since the end of the Second World War”.

But I think what I have heard in this debate is that our special relationship with the United States is not about one man; it is about our common heritage, our shared values and democracy. It is important to reflect on that. Our focus on that relationship cannot just be seen in terms of that individual relationship; it must be seen much more in terms of that soft power that we have been talking about, and certainly we had an excellent debate in this House on the report of the Select Committee on soft power. I think it is still worth reading that report because it focuses on a number of key issues. I think, for peace and security, our relationship remains very important. As James Landale of the BBC put it:

“It is almost as if the Trump modus vivendi has made it even more obvious that the transatlantic relations that matter are the historic state-to-state contacts between the different agencies of government rather than the personal relations between individual leaders”.


The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said it absolutely perfectly. We have new networks that are developing. We need to reach out to those networks, and not only new networks of countries. One of the things that Trump’s campaign has taught us is that there are new means of communications. As a foreign policy objective, we should reach out not only to all politicians but to civil society, because that is how we maintain our liberal rules-based organisations in the world. Reaching out through new media and new contacts—that is what our soft power should focus on.

I commend the debate and I conclude by thanking the noble Lord for initiating it, but it is not the end and the last word. This debate will continue over the next three years of Trump’s Administration.