re: "Foreign Policy Technique"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("This website makes available to the general public interesting episodes and insights from Charles Crawford's eventful diplomatic career, and aims to explain in a open-minded, reasonable way how diplomacy works in practice.") tells you more of what you need to understand about diplomatic realities and engagement.

Money quote(s):

"Over at Commentator is my latest piece on UK engagement with Libya, in which I argue that what happened in recent years was principled, smart and mainly effective."

The following is a short passage from the longer excerpt he provided.

"there are only two basic choices available to democracies when it comes to dealing with odious regimes: Isolation, or Engagement. And that both can have perverse consequences, because it is impossible to deal with perverse regimes without some perverse outcomes"

Pithy, and to the point.

"(T)aking for granted that a 'Western' democratic system with a strong legal system is just 'better' than a cruel torturing dictatorship. What should the democracy do about the dictatorship?

One option is to do nothing. Faraway wicked foreigners oppress each other - what's new?

That option is in fact quite often used, even if there is a busy pretence of 'doing something'. Saudi Arabia is the classic example of a system which in most respects imposes odious unfair apartheid-like restrictions on its citizens, and which we studiously treat as a 'factor of stability'. Communist China used to be far worse, murdering millions. As did the USSR.

In all these cases the hard fact that these systems are powerful, ruthless and/or rich compels a certain caution. But does the fact that we 'tolerate' (say) the Saudi system demolish any claim by us to moral superiority? Double standards, they shriek.

No. Any good policy has to be realistic as well as consistent. If you can't stop all killers, it's right to stop those you can stop. To that extent there is solid intellectual and moral territory between 'double standards' and 'no standards'." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

You can only do what you can do; which doesn't mean you can't do anything, just that you can't do everything.

"The default position of Western democracies these days is that change should be 'peaceful'. The implication of this position (never discussed) is that enslaved people are better off if their slave-drivers reform slavery gradually, rather than get abruptly toppled even at the cost of many human lives. Slave-drivers need dialogue! A lot of dubious moral philosophy lurking behind that proposition.

What if we think that there are possibilities for more or less peaceful change? Egypt in some ways is a good current example. NB South Africa is always presented as a triumph for peaceful change but of course wasn't.

Libya might have been too, had the Gaddafi elite not reverted to stupidity instead of using its new improved relations with Western democracies to negotiate ." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

We tend to forget, at a distance of more than two centuries, just how bloody our own two revolutions (if you count the American Civil War as a second revolution, the one that liberated the rest of us) were. For the British, their bloody revolutions are even more distant, with less dramatic (to us) conclusions.

"In each individual case the options range far and wide, as does the prospect of getting allies and building successful coalitions for change.

Let's not forget too that Western political leaders' main focus is what their voters want. And voters (with rare exceptions) do not put changing the ways of revolting foreign regimes far up their priorities list. Or much taxpayers' money to be spent on the problem."

Some voters. Others are quite willing for their government to very meddlesome, with the treasure and blood coming from their fellow citizens.

"So in the real world of foreign policy it makes no sense to take a stark 'no compromise' position of substance with dictatorships. They exist, they have UN and other votes, they can export trouble, they probably have Ambassadors in London. Your aircraft may need to fly over their territory, or they may agree with you on various international technical issues. It's complicated.

You almost always end up with some form of 'engagement'. But the fact of matter-of-fact exchanges and opportunistically looking for areas to build some common ground is not the same thing as having a policy of Engagement aimed at deliberately using a range of options (openly or otherwise) to bring out reforms." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

In the real world, you make compromises. You make the best ones you can, but they're still compromises. Americans were cautioned early in their history against going abroad in search of dragons needing slaying.

Which doesn't mean you don't ever take fire and branch overseas to put an end to some odious regime which takes the ill-considered trouble of making themselves your enemy, just that you don't go looking for trouble.

(Which doesn't exactly jibe with this new-fangled "responsibility to protect" doctrine begin shopped around currently.)

"My point today is simple. British foreign policy and leadership can make positive changes in unpropitious foreign situations. But simply wanting to make a difference does not get results. Making that happen requires a powerful combination of strong policy determination, operational nimbleness and fine professional technique, an area where the FCO obviously declined under Labour. Plus some money." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Airbrush out the specifically British elements in that last and you've got some bood advice worthy of wide application by a democracy seeking to use its diplomatic strengths wisely and justly.