The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a British think-tank, released a report this week entitled Shared Responsibilities - A National Security Strategy for the United Kingdom. The central policy recommendation of the report was that Britain needs to rethink its role on the world stage, to move away from the idea of Britain as a “mini me” United States and towards closer strategic military cooperation with its European allies. The report does not call for Britain to abandon its “special relationship” with the US, nor does it call for European defence and security cooperation as an alternative to NATO, rather it is of the view that Britain and Europe could play a more effective role in the alliance and on the world stage by working better together. For a very great many reasons, this analysis is absolutely spot on.

In 1962, then US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”. Almost half a century later, Britain resolutely maintains its shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with the United States as the most effective method of enhancing its global influence, though its European policy has been decidely more mixed. British foreign policy towards Europe has, at times, closer resembled a scene from Yes, Minister, in which Britain continues its centuries old European policy of divide and weaken on the continent, as opposed to treating its liberal-democratic European partners with the respect they deserve.

In assessing the direction any country’s foreign policy should take, it is necessary to take a more philosophical approach, grounded in historical lessons and current realities, than perhaps some people do. Those who oppose closer European security integration need to ask themselves why.

“The Global Village” is an apposite simile to describe how technology, the era of instantaneous communications and the ever closer economic integration of states have contracted the world  to the point that social and commerical relations can be had with someone on the other side of the earth as easily as if they lived in the same village. No nation is an island any longer, and those that try to be, such as North Korea and Iran, quickly discover that there’s nothing splendid about isolationism. Yet every coin has two sides, and just as the benefits of living in a global village are evident, so too the dangers posed by far away countries of which we hitherto knew nothing are also much more real than they used to be. In the 21st century, regional conflicts are much more likely to produce global shockwaves. Instability in Iran can produce a spike in global oil prices; conflict in Africa leads to hundreds of thousands of refugess fleeing to the West for asylum; the US housing market sneezes, and the global economy catches a very severe cold.

The bad news, given all this, is that the world is becoming a less, as opposed to a more secure and stable place. Global history since the end of the Second World War has given meaningful weight to the idea, first put forward by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, though subsequently refined and modified, that democracy is much the most stable and benign form of government. Unfortunately, however, according to data from Freedom House, the number of liberal democracies in the world stands at just 89, a mere 46 per cent of the world’s 183 countries. Worse is the fact that global freedom suffered its third year of decline in 2008, and two of the countries named as heading in the wrong direction fastest, China and Russia, are also two of the world’s most influential, nuclear armed states, both with permanent, veto-wielding seats on the United Nations Security Council.

The decline of the West, relative to emerging nations is not yet terminal, but it is happening. If the United Kingdom wants to play its part in remaining influential on the world stage and promoting liberal democracy abroad, then it needs to realise that liberal democracies work best together. For all their historic differences with Europe, the British need to realise that closer economic, political and military integration is a guarantee, not a threat to their cherished way of life. In Britain, there is in some quarters an almost paranoid phobia of closer European integration as somehow a threat to everything honest, freedom-loving Britons hold dear. But let’s sit back for a moment and reflect on what exactly that way of life that we hold so dear actually is. Surely tolerance, freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press, and a legally enshrined respect for fundamental human rights are close to the top of the list. Working with, as opposed to competing with Europe will actually strengthen all these things. The EEC/EC/EU has proved itself to be hugely effective at maintaining peace amongst democracies within its borders, and encouraging liberal democratic reforms in those states outside the union that desperately want in. The likelihood of Europe threatening those other great British traditions, cricket on the green, warm ale and the freedom to complain about the weather, is unlikely to say the least. The greatest threat Europe poses to the British way of life is a sustained challenge to the imperial system of weights and measures.

If Britain wants to find genuine challenges to its traditional way of life, it needs to look beyond Europe’s borders, towards China, Russia, rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and trans-national terrorist organisations. In attempting to tackle all of these challenges, Britain will achieve far more by working with the EU, and other like-minded countries generally, than by pursuing, or even wishing to maintain the ability to pursue, a unilateralist foreign policy.

On the issue of combating terrorist activity it should be made clear from the outset that this is, overall a much bigger and more multifaceted problem than can be dealt with here. However, on a purely strategic level, it should be clear that multilateral cooperation is far more effective than unilateral action. Terrorists do not respect state borders, and countries serious about combatting terrorist activity need to be committed to cooperation on all levels, right from intelligence sharing up to coordinated military action. The reluctance of the Pakistani government to cooperate more fully with NATO in its efforts to combat the Taliban operating in the Hindu Kush has been greatly to the detriment of both, and Pakistan’s recent and well documented volte-face on this issue is a clear, if belated, realisation of this fact.

On the issue of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, it is also the case that the United Kingdom cannot operate alone, and in fairness, it does not try to do so. As regards North Korea, there is little that anyone can do to alter the course of that regime, short of somehow persuading China that supporting a highly unstable, poverty-stricken, nuclear armed totalitarian dictatorship on its border is not in its best interests, even if doing so does spite the West. What influence can be had with China is most certainly better projected through the EU as a whole. Likewise on Iran, it is the case that the EU already seeks to coordinate its efforts, though it does not do so well enough. Iran is more dependent on the EU, even with all the existing sanctions, for imports than any single country, including China. If Europe were to use this influence in a bolder, and perhaps more creative manner, then it could wield greater influence in Tehran than it does at present.

On the issue of Russia and China, the challenges are multifaceted, and stem not only from their recent growth in wealth and power, but also from the increased ambition to exert influence abroad that generally accompanies such growth. None of this would be a problem, but for the fact that neither Russia nor China could be counted amongst countries with any meaningful respect for civil liberties and other democratic norms.

China has never made much of a pretence about the repressive nature of its regime. Russia, by contrast, puts up the pretence of being a democracy, whilst in actuality appears to be sliding backwards. In 2005, Freedom House declared Russia “Not Free”, down from “Partly Free”, citing the virtual elimination of opposition parties in the county, and the ever-tighter grip of the executive’s hold on power. The stage-managed 2008 presidential election, which the OSCE went so far as to boycott, and the fact that Russia still ranks as one of the most lethal countries in the world for journalists to operate in, does little to convince skeptics that Freedom House was mistaken in its judgement.

In and of itself this is bad enogugh, but as just mentioned, what is worse is that both countries are currently in the process of seeking to align themselves as alternatives to the United States as poles of global influence. Russia’s recent hosting of the BRIC conference (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in Yekaterinberg, though failing to agree on much, nonetheless signified an overt desire to look for alternatives to the current, Western-led global economic status-quo. Likewise, President Medvedev was candid in his declaration of Russian intent to gain greater influence in Africa, during his visit to the continent that almost immediately followed the BRIC conference. China, likewise, has been increasing its influence in Africa for a number of years, and its booming economy, perhaps most vividly demonstrated by the fact that as a January 2009, it holds a staggering 24 per cent of US public debt, make it a country the West can no longer ignore.

Where this becomes a problem is that both countries, if not actively promoting their political systems abroad, are becoming increasingly assertive in their opposition to Western efforts to promote liberal democratic progress in the developing world. Russia has been traumatised by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the seemingly unstoppable gravitation of former Soviet republics Westward, first into NATO, and then, in many cases, into the European Union itself. Its invasion of Georgia in August last year, and the de facto annexation of the semi-autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, sent a clear message that Russia is no longer willing to tolerate the perpetual Westernisation of what it sees as its neighbourhood. Likewise, Russia has proved itsef increasingly willing to use its huge gas and oil reserves as a political weapon, particularly against Ukraine since its so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2004-05.

China, meanwhile, in seeking to exert its economic reach in the developing world, has operated on a strict policy of political non-interference in the states with which it seeks to trade, however unsavoury the regime. Nowhere has this policy been more in evidence than in Sudan, 80 per cent of whose exports go to China, and 85 per cent of those in the form of fuel and raw materials that China’s booming economy badly needs. The consequence of this live and let buy mode of foreign policy, which China regularly enforces by way of its veto power on the UN Security Council, is that the genocidal regime of Omar al-Bashir is able to cling to power. Both countries, indeed, regularly use the threat of their vetoes on the UN Security Council to water down meaningful resolutions that seek to promote democratic reforms and the protection of human rights in the developing world. As the humanitarian catastrophe began to unfold in Sri Lanka in April, China and Russia prevented even the discussion of the issue in a proposed resolution put forward by France, claiming it was a strictly internal matter.

Where does all of this leave Britain? On all of these issues, the United Kingdom will have more influence working with Europe than competing with it. Some people may well ask at this point, “Why should we care what happens abroad? How other countries govern themselves is none of our business, and the Iraq war has shown us the danger of foreign meddling.” Yet even if an altruistic concern for universal human rights does not sway such people, the simple equation, democracy equals peace equals prosperity, should. The fact is that efforts at democratic promotion are of proven economic benefit both to the promoters and those on the receiving end. Data from the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index puts figures on a fact that most people know to be true merely from the benefit of their own observations, namely that democracies are more peaceful than other forms of government, and that peace provides greater prosperity than conflict. Measuring the economic benefits of conflict against the economic benefits of peace, the Index has calculated that global conflict costs the world $7.2 trillion more than it generates. Add to this the fact that 19 of the 20 most peaceful countries in the world are democracies, the vast majority of those being amongst the world’s most prosperous nations, and the link between democratic forms of government and economic prosperity becomes evident.

Prosperous and stable states provide countries such as the United Kingdom with greater trading opportunities whilst simultanously reducing the vast economic and increasingly social burden of foreign development assistance, and absorbing refugees and asylum seakers from failed or conflict-ridden states. A much more robust commitment to the promotion of democracy in the developing world should not be seen as unrealistic idealism, but as the central plank of a pragmatic foreign policy.

In seeking such promotion, the EU is ideally placed. It posesses the foreign policy weapon to beat all others in the 21st century global village, one that it has already used to great effect in its eastern neighbourhood: Money. The EU accounts for a larger share of world trade, for both imports and exports, than any country, and it also has the largest economy on the planet bar none. Money talks, as the saying goes, and it has been the desire to get a larger slice of that prosperity that has seen so many ex-Soviet-bloc countries bending over backwards to implement the kind of civil and democratic reforms that would almost certainly not have been so quickly forthcoming had the economic incentives of EU membership not been in place. The EU needs to use all of the economic carrots at its disposal to encourage the developing world of the merits of democratic reforms, whilst concomitantly making the case that democracy is in the long term economic interests of such countries anyway. Unfortunately, Western efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law abroad are still seen by many in the developing world as thinly disguised attempts at neo-colonialism. Robert Mugabe has tried to fool his citizens with this mantra for many years, and the accusations currently being made by the Iranian government against the United Kingdom are clearly born of a similar objective. The EU, and the West in general, needs to learn to make the case far better that democracy is as much a rational pragmatic choice as it is an ideology.

It cannot be emphasised enough that a vigorous and unified commitment to the promotion of democracy abroad should be at the very top of the foreign policy agendas of all liberal democracies everywhere. The greater the number of countries that share our value systems, the fewer the threats we have to face. As the Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observerd: “War is just politics by another means”. It is also the most costly form of politics, and more often than not, it is not a long term solution to the divisions that provoked the conflict in the first place. Better by far, if possible, is to use all the means at your disposal to persuade the opposing side of the benefits of your point of view, thus negating the need for conflict altogether. This will surely come as a statement of the blindingly obvious, and yet amazingly, so much of our foreign policy at present appears to be conducted without much consideration for what should be a guiding principle. Britain, like most other European countries, seems to spend most of its time seeking specific resolutions to localised issues, with little appetite for an overarching strategy of fundamental reform that could and should guide all such efforts. Britain needs to increase the ambition of its foreign policy efforts in this regard, and the obvious vehicle through which this might be achieved is of course the European Union.

In the interim period, Britain needs to accept that on a military and strategic level, Britannia now needs Europe if it wishes to rule the waves. This is not, as stated at the outset, to suggest that Europe should develop a military strategy that seeks to divorce itself from  NATO. Rather, Europe must establish itself as a stronger and more viable partner of the alliance than it is at present. Far too many Britons who oppose what they see as a European “challenge” to NATO seem to equate, whether they realise it or not, a wholehearted commitment to the alliance with a total dependence upon the United States for its continued existence.  NATO would be a far stronger entity than it is at present if European states worked harder at integrating their military systems and developing common foreign policy objectives that could more easily become those of the alliance.

The rise of China, and to a lesser extent the re-emergence of Russia, are demonstrations of the fact, already touched upon, that in the 21st century, the United States will not remain the unchallenged locus of global influence. The United Kingdom has not enjoyed such a position since the end of the 19th century. Yet in today’s world, neither Britain nor the United States needs to seek global influence independent of any other country. Liberal democracies can and should work more closely together to collectively enhance their global influence on a permanent basis. Geo-politically speaking, the countries of the European Union are particularly well placed to effect such an integration. Britain, in particular, needs to realise that in the 21st century global players work best in teams.

The brutal conclusion to the quarter century long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE has left a quarter of a million refugees and between 7,000-20,000 civilian dead in its wake. That the death toll varies to such a degree is testament to the Sri Lankan government’s abject failure to allow international aid agencies and the media access to the conflict zone, almost certainly for fear that to do so would hinder it in its zeal to finish the job.

Though reprehensible, the failure of the Sri Lankan government in this matter is not surprising, and though not necessarily forgivable, is at least understandable. The conflict between the government and the LTTE cost Sri Lanka the lives of tens of thousands of its citizens and several billion dollars of economic disruption. That the government would always seize the chance to terminate the conflict with both hands was wholly predictable.

The real failure in this saga was on the part of the United Nations to press the Sri Lankan government harder to allow the aid agencies and the press into the conflict zone, who together would almost certainly have succeeded in focusing the Sri Lankan government’s mind on the importance of minimising the collatoral civilian damage of the conflict.

Almost as bad has been the resolution passed by the ironically named United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in response to the conclusion of hostilities. Far from highlighting the civilian cost of the conflict, or criticising the Sri Lankan government’s exclusionary policy re international organisations, the resolution “Welcomes the conclusion of hostilities and the liberation by the Government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE against their will as hostages, as well as the efforts by the Government to ensure safety and security for all Sri Lankans and bringing permanent peace to the country.”

The roll call of nations that voted for this resolution included some with what could, at best, be called dubious human rights records, including China, Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia amongst others.

Casual observers of the UN may well ask how an organisation that pledges almost in the first sentence of its charter “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person”, can fail in this task quite as often as it does.

The truth is that at the heart of this organisation is a fundamental and perhaps even irreconcilable contradiction. On the one hand, the UN pledges to uphold human rights, but on the other to be a truly universal organisation that represents all nations and recognises the “sovereign equality of all its Members”. Unfortunately, the UN is and can only be as effective as its members wish to make it, and there are very many members of the UN, including two of the five permanent members of the Security Council, who do not possess governments committed to the maintenance of human rights in any meaningful sense of the word.

The composition of the Human Rights Council is a case in point. Predominantly made up of African and Middle Eastern countries with decidedly dubious track records on human rights protection, the UNHRC has been accused of “partisan posturing and regional divides” and failing to get on with actual protecting ordinary people from abuse by none other than UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself. Mr Ban is one of many to have criticised UNHRC members for voting more often with a view to protecting members’ interests than protecting human rights. The UNHRC was established in 2006 to replace the ineffectual and discredited Commission on Human Rights, though quite how Member States believed a change in the name would effect a change in conduct is hard to fathom. According to Freedom House, just 22 of the UNHRC’s 47 members can be called free countries.

The sad truth is that many UN Member States are staunchly opposed to the UN involving itself in human rights work that might highlight failings by a Member government because they fear that to do so would lead to greater pressure on them to show greater restraint toward their own dissident minorities. The problem of what to do to improve the situation seems almost insurmountable. Does the UN want to guarantee human rights, or to be a universally representative organisation that guarantees the soveriegn equality of all its members? It seemingly cannot do both.

One of the biggest problems confronting even those countries that are serious about human rights is the inevitability of power politics in any situation that involves one country putting pressure on another. This was historically the case during the Cold War, when Western countries, and in particular the United States, gave succour to often brutal dictatorships in order to prevent them from falling under the Soviet sphere of influence. Many have criticised India’s failure to do more in Sri Lanka in recent weeks, and New Delhi’s comparative silence might seem all the more surprising given the large number of ethnically Tamil Indians who live in the south of the country.

However, even putting aside recollections of India’s disastrous intervention in 1983, what also needs to be considered is the role of China in the region. China has been credited with supplying the Sri Lankan government with the arms it required to defeat the Tamil insurgency, and China’s desire to establish itself as a strategic entitity in the Indian Ocean is currently being facilitated by the construction of a $1 billion port in the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota. India cannot afford to push the Sri Lankan government too hard for fear of Sri Lanka turning away from India to China for strategic solidarity. It was China, aided by Russia, that blocked discussion of the Sri Lankan situation in the UN Security Council.

China, indeed, is the principle obstacle to the furtherance of human rights not just in Sri Lanka, but globally. It operates a strict policy of what could be termed “live and let buy”, trading with any and all of the world’s nations, asking no questions of their commitment to human rights, and doing everything it possibly can to prevent others from doing so. China’s relations with Sudan are a case in point. Wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity President al-Bashir may be, but that does not deter China from buying almost 80 per cent of Sudan’s exports. Without China’s willingness to provide the Sudanese regime with this economic prop, and without its obstructing the efforts of the Security Council to pass stronger resolutions on the Sudanese situation, considerable improvements in Sudan’s human rights record, if not outright regime change, might already have been effected.

Ultimately, where human rights are concerned, the economic strength of countries wishing either to effect or obstruct progress is what really counts. “Money talks” as the saying goes. It is no coincidence that the most frequently used weapon in the international community’s human rights armoury is the economic sanction.

This is why the West must seize the chance to effect meaningful change to the way the international community approaches the issue of human rights whilst it still can. With a combined GDP of more than $33 billion, the EU and the US alone account for more than half of the global economy of $62.3 trillion. Likewise, the EU and US together constitute more than 60 per cent of Sri Lanka’s export market. However, the seemingly unstoppable economic rise of China is reducing that ratio in both cases.

It can only be hoped that as China’s middle class increases in size, so in turn they will become less and less tolerant of their country’s human rights policy, both at home and abroad. Until then, however, those countries that are serious about human rights need to establish a human rights council that is separate from the United Nations, and that is able and willing to not only call human rights abuse by its name, but to authorise genuinely effective action as and when such abuse takes place. There is no pretending that this organisation would be a silver bullet. Sudan is one case in point, and North Korea another, that if a regime truly wishes to isolate itself and ruin the country’s economy in the process, then it will not shirk from doing so. So long as such regimes can find at least one strong ally such as China, they can very often hang on.

However, there are a great many other countries with regimes that are not quite so cavalier, and who may well respond to real pressure if effectively applied.  At present, the approach of countries with a commitment to the furtherance of human rights is nowhere near coherant enough, and is still dominated by power politics. These countries still seek to present a united front through the vehicle of the UN, as the world body with the most international legitimacy. However, as has been demonstrated in Sri Lanka, the UN is all too often hamstringed by the truculence of members who do not share that commitment to human rights.

Countries that do hold that commitment should be willing to take a radical step and commit themselves to a human rights council that would put the maintenance of human rights above partisan considerations and whose decisions would be binding on all Member States. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights cannot continue to be an aspirational document devoid of any enforcement provisions. It should serve as the basis for this human rights council, and if its articles are deemed by the council to have been breeched by any country, then that should compel member states to take the action recommended by the council.

A government must exist solely for the purpose of serving the best interests of its people. That his fundamental human rights are protected is surely the highest earthly interest any man can have. Those governments that consistently fail to serve the best interests of their people must be made to pay the consequences. If the United Nations remains as the principle body through which nations with a respect for human rights seek to exert themselves, then that simply will not happen.