Alexander Bowen: In terms of Britain and the rest of the world – what is our circus and who are our monkeys?
Who's accountable for the results?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
Britain’s foreign policy has been defined, or at least surmised, by famous phrases; Palmerston’s classic lines, the first rendered briefly that “Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests”, the second “Civis Romanus sum” (used to justify blockading Greece). Go on further and there are Churchill’s “three majestic circles” – that Britain must sit between Europe, America, and its Empire, to find its place in the post-war world.
Further still, to 2001 and to today, and you find a foreign policy defined by Blair’s Conference Speech that “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken”, that Britain must “re-order this world around us”, and that “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause”. Twenty five years on we are living in that speech’s foreign policy, but not in that speech’s world even if shadows remain in our collective cave.
In this spirit then I would like to offer here a new phrase, not one that defines our foreign policy, but one that ought to. “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s a charming Polish idiom meaning, bluntly, not my problem.
Now this is not a call for reviving Splendid Isolation nor going down some Swiss or Irish path, but it is asking people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?
Yet what we appear to have been left with is a foreign policy that regardless of who is in charge fails to ask that basic question – a left whose only question is whether something has been approved by the UN, a standard to which two and a half countries hold themselves to, and a right, exemplified best by Richard Tice, who simply asks how high must we jump when the Americans call.
Iran is bluntly case in point.
The Telegraph has, correctly, characterised the regime as evil and a global sponsor of terror, arguing that Britain must bomb yet it has been unable to articulate any actually substantive reason for participation only that Britain would be left as a “footnote as history unfolds around us”. What we are left with then is this: that Britain must spend its money, of which we have too little, and put military personnel, of which we have few, in harm’s way so that in, 15 or 20 years’ time, “Britain sent 2 fighter jets to the Middle East” gets to be in brackets in the body of the text.
The …
Who's accountable for the results?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
Britain’s foreign policy has been defined, or at least surmised, by famous phrases; Palmerston’s classic lines, the first rendered briefly that “Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests”, the second “Civis Romanus sum” (used to justify blockading Greece). Go on further and there are Churchill’s “three majestic circles” – that Britain must sit between Europe, America, and its Empire, to find its place in the post-war world.
Further still, to 2001 and to today, and you find a foreign policy defined by Blair’s Conference Speech that “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken”, that Britain must “re-order this world around us”, and that “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause”. Twenty five years on we are living in that speech’s foreign policy, but not in that speech’s world even if shadows remain in our collective cave.
In this spirit then I would like to offer here a new phrase, not one that defines our foreign policy, but one that ought to. “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s a charming Polish idiom meaning, bluntly, not my problem.
Now this is not a call for reviving Splendid Isolation nor going down some Swiss or Irish path, but it is asking people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?
Yet what we appear to have been left with is a foreign policy that regardless of who is in charge fails to ask that basic question – a left whose only question is whether something has been approved by the UN, a standard to which two and a half countries hold themselves to, and a right, exemplified best by Richard Tice, who simply asks how high must we jump when the Americans call.
Iran is bluntly case in point.
The Telegraph has, correctly, characterised the regime as evil and a global sponsor of terror, arguing that Britain must bomb yet it has been unable to articulate any actually substantive reason for participation only that Britain would be left as a “footnote as history unfolds around us”. What we are left with then is this: that Britain must spend its money, of which we have too little, and put military personnel, of which we have few, in harm’s way so that in, 15 or 20 years’ time, “Britain sent 2 fighter jets to the Middle East” gets to be in brackets in the body of the text.
The …
Alexander Bowen: In terms of Britain and the rest of the world – what is our circus and who are our monkeys?
Who's accountable for the results?
Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
Britain’s foreign policy has been defined, or at least surmised, by famous phrases; Palmerston’s classic lines, the first rendered briefly that “Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests”, the second “Civis Romanus sum” (used to justify blockading Greece). Go on further and there are Churchill’s “three majestic circles” – that Britain must sit between Europe, America, and its Empire, to find its place in the post-war world.
Further still, to 2001 and to today, and you find a foreign policy defined by Blair’s Conference Speech that “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken”, that Britain must “re-order this world around us”, and that “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause”. Twenty five years on we are living in that speech’s foreign policy, but not in that speech’s world even if shadows remain in our collective cave.
In this spirit then I would like to offer here a new phrase, not one that defines our foreign policy, but one that ought to. “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s a charming Polish idiom meaning, bluntly, not my problem.
Now this is not a call for reviving Splendid Isolation nor going down some Swiss or Irish path, but it is asking people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?
Yet what we appear to have been left with is a foreign policy that regardless of who is in charge fails to ask that basic question – a left whose only question is whether something has been approved by the UN, a standard to which two and a half countries hold themselves to, and a right, exemplified best by Richard Tice, who simply asks how high must we jump when the Americans call.
Iran is bluntly case in point.
The Telegraph has, correctly, characterised the regime as evil and a global sponsor of terror, arguing that Britain must bomb yet it has been unable to articulate any actually substantive reason for participation only that Britain would be left as a “footnote as history unfolds around us”. What we are left with then is this: that Britain must spend its money, of which we have too little, and put military personnel, of which we have few, in harm’s way so that in, 15 or 20 years’ time, “Britain sent 2 fighter jets to the Middle East” gets to be in brackets in the body of the text.
The …
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