tanks for the memories
I don’t for one second believe that a purely altruistic foreign policy is at all possible but what is equally clear, following the current unrest in the Arab world, is that one that is completely devoid of any ethical or moral component is in defendable.
Admittedly, all recent Governments have followed the same slippery path in this regard but you’ve got to hand it to Tory minister Peter Luff who only a few short weeks ago espoused “There will be a very, very, very (his emphasis not mine) heavy ministerial commitment to arms sales. In the past we were rather embarrassed about exporting defence products. There is no such embarrassment in this government.” Er…I think you might find there is now, Peter! Recent export licences show we’ve sold tear gas and CS grenades to Bahrain, armoured personnel carriers to Saudi Arabia, and crowd control ammunition to Libya. Why, the last Labour administration even equipped Gaddafi’s notorious Khamis Brigade and trained the Libyan special forces at Sandhurst!
There is no moral argument for shipping tanks to tyrants, mines to mullahs and detonators to despots. Surprisingly however there’s precious little argument economically either. Apologists for the arms trade never fail to go to great lengths in explaining that a reduction in international arms sales would result in catastrophic job losses and a huge negative affect on our economy’s GDP. In reality, a mere 0.2% of Britain’s workforce is employed in producing arms for export and the whole industry, which receives a £5m public subsidy, accounts for only 1.5% of total exports. Such a dramatic loss then? To hell in a heavily protected hand-cart with the arms trade I say.
And just when you thought our elected Government’s moral compass couldn’t be more skewed we see Dave morph from a state of supposed ‘ innate pragmatism’ to one of a no-fly zone demanding sabre rattling war-mongering neocon in a matter of exactly three days. The iron lady may not have been for turning but this boy’s spinning like a top! Still, at least his Foreign Secretary, Billy Hague can always be relied upon to make his master look good. His premature announcement that Gaddafi had fled to Venezuela was surely surpassed by the lack of any effective action to rescue British citizens, only to be trumped by the humiliatingly botched diplomatic/SAS mission. “I didn’t know they were coming”, our red faced ambassador was forced to admit. More ‘he who dohs’ as opposed to ‘he who dares’.
I have to admit though, that from my juvenile perspective, it was all worth it purely for the opportunity it presented at PMQs this week: “If a neighbour moved into the Foreign Secretary’s street” taunted his shadow counterpart “would William introduce himself by ringing the doorbell with a welcoming bottle of wine or by climbing over the fence in the middle of the night, shinning up the drainpipe and entering the house through the smallest of bathroom windows?” Priceless.
