The closed box
Carne Ross, the former diplomat at Britain's UN Mission in New York, gave oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee after submitting a memorandum in November 2006 that was very critical of the UK's foreign policy and Parliament's 'negligible' scrutiny. He had previously given evidence to the Butler inquiry into the use made of intelligence information in the approach to the invasion of Iraq that the British authorities did not regard Iraq's WMD holdings as a threat and that the assessment changed only when policy towards Iraq changed.
Ross's memorandum reflects the findings of the joint Not in Our Name study. He states that British diplomacy once stood for international law and a 'world of rules'. He regrets the reversal in the late 1990s 'momentum toward international acquiescence if not endorsement of intervention, and law-based activism - a trend which, at the time, Britain led'. Thanks in part to our own behaviour, he writes, we have stepped back toward an international culture of Hobbesian 'might is right'. The last few years have been disastrous for British foreign policy, he says, and no one is held to account. 'The edifice of human rights law and norms, which took half a century of careful work to construct, has been undermined by those who claim to defend it'.
Ross regrets the loss of conviction, inconsistencies and 'policy failures' in British foreign policy which he links to four systemic problems. The core of his argument is as follows: 'Policy-making in the UK government and the FCO in particular remains a “closed box”. Ministers are but the tip of the iceberg of decision-making. Officials are anonymous and unaccountable. Foreign policy now touches on more and more issues in our domestic lives (food standards, climate change, terrorism), yet policy is still decided by small groups of officials invisible to the public in whose name they are acting. This lack of transparency and accountability risks bad policy. Indeed, the greater the range of what is included today in “foreign policy”, the more likely are poor decisions within the closed box. The FCO's talk of transparency, open days and public meetings merely scratches the surface.'
While decision-making remains in the 'closed box', he dismisses parliamentary scrutiny as negligible. He says that the Foreign Affairs Committee's series of reports on the Iraq war stand as acute evidence of the failure to scrutinise; and that inside the FCO, the recommendations of the FAC are given little attention. He writes: 'The FCO will politely pretend otherwise, but it is in reality able to carry on its business without fear of significant intrusion. Parliamentary questions, foreign affairs debates and occasional single topic debates, are straightforward for officials and ministers to fob off with stock and bromidic answers, and thus form a kind of theatre - a sham of democratic accountability, when in reality there is none.'
He complains that the FCO has become marginalised and politicised since 2001 and reduced to an entirely subordinate role to Downing Street. Officials increasingly tell ministers what they wish to hear. The culture of official impartiality, and the ability of officials to tell ministers necessary truths, is undermined.
He recommends an alternative direction for British foreign policy (that conforms to public opinion in the UK). This alternative lies in consistency of application of international law and a robust defence (including intervention when necessary, as in Kosovo and Sierra Leone) of those under assault or oppression. 'It also lies in remedy to the “diplomatic deficit” whereby those affected by our - and others' - foreign policy have no capacity to influence it while those in whose name policy is carried out - us, the public - also have scant means to affect it.' Together, he asserts, such changes will produce a more just and therefore more stable world.
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