Abstract
The events of 11 September 2001 (hereafter 9/11) intensified debates about the UK’s role in global politics. To what extent had UK foreign policy helped shape a world order that could produce such acts of terrorism? How closely should the UK align itself with the US in their aftermath? What roles should the UK play on the world stage and what values should guide it? What and who was UK foreign policy for? This study aims to contribute to these debates by offering a critical analysis of the foreign policies pursued by Tony Blair’s Labour government during its first two terms in office between May 1997 and May 2005.
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Notes
Tony Blair, ‘The principles of a modern British foreign policy’, speech to the Lord Mayor’s banquet, London, 10 Nov. 1997.
John Kampfner, Robin Cook (London: Phoenix, 1999), p. 129.
See generally, Miles Kahler (ed.), Liberalization and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). On the Conservative’s foreign policy see Malcolm Rifkind, ‘Revisiting the ethical foreign policy’ (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 22 April 2004).
For example, Richard Cornwell, ‘When high principles run headlong into hard reality’, Independent, 16 Sept. 1999 and Robin Harris, ‘Blair’s “ethical” foreign policy’, The National Interest, 63 (2001), pp. 25–36.
Cited in James Naughtie, The Accidental American (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 62.
Brian Barder, ‘Britain: still looking for that role?’, Political Quarterly, 72: 3 (2001), pp. 366–74.
See Peter Mangold, Success and Failure in British Foreign Policy: Evaluating the Record, 1900–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
For example, Tim Dunne, “When the shooting starts”: Atlanticism in British security strategy’, International Affairs, 80: 5 (2004), pp. 893–909.
The main exceptions were Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, ‘Good international citizenship: a third way for British foreign policy’, International Affairs, 74: 4 (1998), pp. 847–70 and to a lesser extent Mervyn Frost, ‘Putting the world to rights: Britain’s ethical foreign policy’, Cambridge Review of International A ffairs, 12: 2 (1999), pp. 80–9.
See Mark Curtis, The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order (London: Pluto Press, 1998); The Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World (London: Vintage, 2003); ‘Britain’s real foreign policy and the failure of British academia’, International Relations, 18: 3 (2004), pp. 275–87. Variations on this perspective include Eric Herring, ‘Response to Mervyn Frost: the systematic violation of ethical norms in British foreign policy’, Cambridge Review of lnternational Affairs, 12: 2 (1999), pp. 90–2; and John Pilger, Hidden Agendas (London: Vintage, 1999), esp. pp. 1–152 and The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2002).
Walter Carlsnaes, ‘Foreign policy’ in Walter Carlsnaes Thomas Risse, Beth A. Simmons (eds), Handbook of lntemational Relations (London: Sage, 2002), p. 335.
Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (London: Palgrave, 2003), p. 3.
Colin Hay, Political Analysis (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 251–60.
See Max Horkheimer, ‘Traditional and critical theory’ in Critical Theory: Selected Essays, translated by Matthew J. O’Connell and others (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 188–252.
Tony Blair, ‘Let us reorder this world around us’, speech to the Labour party conference, Brighton, 2 Oct. 2001.
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© 2005 Paul D. Williams
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Williams, P.D. (2005). Introduction. In: British Foreign Policy Under New Labour, 1997–2005. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_1
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