Written Evidence from Professor Richard G. Whitman, Director, Global Europe Centre, University of Kent and Associate Fellow, Chatham House (EUM0015)

 

 

Author

Professor Richard G. Whitman, Director, Global Europe Centre, University of Kent and Associate Fellow, Chatham House

 

About the author

Professor Whitman is an academic and commentator writing extensively on the EU’s foreign, security and defence policy and has previously presented written and oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on EU and UK foreign policy matters. 

 

Summary of evidence

The evidence submission focuses on the implications for UK and foreign policy if the UK exits the European Union. It argues that the impact for the UK would be profound and irreversible and lead to a significantly diminished international role for the UK.

 

Evidence

 

Current benefits for UK foreign and security policy of EU membership

  1. The UK’s current foreign and security policy - and which extends to its trade and development policies are embedded within, and pursued through, the EU. The UK has used its membership of the EU to enhance its international influence and as a vehicle for leveraging and amplifying national foreign and security policy objectives.

 

  1. The EU’s mechanisms for foreign policy have provided the UK with the best of both worlds – allowing the UK freedom of action to act independently where it chooses and to act collaboratively and leverage common resources where it prefers. This allows the UK to have a greater influence in world affairs than it could do so if acting purely on its own. The EU mechanisms are also particularly attractive for a large member state like the UK with historical engagements and widespread commercial interests around the world. A large Member State like the UK  has a greater ability to influence EU policy  on a wide range of issues as it has a more extensive and ambitious foreign and security than the majority of the EU’s smaller and medium sized Member States.

 

  1. More broadly the process of European integration has provided the UK with an unparalleled period of peace in its relationships with its neighbouring states. The EU, alongside NATO, is a pillar of the post-cold war European security architecture. It has played a pivotal role in managing the transition of the continent from cold war cleavage and military confrontation to drawing Europeans together as political allies, economic collaborators and security partners.

 

  1. The attraction of the EU as an economic bloc has allowed EU Member States, including the UK, to insist that countries in the Western Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe broaden and deepen their nascent democracies and develop vibrant civil societies as the price of EU membership. This reintegration of countries into a stable democratic European political mainstream has been the realisation of a key British foreign policy objective.

 

The potential costs of Brexit for foreign security and defence policy

  1. Any prospect of an EU exit would consequently raise a broader set of questions for the UK on the orientation and objectives of its national foreign and security policy. EU membership has been a key component of the UK’s diplomacy and foreign policy since 1973. Alteration to that status would require an extensive recalibration of the UK’s relationship with its European neighbours.

 

  1. The European Union provides significant efficiencies for the UK in being able to address a wide range of foreign policy and security issues, via a multilateral format, with twenty seven other European countries that allows for mechanisms that can facilitate resolution of inter -state disagreements, an ironing-out of differences and pursuing collective positions on issues of common concern. The current collective EU sanctions regime towards Russia, following its occupation of Crimea and military involvement in Eastern Ukraine, provides an example of where significantly divergent views between the Member States were directed into strong collective action.

 

  1. Negotiating an exit from the EU itself would mean that extensive diplomatic and political bandwidth would be engaged for an extended period in institutional preoccupation rather than in resolving the extensive and pressing set of real security challenges currently faced by the UK.

 

Adding uncertainly to managing a changing security environment

  1. The UK is facing its most challenging security environment since the middle of the twentieth century. Broader structural shifts within international relations are taking place alongside considerably volatility in the UK’s European neighbourhood. Managing change and complexity are key challenges for the UK’s foreign and security policy.

 

  1. The changing structure of international affairs, with the rise of new globally significant actors such as China and other BRICs, has combined with the recent global financial crisis (and its attendant austerity) to raise questions about the place of the UK in international relations.

 

  1. The UK now confronts an arc of crisis running from its neighbourhood to the east through and across its southern borders in which it is being confronted by multiple security challenges. To its east it faces a direct challenge from Russia which is willing to use state power to alter borders and impose its will on its neighbours. The emergence of Islamic State (IS) has changed the dynamics of Syria’s civil war and impacted on the wider Middle East. Libya’s descent into civil war and state collapse has fuelled and facilitated significantly increased cross-Mediterranean migration from Africa and the Middle East by those seeking a better future in Europe. The combined magnitude of these challenges requires multi-institutional and multi-national responses. The EU will be a central player – and payer – in mitigating these challenges.

 

  1. Consequently, a UK exit would see Britain detached from a key capacity to influence and shape policy in its security neighbourhood. An example is the EU’s approach to Somalia and the Horn of Africa, combining development policy with military assistance, as a long-term investment to stabilise the region. The UK’s contribution to these efforts, particularly through its recently opened embassy in Mogadishu populated by FCO, MoD and DFID staff illustrates where UK expertise, allied to the greater financial and technical resources of the EU, allows Britain to gain greater direct influence than acting independently.

 

Member state exit has no precedent

  1. There is no precedent for a country choosing to exit the European Union. This means that the consequences for the UK’s foreign and security policy of a departure from the EU are uncertain and the full-costs cannot be calculated on the basis of any available evidence.

 

  1. The Balances of Competences report on EU foreign policy, produced by the 2005-2015 UK Coalition government, is the only systematic study to-date of the costs/benefits on the UK’s foreign policy working through the EU. The report summarised the expert evidence that it received with the assessment that it is “generally strongly in the UK’s interests to work through the EU in foreign policy”. The report argued that benefits come from the increased impact from acting in concert with 27 other countries; greater influence with non-EU powers, derived from our position as a leading EU country; the international weight of the EU’s single market, including its power to deliver commercially beneficial trade agreements; the reach and magnitude of EU financial instruments, such as for development and economic partnerships; the range and versatility of the EU’s tools, as compared with other international organisations; and the EU’s perceived political neutrality, which enables it to act in some cases where other countries or international organisations might not.

 

  1. In seeking exit from the EU the UK would be going against the trend of post-cold war European international relations which has seen European states seek to better provide for their security and prosperity by joining the European Union and being accommodated through successive waves of enlargement. UK advocacy that countries such as Bosnia Herzegovina and Serbia should pursue difficult economic and political reforms necessary to secure EU member would have little credence with the UK seeking exit.

 

  1. A Brexit would create a broader international diplomatic crisis forcing the UK to counter a view that Britain would be shrinking its international role and influence and raising questions such as whether membership of key bodies, such as the UN Security Council, was no longer appropriate. Special attention would need to be paid to the United States which has expressed a clear preference for the UK to remain within the EU. Further, EU departure would be placing the UK in a contradictory position from the long term strategy of the United States, pursued by both Democrat and Republican Administrations, which has supported and promoted EU and NATO enlargements as key tenets of Transatlantic relations over recent decades. Outside the EU the UK would no longer have leverage on future enlargements of the EU or seeking to ensure that EU defence policies are developed in a manner that also strengthens, rather than duplicates, NATO. This reduction in leverage would mean that the UK would most certainly be considered of less significance to future US administrations. Weaker transatlantic ties could have implications for other security relationships.

 

The potential costs to the EU foreign and security policy of Brexit

  1. The UK is a key participant in the EU’s foreign and security policy. Its departure from the EU would also diminish the EU’s collective foreign policy. As a country with a significant track record in international engagement, and a range of diplomatic, military, development and other foreign policy resources, the UK’s support, or opposition, to the development of a collective system of EU foreign and security policy making, and the pursuit of foreign policy initiatives, has a high degree of importance. As illustrative the EU’s diplomacy (conducted by the EU’s three largest member states and the EU’s High Representative) with Iran on its nuclear programme would not have been received as seriously in Washington without the presence of the UK and Europe’s ability to influence the behaviour of other international actors

 

  1. The UK has been instrumental in the recent reforms intended to enhance the institutions and practices of the EU’s foreign policy and external relations. It has long sought to bring the EU’s financial resources into more effective use by the EU’s foreign and security policy and which has been achieved by creating the role of the EU’s first High Representative/Vice President for Foreign and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton, and the EU’s diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS).

 

  1. The UK has also played a major role in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations and notably a leading role in the anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. The operation is headquartered and directed from Northwood in the UK (other EU member states providing all the ships and aircraft at present) sharing the common costs of the mission with 27 member states (including those with no naval forces).

 

  1. The UK has seen the CSDP as a key instrument to create capabilities for crisis and conflict management not possessed by other organisations such as NATO. It has also acted as a vehicle through which to strengthen other member states military capabilities to thereby boost European defence by providing experience for countries to deploy and sustain their forces overseas for extended periods in combination with other EU nations and successfully promoted the creation of EU Battlegroups which created multinational forces available for rapid deployment in crisis situations. The Battlegroups are notable for bringing non-NATO member European countries such as Finland, Ireland, Norway and Austria into operational readiness for military conflict management roles. 

 

  1. The EU would also lose the UK’s voice in setting its agenda on development policy, international environment diplomacy, internal security and trade policy. In turn, the UK would lose the capacity to multiply its national foreign policy objectives through the EU and the power that it exercises in each of these areas. As illustrative, and concluded by the Balances of Competences report on development policy and humanitarian aid, produced by the 2005-2015 UK Coalition government,  the EU’s wider geographical coverage means the UK can channel aid through it to reach countries that the UK could not reach alone. To quote from the report “[T]he close alignment of UK and EU development objectives, and the EU’s perceived political neutrality and global influence, mean the EU can act as a multiplier for the UK’s policy priorities and influence.”

 

A significant timescale impact

  1. The impact of disentangling the UK from its foreign and security policy relationships would be a costly exercise and with an uncertain outcome. At present the UK is able to combine UK foreign policy assets with EU policy in pursuing its objectives within international relations. The exercise of national sovereignty is preserved within the EU’s CFSP CSDP as collective action can only be pursued if all member states agree on action.

 

  1. With the UK currently pursuing a policy of austerity in its foreign and security policy the UK should be seeking to develop and deepen areas in which it could cost-effectively pool diplomatic and military capabilities further with partners.

 

  1. Withdrawal from the EU would complicate such processes of pooling and sharing as the UK’s neighbours and partners would face a high degree of uncertainty as to the UK’s future foreign policy priorities. As illustrative the existing Anglo-French defence, security and nuclear agreements reached at Lancaster House in 2010 to seek greater burden sharing are premised on closer cooperation between the UK and France in the EU and NATO. France has persisted with the idea of an Anglo-French coordination at the heart of a successful EU foreign, security and defence policy despite the reticence of recent British governments to develop an EU defence policy. With a UK EU exit the rationale for closer links with the UK would diminish and other intergovernmental partnerships with Member States such as the Weimar grouping (Poland, Germany and France) provide ready-made substitutes for defence collaboration. 

 

  1. The UK’s membership of EU has Britain participating in a set of policies that are used to organise the relationship between the EU and other states and organisations involved in international relations. This set of policies that encompass trade, security (including defence), development and foreign policy would all need to be renegotiated bilaterally by the UK as they would expire on EU exit. The UK would be expending considerable resources in just seeking to re-codify the status-quo in its relationships with many third countries outside the EU across a range of issue areas. And this alongside renegotiating a new bilateral relationship between the EU and a UK non-member.

 

  1. The UK’s foreign and security policy could be preoccupied for the best part of a decade in reorganising its existing foreign relations whilst new challenges within international relations might be a better focus of attention. Furthermore, the UK would still need to be heavily occupied with influencing the EU’s policy agenda from outside an organisation which represents the world’s largest trading bloc, the most significant provider of overseas development aid, a major player in international environmental diplomacy, and a key actor in Europe’s diplomacy and security. The UK can choose Brexit but its security will still remain intertwined with the successes and failures of the EU.  

 

October 2015