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Brown's Declaration Of Interdependence
For some reason the British media saw fit to ignore the keynote foreign policy speech Gordon Brown delivered at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston last month.
In the speech, the Prime Minister gave hints as to the future foreign policy of the UK, implying that the US too should join in its great endeavour to respond to global challenges by investing in international bodies. US critics have condemned Brown's speech as an attack on US sovereignty on a par with King George III's imperiousness.
Many commentators responded negatively to the Prime Minister's call for a "Declaration of Interdependence." A hardline conservative writer claimed that Brown's speech represented "England's Call to Repeal Our Declaration of Independence". Happily, England cannot take credit for Brown, a Scot.
"Brown rejected the traditional concept of national sovereignty, which means an independent nation not subservient to any outside control, telling us to replace it with "responsible sovereignty," which he defined as accepting what he calls our global "obligations." Hold on to your pocketbook," wrote Phyllis Schlafly, in a column which has been reproduced widely in the US blogosphere, as well as on the UK Daily Telegraph's comments page and Archbishop Cranmer's weblog.
"Brown admitted that his "main argument" is that we must accept "new global rules," "new global institutions," and "global networks." Brown's global rules include massive U.S. cash handouts and opening U.S. borders to the world."
Brown called for a "new dawn" of global cooperation to combat religious extremism, the ill-effects of globalisation and climate change. Handing extensive responsibility to international bodies - such as Britain has done with the European Union - goes hand in hand with a diminishing of national sovereignty.
Naturally, such schemes play poorly in the US, where many citizens believe with some justification that international organisations such as the United Nations exist purely to allow non-democratic states to harangue and obstruct the US and its allies. Furthermore, many Americans believe that the solutions proposed to slow global warming would have the added effect of crashing the US economy, as developing world competitors ignored the rules and raced ahead. Incidentally, Brits are waking up to a similar belief: A poll released last week suggested that a majority of Britons reckon that the government is using global warming as an excuse to raise taxes.
It's best we leave our American cousins to re-enact the Boston Tea Party. What concerns EURSOC in this post is Brown's further elaboration of what we've come to see as New Labour's "Deep Project", the radical transformation of Britain from sovereign state to borderless "hub of ideas."
This radicalism is usually referred to in ministerial speeches, but is seldom examined by the media, who choose to concentrate on "bread and butter" issues. We wholly expect the Prime Minister to follow the launch of Rebooted Britain, Brave New World by telling surprised journalists that he and his ministers had been discussing Britain's status for months, but they'd ignored the clues.
There was foreign secretary David Miliband's January column when he discussed Britain's future as a "hub of ideas" - deracinated, borderless, international, yet closely observed and its population policed, it seemed more like an argument to make London a free-floating city state than a set of guiding principles for a nation of 60 million recorded people.
And now, Brown's Declaration of Interdependence, a call for new and more powerful international institutions. WIth touching modesty, Brown compares his proposals to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the 1815 Congress of Vienna and the post-war settlements of the late 1940s, which gave birth to the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Marshall Plan.
Brown says the above "saved the free world" - and, wrapped in the mantle of the Kennedys, challenges contemporary leaders to rise to match the achievements of their illustrious predecessors.
Let's look at the precedents Brown selects. They are pivotal moments in European history, in the creation of national governments and the drawing up of international obligations.
The Treaty of Westphalia sealed the end of two long European wars and put in place diplomacy based on the concept of national sovereignty. In the wake of Napoleon's wars, the Congress of Vienna readjusted national boundaries and held revolutionary and nationalistic impulses in check.
The 1940s introduced the principle of international institutions with rights, or even laws, which many hoped would enjoy priority over national laws; as well as a series of obligations in which powerful nations would channel their resources in the name of the "greater good". The European Union was born of such a dynamic, though few signing up to the "Coal and Steel Community" were aware of the federalist fantasies of its founders.
But make no mistake about Brown's ambition: He is calling for nothing less than a new grand treaty, another pivotal moment in western history, ostensibly to face the "challenges" posed by globalisation, terror and climate change but motivated by a desire to take the nation state to a different level of being. His hopes are for solid stuff, too. Though there's much circumambient gas in Brown's speech, his references to previous treaties - and his character - suggest his core proposals aren't Blairite blather but solid and with legal and constitutional force.
The silence of the response was deafening.
The only Americans who picked up on the speech were the conservatives who saw it as an attack on their constitution and way of life; America's governing elite and newspapers roundly ignored it - much like the press in Britain. Much, indeed, like the British opposition, who have taken to looking the other way when Brown discusses foreign policy or constitutional reform, in case they might have to disagree with him. The overseas press ignored Gordon Brown's major keynote foreign policy speech too.
There's been no rush by world leaders to sign up to Brown's borderless vision of shared sovereignty and improved institutions. What conclusions can we draw from this? The first is that Brown is, in international terms, an inconsequential politician. Imagine Tony Blair making a similar speech; it would be all over the US papers, and liberal Americans would have rushed to defend the PM from the accusations levelled at him by right-wing nationalists. Even Nicolas Sarkozy's half-baked idea for a "Mediterranean Union" was covered by the international press, and fellow leaders paid attention to it, if only to kick it into the long grass.
But Britons should draw no comfort from the rejection of Brown's proposals. Labour politicians, lest we forget, are dyed in the wool unilateralists; they signed up for CND's absurd pledge to rid Britain of its nuclear deterrent in the 1980s, believing that the Russians and then the Americans would follow suit.
Who would rule out Gordon Brown declaring a unilateral "non-nation" status for Britain, the world's "hub of ideas", in the hope of heralding a brave new world?
