46 Britain The Economist December 18th 2021
Wakeywakey
B
ritain can look rather selfabsorbed these days. It spent four
years wrangling over Brexit, which was often more to do with
how Britons felt about each other than about Brussels. Boris John
son, a flop as foreign secretary elevated to Downing Street, uses in
ternational summits for playfights with the French over fish and
sausages. Revelations about Downing Street’s illicit Christmas
parties fill news channels; the fate of Ukraine does not.
Tory mps are tiring of their prime minister, and many like what
they see in Liz Truss, who became foreign secretary in September’s
reshuffle. She is the figurehead for a new foreignpolicy doctrine:
ideological; unhitched from Europe; seeking alliances beyond
America; pitched squarely against China and Russia. The themes
were spelled out in a securitypolicy review in March, but she is
their most forceful advocate. If Global Britain means anything, it
will be defined not by Mr Johnson but by Ms Truss.
Her speech to Chatham House, a thinktank, on December 8th
was dismissed by critics as facile and reductive. That misses its
significance. It had a Manichean quality more familiar to Ameri
can ears than to British ones. According to Ms Truss, an ideological
battle is under way between the “free world” and the autocratic
powers of China and Russia: a struggle between systems that serve
the individual and those that put individuals at their service.
“Nonaligned” states are pulled between the two orbits. She la
mented the “age of introspection” that followed the cold war,
when democracies nodded off, cutting defence spending and be
coming distracted by home comforts and campus culture wars.
Preoccupied abroad by the war on terror, they sucked up China’s
cheap technology and Russia’s cheap gas, and kidded themselves
that those countries were their partners.
Her response is to revive economic diplomacy, which she
thinks is neglected. She imagines a “network of liberty”, spanning
democracies and undemocratic allies that at least uphold interna
tional rules. She is keen for Britain to join the Comprehensive and
Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership, a trade deal
of modest economic value but in which she sees a bulwark against
China. Britain is joining its allies to offer poor countries a rival
source of infrastructure finance. Since David Cameron left Num
ber 10 in 2016, Britain has made a Sinosceptic uturn, but the shiftwas painted as pragmatic and technocratic. Ms Truss recasts it as
something approaching a struggle for civilisation.
Her vision is, in its essence, Thatcherite. The Chatham House
speech held echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s warnings, as the Berlin
Wall fell, against complacency and what Francis Fukuyama, then
an upandcoming political scientist, called the “end of history”.
Some Tories think her a grating pastiche: she can be found on In
stagram riding British tanks in Estonia (“the frontier of freedom”).
She brushes off the comparison to Thatcher—it is made of any
Conservative woman with strong views—but her supporters say
she is a loyal student. She spent her childhood on antiwar march
es with her parents, but was struck by the grim reality of their
friends’ lives behind the Iron Curtain. She ditched their politics
but kept their radicalism. She is one of several cabinet ministers
itching for the supplyside reforms Brexit was meant to usher in.
Over the past three decades the Foreign Office’s budget has
been cut, and may yet be cut further. Ministers and mandarins
holidayed as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Powers were hived off to ri
val ministries. Some are returning: last year it swallowed the in
ternationaldevelopment department. Ms Truss would like it to
have more influence over trade, her previous remit.
For British diplomats, she is a culture shock. Like Thatcher, she
finds them too prone to abstraction. She was irritated by an inter
nal memo describing their diplomacy as “honest and humble”.
She wants them to be patriotic, and to advertise the freedoms that
make Britain great. Sceptics in the Chatham House audience
found the boosterism too much and the analysis simplistic; diplo
macy means dealmaking in places where goodies and baddies are
in short supply. Still, they were struck by her grasp during ques
tions. Unlike Mr Johnson, she is good at getting Whitehall to do
what she wants, says a former minister. Civil servants who don’t,
and particularly the publicschooleducated men who tend to get
on her wrong side, can get a putdown and an eyeroll.
Mr Johnson has damaged Britain’s standing in Washington,
which sees him as a threat to peace in Northern Ireland. The trade
deal that Brexiteers hoped for has not materialised. Ms Truss, for
her part, fears America is becoming inwardlooking and protec
tionist. The relationship is now “special but not exclusive”; Britain
is strengthening security links with Australia, India and others.
Still, Ms Truss’s idea of an ideological struggle with China con
verges with President Joe Biden’s. Her rise coincides with a new
British energy in defending European security. Britain is being no
ticed again as a player if not a leader, says Ben Judah of the Atlantic
Council, a Washington thinktank. It has been vocal on Russia’s
threat to Ukraine, and quick to impose sanctions on Belarus and
send troops to Poland to aid a migration crisis.Rise and shine
Tory Europhiles think Ms Truss is their best chance of a rapproche
ment with European governments. She voted Remain, but has
since changed her mind on Brexit, saying that it has enlarged Brit
ain’s diplomatic toolkit. Still, she stresses a bigger picture: that de
spite scraps over fish and sausages, European countries are fellow
freedomlovers in a tough world. It is a truth often lost on those
Tories who mistook Brussels for tyranny. She thinks highly of An
nalena Baerbock, Germany’s new Russiasceptical foreign minis
ter. At Chatham House she offered a modest olive branch, praising
an eu aid scheme to counter Chineseloans. Setting aside quarrels
with the neighbours will be the truetestof whether Britain’s age of
introspection is drawing to a close.nBagehot
Britain’s foreign secretary wants to end the age of introspection