UK Shift to ‘Patient Diplomacy’ to Woo Developing Nations Away From Russia and China
Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022. Former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak is set to become Britain’s first prime minister of color after being chosen Monday to lead a governing Conservative Party desperate for a safe pair of hands to guide the country through economic and political turbulence.
James TweedieBritish Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the UK needed to compete for influence outside its comfort zone of Europe, North America and the Commonwealth of its former colonies — but was reticent to name the country’s global rivals.The UK will compete with Russia and China for influence in the developing world through “patient diplomacy.”Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced the new policy direction in his first speech to the Foreign Office on Monday. “We are at peace, we are prosperous and we live on an island, so why do we bother doing foreign policy at all?” he asked.Cleverly admitted that as a “former imperial power,” the UK knew the “temptation” of the “might is right” doctrine, saying: “For most of our history, the world has been dominated by the brutal maxim that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”He lauded the foundation of the United Nations (UN) following the Second World War as a mechanism for avoiding a repeat of the “catastrophe.” But he went on to condemn Russian president Vladimir Putin for Russia’s “abhorrent” de-Nazification operation in Ukraine.”He is is prepared to destroy the laws that protect every nation and, by extension, every person,” Cleverly claimed, without acknowledging the mutual defence treaties Putin signed with the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics two days before the operation was launched in response to continued Ukrainian attacks.Cleverly said the UK needed to “catch up” on building ties with Africa, Asia and Latin America, but added that Britain has “leverage, and it is my job to use it.” And he insisted that the UK did not view the “changing balance of power with any “sense of loss” or regret.”The reason why the word’s geopolitical centre of gravity is moving south, and east, is precisely because hundreds of millions of people have escaped poverty,” Cleverly said, calling it a “vindication of the world order,” free trade and “everything that Britain has spent generations working for.”
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‘Patient Diplomacy’
Cleverly said future British influence in the world would depend on “winning over a far broader array of countries,” including those that “often describe themselves as ‘non-aligned’, and they are wary of committing themselves in any direction.”The Non-Aligned Movement of nations, founded in the Yugoslav — now Serbian — capital Belgrade 1961, has 120 member states, more than half of the UN. Those include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Venezuela and every African country except South Sudan — which separated from Sudan in 2011 with US backing — and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.Cleverly said the UK’s task was to to “earn their support” by “investing in relationships based on patient diplomacy, on respect, on solidarity and a willingness to listen.”Crucially, Cleverly said that would mean “learning from our competitors” — who he did not name, adding: “We must have strategic endurance — the willingness to commit to relationships for decades to come.”Both Russia and its close strategic partner China have increased cooperation with other emerging nations in the last 20 years, partly through the now-expanding BRICS group originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.In October, speaker of the Central African parliament Simplice Sarandji told Sputnik that the presence of Russian military instructors in the Central African Republic (CAR) is beneficial for the country, and they will remain there until all security problems are eliminated. A few months prior to that, Alexander Ivanov, the Head of the Officers Union for International Security, said that Moscow was going to ramp up the number of Russian instructors in the law enforcement agencies of the CAR upon the request of the country’s leadership.Russian flags have become a common sight at protest demonstrations against Western nations from the Malian capital Bamako to Port-au-Prince in Haiti on the US doorstep. Asian economic giant China is investing heavily in the developing world, drawing fire from Western leaders.But the east’s aid goes back decades into the 20th century to Soviet and Chinese support for the anti-colonial struggles across Africa and Asia.
