The Foreign Secretary describes his approach to diplomacy as ‘progressive realism’. One can legitimately ask what is progressive about a closer accommodation with the slave-labour-deploying Leninists of Beijing or what is realistic about ceding the UK’s sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to China’s ally Mauritius. But David Lammy seems happy in his work. His choice of words serves to give an updated gloss to what most observers would readily recognise as the Foreign Office’s traditional approach – appeasement of our enemies and embarrassment at anything which appears to be a reminder of our colonial past.
Whatever the aptest description of this government’s foreign policy, it is fair to say Donald Trump is piloting a different approach to international affairs. Rather than progressive realism, he is opting for reactionary surrealism. He is putting the naked pursuit of the national interest first, but in a manner more reminiscent of a competitor in Squid Game than a diplomat at the Congress of Vienna.
In short order, the US President has made overtures about annexing Greenland from Denmark, sent his Secretary of State to Latin America to wrest back control of the Panama Canal, imposed punitive tariffs on Mexico and Canada and then lifted them within 24 hours, applied a much more bracingly rigid tariff regime against China, and then suggested acquiring the Gaza Strip for his property portfolio as though it were a Mediterranean Mar-a-Lago. At first glance, his foreign policy appears to be one not mediated through the institutions of the EU, UN, World Trade Organisation or Nato but one administered by an individual in the grip of ADHD.
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