Pivotal Power to glorified Aid Agency

Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander want the Tories to speak out louder about the atrocities committed by ISIS in Iraq, but want to rule out military intervention. Does Labour even have anything useful to add to the current debate? Is this a worrying sign of decreasing British influence in the world under a Labour government?

Blair envisioned under his premiership Britain would be a pivotal power which used its military power for peacekeeping and humanitarian causes. Currently, the Labour leadership seems to be taking a dramatically different approach to international affairs.

Alexander’s article in the Telegraph argues that the government should be ‘doing more to speak out about the continued suffering of religious minorities … inside Iraq’. It shows that Labour has the right analysis and values but fails to back this up with meaningful commitment. It’s a sad day for British foreign policy when speaking out louder is all a potential government can offer.

Clearly those at the top of the Labour Party are not willing to assist US airstrikes and limit UK involvement to humanitarian aid. Of course, military intervention is not always necessary and alternatives should be considered first. But when brutal fascist militants threaten the stability of Iraq, Britain’s reluctance to act with force downgrades it to the role of an aid agency. Humanitarian aid is welcome but will not stop ISIS, resulting in Iraqi’s being well fed but dead.

Labour’s position is disheartening but unsurprising considering it’s increasingly isolationist tendencies, demonstrated by Miliband’s decision not to support possible airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad.

In his book Influencing Tomorrow it’s clear that Alexander wants to mirror the Obama Administration’s attempt to end to the post-9/11 ‘Decade of War’. While the Shadow Foreign Secretary is keen to strike a balance between thinking Britain can shape the world and being reduced to a marginal actor, recent events suggests that Labour’s foreign policy is sliding towards the latter.

In the case of Iraq, we are not talking about reshaping world order but rather assisting a country whose future we took responsibility for in 2003 – a task which cannot be left to an equally war-weary United States.

Labour’s current foreign policy (or lack of it) seems to stem from Miliband’s genuine scepticism about using British military power to solve problems. Naturally, he wants to explore all legal, diplomatic and non-military avenues before committing UK forces abroad. But, this caution can easily be seen as indecision. Taking time to scrutinise policy is all well and good. However, when 20,000 Iraqis are besieged by ISIS on a mountain, quick and bold actions must be taken.

Miliband has repeatedly said we need to learn the lessons from Iraq. But how many civilians have to die in Syria and Iraq before Labour does more than speak out? How much does our security need to be compromised by instability in the Middle East before Labour changes course on it’s increasingly non-interventionist foreign policy?

Whatever your view about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Labour needs to get over its Iraq syndrome to ensure Britain can play a bold and positive role in the world.