The Commonwealth Conversation

Noticing the Commonwealth

Lord David Howell, Deputy Conservative Leader in the House of Lords and Chair of the 1996 Foreign Affairs Committee report on the Future of the Commonwealth, stresses how everyone seems to be noticing the Commonwealth except in the UK. His article gives some ‘Royal Foreign Policy Advice’.

Has anyone noticed how, in the evolving global order of things, the Commonwealth is climbing steadily up the agenda of importance, relevance and potential? The Queen has certainly noticed, and devoted half her Christmas Day broadcast to explaining how the Commonwealth was ‘in lots of ways the face of the future’. Her husband has also noticed, and through his support for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference (next one due in 2013) is responding precisely to HM’s call for the Commonwealth to gather young people together to ‘bring creativity and innovation’ to global challenges, as well as practical solutions..

The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy also seems to have noticed, because it was he who turned up at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad and Tobago to seek stronger support from the Commonwealth network  for his international aims. And so has the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, also attending the Trinidad gathering.

So also have leading Japanese politicians, who now make regular enquiries about Commonwealth events and ask to attend them. So have a lengthening queue of smaller states applying for membership, of which the latest to be admitted is cricket-playing, and now English-learning, Rwanda.

So have a whole raft of international business investors who are moving growing volumes of capital and technology from one part of the Commonwealth to another – e.g from Canada to the Caribbean, from India to South Africa, from Australia to Malaysia – in a criss-cross pattern of south-south capital flows which are replacing the old north-south stereotypes.  

But come nearer home and things look rather different. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) publications studiously downgrade the development of the Commonwealth network in their international priorities, putting the UN and the EU top of the list, and forgetting the ‘C’ in their nameplate.

For the Tories, William Hague has been making increasingly strong statements about the emerging Commonwealth soft power network and its growing significance for British interests, but Hague is not yet in the Government and has yet to contend with the blinkered disdain of the Whitehall foreign policy establishment.

What is it about this colossal trans-continental network, covering almost a third of the human race, that excites the wider world and yet attracts so little interest in London?

First there is history and second there is suspicion of rivalry with other current objectives.

The history problem is that with the end of empire the Commonwealth came to be seen a  sort of compensation, a Britain-centred club or talking shop  for remembering the old days, along with plenty of post-colonial grumbles, a touch of nostalgia and not much else. It was simply not noticed that out of the old chrysalis was emerging an entirely new entity, composed not of  mostly struggling low-income states but of some of the world’s most dynamic and fastest–growing economies and markets, and with booming India, not  Britain as its centrepiece. Nor was it noticed –and still in many quarters has not yet been – that in the information age the subtle commonalties and interfaces of Commonwealth membership were becoming just as important to British national interests and security as traditional hard power deployments – possibly more so.

The other hang-up – that somehow giving a more central place in UK foreign policy to the Commonwealth network distracts from Britain’s other priorities on the world stage, notably effective membership of the EU, of the Atlantic Alliance and the UN, reveals even weaker understanding of the new international architecture. There is no conflict at all between being good Europeans, with strong commitment to regional cooperation and interests, and stronger Commonwealth ties. Perhaps there was once, way back when the UK first joined the European Community, but that was many yesterdays ago in a world of different trade patterns, different communication patterns and different distributions of power.

On the contrary, the UK might well be doing rather better in the unending manoeuvres and tussles over the EU’s future between integrationists and decentralisers, (of which the Lisbon Treaty is only one pause in a constant struggle), if it had put Commonwealth network interests more vigorously to the fore. Besides, the EU and the Commonwealth are two quite different components of the 21^st century global system – the one seeking to consolidate regional bargaining power and solidarity of broadly similar cultures, the other linking together in a fascinating mosaic of formal and informal ties and associations a far wider grouping of powers, cultures and philosophies. (The last UK Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on The Future of the Commonwealth, counted 202 non-governmental Commonwealth organizations and 46 official ones).

Is the expanding Commonwealth network treading on UN toes? Again, the answer is that it offers a different kind of platform on which nations can cooperate – and one which is more friendly and intimate, especially for smaller nations. It should be seen as a necessary 21^st century add-on or reinforcement to the world’s 20^th century institutions. 

The weaknesses of the UN system were on agonising display at Copenhagen. The strengths of the Commonwealth system were very visible, for anyone who cared to study them, when they addressed climate issues, security and peace-keeping issues, development dilemmas, common problems from the financial turmoil fall-out and a host of other immediate challenges at their recent Trinidad gathering. When it comes to resolving the core conflict of the age between sustainable future growth and defeating present poverty – which more or less sunk the Copenhagen gathering –  the dialogue between today’s and tomorrow’s Commonwealth leaders seems to offer a distinctly better – and happier – forum for the key reconciliation of purposes the world now requires.

We are seeing here the new international system in action. And if the question is ‘what’s in it for the UK?’, the answer is that it is increasingly good for business. As the balance of global power shifts eastwards and outwards the modern Commonwealth network now links us into some of the world’s fastest expanding markets and largest sources of savings and capital investment, at a time when the limping West badly needs both.  

The Commonwealth is indeed, in the Queen’s phrase, ‘the face of the future’. But are the Queen’s Ministers and subjects listening?

Category : The Commonwealth's Relevance
Tags: Commonwealth, EU, Queen, UK, UN
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