This week, the UCL Policy Lab published a report proposing changes in UK foreign policy and in the organisation of the UK’s foreign ministry. It generated a degree of press coverage and social media commentary, not all of it exactly a wholehearted endorsement (see here, here and here).
I’m publishing my brief thoughts on it here because, although the paper is not a specifically cyber-related paper, I am interested in cyber policy and strategy as instruments of national strategy and statecraft. Interesting interventions in the public debate about UK strategy and statecraft are within scope.
My main takeaways from the UCL paper up front: this was a largely unexceptionable paper; its analysis was fairly mainstream and uncontroversial, albeit with an implicit critique (pointedly not developed explicitly) that existing UK policy is failing to orientate itself to achieve the objectives outlined in the paper. Some of the coverage of the paper fixated on the most trivial of the paper’s recommendations, about how the physical headquarters of the current Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was too grand and imperial to be fit for purpose.
In truth, I think there is one legitimate criticism of the building in King Charles Street, but it’s not one the paper makes. Currently, there doesn’t appear to be nearly enough space for staff to have meetings. But regarding its paintings and décor you could argue either way – impressively imposing grandeur or living in the past, you decide. On the whole, I think the existing building serves the ‘dignified’ more than the ‘efficient’ side of foreign policy and diplomacy, but maybe imposing grandeur can be a bit efficient too?
The first thing that struck me about the UCL paper, having read the reporting and commentary before the paper itself, is that it is a very short intervention in this debate. It comprises just fourteen pages. And really, it’s just eight pages, arguably even six, once you account for the two pages that are only one paragraph long, and remove the cover, back page, prelims, graphics, and the generous use of white space throughout. Frankly, it’s not far off being a blog post – well, a blog post written by an academic, anyway.
This isn’t meant to be a criticism. Arguably, it reflects its intended readership. Who is meant to read it? Not current ministers or officials. Realistically, not most ordinary voters either. I would suggest that this is squarely aimed at Labour staffers and their shadow ministers, open to suggestions about how to re-enter government after a decade and a half in opposition. Busy readers don’t have time for longer documents, and most probably won’t read much beyond the summary, so brevity is a feature not a bug. Although, with such an impressive list of contributors, the paper’s brevity does feel a bit like a missed opportunity to elaborate its arguments.
Second, I think this presumably intended readership explains another of the paper’s features that has been criticised. It is largely a shopping list of perfunctory, obvious observations about where the UK sits in international politics (an off-shore middle power, relying on trade and the rules-based international order) and what it needs to do to succeed. I don’t think this is meant to be a revelatory document for anyone currently involved in policy – except in the implicit criticism that current policy and operations are failing to achieve what are already UK strategic objectives.
Third, the report also makes a curious machinery of government recommendation, that the admittedly cumbersomely-named FCDO should change its name to something like a Department of International Affairs or Global Affairs UK. I confess, my bias is small ‘c’ conservative, against machinery of government changes. I’d much rather make more effective use of the institutions I inherit.
My guess is that a lot of people working in the current FCDO, having recently experienced the MoG change forced on them by the DFID merger (and continuing to experience its practical impacts on normal business), would probably recoil, shuddering at the suggestion of yet another MoG change after the next election, unless it really is a change in name only (an issue of ‘branding’, as the paper implies). This is the part of the report that feels the most gimmicky and superficial, even though I sympathise in principle with the case for a more utilitarian, functional description of the Foreign Ministry than the somewhat cumbersome four-letter acronym we’re currently stuck with. (But remember, most people still just call it the ‘Foreign Office’ anyway. Indeed, this report does itself on page 9. So, you know, what’s another MoG change between friends?) In a super-short paper, is this really a recommendation that merits being made?
Fourth, the report contains plenty of perfectly unexceptionable recommendations. These wouldn’t be out of place in any think tank report on UK governance: policy needs to be better coordinated from the centre of government (a hardy perennial of commentary on the UK system); policies should be better implemented (ditto); design and implementation of policy should be more integrated with stakeholders beyond government (ditto again). None of this is a criticism: even if these are issues that have been highlighted for decades, government can always improve its degree of coordination, implementation and integration, and it’s important to continue to make the argument. The paper is self-aware on this point, highlighting that its recommendations are often complementary of others that have already been made.
Fifth, on international politics and what the UK can do better, the paper rightly highlights significant economic and geopolitical trends that combine to make international politics, including the rules-based order, more fluid than in previous decades. Again, this is an insight that is consistent with existing UK foreign policy priorities, such as the effort to improve relations with ‘middle powers’ and the Indo-Pacific tilt. And the paper’s appeal for pragmatism and a team-player spirit (rather than emphasis on the UK’s self-perception as a global leader) similarly doesn’t feel out of step with the main lines of UK policy in substance, if not with some of its adjacent rhetoric.
The paper argues that the UK needs to embrace its strengths, inter alia that the UK is an influential member of NATO, the 5 EYES agreement (the paper says alliance, but it’s an agreement), and a P5 member of the UNSC. You might plausibly (I guess) argue that current UK policy doesn’t exploit these advantages enough, but I don’t think you could fairly argue that it isn’t aware of them, or doesn’t regard them as major plus points for the UK. Again, I think this is a passage you need to read in context. I think it is aimed at influencing an incoming Labour government. (If, by some miracle, the Conservatives are still in government after the next general election, they are hardly likely to be receptive to this kind of critical advice, buoyed as they would be by fresh success and a decade and a half of incumbency.)
The paper curiously implies that the intelligence agencies operate ‘in isolation from the government and each other.’ This doesn’t ring true for me – either in terms of integration between the agencies, or in the ways in which the agencies work within and for the wider government agenda. But the team of authors is experienced and well-credentialed enough to know what they are thinking – it would have been interesting to read a more specific elaboration of what experiences have shaped this view, which seems at odds with what is known about how the agencies operate.
Sixth and finally, in line with the sense that the report makes a series of mainly mainstream suggestions, it focuses on the need to uplift resources and capacity for international policy and central coordination, making recommendations about the national security secretariat and the FCDO. None of this is surprising – improving capacity at the centre and reducing churn are staples of, for example, Institute for Government reports, and the Berrill Report was making similar remarks in 1977 about the need to improve specialisation in the FCO. Similarly, the paper recommends improved use of technology and curation of institutional memory, without naming existing teams in the FCDO designed to do exactly this. Does this omission mean the authors don’t think those teams are fit for purpose? If so, they should explain why not.
Overall, this does feel a bit like a missed opportunity to make a major intervention in the debate about international policy. Perhaps the report is a public-facing calling card, and the authors have already provided more extensive and detailed advice to the Labour shadow teams. But even so, this was an opportunity to go beyond that and to inform the wider public debate about issues that are extremely important but rarely salient in general election campaigns.