Martin Parsons reviews Douglas Hurd's Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary - 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2010) 414pp.
For anyone who wants a summary of what works and doesn’t work in foreign affairs, former Conservative Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd’s new book is a pretty good place to start. Lord Hurd begins by contrasting nineteenth century rivals Castlereagh and Canning, whose disagreements became so intense that they fought a duel. Canning’s foreign policy was idealistic, unilateral, liberal and interventionist, while Castlereagh’s was based on diplomacy and the building of alliances and embryonic institutions. This contrast is played out in each of the twelve Foreign Secretaries and associated Prime Ministers he selects.
However, the genius of this book is that it is not merely an academic history book, but includes Lord Hurd’s reflections on these events based on his own experience as both a diplomat and later as Foreign Secretary. These pearls of wisdom include:
- His observation that foreign policy is often based on a series of inherited myths, such as the ‘importance’ of Suez when Britain no longer had an Indian empire it needed a short sea route to;
- Lord Hurd also comments that there is often a potentially difficult relationship between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, as the Prime Minister naturally wants to take the lead in meetings with foreign leaders. On this, Lord Hurd wisely remarks that ‘The Prime Minister is first among equals but should treat his Foreign Secretary as a colleague’ listening to his advice rather than relying too much on his own judgement.
- He observes that ‘A Prime Minister, as Eden found in 1956 and Blair over Iraq in 2003, can always find advisers to praise his wisdom’. However, the British constitutional machine, properly used provides an antidote in the form of solid mechanisms of fact-finding, analysis and recommendations.
- Nonetheless, he also avers that sometimes nations will construct their foreign relations not simply on the basis of logic and reason, but also on the basis of feelings and sentiment;
- Some of Lord Hurd’s most interesting comments relate to dealing with states that don’t play by the same rules that we do. Whilst he observes that there is a link between oppression inside a country and the likely course of its foreign policy. He also acknowledges that it is sometimes the duty of a Foreign Secretary to deal courteously with villains and that some acts of wickedness will go unchecked and some wicked men go unpunished. This is so, he contends, because ‘sometimes attempting what is right would cause more suffering than already exists. In that case, doing what is right would in fact be wrong.’
There are academics who write books and there are people who write from experience; however, this highly readable book does both. Lord Hurd has done us a great service with this book.