Oppose New Labour’s “Second Wave” Foreign Policy

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Oppose New Labour’s “Second Wave” Foreign Policy

The new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, yesterday delivered a keynote speech at the Labour Party conference, in which he spoke of “the second wave of New Labour foreign policy”. Already some media commentators have presented it as an attempt to distance the foreign policy of Gordon Brown’s government from that associated with the governments of Tony Blair.

            It is true that Miliband was forced to acknowledge that many within the Labour Party, as well as millions up and down the country and throughout the world, have opposed New Labour’s foreign policy during the last ten years. But he merely asserted that the government must learn the lessons of the last ten years and then move on. In general, his speech was entirely unapologetic and firmly based on the view that the defence and imposition of so-called “universal values” was entirely correct and should be continued and further developed through international institutions that fully embodied those values.

            It was in the context of defending the “universal values” of neo-liberal globalisation that Miliband supported the invasion of Afghanistan, while at the same time stressing the need for wider interference in Pakistan in order to establish what he referred to as “strong, stable, democratic countries able to tackle terrorism on both sides of the border”. It was in this context that Miliband defended sending “young men and women to fight for our values”, the invasion and continued colonial occupation of Iraq and interference throughout the region. In this regard, and just as in the past, Miliband even presented Britain’s role as one of working to “reconcile Sunnis and Shias”, in order to “prevent that conflict first fragmenting the country and then spreading like contagion across the Middle East”, as if it were not the Labour government and its allies who have provoked and fuelled such divisions in recent times, just as its predecessors did earlier in the 20th century. For Miliband, the issue was not what he called “the rights and wrongs” but rather that the government must “learn the right lessons” and “move on to address the new issues”.

            Just as in the past, Miliband presented what he called “the suffering of the Palestinians” as merely “an excuse for violence”. He therefore stressed the “need to remove this excuse”, preferring to ignore the issue of the rights of the Palestinians and the denial of these rights for nearly a century by successive British governments. Indeed Miliband’s assertion that in the Middle East “the only solution” is “a two state solution” is itself a denial of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

            Miliband defended both the close alliance with the US and membership of the EU. He stressed that “we share core values with the US”, which, he said, “has more power for good than any nation in the world”. But he stressed that what was now required from the alliance was “a great project”, that is what he referred to as the building of “institutions which re-define the global rules for our shared planet”. While on the subject of the EU, Miliband favoured greater expansion, welcomed the entry of Turkey into the European union of the big monopolies, and stressed the need for the EU to intervene globally. It was in this context that he urged parliamentary support for the EU Reform Treaty which, amongst other things, facilitates further expansion and a strengthening of the role of the big powers in the EU to consolidate the dictate of the monopolies, just as the previous Labour government did.

            Although much has been made of Miliband as a youthful foreign Secretary, ushering in the so-called “second wave of New Labour’s foreign policy”, his speech at the Labour Party Conference shows that he and Gordon Brown’s government remained committed to the export of the Eurocentric values of the big monopolies, the values of neo-liberal globalisation, aggression and war. It may well be that New Labour has learned some lessons from the last ten years and will seek to present its foreign policy in new colours, but there can be no illusions,   the “second wave”   of foreign policy remains as reactionary and dangerous as the first.

            Miliband’s claim of “fewer countries at war than ever before” is a fraud. Anglo-US imperialism is marauding the world with military aggression and interference, seeking revenge against all those peoples that dare to stand up against its dictate and adhere to their own values and have fidelity to their own cause and convictions. Peoples and nations fighting to defend, preserve and attain their sovereignty against this aggression and bestiality is the norm. Miliband’s urbane and civilised exterior covers over the crimes of the imperialist assassins, and carefully denies any role to the people and their heroic struggles. WDIE calls on the working class and people to step up their struggles against this government which continues to have its hands dripping with the blood of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and to tear off this “civilised” mask from the pontificating faces of Brown and his cohorts. The anti-war movement, the stand of the people in favour of defence of sovereignty and against imperialist aggression, must not be deflected from its goal of achieving an anti-war government with the power to stay the hand of the warmongers.

Reject and Oppose the “Second Wave” of Labour’s Foreign Policy!

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