At a recent hearing of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee a lively exchange occurred on the place of Human Rights in Foreign Policy considerations. The Committee heard that while Human Rights were still an integral part of the FCO’s work, they were no longer one of the top priorities. Trade was now further up the list.
Integrating human rights into foreign policy poses difficult dilemmas for many western governments. Getting the balance right all the time can be challenging. The late Robin Cook, spoke of an ethical foreign policy. Few countries now speak of such a policy, for fear of being called out on it. But in my experience having served overseas as a diplomat, the ethical dimension remains strong, albeit implicitly so.
Diplomacy is about building and maintaining relationships with individuals, groups and states – and sometimes with those who don’t share common values. Diplomacy navigates and influences difference. As with human relationships, if one desires a positive change in the other then engagement is one way of achieving that through building up contact and hopefully trust and confidence. In extreme cases of difference, diplomats might ask at what stage you can speak to terrorists? Or when can you deal with dictatorships and how? Earlier generations faced similar values dilemmas when dealing with the USSR and Warsaw Pact.
Political Scientists disagree on whether the market comes before the democracy or vice versa. That feeds into the policy dilemma on human rights and trade.
Adopting too absolutist an approach on trade or human rights is likely to be ineffective. Giving trade a stronger priority over human rights in foreign policy might actually hasten the day when they are more sustainably embedded, or it might simply help to sustain the injustice. As with our human actions, all depends on the purity of motive underpinning the policy choice and the standards by which we discern that.
A self-interested utilitarian focus on trade alone is unlikely to bring positive change for either society. Clive of India and the East India Company is a history not to be repeated. But equally, a too purist approach to achieving human rights and democracy risks putting impossible expectations on developing countries, in particular the weaker ones, to achieve standards that took us centuries to deliver.
Trade and Human Rights are not mutually exclusive; in the right circumstances one can lead to the other. When Jesus spoke about being as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves, he illustrated the balance that sometimes has to be struck. Foreign relations, like human relationships, ask us to discern the purity of our choices and subsequent actions. For people of faith, we believe that one day we will have to account for them.