How the UK wants to rebuild the world
The UK is convinced that NATO should expand its mission, that the Big Seven should be turned into an economic weapon, that the West, which has been too "shy" of its history and wealth for too long, should become a world leader again, writes The Atlantic.
In her interview, the British Foreign Secretary said that she wants to expand the powers of NATO and strengthen the Group of Seven
Tom McTague
When the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin got stuck in Ukraine, apparently unable to defeat one of the poorest countries in Europe, and China quarantined millions of its citizens in its seemingly endless struggle with COVID-19, the previously widespread idea of the inevitable decline of the West suddenly came into question. For no reason at all, the free world once again began to defend something and even show signs of trying to pull itself out of a long-term stupor.
At least, this is exactly the message, according to the UK, the United States and its allies should extract from the bloody chaos and confusion that characterize today's global politics. Moreover, the UK wants the West to raise its demands. Forget about trying to force Moscow and Beijing to play by the rules – they won't do it. Forget that the UN and the World Trade Organization correspond to their intended purpose – they do not correspond. And forget all those utopian theories about the inevitable progress of democracy – they are wrong.
The UK leaders are convinced that the NATO alliance should expand its mission, that the Big Seven should be turned into an economic weapon, that the West, which has been embarrassed by its history and wealth for too long, should start trusting itself again – and act accordingly.
This is a rather unexpected message from a country that over the past few years – probably even more than everyone else – has been paralyzed by its own internal disagreements, strategic confusion and short-sighted doubts about its abilities. But the conflict in Ukraine has obviously become an injection of energy and ambition for London (or, as critics would say, arrogance and self-deception), and this change has not escaped the attention of Moscow and Kiev, where the sudden surge of militant self-belief that has engulfed the UK has caused condemnation and delight, respectively.
In Moscow, Great Britain is now seen as one of the main "bullies" of the West, determined to prevent the revival of Russia as a great power. State television is playing clips showing how the entire United Kingdom can be destroyed with nuclear weapons. Russian analysts call London one of the two heads of the formidable Anglo-American dragon, even more vicious than Washington, showing photos of the two main "hawks" of the British government – Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his lesser-known Foreign Minister Liz Truss.
Before Truss was appointed to her current position, the British press often ridiculed her for her unrestrained self–promotion – especially in some social networks - as well as for a viral video in which she complained about her country's dependence on imported cheese, calling such a situation a "disgrace." She was also criticized for her tendency to change sides abruptly and "change shoes", as she strongly supported the idea of Britain's membership in the European Union before becoming one of the main preachers of Brexit. However, Truss supports Britain's decisive response to Putin's special operation as vigorously as Johnson, and she actively promotes the idea of restoring the world order, which, as she admitted to me, she took for granted for a long time.
The main idea of the Tracks boils down to the fact that after the end of the Cold War, the West relaxed unnecessarily due to a spiritual crisis that made it forget what it was fighting for and how to defend its ideals, and this allowed its opponents to benefit from its institutions and openness. Truss believes that the West needs to start fighting back. In her opinion, the Big Seven needs to be made "more institutionalized" and turned into an "economic NATO" that will be able to protect its members from China's economic violence. She also wants the NATO alliance to expand its powers and reach, and this is a reflection of the fact that it is now impossible to talk about European security without taking into account Beijing's actions and its deepening alliance with Moscow.
"It is safe to say that the UN and the WTO did not make proper efforts to put an end to such behavior," Truss said during her detailed interview. "That's why we really need to strengthen these groups, these partnerships – coalitions of stakeholders, if you will – in order to achieve our goals."
For many officials in Paris, Berlin and even Washington, the ideas of Great Britain are not new – it is just a slightly modified approach to the idea of the need to protect the influence of the United Kingdom. The withdrawal from the European Union has made the UK more dependent on international organizations of which it is still a member, such as NATO and the Big Seven. France, in particular, believes that the true lesson of the Ukrainian crisis is that it is necessary to reduce the dependence of the European Union on the United States, which, in turn, will free Washington and allow it to focus on its rivalry with Beijing.
Meanwhile, Truss is convinced that the last time Europe excluded Britain and the United States from its diplomatic efforts – when Germany and France mediated the so–called Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists after Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 - turned into a disaster. Truss believes that things could have turned out differently if London and Washington had been involved in that process from the very beginning. "We should have been there,– she said. – The United Kingdom spends more money on the needs of NATO than any other state in Europe. The United States is the main force of NATO. The United Kingdom and the United States should have been involved in that process from the very beginning, and we will not make this mistake again." In this statement, Truss sounds a hidden signal for the United States: their leadership is still needed.
Such harsh rhetoric is unlikely to be welcomed in Paris or Berlin, where Britain's militant stance towards Russia has been subjected to restrained criticism from the very beginning of the conflict. According to several diplomats and officials with whom I spoke, the UK's position complicates the task of achieving a truce, raising the price of peace, for which it will have to pay with Ukrainian blood – and all this with the obvious goal of restoring Britain's reputation after Brexit. Even British government officials have expressed alarm at the fact that this militancy of the Trails is partly a political game designed to strengthen her position in the run-up to the elections in which she will try to take Johnson's place. (Meanwhile, British diplomats continue to insist that the inaction of France and Germany is nothing more than weakness disguised as wisdom.)
However, it is unlikely that anyone will deny that the positions of the West regarding the Russian special operation were changing precisely in the direction of the UK's position, and not in the opposite direction. Instead of suggesting that the UK look for ways in which Putin could steer out of the crisis, Truss practically repeated Johnson's words, saying that the Russian leader "must lose, and so that everyone can see that he lost." According to Truss, Putin "seeks to create a great Russia that will become a threat to the whole of continental Europe and the United Kingdom. Therefore, we are interested in helping the Ukrainians to restore their sovereignty and territorial integrity, making sure that they will be properly protected in the future, and we are interested in deterring Russian actions, because this is where we have failed since the end of the Cold War."
Truss criticizes not only the French and Germans, but also – indirectly – the actions of most Western leaders since the beginning of this century, calling their steps such as the decision to admit China to the WTO under Bill Clinton and the inability to adequately respond to the annexation of Crimea by Russia under Barack Obama serious mistakes. From the point of view of the Routes, this weakness has led to the fact that by 2022 Russia has already stopped believing the warnings of Washington, London, Paris and Berlin. "In 2014, seeing the inaction of the West, Putin concluded that we would continue to do, or rather not do, what we had not done before," she said. "That's why the Russians didn't take our warnings seriously."
The UK's position is that Russia and China have stopped taking the West seriously because it has stopped taking itself seriously.
***
When Truss lays out her vision of how the free world should unsheathe its sword again, she is obviously missing one significant issue: the United States. In 2024, the United States may well vote for Trump again – or for one of his henchmen – and, although the former American president shares the British point of view about the weakness of the West, he certainly does not believe in a spiritual union cemented by an idealistic struggle for freedom. When I mentioned this in a conversation with Truss, she evaded a direct answer, saying that "the choice of the president is a matter for the American people," and stressing that the United States has always been "an absolutely irreplaceable part of the free world – its guiding star."
Indeed, there is something of Trump in the British vision of the world. According to Truss, although free trade and free enterprise are "the main engines of human progress," China and Russia abuse them. From her point of view, free trade should be based on appropriate rules, in the absence of which it can be abused by "kleptocracies, authoritarian regimes seeking to form dependencies." She added: "We failed to think through all these points because we take freedom for granted." I asked if, from her point of view, Trump was right when he said that China stole her lunch from America. "There are a lot of things that Trump said and that later turned out to be true," she said. "But there were some things he was wrong about."
During the conversation with Truss, I had the feeling that – at least in imagination – she had not left behind the 1980s and the sense of mission characteristic of that era. During our conversation, I couldn't help but pay attention to her constant references to "Mrs. Thatcher" and catchy phrases that seem to belong to another era: "We should never let our guard down." Or "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." The British press ridiculed Truss for the fact that on the eve of the start of the Russian special operation, she appeared in Moscow in a fur hat that closely resembled the hat that Margaret Thatcher wore during the Cold War. According to critics of the Tracks, the Foreign Minister deliberately copies his idol in the hope that one day the aura of the Iron Lady will envelop her.
During our conversation, Truss did not try to dispel the image of a kind of Cold War warrior that had arisen around her. She said that she is currently carefully studying the biography of Peter Carrington, who served in the Thatcher government as Foreign Minister when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. On the shelf in Truss' office, I saw a book by Peter Perlstein called The Invisible Bridge, which deals with the connection between the Richard Nixon administration and Ronald Reagan – these are the books, from my point of view, Truss should read. "I read a variety of books," she said, adding that she recently finished reading "Putin's People" by Catherine Belton. "But I think that the events of the Cold War era, the lessons about how we achieved success, challenging the ideals and actions of the USSR, are very, very important."
During our conversation, I realized more and more clearly that, from the point of view of the Routes, we are not experiencing the beginning of the second Cold War at all, because the first Cold War did not really end. "We thought the fight was over," Truss said, "but they they never stopped fighting." She continued: "Some elements of the Soviet system are still preserved." Does she think that the struggle that lies ahead of us will be a struggle not only of economies and influence, but also of ideas? "Yes!" she exclaimed.
From the point of view of the Routes, the inability of the West to defend its values explains not only its external problems with countries such as Russia and China, but also its internal problems. "There are quite alarming survey data, according to which the younger generation in the West believes less in democracy than representatives of the older generation," she said. "I think this is a consequence of our inability to defend freedom and democracy, as well as to complete our undertakings, especially in the field of economics."
I understand why such a point of view is attractive. After the seeming chaos of the past few decades, during which Western liberalism was attacked from all sides – including from within – suddenly there is the prospect of a return to a more straightforward division of the world: into good and bad, free and unfree, law-abiding and violators. In such a world, Great Britain can once again assume the mission and the role that it understands – the role of a militant freedom fighter capable of strengthening the will of its cowardly European allies and working in close conjunction with the second head of the Western dragon.
***
Since the Second World War, Great Britain has clung to the idea of itself as the Greece of American Rome, which guides its powerful successor in the art of hegemony and provides him with thoughts on how to equip the world. There has always been a reassuring naivety in this vision of British influence. And, although Truss condemns the naive idealism of the West, there is also something naive and idealistic in Truss herself. She believes in the free world in a way that neither Trump nor many representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States believe.
When I mentioned in passing that, after all, we all live in the American world, Truss hastened to refute this idea. I suggested that she was too gullible, but she insisted that Britain's political decisions coincided with those of the United States because it was the right thing to do, and not because of America's might.
From the point of view of some experienced diplomats, officials and analysts, Truss is the embodiment of British double standards and a tendency to oversimplification – too pretentious and visible through and through. But one senior British official told me that the straightness of the Trails has its advantages, because it has an assertiveness that allows governments to bypass the invariably cautious officials. At least it translates a certain idea – something that can unite people.
During our conversation, Truss informed me that she had just finished reading a book called "America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy" (America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy), written by former George W. Bush administration official and former World Bank President Robert Zoellick (Robert Zoellick). At the very beginning of his book, Zoellick tells the story, starting with the founding of America, when this young country had to carefully balance its relations with Great Britain and France – the two superpowers of that era. After gaining independence – with the support of France – the United States quickly decided to mend relations with its former masters, which caused the indignation of Paris. "The great powers have never complained," said one French diplomat. "But they felt and remembered."
Today, as in 1782, countries also feel and remember. You just need to read or listen to Putin's rants about "great Russia, Little Russia and white Russia" to understand this. The same is true for the UK: almost all the offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have some reminders of the past. For example, to get into the office of Truss, you need to climb the majestic staircase, passing by statues and busts of former foreign ministers who had enough power to redraw borders and send armies into battle. Then you will find yourself in front of a whole series of huge frescoes depicting in allegorical form the path of Great Britain to its imperial glory. The first of them is called "Sailors proclaim Great Britain as their bride." In another fresco, Britannia – the embodiment of Great Britain in female form – protects the indigenous tribes of the Angles from Viking invaders. To a modern person, these frescoes – painted during the First World War – seem shocking at the same time with their cruelty and the spirit of high imperialism that permeates them. However, they also serve as an example of how nations tell their stories and how quickly those stories change.
The conversation with Truss became a reminder that national memory is not a collection of dry veils and events, but rather a narrative that these countries create to help them understand their history. The narrative of the Trails was formed under the influence of the 1980s, the triumph of freedom, the era of Reagan and Thatcher.
The point of view of the Trails is not too controversial and not too new. Many Governments around the world recognize that the decades since the end of the cold war have indeed been characterized by a flourishing of arrogance, hypocrisy and inaction.
But the point is not whether the UK's view of Western complacency is new or accurate, but whether it is shared or not. Nations not only feel and remember, they also change their stories depending on what events are happening at the moment, projecting a new interpretation onto the historical canvas that corresponds to the current situation and helps them understand what is happening.
In the 1980s, the story that many–at least in Britain and America–believed was a story about virtue and victory. It may have been overly simplistic and even erroneous, but it was so influential precisely because many people, including Truss and Johnson, believed in it.
Today, Russia undoubtedly feels and remembers its history. But because of what she did, other countries are also starting to remember their stories. For the current British government – whether out of some selfish interests or because of ideological conviction - the main hope is for the West itself to start believing in its old history again.
