London, UK - 17 May 2006, 7:05 GMT - ATCA: The Commonwealth as the Ideal Model for International Relations in the 21st Century - The Lord Howell

We are grateful to The Right Honourable Lord Howell of Guildford from the Palace of Westminster for his contribution to ATCA, "The Commonwealth as the Ideal Model for International Relations in the 21st Century".

The Lord Howell argues that the Commonwealth is becoming a completely transformed entity and that an enlarged and reformed version of it should be centre stage in addressing the problems of the new international order. The British FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) should be re-named the CFO (Commonwealth and Foreign Office) and that the Commonwealth network should be enhanced and made the centrepiece of British Foreign Policy. He also argues that sections of the British overseas aid budget currently administered through the EU in Brussels could be much more effectively handled through Commonwealth machinery and for UK children to be taught in schools not just a stronger sense of British identity -- as the British Prime Minister The Rt Hon Tony Blair is calling for this week -- but a sense of British and Commonwealth identity.

The Commonwealth normally refers to 53 member countries, formerly members of the British Empire. The Commonwealth's membership includes both republics and monarchies. The Head of the Commonwealth is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Headquarters are at Marlborough House in London. Her Majesty also reigns as monarch directly in a number of states, known as Commonwealth Realms, notably the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and others. The Commonwealth's 1.8 billion citizens, about 30 per cent of the world's population, are drawn from the broadest range of faiths, races, cultures and traditions. About half of this population are less than 25 years old. Members range from vast democratic countries like India, Canada and Australia to smaller city states like Singapore. The Commonwealth has three intergovernmental organisations: the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Foundation, and the Commonwealth of Learning.

The Right Honourable Lord (David) Howell of Guildford, President of the British Institute of Energy Economics, is a former Secretary of State for Energy and for Transport in the UK Government and an economist and journalist. Lord Howell is Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords and Conservative Spokesman on Foreign Affairs. Until 2002 he was Chairman of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, (the high level bilateral forum between leading UK and Japanese politicians, industrialists and academics), which was first set up by Margaret Thatcher and Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1984. In addition he writes a fortnightly column for The JAPAN TIMES in Tokyo, and has done so since 1985. He also writes regularly for the International Herald Tribune. David Howell was the Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1987-97. He was Chairman of the House of Lords European Sub-Committee on Common Foreign and Security Policy from 1999-2000. In 2001 he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan). He writes:

Dear DK and Colleagues

Re: The Commonwealth as the Ideal Model for International Relations in the 21st Century

The idea of the Commonwealth as a marginal international institution, doing good works, uttering virtuous aspirations and blessing a host of unofficial organisations is now completely redundant. We now face entirely new international conditions and in these the Commonwealth should shed its past diffidence and prepare itself to take a lead in setting the global agenda. This will require the Commonwealth to raise its game all round, expand its ambitions and activities and forge new links with non-members. It needs to demonstrate boldly its new significance in the promotion of world trade and investment and to build on the role it has already begun to carve out in the WTO debate.

This in turn depends, of course, upon its leading member states. Until they wake up fully and understand the staggering potential of the new Commonwealth network, as an ideal model for international collaboration in the 21st century, the backing needed will not be there. This means persuading Commonwealth Governments giving place and recognition to the Commonwealth network in their foreign and overseas economic and development policies at a level which, for various reasons (mostly now outdated), they have hitherto failed to do, the big exception being India, which almost alone, with its new flair and dynamism, has recognised the Commonwealth as ‘the ideal platform for business and trade’.

So the first task is to bring home to a half-interested world a few new facts about the Commonwealth system which have clearly escaped them. First, far from being a run-down club, held together by nostalgia and decolonisation fixations, today’s Commonwealth now contains thirteen of the world’s fastest growing economies, including the most potent emerging markets. Outside the USA and Japan, the key cutting edge countries in information technology and e-commerce are all Commonwealth members. The new ‘jewel in the Commonwealth Crown’ turns out to be the old jewel, dramatically re-polished and re-set, namely booming India , the world’s largest democracy with a population set to exceed China’s .

This presents a picture so far removed from the old image of the Commonwealth, bogged down in demands for more aid and arguments about South Africa (or latterly Zimbabwe) that many sleepy policy makers find it simply too difficult to absorb. The unloved ugly duckling organisation has grown almost overnight into a true swan. Or to use a different metaphor the Commonwealth of today and tomorrow has been described as ‘The Neglected Colossus’. It should be neglected no longer.

It has been recently estimated that in the new information age context the Commonwealth’s commonalities of language, law, accounting systems and business regulations gives a 15 percent cost advantage over dealing with countries outside the Commonwealth.

As for finance, the market capitalizations of Toronto, Sydney and London alone, combined, exceed New York’s. The assets of the financial services sectors of the Commonwealth group of nations are actually now larger than those of the whole EU.

Finally, on the economic and commercial front it should be noted that recent detailed academic analysis has identified a growing ‘Commonwealth effect’ – namely a perceived reduction in what is termed the psychic distance between Commonwealth member states, and a consequent increased propensity for Commonwealth states -- especially the smaller developing ones -- to engage in increased trade and investment activity between each other in preference to, and prior to, trade and investment elsewhere in the global community.

A Wider Role than Trade

But the new story should not just be about bread and butter matters and new economic opportunities staring us in the face. The Commonwealth needs to be re-assessed in terms of its real weight in securing world stability, in balancing the dialogue with the U.S. giant, in linking rising Asia and the West, in helping to handle the prickliest of issues such as the Middle East and Iran, in promoting better development links, in bringing small and larger nations, poorer and richer, together on mutually respectful and truly friendly terms and in bridging the faith divides which others seek to exploit and widen.

In all these areas I believe the Commonwealth, reformed, reinforced, built upon and enlarged, offers, as the Indian Industry Minister Mr Kamal Nath, wisely perceives, ‘ the ideal platform’. But, it will inevitably be asked, how can such a disparate and scattered grouping possibly be a force and a weight in these dangerous and contentious areas? Who will take the lead? Where is central control going to be?

To understand the answer to these questions requires the biggest shift of all between the 20th century and the 21st century mindset, a shift which many still find it impossible to make. In the 20th Century the solution had to be in terms of blocs, consolidated organisations, centrally controlled in the name of efficiency, organisational pyramids, perhaps with some delegation, but basically radiating down from a superior and central point.

All this has now been invalidated, not only in business but in governmental affairs and in relations between countries and societies. Thanks to the extraordinary power and pervasiveness of the information revolution we live in an era now not of blocs and pyramid tiers of power and management but of networks and meshes, both formal and informal.

By accident as much as design the Commonwealth emerges from a controversial past to take a perfect place in this new order of thinking and acting. The fact that the Commonwealth now has no dominant member state, or even a coterie of such states, far from being a weakness is now a strength.

Because the Commonwealth is founded on respect for nation states, each following its own path, yet recognising the imperative of interdependence, constant adjustment can take place to new challenges, with partnerships and coalitions being swiftly tailored to each new scene.

This answers three dilemmas:

The first is that people want more than ever in an age of remote globalisation, to develop their own identities, to have countries and localities to love and defend and take pride in. They recognise the fact of interdependence but they long equally for ownership and a degree of independence. Superior ideas of supra-national government and super-states, along with sweeping dismissals of the relevance of the nation state, can play no part in resolving these deep and competing needs, and indeed utterly fail to do so when imposed by well-intentioned integrationists, as in the case of the EU.

Second, rigid bloc alliances cannot keep up with the kaleidoscope of change. The more that the European Union tries to draw its members into a rigid and unified political and military bloc the less effective it becomes. The more that the world is seen as clinging to a structure of blocs established in rivalry to each other the more the real criss-cross network of bilateral linkages between nations is neglected. Yet it is just this new and more flexible pattern which provides far the best guarantee of stability and security.

Third, the new texture of international relations is made up not just of inter-governmental and official contacts but of a mosaic of non-governmental and sub-official agencies and organisations. This takes time to grow, but grow it has under the Commonwealth canopy into an amazing on organizations and alliances between the professions, the academic and scholastic worlds, the medical, educational, scientific and legal communities and a host of other interest groups linked together across the 54 nation Commonwealth Group.

Filling a Dangerous Vacuum

The tragic collapse of America’s ‘soft power’, reputation and influence almost across the entire globe is leaving a dangerous vacuum. Into this vacuum, cautiously, subtly, but steadily are moving the Chinese – with cash, with investment projects, with trade deals, secured access to oil and gas supplies in an energy hungry world, with military and policing support and with technology.

This is a gap which ought to be filled not by the Chinese dictatorship but by the free democracies of the Commonwealth, from both North and South, banded together by a commitment to freedom under the rule of law and ready to make real and common sacrifices in the interests of a peaceful and stable world and the spread of democratic governance in many different forms.

The Commonwealth possesses the vital attributes for dealing with this new world which the old 20th century institutions so conspicuously lack.

It stretches across the faiths, with half a billion Muslim members; it stretches across all the Continents, thus by its very existence nullifying the dark analysis of a coming clash of civilisations.

Better still if a more confident Commonwealth now reaches out and makes friendly associations with other like-minded nations, both in Europe and Asia. Japan, with some twelve percent of the entire world’s GNP, and with its confidence and dynamism now restored, is ready to make links with the Commonwealth, especially with India and Britain together. Poland and some other Central European nations long to have association with a grouping less parochial than their own local European Union. Even Russia, despite its prickly inward-looking mood and latent nationalist sentiments, could yet emerge a good democratic partner of like-minded nations inside the Commonwealth club.

So in a sense I am asking that the Commonwealth Secretariat should be encouraged to develop its external wing in a much more powerful way than hitherto and perhaps have a nominated high official to work with the Secretary General and act as the Commonwealth’s High Representative. Make such an enhanced Commonwealth the central platform of the international future and there will then be an enlightened and responsible grouping on the planet, ready to be America’s candid friend, but not its lapdog -- a serious and respected force, both in economic and trading terms and in terms of upholding security and peace-keeping.

A Key UK Priority

This is the body the strengthening of which our own UK should now make its key foreign policy priority and together with which it should re-build its own foreign policy priorities. It should do so because this route offers far the best way both for a nation such as ours, with our history and our experience and skills, to make a maximum contribution to meeting the world’s many ills and, even more, because it is the best way to promote and protect our own interests world-wide.

In particular the UK should consider transferring the administration of that part of its overseas development effort which at present goes through the EU from that unhappy channel to the Commonwealth system, and encourage both other Commonwealth members to do likewise and the Secretariat to develop the full capacity to handle this role. This single move would give the Commonwealth huge new prestige and resources, direct our aid efforts far more effectively to poorer Commonwealth member states, who are our closest friends and to whom we owe the strongest duty and greatly strengthen the UK’s own prestige and effectiveness in the global development process.

And when the Prime Minister calls for children here to be taught a ‘greater sense of British identity’, I say that should be ‘British and Commonwealth identity’. That alone conveys the broader and outward-looking sense of interdependence and duty which is the true message with which young British children should carry in today’s world.

Of course we must always be the best possible local members of our European region –- as, incidentally we nearly always have been, although some people forget this.

But Europe is no longer the world’s most prosperous region. It is our duty to build up our links, many of which were so strong in the distant past, with what are becoming the world’s most prosperous and dynamic areas of the world, but also with the smaller nations as well as the large ones, the struggling poor ones as well as the rapidly industrialising and increasingly high-tech ones. This is what an enlarged Commonwealth can do for us in a way that the European Union can never do and for which it lacks the reach and the right basic policy structure.

That is why Britain’s external relations priorities need major re-alignment and why I would like to christen the home of our able and experienced diplomats the Commonwealth and Foreign Office – the CFO not the FCO.

Regards

 

David Howell

This is the text of a Lecture by Lord David Howell to be delivered at 6:00 pm on Wednesday 17th May 2006 at The Royal Commonwealth Society, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London.

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We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.

Best wishes

For and on behalf of DK Matai, Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)

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