From deserting Libya to supporting Ukraine

The past 14 years of Conservative foreign and defence policy have been shaped by a significant shift in global threats.

When David Cameron arrived in Downing Street in 2010 as the head of the coalition government, the war on terror was still a major priority in Whitehall, and the Arab Spring – and the foreign affairs disasters that would follow – were months away.

If the polls are correct and Rishi Sunak is leading his party to defeat, this Tory government’s time – with Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary – will draw to a close against a very different geopolitical backdrop, dominated by the increasingly assertive states deemed hostile by the west, in particular Russia and China.

But there are growing concerns in Whitehall about a potential resurgence of Islamist terrorism, pinpointed on the Islamic State affiliate Isis-Khorasan.

Here i examines the Conservatives’ record in office on defence and foreign affairs.

Libya

Cameron’s first major policy challenge came just months into his premiership, in February and March 2011. Along with France, the US and other Nato countries, he authorised UK military force to defend civilians in the Libyan city of Benghazi, who were being subjected to a brutal crackdown by Colonel Gaddafi’s regime after taking part in Arab Spring protests. The initial military operation was within the bounds of a UN security council resolution, but drifted into regime change in the civil war that followed and that culminated in Gaddafi’s killing by newly installed government forces.

A diplomatic source says the military intervention, driven by the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was “not properly thought through”, adding: “We went along with it. [Barack] Obama went along with it. The Europeans were keen to do something. But it turned into mission creep as it went on, creating a frightful mess which went beyond the UN security council resolution. DC [David Cameron] didn’t consult the military commanders before agreeing the decision with Sarko.”

Cameron was criticised in a 2016 report by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee for failing to take responsibility for reconstruction of the country in the aftermath of the military intervention. Obama, US president at the time of the intervention, also later criticised Cameron and Sarkozy for their lack of interest in post-war reconstruction. The episode marked an effective end to more than a decade of successive UK governments’ liberal interventionism.

Syria

In August 2013, when President Assad used chemical weapons against civilians including schoolchildren, Obama called Cameron – who was on a beach in Polzeath, Cornwall on a family holiday – to tell him that the Syrian president had crossed the US red line. But Cameron, clearly mindful of both the Libyan intervention and the war in Iraq a decade earlier, said he would need to secure parliamentary backing before committing UK forces to strike against Assad. He failed to win the votes – as did Obama – and the West did not intervene. A diplomatic source says: “I don’t think Cameron was necessarily wrong but it was quite a difficult moment in terms of relations with the US and whether the UK was going to be a strong ally. It was an important moment.”

Ukraine

A shift away from intervention undoubtedly played a role in the lack of Western response to President Putin’s 2014 annexation of part of Ukraine, Crimea – although dependence on Russian oil and gas was also at play. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted that the West had made a “terrible mistake” by letting Putin “get away” with the annexation. A diplomatic source says the decision to stand by “probably encouraged” Putin “to become much more emboldened when he invaded in February 2022”.

However, following the February 2022 invasion and throughout the war, the UK, US and other Nato countries have played a major role in helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian forces – even if they have not directly engaged them – through the supply of weapons and equipment and the training of soldiers.

The diplomatic source adds: “The Conservative government did the right thing and Boris, having been happy to get cosy with Russian oligarchs, did take a strong role in defending Ukraine. That is a tick in the box for Conservative foreign policy – the one really good moment in that sense. It showed that the UK is able to be a leading partner on foreign policy issues in Europe despite not being in the EU.”

Olivia O’Sullivan, director of Chatham House’s “UK in the World” programme, says: “The Conservative government has had a very consistent response to the war in Ukraine. Not being in the EU has not prevented the UK from being a consistent supporter of Ukraine. But there are concerns about whether we should be able to share more security and geopolitical decisions and risks with the EU, particularly with the prospect of a second Donald Trump term on the cards.”

Brexit and Europe

Departure from the EU, following the referendum vote in 2016, has shaped UK foreign policy as well as causing political drama at home. O’Sullivan says: “Brexit overshadows so much of the UK’s foreign policy in this period, not just because it caused a lot of domestic turmoil but because of effects on our foreign policy relations with the EU.

“Post-war there were two pillars of foreign policy strategy that were in balance – our relationship with Europe and our relationship with the US, where we used our influence with one to maximise our impact with the other. You don’t have to be pro or anti-Brexit to see that it took out a strategic pillar of UK foreign policy. What is the strategic approach will be the question for the incoming government.”

The Conservative government’s first major foreign policy statement after Brexit was in 2021 with the “Integrated Review” which, O’Sullivan says, marked a “shift away from the war on terror and towards the threat from hostile states such as Russia and China”. She adds: “As a lot of commentators said at the time, there was a European-shaped hole in it, in terms of foreign policy influence with the EU.”

And a diplomatic source says after 2016 the UK government was “trapped on the axle of Brexit” in foreign policy terms and even saw Johnson and Liz Truss, who both served as foreign secretary and prime minister, resorting to “gratuitous insults to our EU allies” by “calling them rude names”. The source says the two politicians “clearly saw it as an opportunity to find favour with the people who supported Brexit. It didn’t help improve our relations with Europe and decisions on Brexit. It pissed people off in European circles”.

United States

Despite pro-Brexit politicians claiming that a vote to leave the EU would mean closer relations with the UK’s strongest ally, the US, experts believe that withdrawal from Europe has dimmed London’s influence in Washington. The UK is still a key member of Nato, but “leaving the EU meant America regarded the UK as less important than European allies – we are no longer the first port of call,” the diplomatic source says, “and for the Europeans we would no longer play an important part of what we did in Washington. We mattered a bit less in both decisions. Even during the Trump years”. However, despite Brexit, the UK is still a powerful player in foreign policy and security terms because of its military capabilities, insiders say, which Washington respects. The source says: “Effective diplomacy is having a credible capability of using force if diplomacy fails. In Europe there are two countries that can do that – Britain and France.”

Afghanistan

The withdrawal of UK and US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 had been scheduled for months but descended into chaos and disaster. It marked one of the worst moments for the Conservative government’s foreign policy record and a low point for Prime Minister Johnson and the then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

Both men, along with the FCDO’s permanent secretary Sir Philip Barton, were on holiday at the time of the withdrawal, prompting criticism that there was no leadership when things started to go wrong. The Taliban’s advance on Kabul, and their eventual takeover of Afghanistan after 20 years of UK and US forces in the country, happened much quicker than had been anticipated by intelligence and military chiefs, but in a report a year later, the Commons foreign affairs committee said there had also been “systemic failures” in diplomacy and planning which led to lives being lost in the evacuation of civilians.

China

The Tory government has been on a “real journey” in its approach to the world’s second-largest economy, O’Sullivan says. Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne forged close links with Beijing from their time in opposition and into the first years of government, during a period known as the “Golden Era”.

Their pursuit of warmer relations, fuelled by the opportunity of more prosperous trade links, was heavily criticised for being too naive about the security threat President Xi’s regime poses via technology, intelligence, support for states like Russia, Iran and North Korea and, potentially, fears over an invasion of Taiwan before the end of the decade.

O’Sullivan adds: “Looking back over 14 years: the Golden Era and the sense that China presented economic opportunity – we have really shifted from that period to one where, under Johnson and Truss, both governments shifted to seeing China much more as a security risk but also a real recognition, a sensible recognition, from the government that the whole region of the Indo-Pacific does need more diplomatic engagement from the UK. Important shipping routes in the region would be threatened by any security crisis in the Indo-Pacific.”

In the meantime, the UK has moved closer to Japan and to Australia, including signing, along with the US, the Aukus deal for new nuclear submarines. O’Sullivan adds: “It would be really interesting to see how the next government intends to balance this [attention to the Indo-Pacific] with their plans to get closer to the EU. We don’t need to see these two things as binary. There is a lot of pressure [on the UK] from the US to align with them on China. The issue of Huawei becoming part of our 5G infrastructure is a case in point, where the US brought significant pressure to bear on the UK to remove Huawei. If there is a security crisis over Taiwan that pressure gets even more intense. Even without a possible crisis with Taiwan the US will continue to set out its ambition to focus more on China and focus less on its role in European security.”

Middle East

The 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel, and the war in Gaza that followed, continue to test the diplomatic limits of the international community. In the first weeks of the war, Sunak expressed hope that the UK could play a key role in the Middle East peace process, something that may have had more credibility if the UK had not deprioritised the region during more than a decade of Conservative government. In fact – despite his much-criticised role over Libya – the return of Cameron as Foreign Secretary in November 2023 did at least add gravitas to the UK’s diplomatic efforts to pursue a two-state solution, given he had visited the region as prime minister and formed working relationships with key players like Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas.

What’s more, the UK’s contribution to military action to defend Red Sea shipping against Houthi attacks, as well as in the shooting down of Iranian missiles headed for Israel in April, will have earned Sunak and his government “credit in the bank in Washington”, the diplomatic source says, adding: “That showed that the UK could be relied upon by the US.”