British Foreign Secretary David Lammy advances a fresh doctrine for the country’s statecraft, one of “progressive realism”. It seeks to marry progressive, altruistic politics with a sense of limits. Or, in the tradition of diplomat and historian E.H. Carr, to seek a dialectic between power and morality as Britain picks its way through international chaos. Ultimately, it’s a flawed concept. More on that in a minute. First, a word of appreciation is in order. 

At least, in its favour, the Lammy Doctrine is more substantive than the vacuity of “Global Britain”, or the “Global War on Terror” and the pathology underpinning it, the urge to treat foreign policy predominantly as a matter of feeling important and put asserting “leadership” above the hard business of priorities and achievable goals. In its regard for aligning means and ends, it at least offers something more than the standard, strategically illiterate rhetoric of the foreign policy class. And it echoes the quiet concern of Whitehall staff who have tried, for years now, to turn high-minded slogans into workable strategic visions. It echoes a wider sense in the country that Britain needs to turn away from the surrealism that got us into disastrous wars, ruinous economics and fiscal and military overstretch.  

So, what’s wrong with it? The trouble with “progressive realism” is that the world is not a progressive place. That is, at least as realists would suggest, it cannot progress from its fundamental pattern — of competitive existence under the shadow of possible war. Even advances will be fragile and impermanent, and subject to reversal. 

The word “realism” is attractive because it sounds sober and weighty. To the extent that it helps encourage a sense that Britain’s goals and ambitions abroad should be bounded and achievable, that is a good thing. Yet the force of the word is also its seductive danger. Pragmatism, a concern for what works, is not the same as realism. And the two concepts risk being confused. Lammy and Starmer are not exactly realists. They are liberal internationalists with a partly pragmatic impulse, an eye to what works, yet who have not given up dreams of a world positively transformed. This difference matters.

Pinning down exactly what “realism” means is not easy

To be sure, you can believe in building an egalitarian order at home while practising Realpolitik abroad: indeed, that is part of the Labour tradition. Nye Bevan and Clement Attlee saw no contradiction in building a national health service and building nuclear weapons. But the Lammy doctrine is not just saying that one can strive for egalitarian social democracy while practising militarised power politics beyond. Rather, “progressive realism” seeks to make the world outside the walls a fundamentally better place. It strives for a world governed by law and benign institutions, bound by humane norms, organised around liberal principles, seeking security through enlightened interdependence. 

That is many things, but it is not realism with a capital “R.” Pinning down exactly what “realism” means is not easy. It is not so much a single theory of international relations, and more a broad intellectual tradition of pessimism, whose members have family resemblances. At the very least, realists are different from others not because they alone claim to be “realistic”, but because they have a darker view of what is inexorably “real” and unchangeable about international life. From Thucydides and Kautilya to Machiavelli and Morgenthau, realists judge what will “work” by pessimistic criteria, and assuming a ruthless external environment.

Consider three areas where the Lammy Doctrine’s progressivism diverges from realism. First, legalism. Fidelity to “rules”, and international law, lies at the core of Labour foreign policy thinking. Even when Labour prime ministers flout it, they claim they are enforcing it (recall Prime Minister Tony Blair’s strenuous efforts to get his Attorney General to give him the right answer on invading Iraq). If “progressive” foreign policy claims one thing, it claims that progress entails replacing the arbitrary cruelty of the old world with a world governed by law. It’s one of the ways they distinguish themselves from the rogues they oppose, from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump, and was central to their complaint about the Bush Doctrine. In an early affirmation of this principle, Prime Minister Keir Starmer suspended some arms export licences to Israel primarily on the basis of compliance with Britain’s obligations under international statute. It was a “legal decision, not a “policy” decision, said Starmer to the House –legalism in a nutshell. 

 This is, flatly, not realism. Adherence to international law is selective, historically, and therefore a policy decision not just a legal one. Britain kept quiet about Stalin’s atrocities in occupied territories while the Soviet Union was a vital wartime ally. Britain made common cause with Pinochet’s Chile who secretly helped it defend the Falklands. Britain and NATO exempted themselves from the UN Security Council’s authority in order to bomb Serbia. And Britain, as Starmer knows, will generously offer any concession to the dispossessed Chagossians, short of abandoning its valuable base on the stolen property of Diego Garcia. Declaring the government’s allegiance to the external rule of law will set false standards no government of a major country can live up to. It is not possible to create a world subordinate to rules or laws, because unlike at home, there is no ultimate sovereign authority to interpret and enforce their writ. And a responsible ruler will look first to the national interest, narrowly conceived, even if that clashes with legal principles. And they will clash. In a progressive world, rules and a sense of community must increasingly displace power politics. In a realist world, power generates and ignores rules at will. International law works like a spider’s web. Strong enough to catch the weak, irrelevant to the strong when the strong really want to do something.

Hand in hand with legalism comes a kind of institution-ism. That is, the conviction that Britain can make the world more progressive by reviving and bolstering organisations like the United Nations or the Commonwealth or the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime, things that are voluntary but which involve enduring patterns of shared expectations of behaviour. In the liberal mind, institutions can exert a powerful, independent effect on human activity. By creating a regular, open and intimate forum for bargaining, institutions can not only nudge nations away from conflict and towards peaceful interaction. They can alter how they define their interests in the first place. 

Not so, in the realist mind. Institutions may have a limited value, especially with regards to enterprises that are non-controversial, like international children’s aid. But institutions don’t remake countries. Countries make institutions, and ignore them. Sentimentalists may have celebrated the Atlantic Charter anniversary, but mostly forgot that Prime Minister Winston Churchill worked hard to exempt the British Empire and the Soviet Union from its principles of self-determination. The United Nations only rarely mobilises benign coalitions under its banner to fight aggressors, and even when it does, it is because there is already consensus (1991) or one spoiler has boycotted it (1950). If you want to get a contentious thing done, you either bypass the U.N., or face its obstruction until everyone is dead. The NPT achieved many things, but it was a product of both power and convenience. Most signatory states did not want to proliferate in the first place, and Washington’s carrots and sticks weighed more heavily than norms. And it has had little success in achieving disarmament of the already-haves. Indeed, recent indications are that China, the U.S. and Russia, the leading makers of great power competition, not only will never disarm, but are preparing to resume nuclear tests. As for the Commonwealth, it’s a lovely forum for athletics and of some practical use with regard to service in the military or coordinating development activity. But it is chiefly ceremonial. It can hardly constrain determined members when they are hell bent on doing things that offend the organisation. Recall Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. And the beleaguered Muslims of India won’t expect its intervening hand any time soon. As for the climate crisis, while mitigating measures are possible, we may doubt whether any institution will persuade Asian giants to curb their industrial revolutions.

And then, there is alliance-reverence. The Lammy Doctrine puts Britain’s alliances and partnerships at the core of our security. Reliance on others to help make one secure and share the security burden is something most progressives, and non-progressives, agree is a good thing. And yet. Allies are not friends. Alliances are never eternal. And they are a means to security, not ends. And here marks a strong difference between progressive and realist foreign policy thought. Other countries, no matter how institutionally aligned, are still other countries, with distinct and sometimes competing interests and priorities. They are not, historically, bound or deferential to common values, or common language or shared kinship or blood ties or collective struggle, not when the heat is turned up. Singapore in 1942 ought to have settled that debate. Turkey and Hungary are NATO members, yet maintain their dalliance with Putin’s Russia. And Britain’s senior ally, despite the “special” relationship, tends to do what it likes, even in the face of British protests. 

… if progressive realism is to be more realist, it will have to be less progressive

Yet there remains an urge in certain circles to revere alliances as a profound expression of moral purpose as well as alleviating pressure on defence budgets. Realists, by contrast, may value alliances but with a strong reservation, as supplements but not as substitutes. In a world of ultimate solitude, one may have to stand alone, and should prepare accordingly. Big bets on allied cooperation, from Northern Ireland to AUKUS, are therefore not wise. 

So, if progressive realism is to be more realist, it will have to be less progressive. And vice-versa. That choice will descend on the government, sooner or later, and not in circumstances of its choosing.