Johnson’s brilliant Munich speech defined Global Britain’s ambitions on the world stage
Boris Johnson’s brief, but very much to the point, speech to the virtual Munich Security Conference late last week was the most elegant articulation of his foreign policy and Britain’s position in the world, to date. In lucid prose, in which one might detect the hand of Professor John Bew – the senior in house foreign affairs adviser at No 10 – the PM spelled out where Britain is now and where it is going.
The speech is about half the length of President Biden’s, but in cogency and clarity has twice the impact.
Characteristically, Johnson refuses to indulge counsels of pessimism – he says wants to do nothing to permit “the industry of pessimism to thrive.”
He opens by welcoming the return of America to the concert of nations and international affairs, to lead in the key multinational institutions such as Nato.
Taking the theme of “build back, and build back green,” he emphasises the role of Britain in promoting recovery from the Covid pandemic, and setting up mechanisms to confront the threat of such events in the future. In this he goes much further than Joe Biden in his proposals. Britain’s leadership of the G7 conference will launch a Treaty of Pandemic Preparedness, and sponsor a specialised research body to anticipate and report on global disease.
The UK’s contribution in science is to be an integral part of its renewed global partnership and leadership offer. This goes beyond offers of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to up to 92 nations as a principal supporter of the COVAX alliance. Britain has a vital role now in tracking mutations – being responsible for half the world’s genome sequencing of Covid variants to date.
The life sciences emphasis extends to the distinctly green tinge to Johnson’s foreign policy vision. One of the highlights of the year is Britain and Italy co-hosting the COP-26 climate conference in Glasgow in the first weeks of November. Britain was among the first to adopt the target of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050, a target which he means to stick to.
The most intriguing and novel parts of the speech were on strategy, hard power, and defence and security alliances. In this he was anticipating the Integrated Review on foreign, defence and development policy due in a fortnight.
This will be based on Britain as a global ally, in Nato and Europe and beyond.
He appeared to be minting a new version of the old 19th century adage that trade follows the flag. Now the flag, the banner of defence cooperation, follows trade and security solidarity. With Nato in Europe, Britain faces the real threat of those who wish to harm – instanced by the Russian nerve agent attack in Salisbury three years ago.
Britain has poured extra funds into its military forces and defence. Equally, it will deploy instruments of the law and soft power through such measures as the Magnitsky Act. Cooperation with its major allies underpins the approach to problem areas like Iran.
While Johnson did not seem to be turning his back entirely on Europe, this was the view of Brexit Britain: Britain no longer features in the counsels of EU Europe and nor does the EU in the fundamentals of security and foreign policy of the UK.
Intriguingly, he said he was advocating the admission of India, South Korea and Australia to the G7 conference.
It was Boris Johnson at his most reasonable and upbeat – a vision of a global Britain that was looking at new horizons, but not quite closing all the old doors.