Charting a course beyond an age of British exceptionalism

If you have been watching the missiles and shells in Israel and Gaza, it is striking, on turning to these books by two of Britain’s most distinguished, recently retired diplomats, that they barely mention one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. For a good reason: their subject is the loss of the UK’s influence in the world and its predicament over what it should do now (and claiming a part in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not feature in their answers). Britain should focus on the alliances through which it can still shape things, is Peter Ricketts’ answer; it should recognise the quiet power of diplomacy, is Peter Westmacott’s.

To those who have not spent their lives in Whitehall, the two authors might seem identical. Each spent 40-odd years in Britain’s foreign service; they held some of the same posts (Ricketts succeeded Westmacott as ambassador in Paris); as reward for services rendered, one is a lord, the other a knight. But the books illustrate two very different ways of being a diplomat. Ricketts won the jobs at the heart of Whitehall that Westmacott says he never wanted, rising to become permanent secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the top of the diplomatic service.

Ricketts’ book, Hard Choices, written from the high vantage point he wishes politicians would adopt, is an account of the advice he gave then — and would now. Westmacott offers a personal memoir, They Call It Diplomacy, of representing Britain as an ambassador, mischievous but also passionate and full of insight, particularly into Turkey, Iran and the US, his final posting.

Both tell a tale of the decline of British influence since the second world war. As Ricketts puts it, Britain did “leverage its prestige” to play an “outsize role” in shaping the post-1945 international order, ensuring for itself “the trappings of a great power, including its permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, the status of a nuclear-armed state and the privileged relationship with Washington”.

But former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd’s famous dictum that Britain “punched above its weight” was treacherously seductive. UK influence has now “declined a long way since then, much further than many British people realise”.

The headiness after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union concealed that decline for a time. In those years, western diplomats felt they were not only on the winning side but also bringing the gift of democracy. The UK was one of the prime advocates of central and eastern European countries joining the EU — not anticipating what migration would later do to British public distaste for that union.

It was the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that brutally exposed Britain’s over-reach and its exaggerated belief in its military strength. Westmacott is surely right that the success of Britain’s intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 partly inspired Tony Blair’s decision to go into Iraq. Ricketts is searing on the former Labour prime minister; Blair and David Cameron, one of his Conservative successors, were, he argues, alike in being “thoughtful leaders who took their responsibilities very seriously” but that “the lack of effective checks and balances on a prime minister, coupled with a preference for conviction politics over strategic thinking, led each man to make one fundamental error for which they will always be remembered.”

Lack of strategy is now causing western governments to make other mistakes, writes Ricketts, including a preoccupation with terrorism that led them to neglect the rise of China and new threat from Russia. He argues that intelligence work and international co-operation have “successfully reduced” terrorism to the point where it can be treated as a serious law and order problem rather than an existential threat to the west. On average two people a year have been killed by terrorists in the US since 2001, “as against sixty-nine by lawnmowers” and the thousands more by gun-wielding Americans.

He and Westmacott both spend much time — rightly — discussing how the UK should deal with China and the US. Ricketts sees the battle between China and the US as one for technological and scientific strength, in which the UK will struggle to do trade deals and yet preserve other goals.

For all Ricketts’ calls for more strategic thinking from politicians, he does not seem to have seen Brexit coming, however, and both authors regret it. Neither gives much time to the 2008 financial crisis, perhaps one reason for not sensing the rising populism. Westmacott does not link Turkey’s EU accession plans to Brexit, though Boris Johnson and the Vote Leave certainly did. And Ricketts displays the kind of mandarin loftiness to political realities that drives ministers nuts.

Acknowledging briefly the pressures of social media, he says: “We have seen that politicians can often regard strategic thinking as a waste of time when keeping their job depends on handling the crisis of the moment.”

With Brexit done, what now? The hardest choice for the UK is “to accept reality”, Ricketts argues. Life outside the EU at least creates an opportunity to confront the “uncomfortable truth” of how Britain sees itself and the facts on the ground. This will involve tough choices — from whether to compromise values in pursuit of trade deals to choosing “between the rhetoric of exceptionalism and the reality that the only way for a country of its size to have any real influence in the world is by making common cause with others.”

The strength of Westmacott’s account is that as well as shrewd analysis, he gives a vivid sense of how making common cause actually works. In the US, his last posting, he found Joe Biden “genuinely interested in other human beings, and warm to the point of being more tactile than some people found comfortable but which we found endearing”. Hillary Clinton was smitten with Downton Abbey — and he persuaded the cast to make a video for her.

Above all, he makes a powerful case for the kind of diplomatic skills — and deep knowledge of other countries — which he has spent his life honing. Together, these books show why Britain will need them.

Hard Choices: What Britain Does Next, by Peter Ricketts, Atlantic Books, RRP£14.99, 265 pages

They Call it Diplomacy: Forty Years of Representing Britain Abroad, by Peter Westmacott, Head of Zeus, RRP£25, 358 pages

Bronwen Maddox is director of the Institute for Government, a think-tank, and former foreign editor of The Times

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café