Beyond the bluster and sabre-rattling, there is little of substance in what Cameron has said about Georgia in the past month

David Cameron's various interventions in the Russo-Georgian conflict and now in Afghanistan have served as a useful exercise in clarifying the Conservative Party's foreign policy. Put bluntly, it doesn't have one. Beyond the bluster and sabre-rattling, there is little of substance in what Cameron has said over the past month. As a Conservative victory at the next election looks ever more likely, this is extremely worrying for Britain's international reputation.

In the aftermath of the war in South Ossetia, Cameron showed himself to be an opportunist of some considerable skill, initially succeeding in outmanoeuvring both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. His appearance at the side of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia on 16 August, while Gordon Brown and David Miliband were still preoccupied with the more parochial conflict within the Labour Party, was intended to demonstrate the Tory leader's credentials as an international statesman. For a short while the strategy appeared to be working, although his trip to Afghanistan looked purely cynical.

In Georgia, Cameron asked the right question - "Will the west step up to the plate?" - but singularly failed to provide any useful suggestions for how it might do this. He said it was time to distinguish between right and wrong and to stand with Georgia in its hour of need. However, he failed to elucidate what this might mean in practical terms, beyond the usual platitudes about redoubling diplomatic efforts and empty threats about Russia paying a price for its aggression.

Cameron went on to betray the confusion at the heart of Conservative foreign policy during an interview on the Today programme on 1 September, when he emphasised the importance of European Union member-states acting together to stand up to Russia's bullying.

His arguments in favour of speeding up an EU free-trade agreement with Georgia and suspending negotiations on an EU-Russia strategic partnership might have held more water, were he not leader of a party that remains deeply hostile to the EU and sits in alliance with the lunatic far right in the European Parliament.

The government is not in a position to be complacent, but should now be able to pick apart the contradictions in Cameron's rhetoric piece by piece.

Gordon Brown can take some comfort from the results of the EU emergency summit on 1 September, which issued a strong statement of condemnation of the Russian action, gained an assurance that Russia would finally withdraw its troops from Georgia, and committed the Union to sending observers to assess the humanitarian situation. The EU may be a paper tiger that stopped short of imposing sanctions, but, as President Nicolas Sarkozy has said, it is a paper tiger that negotiated a ceasefire and a partial Russian withdrawal.

David Miliband has been criticised for posturing during his visit to Kiev at the end of August, and was patronised by Kremlinologists and experts on the Caucasus for his poor understanding of the intricacies of the history of this troubled region. It is true that he failed to grasp what Andrey Kurkov describes in this week's New Statesman as the "many-sidedness" of Ukraine's national identity. But it is unfair to compare the Miliband approach to the blundering simple-mindedness of Cameron's position.

There is an attempt at subtlety and nuance about Miliband that was missing altogether from the Foreign Office in the post-Robin Cook era. It is entirely legitimate for the British government to maintain dialogue with Russia while condemning the excesses of the invasion of Georgia. This is not the same as appeasement. We also welcome Brown's new-found desire to engage with the European Union.

Cameron has positioned himself as the "heir to Blair". In his response to the crisis in Georgia, he has shown himself to have inherited the worst of the former prime minister's characteristics: a tendency to see the world simplistically, in terms of only the righteous and the wronged.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website