Why foreign policy should be more democratic

Dr Haro Karkour explains why the secrecy surrounding foreign policy is a threat to democracy.

This post is by Dr Haro Karkour, Online Tutor for Queen Mary Online's MA in International Relations and MSc in International Public Policy. Haro's research focuses on International Relations (IR) Theory.

In eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, foreign policy has been regarded as the realm of princes and kings, who conducted it secretly from the public. The notion that the public would understand matters of foreign policy, let alone deliberate over and decide them, would not only have been alien to statesmen such as Castlereagh and Metternich, but also, as Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, unworkable.

The separation of domestic and foreign policy into different categories - one open to democracy; the other conducted in secrecy - is however problematic. Today it is not foreign policy that demands secrecy but secrecy that demands the construction of foreign policy to evade democracy.

The label ‘foreign’ sets a boundary between the ‘out there’ that is somewhat less relevant from the ‘in here’. But foreign policy decisions do not only hurt the citizens’ pockets, in form of taxation to fund ‘forever wars’; they also boomerang to threaten the very institutions upon which democratic societies are built.

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The boomerang effect

Foreign policy never stays abroad. Blair’s decision in the early 2000s to open UK borders to central and Eastern European countries, for instance, boomeranged into a polarised debate over Brexit in 2016. In turn the latter reopened the Scottish referendum debate.

America’s War on Terror did not stay abroad, but boomeranged into the surveillance national security state, xenophobia against Muslims and a disproportionate number of ex-military personnel storming into Capitol Hill.

An undemocratic foreign policy in a democratic society creates a contradiction. On the one hand, democratic society promises to empower the people - let them control their own destiny and laws. On the other hand, an undemocratic foreign policy creates a sense of powerlessness vis-a-vis unaccountable elites who took control away from the people.

The ‘backlash’ against liberal democracy, therefore, paradoxically, was advanced in the name of liberal democracy. The call to ‘take back control’ and ‘take our country back’ are calls to restore the value of democracy. Whether such calls restore control and democracy, however, is a different matter.

It is clear, from the outcome of Brexit and four years under Trump, that the promise of control and democracy was, in effect a facade to cover the personal interests of a narrow counter-elite. The alternative to this counter-elite, who promise but do not deliver, is to democratise foreign policy.

Prospect of democratising foreign policy

To democratise foreign policy does not mean to let citizens formulate foreign policy. Nor does it mean to offer them ad hoc and last minute referenda. It means, rather, to embed democratic participation in foreign policy in the practice of government and the institutions of the nation. In its practice, the government should present alternative policies and the trade-offs each entail to let citizens deliberate over them.

There are several avenues where these deliberations can take place. For instance, citizens assemblies should be expanded and embedded in the institutions of government. Public hearings offer another avenue for public participation.

Civil society, NGOs and Think Tanks can also play a role. Chatham House in London can help expand the avenues for citizen engagement in foreign policy by, for example, opening local branches across the UK. Such a move would decentralise power and offer avenues for engagement beyond the major cities.

In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt noted that the concept of ‘happiness’, so fundamental to democracy, did not simply mean ‘private happiness’, that is, the happiness of hedonistic pursuits. It also means ‘public happiness’, which is the ability to feel empowered as a citizen of a democratic society, by participating in political life.

A democratic foreign policy is a foreign policy that is not content with private happiness. It is a foreign policy that provides avenues for public happiness. The latter, if the events of Brexit and Trump serve as a preliminary warning, is needed to put an end to a contradiction that the emergence of a counter-elite can capitalise on but cannot deliver.

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