This paper was submitted on April 11th, 2022 as my course paper for SS307: International Relations.

The sun has at last set on the British Empire. The state that once ruled much of the known world has been reduced to another European state playing a supporting role in the US-led world order. This solution has not been desirable for the British people and their government, leaving them both vulnerable and with wounded pride. In 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, reestablishing the state as independent in trade, defense, and governance. The departure from the European Union by the United Kingdom in response to its decline in relative power following World War II can be explained by the realist and constructivist traditions of international relations. This action will produce greater cooperation in the international system because of the United Kingdom’s cultural power.

In an article for Foreign Policy, Michael Moran argues that “in its new defense and foreign-policy posture, the country is no longer trying to punch above its weight.”[1] Moran traces the crisis in Britain’s global security role to the 1956 Suez Crisis, where the once-hegemonic Kingdom lost the Suez Canal, to its lowest point, which he names as the “disastrous British participation in Iraq.”[2] Moran discusses a white paper released by Parliament in March 2021 that expresses Britain’s desire to maintain its “commitment to European security,” but also to accept that “the country now sits more firmly in a specific [geopolitical] weight class—the middleweight class.”[3]

            Much of Britain’s discontent with its position in global politics comes from comparison to its historical position. Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney write, “All countries are prisoners of their past; and the Leave narrative successfully tapped into an enduring British sense of former greatness, exemplified by the country’s continuing preoccupation with the second world war.”[4] Britain is not used to being in the middleweight class in global affairs and in many senses still carries itself as a global power. The British Empire once had possessions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America that enabled it to control global trade and development. Contrary to what Americans today may be led to think, the reason the English language is so widespread is because of Britain’s former trade empire, not America’s recent cultural dominance. The Commonwealth of Nations still exists today as a vestige of the Empire’s former extent, but Britain is now the first among equals rather than a naval hegemon.

The United Kingdom thus left the European Union primarily to maintain its national independence in defense and culture. In a 2021 national security review by the British Parliament, the government emphasizes its soft power through English language media.[5] This hints at its desire to take a leadership role in the world, given that English language and culture are already dominant worldwide. Once it has time to bolster its military capability, it would not be difficult for the United Kingdom to reassert its hard power as the groundwork of culture is already laid. In a RAND corporation report, the authors assert that, “It is plausible that the UK will seek to maintain or even expand its level of ambition in order to demonstrate its continuing relevance and loyalty to its partners and allies. … the UK may seek to demonstrate its ongoing commitment to European and international defence, maintaining or expanding its levels of ambition accordingly.”[6] From defense perspective, it is likely that Britain plans to use Brexit as a strategic pivot point to reassert itself as a global police force, similar to how the United States has acted since the Cold War. Britain appears more inclined to unilateral defense actions than multilateral cooperation with the European Union or the United Nations. This desire can be understood and analyzed using international relations theory.

In the realist view, the United Kingdom is concerned about its diminished international security following its fall from near hegemony. It sees institutions like the European Union as liabilities that leave it vulnerable to a decline in sovereignty. It is not enough for Britain for there to be a mere balance of power in Europe—the only way to guarantee security is to be the hegemon like it once was. Political scientist John Mearsheimer writes, “Apprehensive about the ultimate intentions of other states, and aware that they operate in a self-help system, states quickly understand that the best way to ensure their survival is to be the most powerful state in the system.”[7]  The UK is afraid it may cease to be relevant when contained in the European Union and desires to build itself outside of that context. Mearsheimer assumes that states are not governed by a central authority, that world powers possess the will and ability to hurt each other, that states cannot be certain about another’s intentions, that survival is the primary goal of states, and that world powers behave rationally in their own best interest.[8] With this in mind, it only makes sense that a state seeking security in the international system would seek hegemony, as it cannot trust the intentions of other states which all have the ability to harm its own survival. A state in a realist view of the world system inherently is concerned with relative, and not absolute power. A state may have ‘enough’ absolute power to defend itself against certain threats, but there can never be enough relative power short of being the most powerful state in the international system. Still, an offensive realist would say that a state should maximize its absolute power. In the past, the United Kingdom arguably was a hegemon in relation to other adversary states, but its power has since relatively decreased. Assuming that the United Kingdom is a unitary, rational actor, it left the European Union because it prevented the United Kingdom from maximizing its power and moving beyond parity with other European states, whose intentions ultimately cannot be trusted.

The other strand of neorealism that might explain the United Kingdom’s actions is defensive realism. Defensive realism makes similar assumptions as offensive realism, but notably differs in concluding that states should not maximize their power, but seek parity with other nations. Political scientist Kenneth Waltz explains, “Excessive weakness may invite an attack that greater strength would have dissuaded an adversary from launching. Excessive strength may prompt other states to increase their arms and pool their efforts against the dominant state.”[9] While Mearsheimer believes a state should maximize its power to defend against all possible threats, Waltz would argue that this is easier said than done. In the realist tradition, each other state in the international system is also a rational, unitary actor and would take actions to ensure that its own relative power does not diminish before one state has the chance to become a hegemon. Thus, a state should only seek relative power parity with other world powers, as not to incite balancing action. This defensive balancing of power is another possible explanation for the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. In one sense, the United Kingdom could see its relative position of power in the European Union as less than other member states, leaving it vulnerable to exploitation. It would thus leave the European Union to ensure it can freely build its own power to a balanced level to reduce the chance of a power-maximizing nation invading it after seeing vulnerability. On the other hand, the United Kingdom might have seen the European Union itself as too powerful relative to non-member states in Europe and elsewhere, inviting a balancing attack on the Union. To avoid fallout from this, the United Kingdom removes itself from the entanglement and reduces the European Union’s power, moving the world towards a more balanced and thus less conflict-prone system.

Waltz introduces the concept of the security dilemma, which complicates this defensive balancing. He writes, “measures that enhance one state’s security typically diminish that of others. In an anarchic domain, the source of one’s own comfort is the source of another’s worry.”[10]  This leads to a spiraling escalation in defense spending as states all scramble to keep up with each other and maintain the balance of power. Unless one state can develop defenses at a higher rate than the others and achieve the hegemony for which Mearsheimer advocates, states will be locked in an escalating parity, where absolute power grows rapidly for all states, but relative power does not meaningfully change in the long term. The United Kingdom, depending on whether its actions are analyzed through offensive or defensive realism, may either be removing itself from the European Union in order to break ahead towards hegemony, or is seeking to balance out the bloated power of the European Union in the international system in an effort to avoid conflict.

The other tradition that can explain Britain’s response to its declining power is constructivism. One of the primary ideas of constructivist theory is the social construction of state interests. Ian Hurd explains, “To be a constructivist … means beginning from the assumption that how people and states think and behave in world politics is premised on their understanding of the world around them, which includes their own beliefs about the world, the identities they hold about themselves, and the shared understandings and practices in which they participate.”[11] It follows that while leaving the European Union may not be the most rational economic or political action for the United Kingdom in the short term, the United Kingdom has a socially constructed interest of global cultural dominance that makes defense independence the rational path for Britain in the long term. To the British government and people, they would rather pursue the cultural interest of British greatness than act as an economic profit-maximizer. The key addition of constructivism to the understanding of foreign policy is to show that a state’s interests are often much more complex than mere survival or security, as realists and liberals would argue.

In addition to Britain’s state interest in projecting cultural power, there is clearly a sense of British nationalism that plays a role in Britain’s response to its declining global power. Ernest Gellner defines nationalism as, “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent.”[12] While subject to the rules of the European Union, Britain may have felt that while its national unit was theoretically sovereign, there was also a degree of political submission to foreign powers from continental Europe. In a speech to the European Parliament in 2016, pro-Brexit politician Nigel Farage said, “The biggest problem you’ve got and the main reason the U.K. voted the way it did is because you have — by stealth, by deception, without ever telling the truth to the rest of the peoples of Europe — you have imposed upon them a political union.”[13] Brexit was an attempt to right the nationalist principle so that the political systems governing Britain were congruous with the British nation. Gellner identifies this incongruence as a major problem: “If the rulers of the political unit belong to a nation other than that of the majority of the rules, this, for nationalist, constitutes a quite outstandingly intolerable breech of political propriety.”[14]

In a 2020 speech, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lampooned the EU’s authority over Britain: “I dispel the absurd caricature of Britain as a nation bent on the slash and burn of workers’ rights and environmental protection, as if we are saved from Dickensian squalor only by enlightened EU regulation, as if it was only thanks to Brussels that we are not preparing to send children back up chimneys. In one field after another, Britain is far ahead.”[15] He continued, appealing now to British historical pride: “But this is the moment for us to think of our past and go up a gear again, to recapture the spirit of those seafaring ancestors immortalised above us whose exploits brought not just riches but something even more important than that – and that was a global perspective. That is our ambition. There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail…the wind sits in the mast.”[16] The imagery used in this concluding part of the speech alludes to Britain’s former status as a seafaring hegemon which dominated the world not from a lust for power, but from a benevolent desire to discover and civilize the world. This clear underlying motivation goes beyond any realist notions of power struggle and instead must be understood through constructivism as national pride and identity.

I assess that Britain’s response to its declining relative power is best explained by constructivist theory. The sense of British national identity makes the act of leaving the European Union, which would be irrational for any other EU state, the proper response for Britain to achieve its interests. This will lead to further cooperation in the international system because the UK will no longer feel beholden to the will of other European states and instead come to cooperate with them as a sovereign power rather than just a voting member of a committee. The key crisis for Britain is its struggle with identity: it feels itself as the nation that civilized the world and spread its language and culture to the ends of the earth, but is now placed firmly in the ‘middleweight class’ of international power and was until recently beholden to the will of European bureaucrats. This act of leaving the European Union is a step towards reconciliation of identity and reality for the British people and government. Amartya Sen writes, “The main hope in harmony of our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and works against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization.”[17] Conflict is more likely to arise when a nation is not allowed to assert its own identity. The United Kingdom would rather venture out alone in foreign policy than constrain its proud national spirit into the skin of a prefab Euro polite liberal democracy. This move is ultimately better for all of Europe, as it will make the United Kingdom more willing to cooperate given that the internal resentment against the European Union is resolved. The United Kingdom, and other nations around the world, should seek to ensure their own sovereignty and not allow their unique national identities to be lost in the increasing tide of globalization.

Realists and constructivists would agree that the United Kingdom has experienced a decline in relative power since the end of the second world war. I identify Brexit as the primary event with which the United Kingdom has attempted to right this trend. While a realist would explain this action as an attempt to increase its own relative power, a constructivist would assert that Brexit’s primary goal is to secure Britain’s cultural sovereignty and prevent its national pride from being subsumed by anonymized membership in the European Union. Regardless of which tradition we use to interpret Britain’s actions, I believe there will be more cooperation in the global system in the long-term as a result. The United Kingdom, confident in its independence, will be more willing to cooperate with its European neighbors and will not be as anxious about vulnerability to foreign exploitation when it can secure its own defense.

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Bibliography

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[1] Michael Moran, “The United Kingdom Finally Acknowledges Its Hard-Power Limits,” Foreign Policy, April 16, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/16/the-united-kingdom-finally-acknowledges-its-hard-power-limits/.

[2] Moran, “Hard-Power.”

[3] Moran, “Hard-Power.”

[4] Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney, Beyond Global Britain: A Realistic Foreign Policy for the UK (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, 2021), https://ecfr.eu/publication/beyond-global-britain-a-realistic-foreign-policy-for-the-uk/.

[5] United Kingdom Cabinet Office, Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, and Foreign Policy, (London: 2021), 9.

[6] James Black, Alexandra Hall, Kate Cox, Marta Keep, and Erik Silfversten, Defence and security after Brexit: Understanding he possible implications of the UK’s decision to leave the EU – Compendium report, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017), 63.

[7] John Mearsheimer, “Anarchy and the Struggle for Power,” in International Politics, Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Scott P. Handler and Robert T. Person (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2022), 69.

[8] Mearsheimer, 69-70.

[9] Kenneth Waltz, “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory,” in International Politics, Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Scott P. Handler and Robert T. Person (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2022), 63.

[10] Waltz, 65.

[11] Ian Hurd, “Constructivism,” in International Politics, Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Scott P. Handler and Robert T. Person (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2022), 156.

[12] Ernest Gellner, “Nations and Nationalism,” in Foundations of International Relations, ed. Robert T. Person, Michael A. Robinson, and Hannah M. Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2021), 81.

[13] Camila Domonoske, “WATCH: Brexiteer Nigel Farage To EU: ‘You’re Not Laughing Now, Are You?’” NPR (Washington, D.C.), Jun. 28, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/28/483857209/watch-brexiteer-nigel-farage-to-eu-youre-not-laughing-now-are-you.

[14] Gellner, 81.

[15] Boris Johnson, “PM Speech in Greenwich: 3 February 2020,” https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-in-greenwich-3-february-2020.

[16] Johnson, “PM Speech in Greenwich.”

[17] Amartya Sen, “The Violence of Illusion,” in International Politics, Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Scott P. Handler and Robert T. Person (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2022), 187.