Product Description

In this work, Mark Curtis uses original research into declassified government files to produce a scathing critique of Anglo-American foreign policy in the 1990s. Focusing on three major areas - the UN, development and the Middle East - he details the extent to which Britain and the US, to different degrees, share considerable responsibility for human rights abuse, poverty and insecurity in the Third World. Curtis frames an understanding of British and US foreign policies in the 1990s by tracing the development of those policies since the end of World War II, demonstrating that the priorities have remained virtually unchanged over the last 50 years, particularly in terms of military and economic policy. The US, with Britain clinging at times unceremoniously to its coat-tails, has systematically manipulated the international foreign policy agenda in its own interests. By blocking UK intitiatives, impoverishing and destabilizing Third World countries under the guise of development and democratization, and protecting corrupt client regimes it has acted to ensure its own continued access to strategically important resources - particularly oil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296427 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Superb account of recent British foreign policy
This important book is a study of US and British foreign policy since 1945, particularly of development policy and arms policy. Based on research into recently declassified government files, it develops the themes of Curtis' earlier book The ambiguities of power: British foreign policy since 1945, published by Zed Press in 1995.

He asserts that the US and British states are mainly responsible for world poverty. Why? Because the G7 nations, led by the US and British Governments, have more than 40% of the voting power in the World Bank, whose notorious Structural Adjustment Programs prevent development and worsen the debt crisis. Debt means poor people in poor countries give to rich people in rich countries: the rich get the loans and the poor get the debts. In 1993, the US Government alone voted against a UN Resolution calling for reducing the debts. The debts should be cancelled, not endlessly rescheduled. The US and British Governments are the leading architects of the World Trade Organization, which is an even more brazen assault on nations' sovereignty than the SAPs. Blair said "we intend to play a leading role in the worldwide effort to achieve further trade liberalisation through the World Trade Organization."

The vaunted overseas aid programmes do no good. Aid means poor people in rich countries give to rich people in poor countries. Aid, like AIDS, infects the host by attacking the immune system: even the World Bank conceded that "external assistance can weaken the resolve of governments to tackle developmental problems." The European Union, the World Bank and the United Nations agree that their aid programmes must promote private enterprise. The previous Minister for Overseas Development, Lynda Chalker, said "we use the aid programme to support the kind of international economic system which serves our interest."

Britain still has an inflated military. Only one of the three official 'defence' roles is necessary, defending Britain, but we do not need NATO to do that for us. We do not need the other two roles, protecting the dependent territories, and 'wider security interests': both mean interventions overseas and vast expense. Half a million servicemen, reserves and supporting civilians cost £22.2 billion a year. The Government wants Eastern Europe's countries to join NATO; new members will have to increase their military spending, mainly by buying armaments from the USA and Britain; enlargement of the European Union is designed to assist this. So as well as opposing Economic and Monetary Union, we should also oppose the EU's enlargement into Eastern Europe.

Britain is one of the largest providers of military training, to more than 90 armies, including those of Indonesia (since 1983), Guatemala, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. British forces are currently serving in 71 countries including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Britain is the second largest vendor of military equipment and one of the four largest military spenders. Halving military spending would create 500,000 jobs and add 2% to the gross national product, because the money could be spent where it would create more jobs.

For too long we have accepted compromises of our sovereignty imposed by membership of international organisations, vast foreign investments and debts, the debris of empire, entangling us unnecessarily and expensively in the affairs of other nations. External relations cost us £83 billion a year, a quarter of government spending.

In these areas, as in all the other important areas, we cannot rely on the Labour Government to make any difference: Labour's Shadow Defence Secretary George Robertson said in the House of Commons on 15 October 1996, "We have, of course, supported the government in almost every operational decision that they have taken over the past decade, not because it has been expedient to do so, but because it has been right." We will have to take responsibility for ending the British state's destructive role at home and abroad.