The Guardian view on foreign policy after Brexit: growing pains
It is not unusual for disputes between neighbours to be petty, but small spats express major misunderstandings. So it is with Brexit. There are tensions wherever the boundaries of the UK meet the EU.
In the Channel, there is a problem with French fishing vessels gaining access to Jersey – a complex case because the crown dependency is responsible for its own territorial waters. France has threatened to cut off electricity supplies if the issue is not resolved. To the west, there is the more dangerous challenge posed by Northern Ireland, where UK territorial sovereignty overlaps with EU regulatory obligations.
The cause of the problem is that Boris Johnson signed an agreement that he either did not understand or intended never to honour in full. As a result, Northern Ireland was not prepared – administratively, economically, politically – for the consequences of a customs border in the Irish Sea. Talks are under way in Brussels to ease the situation, but that dialogue has cycled back to a familiar stalemate. Practical solutions involve regulatory alignment, but there is an ideological refusal on the part of the UK government to countenance such a thing lest it impede freetrade deals around the world, specifically a deal with Washington.
That is not an ambition of totemic significance for Joe Biden. The White House is more interested in the strategic dimension of transatlantic relations – rebuilding the alliance of western democracies that was sabotaged by Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive diplomacy. President Biden has a geopolitical concern about China’s emergence as a superpower rival to American power, alongside the ongoing international mischief that Russia pursues in compensation for its relegation from the superpower club. That was the theme of remarks by Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, at the opening of a G7 ministerial summit in London this week.
On that axis there is still a special relationship, but it is complicated by Brexit. Traditionally, bilateral relations with London have been enhanced by Britain functioning also as a bridge to the rest of Europe. But Mr Johnson rejects strategic intimacy with the continent, thus requiring the White House to cultivate stronger direct ties with Paris and Berlin.
The EU is a long way from having its own foreign policy and Nato is the place where Europeans meet Americans to talk about security. But Brussels is the capital of a regulatory superpower, which gives it strategic heft in the global conversation about China and the tension between commercial partnerships and principles of democracy. Britain has done itself no favours by flouncing out of the European rooms where those conversations happen.
One day, a UK government will come to appreciate the folly of surrendering that influence. It is hard for Mr Johnson when he has invested so much in the myth of “global Britain”, defined in repudiation of the country’s nearest allies. But Washington will apply pressure for more realism. There are already enough differences between the US and Europe (and within Europe) to complicate the project of a renewed alliance of democracies. Brexit adds further barriers to cooperation that, seen from President Biden’s perspective, look not only pointless, but childish.
Britain’s disputes with its neighbours are complex, but in the global scheme of things they are also small. They belong to the era of parochial nationalist point-scoring that was never edifying and should certainly have ended once a Brexit deal was done. But European and American allies are still waiting for Mr Johnson to recognise the strategic context in which his actions have consequences. They need a grown-up UK government that understands the limitations of its position since rupture from the EU, and its obligations to repair the damage.