The British Right's foreign policy muddle

Discourse on X today is wall -to-wall dissection of the US midterms. The consensus conclusion is that Trump betrayed his base by getting involved in another Middle East war when he said he wouldn’t - and one that has pushed up prices at the pump - which doesn’t go over too well with an already struggling electorate.

I don’t think that is the whole story. Voting patters are very much influenced by demographic change, and there’s a lot more going on than any outsider can comprehend. The British right, though, has very much latched on to the Iran angle. Restore, in particular, is taking the anti-war isolationist position.

This is the same anti-liberal interventionist shtick we’ve seen on the right ever since Iraq, where much of the rhetoric sounds a lot like the left of the 1980s, who were opposed to “Western Imperialism”, took the side Russia, and even opposed Britain’s war to re-take the Falklands. Tony Benn, a major left-wing figure and former Cabinet minister, opposed dispatching the Task Force from early on. It’s as though the two sides have swapped places. This is now boilerplate rightoid slop.

My own view is far less settled. The Iran war, said to be about its nuclear potential, was much as much about degrading Iran's conventional arsenal, which Epic Fury was reasonably successful at. Justified by way of the fact that Iran has demonstrated its willingness to use it. Had Israel and allied air forces not been so successful in intercepting Iranian drones and missiles, it is likely there would be a wider war by now.

Degrading Iran's conventional weapons stocks reduces the chances of a repeat performance, and goes some way to deterring Iran. The strikes caused severe, lasting degradation to Iran’s conventional military power projection, leadership continuity, and nuclear industrial base. It is highly probable that this oil crisis would have happened regardless, not least because of Iran's sponsorship of the Houthis. Iran provides substantial, long-standing material, technical, training, and intelligence support that enables Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

In my view, Trump didn't do enough to finish the job, but then there's only so much you can do without a mandate to put boots on the ground, and only so much you can do with air power alone. But it should be noted that the latest round of regional instability has Iran at the centre of it. Inaction carries its own consequences, and diplomacy with basketcase Islamist regimes is of limited use.

I think the reason Trump left Iran unfinished is because the US reached the limit of what can be accomplished with air power alone. He didn't have a mandate to put boots on the ground, wouldn't have secured one, and the US army is currently in no state to prosecute such a war. It's been badly degraded since the end of the Afghanistan war, with kit that is now beyond obsolete, and replacement programmes faltering in much the same way European procurement does.

Meanwhile, missile stocks are low, and the asymmetric economics of missile and drone interception in the Gulf make it untenable in the long run. It was as much a capacity and capability problem as it was domestic politics. The story might have been different had so much political capital not been squandered on Iraq. It may also have been a different story if Europe wasn’t a defence free rider.

Regardless, the situation is still unresolved and a swap out of US politicians doesn't Iran any less determined to sow chaos in the region. We haven't seen the end of it, and we still have the Houthis to contend with. The Saudi fightback is under-resourced and incompetent, that may yet require Western reinforcement beyond defensive Typhoon operations. The alternative is caving into Iran - which brings problems of its own.

That, though, does not make me a war hawk. I don’t think we should get involved in wars of choice, and liberal interventionism has too often backfired. I also think the national and regional interest is for the Ukraine war to end as soon as possible - even if it has to be a frozen conflict. In the case of Iran, though, I do not see an optimal course of action. Restore and the wider Slop Right are just opportunistically pandering to the nationalist base without giving the matter any thought.

The intellectual drive behind this Restore’s position is nationalist isolationism (which is doctrinally anti-NATO). It's wrong. Britain and the West will have enemies whatever it does. There will always be bad actors who threaten our interests and our security. The Houthis are one such example. They will hold the West to ransom because they can. That begs the question of whether Britain still upholds the principle of unmolested international shipping lanes. I would hope that we do.

Meanwhile, Iran will continue its nuclear ambitions, will funnel weapons to Russia, and fund terrorism throughout the region (with the intent of harmful destabilisation) while also attempting to destabilise Iraq. Interventions have their consequences, but so does inaction, and your foreign policy cannot be to simply stick your head in the sand and hope people will leave you alone. This is naïve and boneheaded.

What’s interesting is that Henry Bolton, Restore’s defence and security spokesman, supported Restore’s announcement but Bolton only does so in the transactional sense. The children running Restore are anti-NATO isolationists who basically believe everything about this current instability is Israel's fault for existing. Rupert Lowe doesn't believe this and neither does Bolton.

As we know, Lowe isn't the intellectual director of Restore Britain and is largely oblivious to what is being said and done in his name. The mystery here is why Bolton is using his intellectual resources to prop up a party's reputation when it's predominately steered by people who fundamentally disagree with his ideology, don't respect him, but will use him for political expedience. Restore uses Bolton as a figleaf, so it can still pretend to be a pro-West civic nationalist party when the need arises, but under the hood its politics are closer to those of Nick Griffin than Rupert Lowe.

What this amounts to is Britain choosing to take a back seat in international affairs that have direct economic consequences for us. Restore would likely close US air bases in Britain, and substantially weaken our commitment to NATO, and very possibly withdraw.

While there is a debate to be had over the threats we face, and the future and function of NATO, its essential function is interoperability with allies, recognising that no single Western nation is capable of fighting a peer enemy alone. Its very existence is its own deterrent. Without it, we would have to spend much more on defence. We need a considered approach, not reactionary ideological dogma.

But that puts anyone sane on the right in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand we have right wing isolationists, and on the other, a Tory party that takes the uniparty line on Ukraine, enthusiastically feeding a dangerous forever war. Neither is especially in our interests. Ukraine is a destructive and dangerous war that's demolishing European energy infrastructure - and it is not in our interests to sustain it or escalate it, but then complete disengagement on Iran is just as suicidal. One could be forgiven for thinking that Britain is no longer a serious country.