K. is now an object lesson for other countries dealing with a dark triad of deindustrialization, degrowth, and denigration of foreigners. This book has no axe to grind, but the invasion of Iraq, which I barely remember at the time, wow, wow, wow. Far from being a minor player, Snell argues, the UK has often been decisive in world affairs, for instance by supplying the dodgy intelligence that justified America's invasion of Iraq and providing money-laundering services for the Russian elite in London. Though Britain still maintains overseas territories, the handover marked the final end of Britain's empire.

It was the ideology developed in the Balkans that later justified the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. by helping create failed states in Libya and Syria, there have been surging immigrant crises, which have come to our doors, looking for help, which the UK is unwilling to deal with. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Pro- and anti-Brexit demonstrators outside parliament in October 2019. The shifting alliances of tribal and political leaders to meet their own changing needs frustrated our diplomats and military leaders, who couldn’t work out whose “side” they were on. Instead, the UK needs to re-engage with the EU on new trade partnerships and growing military capability.When six of the country’s leading experts on Iraq went to Downing Street in 2002 seeking to warn Blair about the consequences of his actions, instead of asking about the country’s complex religious faultlines, one of the few questions the uninterested PM asked was “But he [Saddam] is evil, isn’t he? The same circumstances that dictated the withdrawal from India required, at almost the same time, the termination of the mandate in Trans-Jordan, the evacuation of all of Egypt except the Suez Canal territory, and in 1948 the withdrawal from Palestine, which coincided with the proclamation of the State of Israel. Asserting that British foreign policy has been a key factor in twenty-first-century gepolitical instability, former diplomat Arthur Snell presents a persuasive argument that Britain's marginal role on the world stage has in fact been decisive. Today, Britain seems trapped between a left-wing aversion to growth and a right-wing aversion to openness. The book doesn't attempt much in the way of analysis as to why this happened other than to imply a constitutional dishonesty, wilful ignorance and lazy thinking on the part of UK politicians, their advisers and maybe some of the civil servants who aided and abetted them.

Meanwhile Putin, who accused the West of having anally raped Serbia, was prompted to foster aggressive nationalism in Russia, leading to a renewed assault on the breakaway republic of Chechnya and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The Middle East as a whole was destabilised and the power of Iran was enhanced, as it demonstrated by intervening in Syria. In this book he argues that British post-imperial ambitions to ‘punch above our weight’ have significantly contributed to making the world more violent, dangerous and divided today than it has been at any time since the end of the Cold War. For example, there was huge media coverage and political outcry in the UK around the poisonings in Salisbury by Russian agents.

China has been investing significantly in many Commonwealth countries over the last 30 years, particularly in Africa, where they see African raw material extraction as vital for fuelling the fourth industrial revolution, and access to Africa’s markets important in keeping their economy growing.

The war had stripped Britain of virtually all its foreign financial resources, and the country had built up “ sterling credits”—debts owed to other countries that would have to be paid in foreign currencies—amounting to several billion pounds. And why were they so ineffective at explaining to President Joe Biden that London had more to lose than any other country from a failure of the Good Friday Agreement (p. He even argues that Kosovo -usually seen as a success - was ultimately unhelpful for the Balkans, although it did result in a generation of children being named after Tony Blair. The seeds of the ideology that led to both the Iraq invasion and the end of the West’s nascent warm relationship with post-cold war Russia were both sown in the late 1990s in the Balkans.

Thatcher’s injection of neoliberalism had many complicated knock-on effects, but from the 1990s into the 2000s, the British economy roared ahead, with London’s financial boom leading the way. After graduating from Oxford with a first-class degree in history he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and served as Britain's High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago from 2011 to 2014. Driven by post-Brexit trade pressures, the UK is increasingly seeking to do deals with anyone at any cost. It’s a slightly odd realisation to finally figure out that you don’t believe in the concept of a country.

The UK defended its bending of international legal norms in Kosovo and Iraq with UN resolutions and retrospective self-justification.Snell’s position, however, is not that another military intervention would have been desirable as such. The right wing establishment is the target of this book, because they are the are in power and have been in power across the frame of reference of the book. Nigel Farage, the show’s latest political signing, may well end up having to eat more than his share of kangaroo anuses. Before the war, Britain maintained colonies all over the world, which provided valuable raw materials, manpower and strategic bases.