Virtue Imperialism: Law, Disorder and Power

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“Covenants without the sword are but words and of no use to any man.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651

The Tyranny of Lawyers

December 4^th. Is the Starmer administration the first British government committed to actively undermining the British interest? No, I am not one of those people stupidly calling for the new government to step down and I am willing to give it a chance, but its first missteps have me profoundly concerned. Like millions of Britons, I am desperate for a competent and pragmatic government grounded in reality. Thus far, all I see is ideology, more incompetence…and lawyers.

I suppose that is hardly surprising given Starmer is himself a human rights lawyer. Ever since the Human Rights Act was enacted by the Blair administration and the European Convention on Human Rights was incorporated into British law, British foreign and security policy has gone bonkers. Worse, Britain’s tradition of international pragmatism has been replaced by the tyranny of activist lawyers’ firm in the belief that law is power and that the rules-based system can only be maintained if states like Britain are constrained. And all this just when Putin, Zi, and soon Trump will drive several London buses through said rules-based order.

Virtue Imperialism

Britain’s retreat into lawfare has not only seen the abandonment of statecraft, the considered exercise of all instruments of power in pursuit of the British interest in an anarchic world in which power trumps (excuse the pun) law. The abandonment of statecraft has also seen guilt for past British imperialism replaced by virtue imperialism in which ‘policy’ has become legal atonement for perceived past sins, mainly imagined. Government lawyers have convinced a whole succession of weak British political leaders that such guilt can only be atoned for by London claiming the legal-moral high ground at its own expense. Such legalism is not confined to Britain with the judges at the International Criminal Court now making law where none hitherto existed enabling British lawyers to then cite such judgements to justify the further constraining of British power and action.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Britain’s ridiculous virtue imperialist decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to distant Mauritius and pay for the privilege. This, even though the Diego Garcia air base is vital to US operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Foreign, Development and Commonwealth Office lawyers say the decision will further distance Britain from its actual imperial past and in any case the base is protected by a ‘security protocol.’  No, it isn’t! Why do you think the Russian Foreign Ministry has been supporting Mauritius to exploit a non-binding decision by the International Court of Justice in favour of the Mauritians? It is because the Chagos Archipelago consists of over 600 islands of various sizes and thus endows the sovereign owner with control over a huge area of the Indian Ocean around Diego Garcia.  Mauritius is in the pocket of Beijing who will move quickly to establish another base/eavesdropping hub close to Diego Garcia. Not only will this upset the Americans (believe me it does whatever the public utterances), it will also upset the Indians by extending China’s geopolitical reach.

The Special Relationship?

One of the many lame justifications for Britain’s lack of strategic ambition implicit in such decisions is that Britain is not the power it was in 1941 when Roosevelt coined the phrase ‘United Nations’. If that means Britain is no longer the world’s leading naval power or second economy, then sure. However, Britain is still America’s most powerful military ally in Europe and the choices London makes profoundly affects American foreign, security and defence policy at a time of profound American overstretch. Look at the facts. In 2024 Britain is still the world’s sixth biggest economy and defence investor. The other top five? China is the adversary, Japan is far away, Germany can’t be bothered, India tends to side with Russia, Saudi Arabia is, well, Saudi Arabia.

Law, Disorder and Power

Power is as much a burden as a blessing. For too long London has been hiding from power and using lawyers to do it by retreating into legalism. Legalism, you see, is the absence of leadership. It is non-power presented as soft power. It leads to the most perverse of judgements such as the utter betrayal of Britain’s own soldiers, most notably the SAS, for putting their lives on the line at the behest of serpentine politicians. London’s abandonment of power under the guise of legalism and virtue imperialism also encouraged Putin to believe he could get away with a full-scale military invasion of a Central European country in 2024.

British legalism is founded on the misplaced belief that if London plays legal chess the rest of the world will eventually stop playing power poker.  It is an equally misplaced belief that through virtue imperialism Britain will lead the world towards some form of universalist Kantian sense of duty through self-imposed restraints of critical British self-interest. It is a legalist fantasy in which virtue imperialism fast leads to virtual imperialism and thus destroys the power of the West.

If Thomas Hobbes were alive today, he would write, “soft power without hard power is but words and thus of little use to any man or woman.”  Law without power is disorder, which is Britain today, an increasingly unstable country ‘led’ by activist lawyers and incompetent politicians that punches far beneath its weight.

Julian Lindley-French