Can foreign policy be pragmatic and progressive?

These are dark times for progressive foreign policy. We are moving towards an illiberal world order. In this climate, how can the UK advance progressive foreign policy goals? 

Many UK policymakers advocate a pragmatic approach, downplaying values in favour of hard security interests. The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has argued for a Progressive Realism that involves not being ‘naïve about the limits of power’ and ‘taking the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be’. 

Progressive Realism is problematic because it smashes together two contradictory ideas about the world without telling us which should win out in a given situation: a progressive one which believes in human progress, international cooperation and global ethics, and a conservative tradition which sees these as window dressing for underlying power struggles.

In an illiberal world order, progressive foreign policymakers need answers to practical questions: if you must work with autocratic powers, where do you draw the line? Which issues require engagement? When do you pull back rather than risk legitimising autocratic rule or becoming complicit in human rights abuses?

To answer these questions, we still argue for pragmatism; but instead, the philosophical version which emerged in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. Figures such as W.E.B Du Bois, William James, Jane Addams and John Dewey were radical and progressive but grounded their ideas in the real world and explored how political choices impacted people’s lives.

Four key principles underpinned this approach: democratic inclusion, empiricism, experimentalism and a complex view of identity. This framework is better suited to navigating our current era of global change than ideas such as Progressive Realism.

Democratic inclusion

In the realist tradition of international relations, policymaking is something done by elites and democracy is confined to domestic politics. By contrast, philosophical pragmatists see democratic inclusion as vital to making good policy. After all, how can we know if a policy is effective if we are not including those affected by it in its evaluation? As John Dewey put it, an expert shoemaker will know ‘how to fix the shoe’, but it is the layperson who ‘can tell where the shoe is pinching’. Thus, philosophical pragmatism sees it as important to include wider publics in conversations about international politics. 

We can see the value of inclusion when it comes to negotiations over climate change policy. Fossil fuel industry representatives have to be included since they bring expertise, but their influence needs to be balanced by those most impacted by extractive industries and climate change. The wider public have a stake, since they will pay the costs in higher bills and will need to change their behaviour. Excluding any of these groups will threaten the chances of a successful outcome.

Similarly, effective action on climate change requires the support of powerful states such as China, India and the United States. They represent a large portion of humanity and having their input provides important feedback on how policy is impacting people’s lives globally. 

Of course, powerful states and special interests may obstruct action. Then, inclusion becomes even more important. Progressive policymakers need to engage with non-state actors, international organizations and wider publics to push for change.

Empiricism

At first glance, empiricism – emphasising experience and observing the world around us - might seem like a realist principle. But realists tend to focus on abstract ideas like the state or the national interest. Philosophical pragmatists want to understand what happens in people’s everyday lives. 

In a world where much of the focus is on great powers and abstractions like ‘security’ and ‘defence’, policymakers need to keep bringing things back to what this means for actual people. What would an enforced peace in Ukraine mean for ordinary Ukrainians, especially those living under a Russian occupation that was made permanent? What impact will cutting development aid and conflict resolution efforts have on people’s lives in developing countries? What threats are most likely to have a tangible impact on British people’s everyday existence? 

While policymakers decide policy on a general basis, they need to keep checking how this applies in the particular or else risk losing contact with reality.

Experimentalism

Leading pragmatist thinkers such as Dewey dismissed ideologically-fixed positions and instead preferred an experimental, problem-solving approach, where ideas are valuable if they are tested and found to improve people’s lives. Rather than the moral relativism that pragmatists are sometimes accused of, philosophical pragmatists sifted the worth of ideas by how they played out in practice. Some ideas are better than others, and we learn this from experience. 

In an era of complex uncertainty, many of the challenges UK policymakers face, including economic instability, conflict, climate change and migration, require them to work with governments of different ideological beliefs and value systems.

An experimental approach empowers policymakers to choose who they work with, and how, to test what works. Policymakers from different states or regions can compare evidence, identify advances and learn from each other. This is permissive, but the flipside is that such arrangements need to be constantly reevaluated to ensure they are working for ordinary people. If autocratic governments are leveraging that engagement to silence criticism or undermine other public goods, such as peace or freedom, relations may need to be rethought. Reaching out beyond governments and listening to wider publics is a vital mechanism to test the information provided.

Identity as complex

To work with other states and peoples around the world, policymakers need to have a good understanding of what makes them tick. Philosophical pragmatists offer a route to empathising with others by avoiding attaching single, fixed identities to them. Thus, W.E.B. Du Bois opened up space for more creative and productive conversations about identity with his concept of ‘double consciousness’, whereby, one could be African and American, rather than having to choose between a false binary. 

People are complex and motivated by many different things, not just power or fear as realists suggest. Societies are capable of great good as well as evil. One only has to think of the good that development has done for the Chinese people, even as the Chinese state continues to infringe individual rights. China is both an aggressive power in its region, and a vital contributor to international security debates. Defining actors by single fixed identities is inaccurate, impractical and regressive.

For that reason, philosophical pragmatists would be wary of dividing the world up into democracies and nondemocracies, via ideas like a ‘league of democracies’ or ‘network of liberty’. These inhibit cooperation (vital to solving shared global problems), and present democracy as a quality of mostly Western states (which would reinforce arguments about cultural difference used by autocrats to marginalise pro-democracy campaigners). 

Conclusion

Pragmatism is often bandied about in British policy discourse as a synonym for common sense or an excuse to reject values in favour of expediency. For that reason, it is often aligned with realism. However, there is a rich tradition of philosophical pragmatism that is progressive. This approach refuses to indulge realism’s elitism and fatalism. Rather, it sees progress as possible, based on democratic inclusion, an empirical emphasis on people’s actual experiences, the willingness to experiment and test ideas to see what works, and a more productive attitude to identity and how we see others. This is the philosophy that should guide British foreign policymakers.

Prof Jamie Gaskarth is Professor of Foreign Policy and International Relations at The Open University. Prof Jason Ralph is Professor of International Relations at the University of Leeds and author of On Global Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Cover Image Courtesy of https://president.az/en/articles/view/67281 & https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/