Protecting in an era of change: The UK’s commitment to human protection in a transitional foreign policy

This dissertation assesses the UK’s commitment to human protection from mass violence and atrocity crimes in the context of its transitional foreign policy between 1997 and 2020. A transitional foreign policy is defined in relation to changes in the UK’s geopolitical interests, policies, and international engagements, which is examined between 1997 and 2020. It is shaped by the adaptation of successive governments to the UK’s post-war relative hard power decline, the UK’s membership, leadership, and influence in multilateral organisations, and the UK’s position within the evolving international order. A transitional foreign policy has implications for the nature of the UK’s commitment to human protection as successive governments attempt to strategize the UK’s international relations, including the relationship between its many foreign policy interests and values.

The dissertation argues that there has been a sustained change in the UK’s commitment to human protection in a transitional foreign policy between 1997 and 2015 based around a liberal internationalist approach to protecting populations from mass violence and atrocity crimes. However, from 2016 to 2020 this commitment to human protection has been in tension with the UK’s other geopolitical and economic interests such as international trade, which is part of a broader difficulty in defining the UK’s place in the world in the 21st century. Brexit in particular has renewed attention amongst academics and policymakers to the UK’s relative international power decline. In turn, successive governments have reasserted the UK’s post-Brexit role in the world as a ‘Global Britain’, with economic and geopolitical relations at the core of this approach.

These arguments are evidenced by an analysis of 1,055 primary documentary materials, semi-structured interviews, and secondary scholarship. The dissertation utilises theory on foreign policy change to develop an original analytical framework to assess sustained changes in the UK’s commitment to human protection in a transitional foreign policy, which is applied to the crises in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Libya, Syria, Myanmar, and Yemen. This dissertation contributes to research on UK foreign policy and human protection, assessments of foreign policy change, and UK leadership and influence amid its post-war relative international decline.