David Owen, Human Rights and the Remaking of British Foreign Policy

Description

Although the evolution of human rights diplomacy during the second half of the 20th century has been the subject of a wealth of scholarship in recent years, British foreign policy perspectives remain largely underappreciated. Focusing on former Foreign Secretary David Owen’s sustained engagement with the related concepts of human rights and humanitarianism, David Owen, Human Rights and the Remaking of British Foreign Policy addresses this striking omission by exploring the relationship between international human rights promotion and British foreign policy between c.1956-1997. In doing so, this book uncovers how human rights concerns have shaped national responses to foreign policy dilemmas at the intersections of civil society, media, and policymaking; how economic and geopolitical interests have defined the parameters within which human rights concerns influence policy; how human rights considerations have influenced British interventions in overseas conflicts; and how activism on normative issues such as human rights has been shaped by concepts of national identity. Furthermore, by bringing these issues and debates into focus through the lens of Owen’s human rights advocacy, analysis provides a reappraisal of one of the most recognisable, albeit enigmatic, parliamentarians in recent British history. Both within the confines of Whitehall and without, Owen’s human rights advocacy served to alter the course of British foreign policy at key junctures during the late Cold War and post-Cold War periods, and provides a unique prism through which to interrogate the intersections between Britain’s enduring search for a distinctive ‘role’ in the world and the development of the international human rights regime during the period in question. Cover Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Contents Illustrations Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 A Natural Policy for Socialists to Champion: David Owen, Human Rights and New Social
Movements in the Long 1960s Pastor to the Foreign Secretary Decade of disillusion The echoes of 1968 2 The Morality of Compromise: Selling Arms to El Salvador and Iran Human rights in the FCO: The human rights comparative assessment Armoured cars and archbishops: The curious case of El Salvador ‘The price to pay was a little inconsistency’: Appeasing the Shah of Iran 3 In Search of a Role: Human Rights and British Relations with the United States and the European Community A return to the ‘special relationship’ Tackling the Rhodesian impasse Transatlantic tensions 4 Beyond the Breakthrough: (In)divisible Human Rights and Cold War Contestations Owen, Thatcher and the weaponization of human rights within the CSCE Competing visions of human rights in the neoliberal age ‘hardly a trumpet call for freedom everywhere!’ 5 Lessons from the Balkans: On the Protracted Development of a New World Order ‘A “New World Order” was buried in the rubble of Vukovar’ ‘who better than me to take the flak?’ The ‘high-water mark of humanitarian interventionism’ Conclusion Bibliography Index