Britain sets its sights on global climate leadership at COP29
The Cable | No. 19.2024
Welcome to the 19th Cable, our weekly roundup of British foreign and defence policy.
His Majesty’s (HM) Government has stated its aim to take a leading role in global climate action at the United Nations Climate Change Conferences (COP 29), which began in Baku, Azerbaijan on 11th November. The re-election of Donald Trump, President-elect of the United States (US), renowned climate sceptic, and the absence of leaders from France, Germany, the US, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), India and the European Union (EU), among others, has overshadowed the summit.
However, Britain has launched a diplomatic push at COP29 to advance its climate agenda with Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, and Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, in attendance. Last week at the summit, HM Government announced that its next Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) will cut the United Kingdom’s (UK) emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, will ban new coal mining licences, reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to provide £11.4 billion in climate finance between 2021 and 2026 and launched new initiatives to stem deforestation.
While in Baku, Miliband released a statement saying:
Britain is back in the business of climate leadership, with an ambitious new target that will protect our environment, deliver energy security and restore our global climate reputation.
Running until 22nd November, COP29 will primarily focus on enhancing climate finance mechanisms for rich countries to aid developing nations in their transition away from fossil fuels.
Key diplomacy
Sir Keir has travelled to Rio de Janeiro for the annual Group of 20 (G20) summit, which will take place between the 18th and 19th November. The talks will focus on trade, climate change and global security issues, with Sir Keir set to focus on ‘strengthen[ing] ties with the world’s leading economic powers to drive growth’. With the grim milestone on 19th November of 1,000 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the prime minister is expected to call for G20 countries to ‘go further and faster’ to support Kyiv.
On 18th November in Rio de Janeiro, Sir Keir met Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in the first meeting of a British prime minister and the Chinese president in six years. The two men discussed enhancing bilateral partnerships and working together to pursue ‘global stability, economic cooperation and the clean energy transition.’ Sir Keir also raised concerns on issues including human rights, Hong Kong and Chinese support for Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. However, two British journalists were removed from the meeting by Chinese officials when Sir Keir raised these issues with Xi. It is unclear whether Sir Keir and his team protested this unprovoked aggression.
On 13th November, Sir Keir hosted Marcel Ciolacu, Prime Minister of Romania, for talks on deepening bilateral ties. The talks followed the signing of a new defence treaty by John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, and Angel Tîlvăr, his Romanian counterpart. The agreement will see the establishment of a joint defence committee, through which the two countries can enhance military cooperation and develop information sharing mechanisms.
Defence
Last week, Healey visited Ankara and Riyadh for talks with Yaşar Güler and Prince Khalid bin Salman, his Turkish and Saudi counterparts. These talks focused on regional security and deepening bilateral cooperation on defence. In Turkey, Healey and Güler reaffirmed plans for ‘greater military cooperation’ and to ‘pursue a joint strategy for industry’.
Joe Biden, President of the US, has given permission to Kyiv to use American Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) mid-range missiles on Russian territory. This move could pave the way for Britain and France to green light Ukraine to use their long-range cruise missiles on Russian soil, which use American targeting systems. As of the evening of 18th November, HM Government is expected to give Kyiv permission to use Storm Shadows in Russian territory.
Luke Pollard, Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, visited the Falkland Islands last week to commemorate Remembrance Day, meet with British forces stationed on the South Atlantic islands and reaffirm HM Government’s ‘unyielding commitment’ to the territory’s security and prosperity. Pollard issued a statement at the conclusion of his visit, saying ‘The Falklands are British for as long as the Falkland Islanders want to be.’
Environment and climate
The National Energy System Operator (NESO), the new publicly owned energy system operator for the UK, recently released its Clean Power 2030 report highlighting the different pathways to reaching HM Government’s target of decarbonising the energy grid by 2030. The report states that doing so would be a ‘huge challenge, but is achievable’ requiring a transformation of Britain’s regulatory system to allow a massive buildup of renewable energy and transmission network infrastructure. Following the release of the report, Miliband said:
This independent report provides conclusive proof that the government’s clean energy superpower mission is the right choice for the country, replacing Britain’s dependency on volatile fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain.
How Britain is seen overseas
The Wilson Centre released an opinion piece analysing the first 100 days of Sir Keir’s premiership. The article begins by highlighting that despite Labour’s large majority, the new government has been given a bad hand and its approval ratings have already slumped. However, ‘the optics around Starmer’s first few months in office have detracted from the actual policies’ with Labour pushing an ‘ambitious’ legislative agenda and the new government’s first budget aiming to plug the ‘black hole’ in public finances. It concludes by stating that Sir Keir’s large majority will provide options to ‘deliver on his “missions”’.
How competitors frame Britain
Sputnik International released propaganda speculating that Sir Keir and Emanual Macron, President of France, have conspired to make a last ditch effort to get the Biden administration to ‘turn on the taps’ to support Ukraine. The article ends by repeating the Kremlin’s warnings against North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries from supporting Ukraine, which ‘contributes to the prolongation of the standoff’. No surprises here that Russian state media is afraid of more material support for Ukraine.
The People’s Daily reported on the meeting between Xi and Sir Keir at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. According to the article, Xi called for ‘China and Britain should adopt a rational and objective perspective on each other’s development.’ Xi went on to state: ‘The two countries should enhance strategic communication and deepen political mutual trust to ensure a steady, substantial, and enduring development of bilateral relations.’ If the CCP wants better relations between London and Beijing, all it has to do is to work within international rules.
Tracking the Royal Navy’s global deployments
9th-15th November 2024: Though out of sight, the Royal Navy’s ballistic missile nuclear submarine continued to deter the most severe threats to British interests from under the dark blue waters of the North Atlantic. Both aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, were on training operations in the English Channel, alongside HMS Dauntless. HMS Portland visited Straume in Norway and HMS Iron Duke monitored a Russian flotilla steaming through the English Channel.
HMS Duncan, supported by RFA Mounts Bay, visited Valletta in Malta, where she received the British High Commissioner. On the other side of the world, HMS Protector – still in Chile – was under maintenance preparing for her deployment to Antarctica, while HMS Lancaster undertook training with commandos in the Arabian Gulf.
Offshore patrol vessels HMS Forth, HMS Trent, HMS Medway, HMS Spey and HMS Tamar were active worldwide. HMS Forth received Pollard during his visit to the Falkland Islands and HMS Medway remained in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, HMS Trent continued her stay in Valletta in Malta, while HMS Spey paid a port call to Singapore for Armistice Day. And HMS Tamar remained in the South Pacific.
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) also continued to support British interests: RFA Lyme Bay visited Freetown in Sierra Leone and RFA Tidespring was in support of the aircraft carriers in the English Channel.
How Britain thinks about foreign affairs
Special guest contribution by Marc de Vore, Senior Lecturer, University of St. Andrews and Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy*
British politicians, officials and experts rightly view the so-called ‘rules-based international system’ as a state-of-affairs beneficial to the UK. Today, however, official statements that Britain should not, in the name of preserving that order, employ the same forms of assertive behaviour regularly employed by adversaries, is self-defeating. Given the approach taken by rivals, the UK should draw a distinction between its aspiration for a rules-based system and a recognition that Britain cannot always obey its strictures today if it wants to counter revisionist states’ expansion.
Implications
The term ‘rules-based international system’ refers to the constellation of treaties, agreements and institutions that emerged after the Second World War and developed thereafter. British policymakers played an outsized role establishing this order, and it is therefore only natural that they feel a particular attachment to it. Financially drained by two world wars and confronting the imminent need to liquidate the world’s largest overseas empire, British policymakers sought alternatives to military force to ensure Britain’s prosperity and the security of its Commonwealth.
UK civil servants, academics and political leaders consequently provided much of the impetus for the creation of the United Nations (UN), the International Maritime Organisation, the UN Economic and Social Council and NATO. In subsequent decades, this British desire for rules saw it lead on issues such as the law of the sea and nuclear non-proliferation. The so-called ‘English School’ of International Relations, meanwhile, precociously theorised how institutions and rules could tame the worst excesses of traditional inter-state power politics.
While the UK played a forward-leaning role developing the rules-based system, its efforts succeeded because other great powers found it in their interest to follow suit. Today, however, revisionist states have subverted this order by ignoring, subverting or disingenuously invoking its rules.
Russia, for example, is blocking UN Security Council action against either the North Korean or Iranian nuclear programmes, while evoking non-existent weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for invading Ukraine. Russia equally evoked the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’s (UNCLOS) environmental provisions to charge foreign ships to sail through Arctic waters, before simply unilaterally annexing those waters in a 2022 Duma Law. The PRC, meanwhile, seized Philippine islands in contravention to the International Court of Justice’s rulings and built artificial islands in the South China Sea despite UNCLOS stating that such islands have no legal reality.
To argue in such circumstances that Britain must be guided by the strictest interpretations of international rules is to metaphorically ‘turn the other cheek’ to adversaries which are expanding their territories and spheres of influence. It is high time that HM Government recognise that the post-1945 ‘rules-based system’ is already moribund. If the UK hopes to live in a world governed by rules and institutions rather than raw power, it first must prove to the revisionist powers that they cannot achieve their objectives by force. Then and only then can Britain resuscitate a rules-based international system.
*Writes strictly in a personal capacity
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