Britain’s Responsibility to Asia
By Will Barber Taylor
Britain once had an empire that stretched over a quarter of the globe. The sun, it was said, never set on the British Empire and it didn’t until the Second World War. With the collapse of Nazi Germany, the various nations that had made up the British Empire decided that they wanted independence. The Jewel in the Crown, India, was one of the first to achieve this.
The way its independence was brought about is not one of the great achievements of British foreign policy, to put it mildly. Yet, since the end of the Empire we have appeared to throw our arms up and declare “We cannot be involved in Asia.” Indeed, since Iraq we have almost completely given up on intervening in the misfortunes of other countries. Some may argue that this is a good thing, that we shouldn’t be the “world’s policemen”. And perhaps they are right — but we have a duty to help and right the wrongs, when we see them, that are committed by these nations.
Some may call this a paternalistic, overtly Western view of Asian politics; that the West always knows best, and Asia should listen to us. This simply isn’t the case — often the West has made the wrong decision in a time of crisis. Nor does us attempting to use diplomacy and the world community to right wrongs committed in country’s we once ruled have to be paternalistic — I would argue that we should do the same thing in any nation, regardless of where it is located when we see injustice being done.
For example, in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, we find wrongs being committed which — because of our long association with this nation — we should embark to correct and to change. How can anyone, regardless of whether they are a socialist, liberal or conservative, say that we should not attempt to help the Rohingya Muslims who are being persecuted by the Myanmese government?
We cannot sit silently by and let atrocities like this occur without doing something more than we currently are. Yet, consumed by our own psychodrama of Brexit, we are merely tutting whilst asking if we can arrange a free trade deal. Whilst Asia is either zooming forward in terms of industry such as in China and India and polluting the environment on an unprecedented scale as it does so, we mull over whether the ERG will get enough letters together to challenge our Prime Minister.
Political inaction in the face of crisis is not simply the revocation of our duty but a moral turpitude for which we should be ashamed. With the Russian Bear continuing to eye up a chance to enter into Asia, we cannot let ourselves be frightened to step up to the table and hold ourselves responsible to the people of Asia. It is our duty to ensure that they feel they can have the same opportunities and right to justice that is felt in the West and we must ensure that, regardless of our situation after Brexit, our fellowship, critical when it needs to be, must continue.
