Gordon Brown has explicitly sought to distance his foreign policy from that of Tony Blair – whose early promise of ‘ethical foreign policy’ appeared to be in tatters after the debacle of the Iraq war. Will Brown take up the ‘liberal internationalist’ mantel? If the essence of this is foreign policy driven by morality rather than interests, has Brown already done so with his highly moralised policies towards Africa, and promise to re-focus British foreign policy on climate change and the provision of free primary school education within the poorest countries?
Will Gordon Brown be able to restore the moral authority of British foreign policy using the Department for International Development rather than the armed forces? Or will there still be a place for military interventions under Brown? British interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000 were widely supported and seen as examples of war fought not for narrow national interests but, as Blair argued in his 1999 ‘Chicago Speech’, for values. Even fierce critics of the occupation of Iraq have been among those calling for intervention in Darfur and Zimbabwe: it seems the idealism behind liberal internationalism remains undiminished. Does Blair’s demise mean a new direction for foreign policy, or simply a fresh start? To what extent can foreign policy be shaped around moral aims? What does the moralisation of foreign policy say about politics today?
 | Dr Philip Cunliffe senior lecturer in international conflict, University of Kent; co-editor, Politics Without Sovereignty: a critique of contemporary international relations. |
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 | Alex Bigham Head of Communications & Projects, Foreign Policy Centre |
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 | Conor Foley humanitarian aid worker based in Brazil; author, The Thin Blue Line: how humanitarianism went to war |
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 | Dr Tara McCormack lecturer in international politics, University of Leicester; author, Critique, Security and Power: the political limits to emancipatory approaches |
| Dr Tara McCormack lecturer in international politics, University of Leicester; author, Critique, Security and Power: the political limits to emancipatory approaches | |
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 | recommended by spiked |
