Answer to Question #29889 in Economics for Hannah

Question #29889
Describe the Postwar foreign policy goals of Great Britain and France
1
Expert's answer
2013-05-10T08:20:33-0400
GB foreign policy goals:

The standard view is that Britain’s postwar foreign policy has aimed to promote democracy, peace, human rights and overseas development. If these supposed goals are not always explicitly outlined in mainstream analysis, they are invariably implicitly assumed. This is an extraordinary and false view. The evidence shows that Britain is a systematic violator of the noble virtues noted above as well as international law. It has traditionally been, and remains under the current New Labor government, a key ally of some of the world’s most repressive regimes and acts as a consistent condoner of human rights abuses.
The twin goals of British foreign policy are clearly revealed in the declassified planning files and continue today: to maintain British elites’ political standing in the world, ie, some form of “great power” status; and to ensure that key countries and regions, and the global economy, function to benefit Western businesses. Both are to be secured primarily in alliance with US foreign policy. From these goals have flowed a great number of policies which consign much of the population of the world to the status of “unpeople” – victims of British policies.

France foreign policy goals:

From de Gaulle through Mitterrand, France saw its historic task to be one of repairing the damage of Yalta—the division of Europe into Cold War blocs. Moving "beyond Yalta," it was said, would free Eastern Europe from communism and leave Europe as a whole free from domination by the superpower rivalry. That historic geopolitical change has now occurred—unexpectedly, astoundingly, within only a few years. And the healing of Europe’s division has now been guaranteed by the astonishing disappearance of the U.S.S.R. as a state and an empire. French long-term policy has thus been served. Yet hard dilemmas confront the French in the new Europe.
To some, France emerged a big loser among the winning Western powers. Prior to the Cold War’s passing a divided Europe and a divided Germany profited France geopolitically. France’s main postwar foreign policy stage was Western Europe, and its main dilemma was how to maintain a political edge over West Germany’s ever-growing economic influence.

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