Peace through strength

Lord Salisbury’s principles of foreign policy

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, commonly addressed as Lord Salisbury, the thrice-serving (1885-86, 1886-92, 1895-1902) Prime Minister endowed with an acerbic wit and equipped with a journalistic quill, has been unfairly obscured to modern observers, thanks to the long shadow cast by the two most famous of the Victorian premiers, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. However, whilst these two duelling politicos may have outshone our full-bearded six-foot-four hero in entertainment value, Salisbury’s legacy ultimately stands far taller and is of far greater interest to the thinking politician.

Under Salisbury’s steady watch, the British Empire was at its apogee. The defence of the Empire was indisputably the government’s highest priority. With the Naval Defence Act 1889, he introduced the two-power standard. This meant that, by law, the Royal Navy had to be larger than the combined might of the next two largest navies in the world (at this time, Russia and France). Yet despite his muscular approach to military spending, Salisbury’s tremendous foresight and peace-making ability kept our country out of crippling conflicts with great powers, even those we could win. His success was a testament to that old Hadrianic adage: peace through strength.

When the post-war tranquillity of our youth seems to be fading into distant memory, and we are again faced with the return of wars with muddied objectives and unclear advantage, aspiring ‘future leaders’ would do well to remember the lessons from Salisbury’s attentive statesmanship.

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Born into relative aristocratic poverty, Salisbury first had to make his living through political commentary. Writing for publications like the Saturday Review and the Quarterly Review in the 1850s and ’60s, he soon mastered word and thought and cemented his credentials to become what the later historian Robert Blake described as ‘the most formidable intellectual figure that the Conservative party has ever produced’.

It is in this period that we get the first smatterings of his foreign policy ideas. In his criticism of the Liberal Prime Minister Lord John Russell (1846-52, 1865-66), we see the leadership style Salisbury disdained and one we can sadly recognise all too well today. Russell was ‘[always] willing to sacrifice anything for peace... colleagues, principles, pledges... a portentous mixture of bounce and baseness... dauntless to the weak, timid and cringing to the strong.’ He deduced from this, in what we might regard as an almost Nixonian-Trumpian but ever-appropriate lesson, that the opposition and press were to be ignored. Failing to do so would mean that we will be governed ‘by a set of weathercocks, delicately poised, warranted to indicate with unnerving accuracy every variation in public feeling.’

In Salisbury’s mind, the anti-Russell role model could be found in the career of the great Napoleonic Era statesman, Lord Castlereagh, who served as Foreign Secretary from 1812 to 1822. Writing of him in 1862 in a 73-page review of a new biography, Salisbury painted the picture of a perfect diplomat:

There is nothing dramatic in the success of a diplomatist. His victories are made up of a series of microscopic advantages: of a judicious suggestion here, or an opportune civility there: of a wise concession at one moment, and a far-sighted persistence at another; of sleepless tact, immovable calmness, and patience that no folly, no provocation, no blunders can shake.

From the 1880s, when Salisbury’s political career saw him ascend to the simultaneous posts of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary — unlike his successors, he did not follow the later convention of becoming First Lord of the Treasury — he exemplified all the qualities in action that he earlier heralded in thought. In the view of the political historian Andrew Roberts, Salisbury exuded a ‘preternatural patience’ which saved the British Empire from the brink of armageddon with either France, Russia, America, or Germany, and returned her to enjoy the safe shores of peace and prosperity.

Key to Salisbury’s success, beyond his calm persona, were four core facets which formed the heart of his geopolitical strategy. These were: avoiding entangling alliances, putting the Empire first, backing words with force, and above all, pragmatism. Of course, like most people, Salisbury’s views morphed and shifted over time. The unyielding, dogmatic High Toryism of his journalistic youth stretched into a more empirical form after encountering the practical needs of government. He famously said, ‘the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies’. Relying on the common nautical metaphors of governance, he pointed out that, ‘When a mast falls overboard, you do not try to save a rope here and a spar there, in memory of its former utility; you can cut away the hamper altogether.’

But whilst Salisbury’s approach was nuanced and nimble, responding to each situation with the differing set of actions they demanded, we can still point to these four basic, almost common-sense, principles which informed his career and consequently moulded wider British foreign policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, with far-reaching and Empire-saving consequences. While these principles may seem obvious enough, sadly, as we all know today, common-sense is not so common — not least in foreign affairs.

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Salisbury’s preference to escape binding treaty commitments and his Empire-first approach is often derided with the label ‘splendid isolationism’. However, this deeply misunderstands his position. Salisbury himself regularly used the word ‘isolation’ as a term of mockery and something to be avoided. He certainly believed that Britain should continue to engage with the world. The point was simply that Britain should not fight for causes which did not concern it. Opposing calls for war against China in 1862, he wrote ‘...it is our duty to protect British property and British lives, and to concern ourselves with nothing else.’ If the capitulation of the Chinese silk and tea trade would prove to be less expensive than the great loss of men and resources involved in intervention, then war was simply indefensible.

Taking this view into action, in January 1896 he cut Britain loose from the Mediterranean Agreements which had pledged it to fight alongside European powers against Russia should it extend its reach into the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Using our ancient constitution as his defence, Salisbury argued that ‘parliament and people would not be guided in any degree’ by prearranged international treaties, but instead should only decide to go to war cautiously and according to the situation as it was at the time. This ‘isolation’ simply meant, in Salisbury’s own words, that Britain was not to become the ‘busybody of Christendom’ — or a ‘world policeman’, as others historically and today would have it. By avoiding entangling alliances, particularly in Europe, we were instead given the freedom and flexibility to pursue our own global interests.

Another lesson from Salisbury is the notion that words spoken on the international stage must be backed by real consequence. Simply put, Britain should not issue threats to other nations unless we are prepared to and capable of delivering swift and resolute force: ‘A willingness to fight is the point d’appui [fulcrum] of diplomacy, just as much as a readiness to go to court is the starting point of a lawyer’s letter. It is merely courting dishonour, and inviting humiliation for the men of peace to use the habitual language of the men of war.’ Expressing this even more clearly in his 1862 notes on Lord Castlereagh, Salisbury said that ‘...a willingness on good cause to go to war is the best possible security for peace.’

Of all the many crises Salisbury faced during his third premiership, the Fashoda Incident of 1898 perhaps best illustrates this principle in action. Here, there was a tense diplomatic standoff with France over control of the Sudan which risked spilling over into a full-scale war. Tensions had been simmering with the French in this region since we wrested control over Egypt from Napoleon, putting it within Britain’s informal sphere of influence. Subsequent French strategy in Africa had been to counter British dominance, halting plans to link its possessions stretching from Cape to Cairo by interrupting them at the White Nile with their own trans-African railway running from west to east. A French expedition led by Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand acted under this intention when they seized the territory of Fashoda (today located in the north-east of South Sudan). General Sir Herbert Kitchener, later the 1st Earl Kitchener, hot on the heels of victory over the Mahdists at the Battle of Omdurman, was sent to meet him.

In the midst of the political turmoil following the Dreyfus affair, which erupted in 1894 and was only resolved in 1906, the French were keen to exploit the incident to reunite the country, willing to gamble despite the risk of war. The temperature in both nations reached boiling point with the populist and jingoistic press on both sides baying for blood. At one moment, Britain’s chargé d’affaires in Paris, Sir Robert Scott, reported that he had it on good authority that five French Army Corps were under orders to prepare for an invasion of England. However, Salisbury, at this point Prime Minister for the third time and final time, managed to defuse and de-escalate the situation. Ignoring public opinion, he refused to issue a public ultimatum to the French, understanding that a direct confrontation would not be in our Empire’s interests, even if surely winnable. Instead, he remained calm, but firmly signalled our interests to France, reminding them of our naval superiority. The cooler heads in Paris were given the opportunity to reassess and withdraw from Fashoda with some semblance of dignity still intact.

The end result was that in Africa, Britain ultimately triumphed, facing down its old enemy and winning without a shot being fired. Salisbury had calculated — but did not know for certain — that France was not in any position to duel Britain’s superior navy and never seriously considered fighting over Fashoda. It was also a clear illustration of the principle that threats backed by real force would make Britain’s enemies think twice before challenging it.

Sadly, much of the history of Western foreign policy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been marked by repeatedly failing to follow this lesson. Where lines in the sand have been drawn, boundaries have been crossed without punishment. Regardless of whether or not these lines made sense in the first place, this was true in the case of (for instance) the use of chemical weapons in Syria, with President Obama’s ‘red lines’ violated without answer. This, amongst other incidences of occidental weakness — such as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and our paltry defence spending at present — form part of an important chain of falling dominoes leading directly to the Ukraine War today.

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What all these principles manifest is a pragmatic outlook on foreign affairs. Modern theorists would explain this as a ‘realist’ approach to international relations; a recognition that the world is an anarchic game played by competing states selfishly pursuing their own interests. This stands in opposition to a more ‘idealist’ approach, where action between nations is framed by commonly-shared norms of international law and behaviour, and intervention is justified in liberal and humanitarian terms. Tellingly, in an 1877 letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton and Viceroy of India, Salisbury stated that ‘all absolute dogmas in human affairs are a mistake’. Thus, in the language of the nineteenth century, the Salisburian view exemplifies realpolitik; that any British action on the international stage should be informed by the situation as it really was, not by how it ought to be.

In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, responding to the situation as it really was meant the British Empire turning its attention to the rising great powers: America, Japan, and Germany. One strength in Salisbury’s diplomacy is that he felt no particularly strong personal feelings for or against any of them. This was not a geopolitics underpinned by vague sentiments of cultural kinship or enmity, as was (and still is) very common. So, much to Europe’s chagrin, Britain refused to join the 1895 Triple Intervention of France, Germany, and Russia against the Japanese occupation of the Liaodong Peninsula. Instead, he looked for a deal with Japan in order to protect our own colonial interests.

Salisbury also recognised that the clock could not be turned back; that the ascent of these rising powers could not be easily prevented. Full-scale containment was unrealistic, or at least unrealistic at any reasonable cost. Therefore, if the British Empire was to retain its preeminent position in global affairs, there would have to be an accommodation with them. And yet, if the situation demanded it, Salisbury also understood that it might also be necessary to remind them of British power. He thus turned away from Europe, focusing on the growing threats in Africa, the Americas, and Asia instead. Ultimately, as the German Ambassador Count Hatzfeldt reported back to Berlin, this was because Salisbury was a pragmatic man ‘...who in general cherishes no sympathies for any other nation, and in the transaction of business is motivated purely by English considerations.’

There are three major international incidents which I think best illustrate the success of the Salisburian approach, all of which took place in his twilight years. We have already discussed one of these three incidents: Fashoda, which nearly took Britain to war with its ancient enemy. Of the other two, one involved a nation that we are now claimed to have a ‘special relationship’ with; the other, an adversary later twice defeated.

The former was the Venezuela Crisis of 1895, a minor boundary dispute between the British and a nearly-powerless former Spanish colony, which nonetheless easily could have ignited a much larger conflict with the United States of America. The crisis had its origins in 1814, when Britain acquired the Guiana territory (now the independent state of Guyana) from the Dutch. The territory’s western border with Venezuela was never well-defined, but this never caused any serious issue — that is, until the discovery of gold. Rather unsurprisingly, Britain then formally extended its claim. Venezuela, outraged, petitioned the Americans for support. In 1895, the American Secretary of State Richard Onley wrote to Salisbury, demanding that the British Empire agree to arbitration over the dispute, using language drenched in the Monroe Doctrine. This was the American declaration, first articulated in 1823, that forbade any further colonisation or interference in the affairs of nations in the Western Hemisphere. In return, it asserted American neutrality in European matters.

Salisbury’s response in the first instance was to politely point out that the Monroe Doctrine had no standing at all in this case. It did not apply to British Guiana any more than it would apply to Canada or the British West Indies. The whole matter with the Venezuelan border was consequently a ‘controversy with which the United States have no practical concern’. As was to be expected, this enraged the Americans. In a speech to Congress, an apoplectic President Grover Cleveland declared that it was ‘...the duty of the United States to resist by any means in its power... the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands... which after investigation we have determined of right belong to Venezuela.’

And so there was war fever on both sides of the Atlantic. The overly-excitable and bellicose press called for boots on the ground. Salisbury, however, once again remained calm. He took the view that ‘the American conflagration will soon fizzle away’. According to Salisbury, this was a manufactured crisis and simply the product of Cleveland’s electioneering. The deliberate raising of tensions with Britain was a sure way to ‘twist the lion’s tail’ and solidify support with the Irish-American voting block.

Salisbury once again led his country down the correct path, determining that accommodating America was best. He agreed to arbitration over the territories, and in October 1899, the arbitration committee decided in Britain’s favour, establishing the Schomburgk Line as the official border and handing it nine-tenths of the disputed territory. Instead of a rematch of 1812, Salisbury flipped the situation with only a small compromise by accepting the Monroe Doctrine and American demands. The reward was greatly improved diplomatic relations with the United States and a legitimately acquired and internationally accepted expansion to the British Empire. This was the last time that war was ever a serious possibility between America and Britain, marking the beginning of what would eventually become the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the two nations.

The ultimate geopolitical significance of the Venezuelan crisis was that Britain, as the then-leading global power, accepted America’s increased geopolitical heft. This meant that America had legitimate regional primacy over the Western Hemisphere. In return, and by way of a diplomatic coup, Britain was able to secure official support from Washington during the Second Boer War. This was an impressive achievement considering that this completely flew in the face of widespread sympathy for the Boers amongst the American public. So, by deflecting away any friction with America over matters of little consequence, Salisbury was able to ensure that Britain could concentrate on the more pressing threats to its Empire, of which there were many.

The final crisis we will discuss is that of the Kruger Telegram of 1896. If less cool heads had ruled, this could have easily led to greater European involvement in the Second Boer War, and potentially even war with Germany. It all started with a private army’s incursion into the independent Boer state of the Transvaal in South Africa at the end of 1895. Put together by diamond magnate and empire-builder Cecil Rhodes and led by his right hand man, Leander Starr Jameson, five-hundred men of the British South Africa Company police briefly rode into the Transvaal (officially known as the South African Republic) with the intention of triggering an uprising, overthrowing the Boer government, and expanding the Empire. In order to achieve their aims, they were hoping to make use of disgruntled Uitlanders (lit. ‘outlanders’): the mostly British migrant workers in Transvaal, who had been denied the right to political representation. This was because the nation’s President, Paul Kruger, had sensibly predicted that if the Uitlanders were given the ability to vote, they would eventually outnumber the Boers and claim the land as their own.

Whilst this unprovoked attack on the Transvaal drew international condemnation and was the eventual catalyst behind the Second Boer War, at home, Jameson and his band were lauded as heroes. (Though not by the British Government: Rudyard Kipling’s much-lauded poem ‘If’ was written to celebrate Jameson’s stoicism in the face of prosecution after he returned home to England.) The Jameson Raid, as it became known, ultimately failed, and there is plenty of debate over who knew what and when. For his part, Cecil Rhodes claimed he had instructed Jameson not to go ahead and that he had acted on his own initiative. This seems implausible. But even beyond Rhodes himself, there is a whiff of a grander conspiracy involving the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, and perhaps even Salisbury himself.

Andrew Roberts thinks it unlikely that Salisbury was aware, and posits that had he known in advance he would have actually put a stop to the raid, not out of any ethical concern for international law but for reasons of realpolitik. Whilst there is no smoking gun, we do know that in a letter to Chamberlain on 30 December, unaware that the raid had already begun, Salisbury displayed his sympathies:

It is evident that sooner or later that State must be mainly governed by Englishmen: though we cannot yet precisely discern what their relations to the British Crown or the Cape Colony would be. I am not sorry that at this stage the movement is only partially successful. If we get to actual fighting, it will be very difficult to keep the Cape forces — or our own — out of the fray. In such a case we should have an angry controversy with Germany. Of course Germany has no rights in this affair, and must be resisted if the necessity arises: but still it would be better if the revolution which transfers the Transvaal to British rulers were entirely the result of action of internal forces, and not of Cecil Rhodes’ intervention or of ours.

What is most interesting about the above excerpt is that, in his concern for Anglo-German relations, Salisbury again displays his powers of foresight. Despite his own good personal relations with the ambassador, Hatzfeldt, he still predicted ‘dark and mysterious threats’ from Germany.

Considering they had economic investments of over 900 million marks in the Transvaal, it would seem obvious there would be some response from the Germans. Yet the strength of it still took everyone else by surprise. On first hearing of the raid, Kaiser Wilhelm II was furious. He rashly ordered a party of marines to head to Pretoria and dispatched a cruiser to the Delagoa Bay. The Kaiser also contacted Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to plot the creation of an anti-British continental league, although this never actually materialised. Whilst his own ministers thought the Kaiser had gone quite mad, with one reportedly nearly drawing his sword at him in anger, the dangerous chain of geopolitical dominoes had already begun to fall.

On 3 January, the Kaiser sent a telegram to President Kruger, deliberately fanning the flames:

I express to you my sincere congratulations that you and your people, without appealing to the help of friendly powers, have succeeded, by your own energetic action against the armed bands which invaded your country as disturbers of the peace, in restoring peace and in maintaining the independence of the country against attack from without.

Whilst this was actually a toned-down version of the original telegram, redrafted after the Kaiser’s Chancellor threatened his resignation, the message with its reference to ‘friendly powers’ was taken by the British to mean that Germany was offering to provide assistance to the Transvaal. This was an unacceptable interference in an internal matter.

Germany’s actions thus threatened to create a wider war. But Salisbury, once again, deftly defused the situation. Salisbury knew from his personal dealings with Kaiser Wilhelm II at the infamous events of Cowes Week a few years prior that the Kaiser was, if anything, erratic and difficult to deal with. When asked what response he would send to the Kruger Telegram, Salisbury simply said: ‘I have sent no answer. I have sent ships.’ A squadron was sent to Delagoa Bay (off the coast of the south of what is now Mozambique) in a gesture of national self-assertion, reminding the Germans that in spite of their best efforts, it was Britannia that still ruled the waves.

And yet, despite the firmness of his public actions, Salisbury once again behaved more placidly behind closed doors, personally applying pressure on the London press to try to prevent them from reacting too aggressively to the Kaiser’s inflammatory telegram. Contacting senior newspaper editors, he advised them to tone down their anti-German headlines. Earlier, The Times had combatively printed that ‘England will concede nothing to menaces and will not lie down under insult’. The environment was such that there was even a wave of anti-German civil disorder in London and across the country. The outbreak of a major European conflict from this far-flung dispute was certainly a possibility.

Salisbury’s combination of tough action and peace-first patience would prove successful yet again. Eventually realising his mistake, as well as Germany’s obvious military inferiority, the Kaiser decided to change course. In an act of conciliation, writing to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, he said ‘...never was the telegram intended as a step against England or your Government’. In the damning words of Kruger, ‘the old woman just sneezed and you ran away’. Once again, Salisbury had come out on top; and, once again, this had been achieved without a shot being fired.

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Whilst I have not intended to write a comprehensive history of late Victorian foreign policy, let alone to provide a complete manual on how we should conduct our foreign policy today, I hope that this exploration of Salisbury has pointed readers towards some heuristics for a Britain operating in the much-changed world of 2025.

We have seen that Salisbury’s genius was that of managing Britain’s greatly (and almost certainly unavoidably) changing position in the world — moving from one of total hegemony, to one of competing rival powers continually testing and provoking us — and, in the face of these enormous pressures, successfully prolonging the Empire’s dominance at the lowest possible cost. If Salisbury, who died in 1903, had lived a longer life, might he have steered Britain away from the tragedy of 1914? It is difficult to say. But what we can say for sure is that he did display an extraordinary knack for premonition with his unfinished attempts to escape from the 1839 guarantees of Belgium’s independence.

But instead of now-impossible pasts, we should focus on still-possible futures. So much of today’s policy, whether domestic and international, is determined by knee-jerk reactions, whether from Parliament or from the media. What our country desperately requires is a calm, judicious leadership and foresight that is capable of cutting through the noise. When ministers’ hands are tied over the legal complexities of the global migration crisis, when they hand over British overseas territories at the behest of human rights lawyers, or even when they march nations towards unwinnable and self-destructive wars, they must be reminded that the highest obligation is not to any international treaty, but to their country.

Winston Churchill said of Salisbury that ‘...he confined his purposes to the British Empire’. We would do well to have leaders who do the same, putting our island-nation first.

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Image credits: public domain.

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This article was written by Piers McKenzie Baker, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.

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