David Cameron: a controversial legacy on the international stage

David Cameron has made a shock return to the UK government as foreign secretary.

A profile on the government’s website credits him with developing “a foreign policy that responded to the new challenges of the Arab spring and also evolving challenges from various state and non-state actors”.

But his legacy – most obviously his triggering of the biggest shift in Britain’s foreign relations since the second world war with Brexit – is riddled with controversy.

Libya

Cameron was one of the main architects of Nato’s use of force in Libya in 2011 and the years afterwards have been marked by anarchy.

He has said that he was “proud” of the UK’s role in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi after a western intervention to enforce a UN-approved no-fly zone amid attacks on civilians by the dictator’s forces.

However, damning verdicts on Cameron’s intervention have been delivered by critics. These include MPs on the foreign affairs select committee, who found in 2016 that it was carried out with no proper intelligence analysis, drifted into an unannounced goal of regime change and shirked a moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country.

ChinaDavid Cameron with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at a pub in Princess Risborough, near Chequers, in October 2015. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

A photograph of Cameron and China’s president, Xi Jinping, enjoying pints of IPA has come to be regarded as a defining image of his government’s attempts to court Beijing.

That visit was hailed on both sides as the start of a “golden era” of relations the Treasury hoped would make China Britain’s second-biggest trading partner within a decade.

But eight years later that strategy looks very different against Xi’s attempts to suppress democracy in Hong Kong and preparations for an invasion of Taiwan. China’s interference abroad has also been described by Rishi Sunak as “a particular threat to our open and democratic way of life”.

Europe

Cameron claims that he has no regrets about calling the 2016 referendum on whether the UK should stay in the EU – a promise he made before the 2015 general election – but Britain’s influence on the world stage has arguably never been the same since Brexit.

Before the referendum, EU leaders and officials in Brussels were irritated by Cameron’s attempts to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the bloc, which ultimately did not persuade the electorate to vote to stay in.

Even before then, Cameron had caused immense anger in 2011 when he used Britain’s veto to block a new EU-wide treaty and left other countries to forge a pact to salvage the single currency.

“People remember him as the man who caused Brexit to save his own government. I think in European eyes he is so much discredited and no one will be keen to deal with him, which of course they will have to,” one senior EU source said.

The USThe then US president, Barack Obama, with Cameron during a Nato summit in Warsaw in 2016. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

While the body language during joint appearances was read as Cameron playing a deferential role to Barack Obama, the then US president would later reveal his frustration with British foreign policy.

Cameron was distracted by domestic priorities as Libya descended into a “mess”, Obama suggested in 2016. He also revealed that he warned his British counterpart that the “special relationship” would be at risk if the UK did not commit to spending 2% of national income on defence, in line with Nato targets.

Cameron is withering of Obama in his autobiography, accusing him of “dithering” on Libya and of being “clearly frustrated he had been sucked in”.

He would go on to describe Donald Trump, then vying for the Republican presidential nomination, as “divisive, stupid and wrong” to call for a ban on Muslims entering the US.

Middle East

Cameron authorised UK airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria in a move he said would “make us safer”, but was forced to rule out further British involvement in action against Syria in 2013 after losing a key Commons vote.

Bashar al-Assad, who clung to power by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Syrians, would openly mock Cameron afterwards and the UK was accused by Oxfam of failing to take its “fair share” of refugees.

On the Middle East’s most intractable conflict, Cameron caused waves in 2010 when he likened the experience of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip to that of a “prison camp”. But five years later Israel’s Haaretz newspaper ventured that he was “the most pro-Israel British prime minister ever”.

Elsewhere, he sought to deepen the UK-Saudi relationship, even after the exposure of a secret deal to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council.

It emerged after the exposure of Cameron’s lobbying for Greensill Capital that he had maintained a relationship with Mohammed bin Salman, meeting the Saudi crown prince during a business trip with Lex Greensill in 2020, a year after the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Russia

Cameron wrote in his autobiography that there was “a series of moments” that gave “hope for the future” when Vladimir Putin resumed the Russian presidency, although he insisted he “never forgot the man I was dealing with”.

While he supported sanctions against Russia after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, leading to Putin’s G8 suspension and UK training for the Ukrainian military, critics point to Cameron’s pursuit of supposed shared interests with Russia, UK defence cuts and the way in which the City of London became a haven for corrupt Russian money.

Michael Fallon would go on to claim that, as Cameron’s defence secretary, he was told to turn down requests for assistance in upgrading Ukraine’s defences and that there was a desire not to “further provoke Russia”.

Aid

Cameron’s support for committing 0.7% of GDP to international development has been regarded as being on the “plus side” on the balance sheet of his foreign policy record, even as those on the right have derided it as a reckless target at a time of falling defence spending.

For his own part, Cameron regards committing to the target as a central part of his legacy as Conservative leader. After his time in Downing Street, he criticised Boris Johnson’s aid cuts and the abolition of the Department for International Development.

His criticism of aid cuts in November 2020, which he described as a “very sad moment” for the UK, came after the axe was wielded by the then chancellor, Sunak.