David Lammy, Britain’s all-but-certain next foreign secretary, is talking to J.D. Vance, says Donald Trump is ”often misunderstood” on NATO, and claims that he can find “common cause” with the potential 47th president. What is going on?

Everyone loves to coin a doctrine, as every politico fancies himself a statesman. It is standard foreign policy practice, and it immediately propels ambitious politicians to positions of respect. The first rule is to have a serious sounding name for the thing, preferably a mix of two different, even occasionally opposed theories: think “congagement,” once vogue in D.C. circles—a strategy mixing containment and engagement with China. 

Lammy, the Labour member of parliament for Tottenham, has mastered the art and coined a doctrine of “Progressive Realism.” He is meeting with potential cabinet members in the U.S., including the heir to a Trumpian realist conservatism, J.D. Vance.

Realism, you see, is back in fashion after the failed utopia of the last quarter century, and it sells.

Who doesn’t want to be known as a “realist”? If one is a smart member of the inner circle and a would-be gatekeeper, one needs to portray himself as some sort of a realist. Connoisseurs will recall that Mike Pompeo once tried that. Lammy, too, wants to shape the debate both in the UK and, as most British foreign secretaries feel like Greeks to the Romans, also in the U.S. Ergo, progressive realism, theoretical inconsistency notwithstanding. 

The problem is that it doesn’t make much sense.

Lammy’s theory is essentially boilerplate liberal internationalism without some of its more fanciful accretions. Consider that Lammy said in an interview that NATO isn’t paying its fair share and that Trump has a point. So far so good. He then also vowed to stand by Ukraine till the end.

Lammy writes in Foreign Affairs, 

Above all else, the United Kingdom must continue supporting Ukraine.The future of European security depends on the outcome of the war there, and the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in European security will [sic] be the Labour Party’s foreign policy priority.

In other words, more internationalism, and more integration with the EU. Hardly a symptom of realism, which will, in its true form, dictate that the UK buck-pass the security burden to buffer states between London and Moscow. 

Lammy has criticized Blairite interventionism: “The failures of Afghanistan,Iraq, and Libya undermined the idea that liberal interventionism was, as Blair remarked in 1999, ‘a more subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose.’ Instead, it came to be seen as a recipe for disorder.” 

But then he proceeds to say that inaction and isolationism have their own problems: “That said, the last decade has made it clear that inaction has high costs, too.The fact that the United States did not police its redline against the use of chemical weapons in Syria not only entrenched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s monstrous regime; it also emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin.” He argues that Putin apparently played on a lack of Western resolve and decided to annex Crimea. There is of course no evidence of that particular causal link, as no one, least of all Lammy, is privy to the Kremlin’s inside process-tracing. 

Lammy thinks that the Kosovo intervention was a sign of moral good, and that it disclosed an ethical dimension for British foreign policy. The Kosovo adventure essentially destroyed NATO’s neutral defensive character by taking it into an operation where no strategic interests were involved; it was a blatant intervention against what was until then considered internal sovereign matters of a country, and it destroyed the norm of national boundaries; it was the start of supranational organizations interfering in national affairs; and it provided a template that the Russians replicated, both rhetorically and martially, in their intervention in Georgia in 2008. This, in a country which gave birth to realists like Castlereagh, Canning and Curzon, and elevated “balance of power” to an art form. 

Given London’s “till death do us apart” embrace of the current Kievan struggle, bromides about international corruption abound. London is apparently awash with Russian money, and Lammy’s next crusade will be against that. Lammy also supported Sadiq Khan, the current mayor of London, against conservative candidate Susan Hall because she is apparently bigoted to point out that London is awash with Arab cash and is practically broken by mass migration and crime. Lammy writes about having close cooperation with Ireland and the EU, currently the two entities on warpath over the questions of mass migration. (As we write, anti-migration riots are breaking out all over Eire.) 

You get the idea. 

There is an inherent contradiction of talking about progress, a quasi-providential and directional concept of history, and merging it with realism, a fundamentally amoral concept by which actors are beyond judgment in a history that is cyclical. Lammy, or whoever ghostwrites for him, clearly either does not get that, or is trying to take us for a ride. Realists don’t believe in “international community” or such nonsense. You’re either a nationalist, with a clear geographical sense of interest and national borders, or you’re not. Lammy isn’t. There are clear guidelines in the British history, of a true amoral realist foreign policy, from Viscount Castlereagh’s great power concerts deciding the fate of the continent, to Canning’s prioritization of the navy and the Anglosphere as opposed to European continent, to Palmerston's balance of power, to Salisbury's “splendid isolation,” to Curzon’s “divide and rule” and Lansdowne’s idea of equilibrium. 

One need not like it, but the model is already there; one only needs to look back, instead of forward, and there will be no need to reinvent the wheel. Until then, however, Americans must be wary of such meaningless lectures. 

Does Lammy believe in “humanitarian interventions,” as Tony Blair highlighted in his epochal Chicago speech about the international community, which influenced Clinton, W., and Barack Obama? Does he think borders are sacrosanct, and that migration has turned into an invasion? Does he think great powers are the main actors of foreign policy in a world of anarchy? Does he believe in continual expansion of NATO? These are just a few of the unanswered questions.

Americans, including the next cabinet nominees, should perhaps start asking them when they next face a Lammy lecture.