Over at Commentator is my latest piece on UK engagement with Libya, in which I argue that what happened in recent years was principled, smart and mainly effective. Take that, you chattering classes:

there are only two basic choices available to democracies when it comes to dealing with odious regimes: Isolation, or Engagement. And that both can have perverse consequences, because it is impossible to deal with perverse regimes without some perverse outcomes

Isolation (plus or minus sanctions) invariably drags on unhappily, mainly because the regimes are never in fact that isolated: see the wild success of those policies for eg Cuba, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Belarus. In some cases the regime may isolate itself, all the better to oppress its own citizens: see decades of North Korea.

Engagement creates different problems. Above all, if you engage with dirty people, how to avoid some of their dirt ending up on you? The promise of Engagement is that it offers the hope of slowly but surely changing things for the better; the danger is that while you are doing that, the key leaders of the regime in fact get far richer and learn how to be oppressive in new, cleverer ways.

So in the Libya case. The stupid/wicked/naive Brits trained the Libyan security forces! Of course we did: if you want to set in motion a process of reform and enlightenment in such regressive institutions, what else to do?

Think about what this means in practice. If the Libyan secret police are known torturers, you will be training them while their torturing ways continue. Even if the total amount of Libyan torture declines sharply as a direct result of Libyans cleaning up their act during the wider normalisation process, your trainers in one way or the other will be helping a torturing regime be more efficient.

Yet without outside democratic engagement (and the high-level civilisational rewards which rightly flow to the regime for behaving in a less extreme way) the chances of reducing Libyan torture at all (and thereby opening some small new space for opposition trends) are hugely reduced...

This is also where I part company with my former UK Ambassador colleague Craig Murray. Forget his idiosyncratic leftism. My problem is that Craig's books and website lambast almost any 'Western' foreign policy as corrupt, mendacious, duplicitous or whatever. Yet he is almost 100% silent on how in real life to achieve any positive changes for the better, not least in Uzbekistan which is run by a hard-core regime which he knows only too well.

A loyal reader of my latest Commentator piece says this:

My initial instincts would be to disagree mostly with the kind of line you take on this particular issue. I'm a no compromise man on dictatorships. But, as you say, what are we supposed to do with them? If I may say, you make a very convincing case that really makes me think hard.

Let's think about this a bit more, taking for granted that a 'Western' democratic system with a strong legal system is just 'better' than a cruel torturing dictatorship. What should the democracy do about the dictatorship?

One option is to do nothing. Faraway wicked foreigners oppress each other - what's new?

That option is in fact quite often used, even if there is a busy pretence of 'doing something'. Saudi Arabia is the classic example of a system which in most respects imposes odious unfair apartheid-like restrictions on its citizens, and which we studiously treat as a 'factor of stability'. Communist China used to be far worse, murdering millions. As did the USSR.

In all these cases the hard fact that these systems are powerful, ruthless and/or rich compels a certain caution. But does the fact that we 'tolerate' (say) the Saudi system demolish any claim by us to moral superiority? Double standards, they shriek.

No. Any good policy has to be realistic as well as consistent. If you can't stop all killers, it's right to stop those you can stop. To that extent there is solid intellectual and moral territory between 'double standards' and 'no standards'.    

If we nonetheless decide to do something about a dictatorship, what in fact is likely to work, where 'work' means bringing about change for the more pluralistic, preferably without massive violence?

Hold it right there. Why is massive violence bad? Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted recently thus:

What if we think that there are possibilities for more or less peaceful change? Egypt in some ways is a good current example. NB South Africa is always presented as a triumph for peaceful change but of course wasn't.

Libya might have been too, had the Gaddafi elite not reverted to stupidity instead of using its new improved relations with Western democracies to negotiate .

Cuba? Belarus? Myanmar/Burma? Zimbabwe? China itself?

Simply making a short list like that shows just how varied and problematic the challenge is. In each individual case the options range far and wide, as does the prospect of getting allies and building successful coalitions for change. 

Let's not forget too that Western political leaders' main focus is what their voters want. And voters (with rare exceptions) do not put changing the ways of revolting foreign regimes far up their priorities list. Or much taxpayers' money to be spent on the problem. In 1999 Robin Cook realised that it was a good investment to fund anti-Milosevic activities led by myself, and got superb results. 

So in the real world of foreign policy it makes no sense to take a stark 'no compromise' position of substance with dictatorships. They exist, they have UN and other votes, they can export trouble, they probably have Ambassadors in London. Your aircraft may need to fly over their territory, or they may agree with you on various international technical issues. It's complicated. 

You almost always end up with some form of 'engagement'. But the fact of matter-of-fact exchanges and opportunistically looking for areas to build some common ground is not the same thing as having a policy of Engagement aimed at deliberately using a range of options (openly or otherwise) to bring out reforms. 

When in Poland I quietly and privately explored with the then Ambassador of Belarus (smart, energetic diplomat) some ideas for engaging with the Lukashenko elite. But it all fell into the Not Important Enough category in London. Getting anything done there would take a lot of effort and senior time: Tony Blair saw no real upside in this long slog, and plenty of reasons for letting this one quietly fester under 'EU pressure'.

Was that the wrong decision by No 10? Or the right one? It's still festering, but EU governments are still wobbling unconvincingly between Engagement and Isolation.

A huge subject.

My point today is simple. British foreign policy and leadership can make positive changes in unpropitious foreign situations. But simply wanting to make a difference does not get results. Making that happen requires a powerful combination of strong policy determination, operational nimbleness and fine professional technique, an area where the FCO obviously declined under Labour. Plus some money.

What just doesn't help is facile sneering from the likes of the BBC's 'foreign editor' Jon Williams:

WilliamsJon Jon Williams

Any suggestion of MI6 relationship with #Libya into 2011 v damaging to FCO & No10. Til (sic) now claimed UK-Gaddafi ties part of Blair/Brown past

The fact that MI6 had a relationship with #Libya under Brown/Blair and continued under Cameron showed the policy was working, you silly fellow.