UK Foreign Secretary urges multilateralism

(londonsummit.gov.uk)
Updated: 2009-03-25 17:08

UK's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, gave a speech entitled 'Foreign policy in a recession: making multilateralism work' on Tuesday 24 March 2009.

In his speech, he underlined that 'the economic crisis will shape foreign policy in the second decade of the millennium in as deep a way as September 11th shaped the first'.

He added:

'Today, foreign policy is again being reshaped, this time by the economic crisis: the seizing up of financial markets, now being followed by a global recession.

This is the focus of my speech today. Not the financial or economic crisis itself, but its effect on foreign policy. I don’t believe that we can put circuit breakers in place to stop the economic crisis translating into political risk. We couldn’t decouple the real economy from the financial crisis, or the impact of the crisis on the west from the east. I don’t think we can decouple political risk from economic.'

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