BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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unilaterally, to conduct largely its own campaign in removing the
Taliban from Kabul. British cruise missiles were fired in the opening
salvo of the air campaign and up to 1,000 British special forces were sent
to work with the Americans on the ground. But the US had no real need
of any European military support and little time to discuss it. Insofar as
this stage of the Afghanistan operation was a coalition effort, it was for
the sake of appearances rather than effectiveness. But the operation was
not particularly controversial in a foreign policy sense. Though there
was some domestic disquiet in public opinion throughout Europe at
the implications of the campaign, there was a general consensus, on
which London traded heavily, that this was a justifiable US reaction to
the 9/11 atrocities. Post-conflict reconstruction and ‘nation-building’
would be another matter altogether,36 but this did not dim the sense
of momentum in Downing Street that events were demonstrating
the value of the activist approach to foreign policy. The trick was how
to keep the US engaged in the nation-building aftermath of military
operations.
The Iraq War and its implications
The US wanted to move quickly on from Afghanistan, however, and was
clearly determined to address ways of breaking out of the blind alley that
had consumed the Iraq policy. This proved to be the crucible for the Blair
approach to foreign policy and the turning point between a growing
momentum of success and a policy failure that compelled revaluation.
The Iraq War of 2003, by common consent, has been the most evident US
foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, and may ultimately prove to have
35 Quoted in Kampfner , Blair’s Wars, pp. 130–1.
36 Amalendu Misra, ‘Afghanistan: The Politics of Post-war Reconstruction’, Conflict,
Security and Development, 2.3, 2002: 5–27.
even greater consequences for the US role in the world. Fiasco, the
seminal insider study by Thomas Ricks, has been widely acknowledged by
middle-range policymakers in the US as an accurate summary of the
whole sorry affair.37 Bob Woodward’s trilogy of books on the dynamics of
the administration dealing with the war also tells the story of an unfolding – perhaps inevitable – tragedy for the Americans, the Iraqis and the
Middle East as a whole.38
For the Blair government, concerned with ‘positioning’ for long-term
global objectives, two crucial decisions determined the British share in
this blunder; both taken before the war began. The first was in April 2002
when Tony Blair returned from a private meeting with President Bush
convinced that the US was determined, come what may, to act against
Iraq. There was no question in his own mind that Britain must back US
policy, but it did so with a complex and ambitious diplomatic agenda. It
would deliver united European support for Washington that would build
on the Kosovo experience. It could achieve this because it would simultaneously deliver the US to the United Nations for a legitimising resolution.
It would leverage such a resolution on the basis of a renewal of the ‘road
map’ for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Putin would huff and
puff about the use of coercion but would follow his best interests and fall
in behind a united front. And ‘dealing with Iraq’ would be presented in
the Middle East as a prerequisite to a bigger new deal for the region as a
whole. If this diplomatic coup could be pulled off, coercive diplomacy
might serve to prevent a war at all. The British diplomatic machine went
into high gear to try to manufacture these outcomes, Tony Blair himself
confident that they were within reach. In the event, they all failed.39
The second key decision was to commit large British forces to the war
that ensued – some 40,000 service personnel – sufficient to command a
divisional sector of the battlefield and then the arena of reconstruction.
This was both a demonstration of commitment to Washington and to the
37 Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press,
2006). ‘From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong’, New York
Times, 25 July 2006. Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Taking it to the Streets’, Slate Magazine, 28 July
2006.
38 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002). Bob Woodward,
Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Bob Woodward, State of Denial:
Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). See also, Michael Gordon and
Bernard Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (London:
Atlantic Books, 2006).
39 Michael Clarke, ‘The Diplomacy that Led to War in Iraq’, in Paul Cornish (ed.), The War
in Iraq, 2003 (London: Macmillan, 2004), pp. 40–6.
enterprise, as well as another case where a British approach to the integration of hard and soft power could contribute to a favourable outcome. It
was a further demonstration of the practical partnership between the US
and Britain. This too, went wrong, chiefly because the British had very
little influence on the overall political picture of which south-eastern Iraq
and Basra were a part. Ultimately Blair and Bush were fighting different
wars. For Blair, Iraq was about upholding values and the will of the international community; for Bush it was a demonstration of raw power to
achieve a national purpose. As reconstruction and efforts at nation-building foundered across Iraq the British position became increasingly untenable. Far from offering leadership to the Europeans and partnership to the
Americans, the Iraq commitment left Britain isolated and lacking influence in Washington – lauded for its loyalty but identified with a disastrous
lame-duck presidency. The failure of the enterprise undermined British
influence throughout the Middle East at least as much as the Suez debacle
had done 40 years previously. In his various valedictory addresses, Tony
Blair acknowledged that many mistakes had been made, that the situation
in Iraq was deeply unsatisfactory, but that time would show it was the
right thing to do.40 If it was a US blunder, key officials have opined, then
Washington could not be allowed to make it alone.41 Positioning again.
Not the least significant consequence of the Iraq failure was the effect it
had on other areas of policy. It absorbed British diplomatic and prime
ministerial attention so that the imaginative approach to European politics foundered after 2002, despite a high energy level from a prime minister keen to mend bilateral fences.42 But his run of good luck was over. The
subtleties of the British approach to European defence questions were an
immediate casualty of the Iraq War and relations with France and
Germany deteriorated on a range of issues. Downing Street even felt that
Chirac, Schroeder and Putin effectively formed a diplomatic front against
Blair. Nor was this much ameliorated by the desire of the major European
powers to get back on better terms with the Bush Administration at the
end of 2004. Britain was keen to pus
h for a renewed commitment to
nation-building in Afghanistan. It would be a way for the Europeans in
40 Blair, A Global Alliance for Global Values, pp. 8–9.
41 On blundering, see Barnett R.Rubin, ‘Saving Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs, 86.1, 2007: 66.
On positioning, see Alex Daachev, ‘“I’m with You”: Tony Blair and the Obligations of
Alliance’, in C. Lloyd et al. (eds.), Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (New York: The New
Press, 2007), pp. 46–8.
42 Julie Smith, ‘A Missed Opportunity? New Labour’s European Policy 1997–2005’,
International Affairs, 81.4, 2005: 715–21.
NATO to make a tangible contribution to US policy objectives but still
keep them out of Iraq. And Afghanistan needed more determined
nation-building in the face of a lacklustre US performance that had concentrated almost exclusively on counter-terrorist operations. NATO,
however, was issuing a blank cheque in taking over a potentially massive
commitment at a time when it appeared just about feasible. By the time
of deployment in the spring of 2006, however, the situation had deteriorated considerably. The arrival of NATO forces led the Taliban and
al-Qaeda to open a more active front in the country and the Europeans
fell into public arguments over their willingness to meet the challenges
and reinforce their troops. Britain again found itself positioned squarely
with the US – and Canada – in taking on most of the fighting, but unable
to ‘lead’ its European partners into a more positive, let alone holistic,
response. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan seemed to British officials to offer
some hope of at least interim success. But by the time Tony Blair had left
Downing Street it had become another anvil on which European unity,
and its relationship to US global policy, was being regularly hammered.
It was understandable that the commitment to the principles behind
New Labour’s foreign policy should find other outlets after the failure of
Iraq and its immediate consequences. Tony Blair returned heavily to the
themes of interdependence and the necessary responses to globalisation.
His increasing concentration on anti-terrorism following the 2005 bomb
attacks in London was all couched in terms of the failure of the jihadis and
their supporters to grasp what was at stake in a globalised world and their
visceral fear of the onward march of real democracy. He returned, too, to
the instrumentalities of effecting change – the need to design comprehensive, multinational policies and to understand the sheer interrelatedness of
policy challenges. Africa emerged as a new focus for long-term thinking. It
seemed an appropriate moment given Britain’s presidency of the G8 during
2005 and the Gleneagles Summit, the UN climate change conference and
the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting that would follow.43 The
government had shown a renewed interest in African affairs during its
second term, but the particular challenges of Zimbabwe, Somalia, the
Democratic Republic of Congo and latterly Darfur were not readily accessible to external influences acting independently.44 Nevertheless, the
more structural aspects of Africa’s foreign policy problems offered scope for
43 Tony Blair, ‘A Year of Huge Challenges’, The Economist, 1 January 2005, p. 25.
44 Tom Porteous, ‘British Government Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa under New Labour’,
International Affairs, 81.2, 2005:292–4.
some imaginative initiatives on development aid, debt relief, trade liberalisation, HIV/AIDS, environment, capacity-building, support for the African
Union, and so on.45 The Gleneagles agenda formed the centrepiece of a new
emphasis in Britain’s activist foreign policy and raised new hopes in diplomats and pop stars alike.46 The results were more than cynics had suggested
would be possible. There was agreement to double international aid to
Africa, create financial mechanisms to put more money into public health,
cancel all of Africa’s multilateral debts and help beef up the AU’s capacity to
deploy peacekeepers. There were climate change initiatives, too, though the
unspoken goal remained to find a way of bringing the US into a follow-on to
the Kyoto protocol after 2012.47 Such headlines normally disguise an aggregation of existing trends and policies, however, and there has been a vigorous debate about the fungibility of the promises made at Gleneagles.48
Gleneagles was, however, an undoubted personal triumph for Tony Blair. In
his farewell tour round Africa he made a big pitch for the worth of the initiatives undertaken in 2005. In reality, the locus of British policymaking on
Africa had shifted from the FCO to the Department for International
Development and the Treasury. Gordon Brown talked about aid and debt:
Tony Blair talked about security and intervention. By the end of his premiership it was not clear that British policy was appropriately ‘comprehensive’ nor that international efforts were close to any step-change. But the
agenda was very much his.
The scorecard
The decade of Blairite foreign policy was turbulent and distinctive. Much of
it ended in failure, but certainly not all. And out of the remains of immediate policy wreckage always emerges a legacy that may be more lasting. It was
an approach to foreign policy that was based around Tony Blair’s own selfbelief and commitment. It drew both upon an older conservative tradition
that Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill would certainly have recognised, and on a social democratic internationalism that was close to the
45 Commission for Africa, Our Common Interest (London: Penguin Books, 2005).
46 Alex Ramsbotham, Alhaji M.S.Bah and Fanny Calder, ‘Enhancing African Peace and
Security Capacity: A Useful Role for the UK and the G8?’ International Affairs, 81.2, 2005:
325–39.
47 Tony Blair, ‘A Year After Gleneagles’, Speech, 26 June 2006, 10 Downing Street, Press
Office, Text.
48 Anthony Payne, ‘Blair, Brown and the Gleneagles Agenda’, International Affairs, 82.5,
2006: 934–5.
traditional Labour heart. The key difference between old and new Labour
interpretations of this internationalism was in the Churchillian determination to carry it through – with or without legal institutional backing, with
or without a solid domestic consensus. Internationalism, in Blair’s view,
could not be shackled by the constraints and vetoes of an old system in the
face of such new and urgent challenges. The approach boasted a coherent
view of the world, but in truth that view was characterised more by vigour
in action than rigour in analysis. Key concepts – such as these new and
urgent challenges – were never carefully defined. Action was thought
through, more than principles closely interrogated, by officials and advisers
at the top who had little time for reflection and who were serving a hyperactive, instinctive, Prime Minister with youth on his side.
Blairite foreign policy is irrevocably identified with the principles of
liberal – or humanitarian – interventionism and with the empirical reality
of Iraq as its exemplar. For some, like Simon Jenkins, it is already t
ime to
consign the notion to the history of a vainglorious showman: ‘Liberal
interventionism talks the talk but can barely walk the length of a red
carpet. It has failed the most crucial test of any policy in being neither
morally even-handed nor effective in action.’49 For others, it is a necessary
response to modern instability whose failures – and successes – leave
Britain with something that any country with international interests and
aspirations will seek to refine.50 Conservative policy in Bosnia, after all,
began precisely as a humanitarian intervention, but in a world where all
such interventions are bound to be morally ambiguous and inconsistently
applied, no one had the cheek to elevate it out of the realm of the merely
pragmatic. The British military still retain great respect throughout the
world, if only for their sheer tactical acumen, and for a mixture of good
and bad reasons all the major Western allies have committed themselves to
seek success in the Afghanistan operation. It is reasonable to suppose that
future leaders will be more cautious in committing themselves to interventions in the future. But it is unlikely that the demand for them will
decrease. Many good lessons were drawn from the messy interventions of
the 1990s, but then not learned, or wilfully ignored, in those interventions
that were deemed part of the ‘war on terror’ a few years later.
The central question will persist, whether Iraq demonstrated fatal
flaws in the very concept of liberal intervention, or whether that parti49 Simon Jenkins, ‘Blair Reinvented the Middle Ages and Called It Liberal Intervention’, The
Sunday Times, 3 June 2007, p. 16.
50 Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations (London, Atlantic Books, 2004), pp. 182–7.
cular operation was so badly conceived and executed by the Bush
Administration that no generic conclusions can be drawn from it.
Perhaps it stands as a singular, egregious tragedy in a more nuanced landscape. It seems likely, however, that Tony Blair might be judged less
harshly by history than by his contemporary critics in his decision to back
US actions in the way that he did. It seems inconceivable that after the