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BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007

Page 96

by ANTHONY SELDON (edt)


  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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  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

 

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