Blair's Foreign Policy - Did You Know?

I’ve recently finished reading Tony Blair’s memoir ‘A Journey’. It is an interesting and ultimately worthwhile read, and it confirms much of what I knew or suspected before. My reason for reading it was to see if it threw some new light on why he took the decision that will forever define his premiership, why he took Britain into an illegal invasion of Iraq.

In his rather egocentric account, Blair would have us believe that his frustrations with the European response to Kosovo and his subsequent feelings of indebtedness to Bill Clinton for American support in that NATO action laid the ground for the invasion of Iraq on the coat-tails of the USA. After 9/11 we all should have seen what was coming, especially if we had taken notice of what Blair had said to the Economics Club of Chicago in April 1999. And this is the point, until the publication of this memoir a month or so ago, I hadn’t even known about this speech, Blair’s ‘Doctrine of the International Community’. The thrust of it is this: ‘… intervention to bring down a despotic dictatorial regime could be justified on grounds of the nature of that regime, not merely its immediate threat to our interests’. Does this mean that, in spite of his many denials, the dodgy dossier and all the evidence to Hutton and Chilcott, the invasion of Iraq was all about regime change, after all?

This doctrine is breathtaking in its arrogance and, in the light of subsequent events, it is more than a little disingenuous, take these five major considerations when considering intervention:

“First, are we sure of our case? War is an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress; but armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators. Second, have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance, as we have in the case of Kosovo. Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake? Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we have talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away once the fight is over; better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances with large numbers. And finally do we have national interests involved?”

Did the Labour Party debate this extraordinary deviation from the rather narrow view of national interest? Was there ever a wider public debate? Was this why Blair chose to outline this new thinking in America rather than at a Labour Party Conference? What really is chilling for me is that we, the British people, let him do this with so little debate, with so little opposition until it was too late. We let Blair and his tiny inner circle play cops and robbers on the international stage because of his sense of obligation to both Bill Clinton and George Bush, and once Blair had signed up the whole show was run by the extreme hardliners, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Surely British foreign policy is too important to be left to a ‘maverick’ politician and his sycophantic acolytes to make up as they go along?