Niall Ferguson:
London's bridge has fallen down
Tony Blair's simplistic foreign policy landed him in Bush's lap and isolated from continental Europe.
May 7, 2007
AS TONY BLAIR prepares to step down after 10 years as British prime minister, he has surely learned one thing: Foreign policy is not something you can make up as you go along. The greatest statesmen all thought long and deeply about history before entering the realm of power. Unfortunately, like his nemesis on the other side of the Atlantic, George W. Bush, Blair evinced little interest in international affairs before reaching the top of the political greasy pole. It has shown.
In the 1983 general election when he was elected to Parliament, for example, Blair toed the Labor Party line, which envisaged British withdrawal from the European Economic Community and unilateral nuclear disarmament. As prime minister, by contrast, he set out to be a more committed European than his two Conservative predecessors, while at the same time affirming his faith in the Atlantic alliance with the United States and renewing Britain's more or less independent nuclear deterrent.
Superficially, this was a coherent foreign policy, even if it was largely improvised. In Timothy Garton Ash's term, Blair was attempting to be the "bridge" between the United States and continental Europe, while at the same time maintaining a degree of national autonomy. Yet the events of the past 10 years have revealed this bridge to be a very rickety edifice.
It turns out that there are fundamental conflicts between Britain's commitment to "ever closer" European integration, its supposedly "special relationship" with the United States and its national self-interest.
It is easy to forget how eager Blair was to talk the European talk in the first four years of his premiership. The holidays in Italy set the scene. So what was it that turned Tuscan Tony into Texan Tony? It is often assumed that it was Sept. 11, 2001. At the Labor Party conference, just three weeks after the terrorist attacks, Blair described 9/11 as "a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind."
Yet the real turning point for Blair's foreign policy had in fact come earlier. Twice before 9/11 he had marveled at the remarkable efficacy of Western military power — first in Serbia in 1999, then in Sierra Leone the following year. Short, sharp interventions in civil conflicts in both these countries had spectacularly positive results. Serbia went from ethnic cleansing to elections. Sierra Leone went from decapitations to democracy.
In Blair's mind, then, the doctrine of liberal or humanitarian interventionism was already fully formed. The notion of the inviolable sovereignty of the nation-state could be discarded, central though it had long been to the international system. A state that engaged in genocide — or, by extension, terrorism — forfeited its rights. As Blair observed, it had been possible to justify NATO's intervention in Kosovo only by qualifying "the principle of noninterference … in important respects".
Thus, when 9/11 happened, no other world leader was more ready to embrace a U.S. policy of retaliation that meant violating the sovereignty of multiple nation-states — not only those that were invaded but also those whose nationals were held captive in legal limbo.
With minimal hesitation, Blair accepted the U.S. argument that the Iraqi dictator not only possessed weapons of mass destruction but was also a sponsor of terrorism. When he addressed the House of Commons on March 18, 2003 — the most precarious moment of his time in office — he somehow managed to link the chemical and biological weapons the U.N. inspectors had not been able to trace in Iraq to the possibility of a terrorist attack comparable with 9/11.
Having embarked on this course, however, Blair soon found his much-vaunted Atlantic bridge crumbling. The French and the Germans led the European opposition to military action against Iraq, dashing any hope of a legitimating second U.N. resolution. Meanwhile, at home, there was dismay from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The costs of backing the U.S. were obvious. But what were the benefits? One U.S. State Department official candidly described the relationship between Bush and Blair as "one-sided…. There was nothing, no payback, no sense of reciprocity." Bush's crudely condescending salutation at a G-8 summit — "Yo, Blair" — said it all.
What had been a bridge looked suddenly like a forlorn jetty. And Blair has been standing there ever since, feebly shadowing American policy, not only toward Iraq but also toward Israel and the Palestinians, and Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In foreign policy, it is often the idealists who do the most harm. Blair's tragedy was that, though he was a hard-bitten realist in the realm of domestic politics, he was an ingénue when it came to international relations, a beginner who drew a dangerously simplistic inference from two early successes. The road to Baghdad led through Belgrade and Freetown, but it was a wrong turn.
[email protected]
London's bridge has fallen down - Los Angeles Times
London's bridge has fallen down
Tony Blair's simplistic foreign policy landed him in Bush's lap and isolated from continental Europe.
May 7, 2007
AS TONY BLAIR prepares to step down after 10 years as British prime minister, he has surely learned one thing: Foreign policy is not something you can make up as you go along. The greatest statesmen all thought long and deeply about history before entering the realm of power. Unfortunately, like his nemesis on the other side of the Atlantic, George W. Bush, Blair evinced little interest in international affairs before reaching the top of the political greasy pole. It has shown.
In the 1983 general election when he was elected to Parliament, for example, Blair toed the Labor Party line, which envisaged British withdrawal from the European Economic Community and unilateral nuclear disarmament. As prime minister, by contrast, he set out to be a more committed European than his two Conservative predecessors, while at the same time affirming his faith in the Atlantic alliance with the United States and renewing Britain's more or less independent nuclear deterrent.
Superficially, this was a coherent foreign policy, even if it was largely improvised. In Timothy Garton Ash's term, Blair was attempting to be the "bridge" between the United States and continental Europe, while at the same time maintaining a degree of national autonomy. Yet the events of the past 10 years have revealed this bridge to be a very rickety edifice.
It turns out that there are fundamental conflicts between Britain's commitment to "ever closer" European integration, its supposedly "special relationship" with the United States and its national self-interest.
It is easy to forget how eager Blair was to talk the European talk in the first four years of his premiership. The holidays in Italy set the scene. So what was it that turned Tuscan Tony into Texan Tony? It is often assumed that it was Sept. 11, 2001. At the Labor Party conference, just three weeks after the terrorist attacks, Blair described 9/11 as "a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind."
Yet the real turning point for Blair's foreign policy had in fact come earlier. Twice before 9/11 he had marveled at the remarkable efficacy of Western military power — first in Serbia in 1999, then in Sierra Leone the following year. Short, sharp interventions in civil conflicts in both these countries had spectacularly positive results. Serbia went from ethnic cleansing to elections. Sierra Leone went from decapitations to democracy.
In Blair's mind, then, the doctrine of liberal or humanitarian interventionism was already fully formed. The notion of the inviolable sovereignty of the nation-state could be discarded, central though it had long been to the international system. A state that engaged in genocide — or, by extension, terrorism — forfeited its rights. As Blair observed, it had been possible to justify NATO's intervention in Kosovo only by qualifying "the principle of noninterference … in important respects".
Thus, when 9/11 happened, no other world leader was more ready to embrace a U.S. policy of retaliation that meant violating the sovereignty of multiple nation-states — not only those that were invaded but also those whose nationals were held captive in legal limbo.
With minimal hesitation, Blair accepted the U.S. argument that the Iraqi dictator not only possessed weapons of mass destruction but was also a sponsor of terrorism. When he addressed the House of Commons on March 18, 2003 — the most precarious moment of his time in office — he somehow managed to link the chemical and biological weapons the U.N. inspectors had not been able to trace in Iraq to the possibility of a terrorist attack comparable with 9/11.
Having embarked on this course, however, Blair soon found his much-vaunted Atlantic bridge crumbling. The French and the Germans led the European opposition to military action against Iraq, dashing any hope of a legitimating second U.N. resolution. Meanwhile, at home, there was dismay from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The costs of backing the U.S. were obvious. But what were the benefits? One U.S. State Department official candidly described the relationship between Bush and Blair as "one-sided…. There was nothing, no payback, no sense of reciprocity." Bush's crudely condescending salutation at a G-8 summit — "Yo, Blair" — said it all.
What had been a bridge looked suddenly like a forlorn jetty. And Blair has been standing there ever since, feebly shadowing American policy, not only toward Iraq but also toward Israel and the Palestinians, and Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In foreign policy, it is often the idealists who do the most harm. Blair's tragedy was that, though he was a hard-bitten realist in the realm of domestic politics, he was an ingénue when it came to international relations, a beginner who drew a dangerously simplistic inference from two early successes. The road to Baghdad led through Belgrade and Freetown, but it was a wrong turn.
[email protected]
London's bridge has fallen down - Los Angeles Times
But alas, sincerity and Realpolitik are not compatible.
A sad end to a promising leader!
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