Bitter road to baghdad began in belgrade
By Malcolm Rifkind Last Updated: 11:36pm BST 12/05/2007 John Major once remarked to me that one doesn't win a general election on foreign policy. "No," I replied, "but one can lose it." Reputations can be lost just as easily as elections. Tony Blair won't have any more elections to fight but his legacy will be dominated more by his foreign policy than has that of any British prime minister since Sir Anthony Eden. He will not find the comparison very comfortable. It was never meant to have been like that. He started his decade in power with an extraordinary degree of popularity and power not just at home but also abroad. If it has since soured, that should, however, not blind us to the positive aspects of his international role. Not least of these has been his global prominence. Britain, as a middling power, cannot assume that its prime minister will be known throughout the world. Who knows the name of the Chinese president, the Japanese or the Italian prime ministers? For 10 years, the world has known about Tony Blair. Like him or loathe him, that has helped project Britain as a country with a significant role in world affairs. Blair's contribution has also been serious rather than symbolic. One has only to compare him with Jacques Chirac. While the French President delighted in grand initiatives presented for the greater glory of France, Blair has made a series of thoughtful speeches offering a sober analysis of the world we live in and how Britain can play its part in building a global response to global problems. While the rhetoric has been splendid there has been little attempt to exaggerate Britain's power and his proposals have, for the most part, been put in an international context. That is the case for the defence. The charge against Blair is, however, far more serious. It does not relate to the Prime Minister's integrity or noble intentions. What has been of far greater concern has been his faulty analysis and poor judgement. When he came to power he brought with him no experience and little prior interest in foreign affairs. Despite that, he has acted as his own foreign secretary and has largely ignored the collective advice of diplomats, academics and others with relevant expertise. The Prime Minister made two fundamental errors in the first few years that he was in power. First, he concluded that a commitment to human rights and democratic values justified, and required, a policy of military intervention around the world. This was in accord with his own personality. He has approached foreign policy with all the zeal of a Victorian missionary. His is a muscular Christianity that was evident from early in his premiership. The most important example was Kosovo, which Blair believes was a great success. In fact, by his own declared objectives, it was a significant failure. It demonstrated that when you begin a war against a country that has not attacked you, you lose control of the consequences, which may be very different from those you intended. Nato's war against Serbia had two purposes. One was to restore Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia; the other was to prevent ethnic cleansing. Instead, Kosovo is now demanding, and will obtain, full independence, further fragmenting the Balkans. The ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Albanians has been replaced by the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Serbs. Kosovo was important, not just in itself but because it confirmed Blair in his simplistic belief that complex international problems can be resolved by Western military might. In a very real sense, the road to Baghdad began in Belgrade. This led to Blair's second fundamental error. The end of the Cold War had concluded the global battle between Communism and capitalism, and between totalitarianism and democracy. The old certainties as to who we were and who the enemy was had disappeared. But 9/11 changed all that. Since the attack on the Twin Towers, both the rhetoric and strategy of Blair and Bush have been black and white: a global War on Terror, a new battle between good and evil. Chechnya, Palestine and Kashmir have all had to be fitted onto this template when, in reality, they are quite different issues. The result has been a simplistic distortion of a complex world. The consequence has also been the disaster of Iraq, which, quite rightly, will define Blair's legacy. Going to war is always a difficult decision. But when you go to war against a country that has not attacked you, without the support of the UN Security Council and with your own country and party deeply divided, you have to be sure that you get it right. Blair and Bush have got it terribly wrong. The result has been more than 100,000 killed, two million refugees fled abroad, a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, and Iran having been helped by Blair and Bush to become the most powerful state in the region. Blair's Iraq policy has been worse than a crime, it has been a blunder. Then again, some may argue it is the other way around. I began by comparing Blair with Eden. Maybe Neville Chamberlain would have been more appropriate. While no one can accuse Blair of appeasement, in every other respect the similarities are striking. Blair and Chamberlain: two prime ministers, both inexperienced in foreign policy, both convinced of their own rectitude, both disdainful of advice, both unable to acknowledge error, both contemptuous of their foreign secretaries and both believing in their own personal destiny. For Chamberlain read Munich; for Blair read Baghdad. Both were decent men out of their depth. At least Neville Chamberlain paved the way for Winston Churchill. As we wait for Gordon Brown to enter Downing Street, I realise that this is where the comparison ends. Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP was Foreign Secretary from 1995 to 1997 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/blairf.xml
