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>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4404183,00.html
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The terrifying naivety of Blair the great intervener
The prime minister risks turning Britain into the Pentagon's useful idiot
Hugo Young
Tuesday April 30, 2002
The Guardian
What Tony Blair sees when he looks at Iraq is a country that has the ingredients to
be a good and happy one. It has 60 million people and 9% of the world's oil reserves.
It could be one of the world's attractions rather than its principal pariah, and would
be
so if only it weren't ruled by a murderous psychopath, the worst villain in
contemporary history. The world needs protection from this evil maniac but, just as
important, Iraq and Iraqis need help. Here is the moral challenge of the hour, and
perhaps the supreme task facing political leaders in 2002.
Occupying this place in Mr Blair's mind, Iraq exemplifies the most extraordinary
change in British life since he was elected prime minister five years ago tomorrow.
You can keep class sizes, hospital waiting lists, cuts in car crime or the fine-tuning
of
economic progress. These are tasks all governments take on with variable success,
and any shifts, though important, are at the margin. What's new is Britain's evolution,
entirely at the personal hand of the PM, into an eager player anywhere in the world
where there is work, usually moral work, to do: whether with a handful of retired
security men in Israel/ Palestine; a few hundred troops camped permanently in Sierra
Leone; a couple of thousand in Afghanistan; or, potentially, any number of thousands
one day in Iraq.
For Mr Blair is a driven intervener. He believes in that role for Britain, and defines
the
national interest more broadly than any leader since Gladstone. Mrs Thatcher's
sense of the national interest confined it to the defence of Britain's shores and
possessions. Mr Blair reaches beyond that, beyond our local continent, into the far
blue yonder, anywhere the world might be made a better place by the benign
intervention of a good, stable, rich and militarily capable country like Britain. Iraq
is
the place where this philosophy looks like next being tested.
Such zeal for intervention, as a way of making the world better rather than the nation
stronger, is unique in modern Europe. You never find it among French or German
leaders. Even De Gaulle didn't really fit the category, being more of a pallid
Metternich than a pious Gladstone. But the comparison also stands against
contemporary America. The Bush administration's performance since September 11
has been driven not by a desire to improve the world but to make American territory
safe from the world, and the world safe for American domination. The world will get
some benefit. But those non-travelling Republicans on the Hill, like Bush himself, do
not have a developed concept of disinterested idealism. If they go into Iraq, they will
leave when the business is done. The only business that matters is to kill off Saddam
and thus protect Americans, coupled with the name of Israel.
Mr Blair's impulse is different. Several conversations with high officials persuade me
that we misunderstand what, from his viewpoint, the Iraq option is really about.
London tends to be seen as a restraining force on Wash ington, a wise tactical
adviser on the side of caution. In the early tactics against al-Qaida - notably the
ultimatum to the Taliban and the binding in of Putin and Russia - Mr Blair did, I can
believe, have an influential voice.
But over Iraq, the dynamic is to some extent reversed. Rather than being a
restrainer, Mr Blair is quite eager for action. His catalogue of infamy against Saddam
and the Iraqi arsenal of mass-destruction weapons, including Saddam's imminent
nuclear capacity, is not qualified by doubt. The moral crusader offers a clarity of
vision that makes some, though not all, officials in Washington tremble. Sometimes it
almost seems as though the US is helping the UK rather than vice versa. If America
can help the great intervener, so much the better. Here we have a leader delighted to
have at his disposal the greatest power on earth, abetting any moral cause in which
he believes.
Another consideration pushes him the same way. He believes it is Britain's duty to
ensure that the US is not isolated in its great geo-political campaign against
terrorism. He hears America accused of unilateralism, and counts it as a virtue on
Britain's part to stand as the visible guarantor that this is not the case. On trade
issues, abrasiveness is permissible. But on global security, irrespective of the
substance, Britain's gift to America is to demonstrate, by standing shoulder-to-
shoulder or flying wing-to-wing, that the unilateralist calumnies emanating from the
Middle East and Europe are false.
This Blairite attitude has a public history. Kosovo prompted him to articulate a
doctrine of moral interventionism, and September 11 drew a great oration to the
Labour party conference. But these impulses have deepened and spread. He would
think nothing, if he could persuade the Americans to go along, of organising an
Anglo-American expeditionary force to move round Africa, training local police and
armies a la Sierra Leone, and thus at modest cost shoring up the democracies that
could be the basis of African economic recovery. The vision of the moralist demands
nothing less. An Iraq left in peace to prosper on its oil and educate its citizens in
democratic values naturally belongs there too.
However worthy this vision may seem - to some inspiring, maybe - its insouciance
strikes me as terrifyingly naive. Brazen words to say to a five-year prime minister,
but
two reasons support them.
First, the interventionist compulsion is producing policies that have been little
discussed. Nobody minds sending a few retired officers to detain Palestinian
terrorists. Even Sierra Leone is paying virtuous dividends. But an army, or an air
force, against Iraq? Where are the frontiers of this moral vision, and how much are
we prepared to pay to make it come to pass? How does it relate to Mr Blair's other
driving priority, his alleged intimacy with his European partners? Romano Prodi will
doubtless be scorned on many sides for his reproving words yesterday, asking
Britain where she stands on the EU. But the point was correctly made. It may be true,
as Blair insists, that Britain must remain in good odour with both Americans and
Europeans. History and geography still allow that possibility. But dreams of wiping
out Saddam Hussein smack more of a mesmerised attachment to American power
than any serious attention to what Europe needs and wants.
Second, what leverage does Gladstonian ambition retain for a country that lost
Gladstonian power a century ago? The danger Blair faces is that, when the time
comes, he will have none. Britain will turn out to have been the useful idiot for the
Pentagon's big project, supporting it in the name of a virtuous imperialism for which
Washington has no stomach, and dragged into battle according to timetables that
suit America's domestic needs not Europe's or Britain's - which most other EU
countries will possibly oppose. Blair is deciding, if not saying, where he stands,
because of a singularly personal idea about the purpose of politics in the modern
world. Some day soon, Washington will eat him for breakfast, along with the morality
it then spits out.
� [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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