Blair on Iraq: Responsibility … “for the rest of my life”
Comment at end
17th November, 2007
THE BLAIR YEARS
Tomorrow evening David Aaranovitch’s “The Blair Years” will be shown on BBC1.
Here follows the whole article as it appears in today’s Times.
The Blair Years - David Aaranovitch Sunday, 18th November, 2007, BBC1 10:15pm
Tony Blair: The war? I believed in it, I believed in it then, I believe in it now
Tony Blair tells our correspondent that his only regret is that he didn’t set out his position on confronting Iraq clearly enough
David Aaronovitch
Months ago, when I knew I would be interviewing Tony Blair for a series of programmes on BBC One, I would ask friends, politicians and other journalists what questions they most wanted put to the former Prime Minister. Reduced to its essentials, the answer would almost invariably be the same one, “Why, really, did you go to war in Iraq?” Today this, as far as I can tell, is what happened.
When Tony Blair became Leader of the Opposition in 1994, he — like Margaret Thatcher — knew little about foreign policy. What he did have was a series of instincts about how the Major Government and the international community had handled affairs in Bosnia, and he wasn’t impressed. Ever the anti-fatalist, once in office he was inclined to see such problems as requiring a solution. And passing across his desk in autumn 1997 were a series of intelligence reports concerning the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and his weapons of mass destruction. “We cannot let him get away with it,” he told Paddy Ashdown that November.
Although military force short of invasion was used several times against Iraq in the following years, the first killing ground was to be the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1999. When a campaign of airstrikes against Milosevic’s Serbia seemed to be getting nowhere, Blair began to agitate for Nato to threaten the use of ground troops and eventually persuaded a very reluctant Bill Clinton to agree to such a line. Two days later Milosevic backed down. The lesson that Blair took from this, he told me, was that the credible and united threat to use force could succeed where all else failed. In fact he didn’t believe that Clinton would have carried out the threat.
As the Kosovo crisis developed, Blair had delivered a major foreign policy speech in Chicago that spring. This address outlined a doctrine of liberal interventionism, arguing that there were circumstances when, though its interests were not directly threatened, the international community might intervene in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. The speech singled out two major villains: Milosevic and Saddam. One critic of Blair’s foreign policy activism was — I was reminded by a senior Blair aide — then an academic at Stamford, Condoleezza Rice.
In early 2001 Blair found himself having to form a relationship with a new and Republican President. From the start he and Bush got on personally. “A decent guy,” Bush said to me about Blair. “He’s grounded, he loves his family, he’s got good priorities.
“To me it’s just easier to deal with a person who believes in some basic fundamentals.”
It was 9/11 that created the political bond. “The moment I saw what was unfolding and realised the scale of it,” Blair told me, “I felt a really deep sense of mission.” It was clear to him immediately, he said, what it was he had to do. With Bush showing, in those early days, a restraint and a focus that hadn’t been expected of him, Blair toured the world helping to put together a coalition for action. By Christmas 2001 the Taleban were defeated and Bin Laden was on the run. Now, the question was, what came next? The American answer, by early 2002, was Saddam. Our man at the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, was, he told me, very surprised because he couldn’t see the relevance of Iraq to 9/11. What had changed, Greenstock thought, was the calculus of opportunity — Bush could now get support for action against Iraq that would previously have been opposed by the American people.
In London, Tony Blair was thinking about Iraq in a slightly different way. To him, according to Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, it was the calculus of risk that had altered with the attack on America.
The nightmare was the confluence of WMD with terrorism; nuclear programmes were believed to be up and running in Libya, Iran and North Korea, and Saddam’s continued defiance of UN resolutions seemed to confirm intelligence reports of continuing WMD capacity. Worse, the existing sanctions regime against Iraq was crumbling. “What you could get away with before 9/11,” explained David Manning, “was no longer acceptable.”
From early on, Tony Blair operated with an implied hierarchy of options over Iraq. The worst, in his view, was that Saddam should be permitted to continue in his defiance. The best was that the international community, acting through the UN, should threaten action sufficiently convincingly to get Saddam to back down completely. Then, as happened with Milosevic, Saddam might well be forced from power. In between these poles were other possibilities, ranging from an internationally agreed plan to force Saddam to comply, to the much less welcome possibility of unilateral military action undertaken by an isolated United States.
In April 2002 Blair travelled to the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas. Did he at this point, secretly agree (as many believe), I asked him, to an invasion of Iraq? “It is complete rubbish that when I went to see President Bush I said, ‘Right, OK, I’m up for it’.” replied Blair. “What’s more, he was not of that view at that time.” Blair instead suggested that, if British support were to be forthcoming for any action against Saddam, two things needed to be done. The first was that the diplomatic route through the United Nations should be used, and the second that the process towards peace in the Middle East should be restarted. “If we wanted that broad coalition, for the Arab and Muslim world this was absolutely in the soul of their being.” Blair told me that he specifically put to Bush that if Saddam complied fully with UN resolutions, then they’d have “to take yes for an answer”. Sir David Manning recalls that Bush told Blair that if Saddam accepted international obligations, then they would effectively have “crated the guy”. With intrusive inspection, and UN administration of humanitarian aid, says Manning, Iraq “would have been a different country”.
Even so, there is a division in Blair’s foreign policy team about what it was that the Americans really heard. Did they take more notice of the promise of British support than they did of the British conditions? According to Greenstock, “the second part came over less strongly than the first”. And though Bush, according to Alastair Campbell, had an understanding of the British position, “Cheney and Rumsfeld were in a somewhat different place”. In fact the Administration as a whole had little time for the UN.
By summer 2002 Tony Blair had embarked on his long, hazardous journey between what Jonathan Powell described as the “clashing pillars” of US impatience and the international community’s desire to avoid conflict, or as Greenstock put it: “Tony Blair began to do the splits.” In early September 2002 Blair met Bush at Camp David. Blair’s emphasis was on getting a resolution through the Security Council which would put pressure on Saddam. “I think he was a little concerned,” George Bush told me, “as to whether or not I reconsidered how important it was to utilise the United Nations as a way to rally support and I sure didn’t think it wasn’t, but I also assured him that sometimes you get stuck in the United Nations to no end.”
There was still hope. That November, in the peak moment for Blair’s strategy, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 demanding Saddam’s readmission of weapons inspectors and a regime of compliance. But it was clear very early that France, at any rate, had a different idea of what action 1441 entailed.Chirac was partly animated by a contempt for George Bush and partly by the fear of a Shia Iraq and a civil war. Sir Stephen Wall recalls that after meetings with Chirac, Tony “would kind of roll his eyes and say, poor old Jacques, he doesn’t get it, does he?”
The UN inspectors, under Hans Blix, went into Iraq between December 2002 and February 2003. In essence, they reported two things: first that they couldn’t find any hard WMD and second that Saddam wasn’t fully complying. In response the Americans became more belligerent and the French and Russians, in particular, became more obdurate. As the pillars clashed, the best Blair options of united international action began to fall apart. According to Greenstock, “it became more important to the French, Germans and Russians to stop the superpowers taking unilateral action than to deal with Saddam’s defiance of the UN Security Council”. And the Americans didn’t help. In early 2003, with troops moving to the Gulf, Britain pushed for a second UN resolution to agree action against Saddam. This time even Colin Powell, the one dove in the hawk-cote, didn’t support him. Blair now lent on his relationship with Bush. “Tony needed it,” Bush told me, “I can remember him asking me to make phone calls, which I did, but it was all in an effort to help our friends and allies to eventually accomplish a mission that we had all come to the conclusion needed to be done.” Blair agrees with this perception. “There was a certain amount of resistance to the November resolution (in Washington) and there was big resistance to the second resolution. But . . . I was very insistent with the President that we had to try for it, and in the end he was prepared to try for it.” But, I asked, didn’t Bush do it to oblige you. “Yes,” replied Blair, “I think he did.”
“I don’t feel,” recalled Greenstock, “that the Americans ever really put their shoulders to the wheel, because they were saying ‘we’ve got to humour the Brits’.” And Sir Jeremy was aware of the impulsion to war, with Vice-President Cheney urging action at the beginning of February. “The Prime Minister was asking for many more weeks than that. The President came up with a compromise.” March.
In one last attempt to save the broad-based options, the British suggested a series of practical bench-marks against which Saddam’s compliance could be judged and then, if he was found wanting, united action could be taken. Kofi Annan was positive, Blix was sceptical, but no one else was much interested. Blair’s analysis of his predicament at this point is almost plaintive. “Coming into February, early March 2003,” he told me, “I was in a position which didn’t really have a constituency any more. The American system was . . . wanting to move this thing forward and . . . I think for the countries on the other side, they decided we’re going to draw a line in the sand.” When war came it was the “coalition of the willing”
Bush had phoned Blair two days earlier to tell him that Britain could stand aside if it meant saving Blair’s premiership. “I said rather than lose your Government,” Bush told me, “be passive, you know we’ll go without you if need be.” Blair refused. I asked him why. His answer was impassioned. “Because I think this is the most fundamental struggle of our time and there is only one place to be which is in the thick of it and trying to sort it out.” Some, including Colin Powell, have subsequently criticised Blair for never really facing Bush down. I put Powell’s words to Blair. “It wasn’t a bargaining chip for me,” he replied. “I wasn’t in a position where I was negotiating with him (Bush) in order to get him to do something different. In my view if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this issue had changed I was in favour of military action. And, I am afraid, in one sense it is worse than people think in so far as my position is concerned. I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now.” But did he feel remorse about a war and an occupation that left 4,000 Americans dead, 150 British dead, 75,000 Iraqis dead by the most conservative estimate and more than 3 million refugees?
“There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t, or an acute sense of responsibility which I . . . will have for the rest of my life,” Blair said. “But I can’t say what I don’t believe about this; whatever it began as, it is part of this wider struggle today and . . . if there’s anything I regret. . . it is . . . not having laid out for people in a clearer way what I saw as the profound nature of this struggle and the fact that it was going to go on for a generation.”
And for once his conclusion was, very uncharacteristically, gloomy. “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not.”
— The Blair Years begins on BBC One tomorrow at 10.15pm.
The road to war
April 1999 Blair makes major foreign policy speech in Chicago outlining a doctrine of liberal interventionism. Following his success over the Kosovo crisis, Blair said he believed that there may be circumstances where the international community may need to intervene, even though their interests were not directly threatened. His speech singles out Saddam for attention.
September 11 2001 The attacks on the World Trade Centre cement the bond between Blair and new US President George Bush. Blair says that as a result of 9/11 he “felt a really deep sense of mission”. British forces followed US troops into Afghanistan later that year.
Early 2002 After the Taleban’s defeat in Afghanistan, the Americans turn their attention to Saddam. Blair has to consider the options, from a diplomatic course via the UN to force Saddam to comply with inspections, to unilateral military action with US.
April 2002 Blair meets Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Blair tells the President that to gain British support against Saddam he needs to do two things – to take the diplomatic route through the UN, and to kick-start the peace process in the Middle East. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British Ambassador to the UN, says that to the Americans “the second part came over less strongly than the first”.
November 2002 The UN security council passes Resolution 1441 demanding readmission of weapons inspectors and a regime of compliance.
Early 2003 Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, says that although he can find no evidence of Iraqi WMD, Saddam is not complying with inspections. Britain pushes a second UN resolution to agree action against Saddam. Bush says: “Tony needed it.” The resolution eventually fails.
February 2003 Bush tells Blair that Britian can stand aside to save his premiership. Blair refuses. “This is the most fundamental struggle of our time,” he explains.
March 20th 2003 The Iraq war begins.
ENDS ARTICLE
Mark Lawson, he of the Book Review on Newsnight, has his own ‘preview’ take on the first two of the three-part series.
Not exactly a Blair fan, clearly - but he makes some interesting points.
Lawson looks at the technical and production setups and says:
“The sense that what we’re getting is a televisual equivalent of a personal statement to parliament on Blair’s own terms is increased by the way in which the central interviews are presented.”
Wonder why that should be!?
James Forsyth at The Spectator Coffee House blog is more sympathetic to Blair. Describing the Aaronovitch series as “fascinating” he says:
Once again Blair reiterates that he did Iraq because he believed that it was the right thing to do. His concluding remarks, though, are grim:
“The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not.”
There will be lots of people who will not take kindly to being told this by Blair but it is one of the key points in this struggle.
And, pointing to an excellent article (pdf file) by Matthew d’Ancona, Forsyth says:
Perhaps as important as stomach in this fight is patience. [ ... ] the West is confronting an enemy that explicitly sees this as a generational struggle while Western publics and elite remain fixated on time frames that owe more to the electoral cycle than anything else. At some point, there is going need to be a realisation that whoever is president or prime minister and from whatever party, this issue will not go away.
A generational struggle? One or two of us have been trying to point that our for some time, have we not?
BANK OF ENGLAND INDEPENDENCEAnd here, the former Prime Minister claims some responsibility for something else too:
The Independence of The Bank of England.
In these editing room floor excerpts, (so they won’t be shown in the programme), Mr Blair tells how he had long wanted to set the Bank free from political control. He does NOT say that Brown did not think in the same way at the same time. It rings true, since Blair was clearly the reformer in the New Labour government. His watchword was “change” not “prudence”. Brown was ever the cautious traditionalist.
On Seldon’s “Blair Unbound”, today’s Telegraph has a fair account of the Hat-Trick-Hero
Too easily do those of us whose pursuit of Blair seems psychologically suspect forget the rest of the story.
I don’t. And I never will.
Tags: believed in Iraq, David Aaranovitch, The Blair Years, Tony Blair
