Tony Blair’s opposition to an immediate ceasefire in
the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has
announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East
record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens.
Blair came to office with no experience of, and
virtually no interest in, foreign affairs, and ended by taking this country to
war five times. Blair boasts that his foreign policy was guided by the doctrine
of liberal interventionism. But the war in Iraq is the antithesis of
liberal intervention. It is an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, a war
undertaken on a false prospectus and without sanction from the UN.
Blair’s entire record in the Middle East is one of
catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two
sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however,
he helped to destroy the bridge. Preserving the special relationship with
America was the be all and end all of Blair’s foreign policy. He presumably
supported the Bush administration over Iraq in the hope of exercising influence
on its policy. Yet there is no evidence that he exercised influence on any
significant policy issue. His support for the neoconservative agenda on Iraq
was uncritical and unconditional.
Blair failed to understand that America’s really
special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush
had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter. Blair’s
special relationship with Bush was a one-way street: Blair made all the
concessions and got nothing tangible in return.
American policy towards the Middle East was doomed to
failure from the start, and the end result has been to saddle Britain with a
share of the responsibility for this failure. The premise behind American
policy was that Iraq was the main issue in Middle East politics and that regime
change in Baghdad would weaken the Palestinians and force them to accept a
settlement on Israel’s terms. The road to Jerusalem, it was argued, went
through Baghdad. This premise was wrong. Iraq was a non-issue; it did not pose
a threat to any of its neighbours, and certainly not to America or Britain. The
real issue was Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and America’s
support for Israel in its savage colonial war against the Palestinian people.
When seeking the approval of the Commons for the war,
Blair pledged that after Iraq was disarmed, he and his American friends would
seek a solution to the Palestine problem. He has utterly failed to deliver on
this promise.
True, Blair was the driving force behind the “road
map” that envisaged the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside
Israel by the end of 2005. But Sharon wrecked the road map. In return for the
unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon exacted a written American agreement to
Israel’s retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Blair
publicly endorsed the nefarious Sharon-Bush pact. This was the most egregious
British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour declaration of 1917.
Blair and Bush have also betrayed the Iraqi people.
To begin with, there was much brave rhetoric about bringing democracy to Iraq
and turning it into a model for the rest of the Arab world. But the rhetoric
was empty. The neoconservatives who drove American policy were interested in
overthrowing Saddam Hussein and in nothing else.
The allied invasion of Iraq was not an isolated
episode but part of the so-called global war on terror. But the overthrow of
the Ba’ath regime in Iraq only exacerbated the problem of terrorism. The
invasion of Iraq has given a powerful boost to al-Qaida and its confederates by
damaging Britain’s reputation and radicalising its young Muslims. The London
bombs may not have been a direct result of the Iraq war - but they are
indisputably a part of the blowback.
What we have in Iraq today is chronic instability, an
incipient civil war, endemic violence and anarchy, an upsurge of terrorist activity
of every kind, and a national insurgency to which the allies have no answer.
The neocons did not bother to plan for postwar reconstruction. Occupation was
accompanied by devastation and destruction on a massive scale and a civilian
death toll estimated by one source at 655,000.
The allies pride themselves on having brought
democracy to the Iraqi people, but they have failed in the primary duty of any
government: to provide security for the civilian population. The upshot is that
America and its pillion passenger in the “war against terror” are now embroiled
in a vicious, protracted and unwinnable conflict.
Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his
judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician
to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst
record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century,
infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to
accept responsibility for the Suez debacle.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations
at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the
Arab World.
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