open Democracy News Analysis - Blair's foreign-policy legacy, Felix Blake - Comments

Gerard Killoran on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

Gerard Killoran — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:30:55 +0000

'Felix Blake is the pseudonym of a former British government official.'

Well if I wrote this rubbish, I'd want to stay anonymous too.

'In Kosovo, it is hard to find any Kosovo Albanian who does not love - yes, love - Tony Blair for what he did. People name their children after him.'

Do they Felix? I'm sceptical.

The refugee crisis in Kosovo was caused by the Nato bombing campaign. Kosovo Serbs (non-people in Felix's account) fled into inner Serbia in large numbers to escape the cluster bombs and depleted uranium.

Blair is a proven liar and serial war criminal who should be in the dock - with advisors like 'Felix' beside him.

davidwatton on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

davidwatton — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:29:34 +0000

Dear Felix

It's a shame that you feel the need to hide your true identity on a website named 'Open Democracy'.

I feel your comments on Kosovo are disingenuous: it has been well documented that the NATO bombings precipitated the bloodshed rather than preventing it. The real reason behind NATO involvement was because, like Saddam, Milosevic was not a leader that the West could control and needed to be made an example of. (See the excellent 'Guardians of Power' by David Edwards and David Cromwell for details of the real story.)

More to the point, the Blair government's much-vaunted ethical policy was simply a media fiction based on a careless remark from Robin Cook and a complete sham. Read Mark Curtis for more on this.

Tim P on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

Tim P — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 19:01:24 +0000

Humanitarian intervention died because Blair was allied with someone who did not believe in it, and in fact opposed many of its facets. Action in Kosovo was possible, because Blair was allied to Clinton, a fellow advocate of multilateral humanitarian interventions. Bush put humanitarian concerns at the bottom of his list, although once the initial reasons became redundant, it moved up. Humanitarian intervention when there is clarity in the motivations to intervene, but this certainly did not exist prior to Iraq. Blair probably wanted to remove Saddam as much for humanitarian reasons, but allied with someone who relied solely on WMD related propaganda meant that this was never going to sell it..

Tim

http://www.historic-quixotic.blogspot.com/

maher_colin on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

maher_colin — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 12:03:59 +0000

Please tell us what is wrong with this comment. For our reference this comment has the following ID : 231

Comment 231 is a wise observation: There is a serious conflict between foreign policy (which though it may pretend to be 'moral', is traditonally only in the self interest of that state) and humanitarian action (which is considered unrealistic and only for altruists).

I think that wise foreign policy makers will realize that history will judge them for their attempt to carry out a foreign policy which tries to achieve both ends..

And therefore I think that Tony Blair will be remembered with admiration for the way he tried to combine the two in his decision that Saddam Hussein must be removed. He did not do it for the OIL.or an immediate threat to UK securiity. Whether the US did it for the OIL, is another quesiton. Present international law is an ass and must be changed. Because if it is not, genocide will continue unchecked in Darfur.

Colin

iftimufti on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

iftimufti — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:18:29 +0000

If the policy makers are so ignorant and na�ve as not to recognize the outcome of their actions, they shouldn�t be in-charge of policy making. Belligerence is not an equivalence of remaining firm in well thought decisions. There is always a likelihood for the decisions made by man to be in error, in which case it is wise to reconsider and change these decision. Changing of decisions does not show weakness. Belligerence does.

In case of wars in the Middle East I see self-interests over ruling the main purpose of bringing about peace and stability in the region. Attacking Afghanistan was a senseless action where far better results could have been achieved through diplomacy and negotiations. Had we adopted that route, we probably could have brought all those who had committed acts of violence to justice. We could have put pressure on Mullah Omar through our friends in the Islamic world to accomplish what obviously hasn�t been accomplished through war. What do we have now? We lost the war and we also lost many of our good friends in the Islamic World. It is not only that, we have encouraged terrorism and made the world less safe. Afghanistan is now the biggest haven for the drug traffickers.

War in Iraq, which was fought for no good reason, has turned out to be a total disaster. It is still not clear why the U.S. attacked Iraq? Although the main purpose of the war points to self-interests, no one has ever openly acknowledged it.

Bush keeps repeating the words �victory in Iraq�. Victory is defeat of an enemy or an opponent. Iraq had never acted as an enemy of the U.S. Iraq never declared or staged a war against the United States. Iraq never had any weapons of mass destruction to hurt any of its neighbors much less the U.K. and the U.S. We fought a war against a non-enemy and we are trying to further adulterate it with the term victory.

I think we should learn to negotiate and use diplomacy to resolve the world problems. War is not the right way. The pen will always remain mightier than the sword.

bakerkj2002 on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

bakerkj2002 — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:23:15 +0000

Along with many millions of others I agree with this article, in too many ways we were duped by Blair and labour. We, the British people elected him in.

Over the agonising years since the truth hit home we have all read, re-read and debted ad nauseum the problems of Blair, British foreign policy, George Bush and all the other animals responsible for the carnage in Iraq and Palestine. Themassive problems of Africa, ignored, and the list goes on. We attend more and lqrger protests, we go to the World and European Forums and we listen. Yes thats what we do. Oh yes, and we say clever things in ironic tones.

CHRIST, Blair must be shaking in his shoes

srheywood on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

srheywood — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:18:00 +0000

Yep, TB seems to have a lot of fans in Kurdistan as well. Or he did at one point. What does "Felix Blake" have to say about pulling the plug on the SFO investigation into the al-Yamamah arms deal? Or Trident replacement? We have a government which proclaims its willingness to go to war against corruption, terrorism, dictatorship and WMD while, er, stockpiling WMD and doing corrupt business with terrorist dictators. I'm tentatively cynical about whether it could have been different. Using the British state as a tool of international humanitarian benevolence is like using a battle-axe as a baby's spoon. International benevolence is not what these institutions were designed to deliver. TB must have worked that out and decided to keep the battle-axe in more or less its current form, perhaps long before he got to number 10. On this basis I tend to dismiss the "Tony Blair failed because he was too saintly for this mortal world" school of thought. He may win the "nicest British PM" prize, but there's always a tallest dwarf.

Marjan ZKK on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

Marjan ZKK — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:56:48 +0000

Specific forms of altruism are always governed by subjective value judgments and I am afraid, that this sort of romanticising of ToRy Blair,not only boarders on the offensive.

Should we be thanking and sending our condolences to Rupert Murdoch too?

Or will certain oil and construction companies do for US~on~Sea?

Not logged in on "Blair’s foreign-policy legacy"

Not logged in — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:12:04 +0000

Humanitarian action and foreign policy are doomed to failure because the altruistic & people's centred values of the former excludes the self-interest & state's centered ones of the latter. A union of convenience with little room for true partnership. Excellent piece. M.T. (Geneva)

Blair's foreign-policy legacy, Felix Blake

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Iraq war has ended perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, destabilised the country and the region, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, divided the countries which undertook the invasion, fuelled terrorism and thus undermined the very goal for which it was undertaken: national security. With that disaster on the score-sheet, what else is there to be said about Tony Blair's "legacy" in foreign policy?

There was widespread excitement, even inside the staid corridors of British government departments dealing with foreign policy, when Labour won the 1997 election. After the long shrill night of Thatcherism, and the selfish Realpolitik of then foreign secretary Douglas Hurd (whose own legacy is measured in Britain's failure to act over Bosnia), Labour's "ethical" foreign policy was almost unreal: could it be that a government could think like this? It was as if Oxfam and Amnesty International had taken over the foreign office. Well, unreal it turned out to be.

Felix Blake is the pseudonym of a former British government official

The tragedy is that it could have been so different. Blair's decision to send British troops to Sierra Leone in 1998 was a brave and unusual innovation - a policy without an iota of self-interest. Kosovo in 1999, likewise. President Clinton havered over intervention, despite the ethnic cleansing of almost a million Kosovo Albanians, and had to be prodded into action by Blair. You only have to imagine what the Conservatives would have done had they still been in power to see the difference: another opportunity for Hurd to sneer at the "something-must-be-done brigade". In Kosovo, it is hard to find any Kosovo Albanian who does not love - yes, love - Tony Blair for what he did. People name their children after him.

Foreign policy was at last on a different track from the narrow calculation of national self-interest. Britain was central to the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a landmark speech in Chicago in April 1999 - in the midst of the Kosovo war - Tony Blair conceptualised the trend of "humanitarian intervention": the right to intervene to save people from their own despotic ruler. There was talk of incorporating this concept into international law.

The 9/11 hijackers put paid to that. Or rather, it was the choice to frame the western response not as upholding the law but as a war. Thus were the terrorists legitimised as combatants rather than what they were, criminals. The choice of small words had big consequences. The solidarity of 12 September 2001, when the world stood with the United States and its allies, was squandered.

Also in openDemocracy on the British prime minister's legacy:

Roger Scruton, "Tony Blair's legacy"
(18 December 2006)

Norman Fairclough, "Tony Blair and the language of politics"
(20 December 2006)

It was not immediately apparent in the invasion of Afghanistan, legitimate as self-defence, that quickly followed. But even here, the strategy began to teeter off the rails. Too few troops were sent, the necessary numbers kept back for Saddam-toppling. Afghanistan today is now more lawless and violent than when the British, Americans and their allies first went in; some even speak of a narco-state in the making. Meanwhile, other darker work - Guantànamo, officially-sanctioned torture, extraordinary rendition - was underway, which Britain either collaborated with or ignored (which is worse?) And then there's Iraq.

Humanitarian intervention is today a dirty word. Khartoum refuses UN peacekeepers in Darfur, citing Iraq in its defence. Our authority - moral as well as legal - to stop genocide is in shreds.

The paradox of this history is that Blair's moral intent appears consistent throughout: Milosevic, terrorists, Saddam bad; getting rid of them, good, even if the rules say otherwise. But in the real world, actions and consequences matter, not motivations. Ultimately, there is really only one measure that matters - the blood of others. If this is the measure, not much more need be said.

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