Issue No. 603
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 International |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Awaiting the 'facts'
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now locked into a military alliance with US President Bush that is unlikely to unravel. Gavin Bowd writes from London
Off late, much has been made of Tony Blair's body language. At this week's press conference in his Sedgefield constituency, Blair stood at the podium with his thumbs pressed firmly into his belt. According to experts, this indicated the British Prime Minister's determination on the issue of Iraq.
His comments to the press placed the UK government firmly with the US in its forthcoming war against Saddam Hussein. Perhaps Tony Blair's confident posture is justified: after the resounding triumphs of Kosovo and Afghanistan, the grateful crowds of Baghdad beckon. But could this imminent conflict be "third time unlucky" for the moral imperialist at 10 Downing Street?
Tony Blair spent two-thirds of the press conference fielding questions on Iraq. Pressing issues such as the euro or problems in Northern Ireland were sidelined and accorded even less attention than the recent murders of two Cambridgeshire schoolgirls. That Iraq dominated the discussion showed how much closer war had come, and how little the UK government had managed to prepare its people.
During the summer, opinion polls have shown a growing and substantial majority hostile to military action without UN backing. Grave reservations have been expressed by major figures in the labour movement, far beyond the confines of the pro-Arab Left. Even the former head of MI5 (a British intelligence agency), Dame Stella Rimington, has criticised a "vengeful", "unwinnable" war against "terrorism".
Abroad, there are few supporters of a belligerent policy on Saddam. Indeed, the UK's close association with this second Bush crusade made no small contribution to the hearty and humiliating applause given Robert Mugabe's anti-British speech at the Johannesburg Summit. Tony Blair has also been seen as increasingly at odds with major European allies: President Chirac, unsurprisingly, but also his German social-democratic counterpart, Gerhard Schröder, whose emphasis on UN inspections rather than war has given a fillip to his party's chances in the approaching elections.
For a moment, it had seemed that things could be very different. If Blair had insisted on UN inspections before any UN-backed military action, his position would have chimed with the more "dovish" position of Colin Powell and not been far from the European position. If the UK government had refused to follow the "hawkish" majority of the Bush administration, it could have aligned itself with a new, more independent, European Union (EU) foreign policy. This publicly popular position could have paved the way for a sceptical UK's full integration into the euro-zone.
But the Blair administration has been distinctly inconsistent in its policy on the euro and it has been adamantly pro-US, despite the electoral defeat of the Democrats. In this, Blair has been the most pro-American Labour prime minister in history: Clement Attlee opposed the use of nuclear weapons in Korea and Harold Wilson refused to send British troops to Vietnam.
It is plain to see that the "special relationship" between London and Washington is not economic, social or ecological: it is purely military. Blair is able to go to Johannesburg, speak about Africa's "scar on the conscience of the world", preach sustainable development, and visit townships, in a sincere gesture that seems an implicit snub to the absent US president. But such differences do not shake the foundations of a "special relationship" now based on co-operation between armed forces and intelligence services.
There was a time when things were very different. The founding fathers of the US had despised all things British. Then, in the late 19th century, the Royal Navy helped with the economic expansion of their former colony. In the wars of the 20th century, the US has found a valuable military ally in their Anglo-Saxon neighbour "across the pond".
Blair has promised a "dossier" on Iraq in the coming weeks. It is hoped that these "facts" will reduce opposition within the Labour Party and Trade Union Congress. While there may be new evidence on Saddam's development of a nuclear capability, the details leaked so far seem to repeat what was already known before UN inspectors left in 1998. And on the eve of 11 September, a dossier will be published by former inspector Rivers Pitt claiming that the said inspectors were expelled from Iraq at the behest of the US.
But empirical evidence is relatively unimportant in the current crisis. The Bush administration is rhetorically and emotionally locked into an attack on Iraq. The logistical framework is already being put into place. It is difficult to imagine Tony Blair not following the US. It is also difficult to see the Labour government emerging intact from this war.
In the 1950s, a Tory prime minister, Harold MacMillan, had seemed unassailable. But, he said from experience, "events" would prove his undoing. "Events" could soon strip bare Britain's moral emperor.
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