Time for change

With New Labour's latest huge defeat at the hands of David Cameron's Conservatives, it looks like a change is coming in British politics.

Britain’s failure in Iraq

My article "Britain’s failure in Iraq" is published this month in the English language edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. An excerpt:

"In 2003, Britain promised a post-Saddam Iraq that would be “a stable, united and law-abiding state providing effective representative government to its own people.” That those ambitions have not been realised is now widely acknowledged even within the political establishment. A recent report by Michael Knights and Ed Williams described Iraq’s deep south, the area for which Britain is responsible, as “a kleptocracy” where “well armed political-criminal mafiosi have locked both the central government and the people out of power”. "

"Britain’s official goals have now been significantly downgraded to keeping violence at a manageable level, and leaving local administrators and security services to deal with the situation. Even this is far from being achieved, and Britain faces these problems in near isolation from the international community. British policymakers and analysts will be asking themselves what went wrong for many years to come."

Read the rest here. Alternatively, if you want a hard copy, you can get LMD in English from one of the bigger branches of a major bookstore, e.g. Borders on Oxford Street, London.

The Blair Myth

My latest article, "The Blair Myth", is available at UKWatch.

"In spite of the heavy political weather that cast a shadow over the latter half of the Blair premiership, there exists across the spectrum of mainstream political discourse something approaching a personality cult where the departing British prime minister is concerned. This is based primarily on two widespread views of Blair: firstly, as a uniquely gifted politician, and, secondly, as a crusader for liberal values on the world stage. However, a review of the evidence exposes these views as having, at best, a limited grounding in reality."

Read the whole thing here.

Kosovo and its Implications

I will argue that the concept of “humanitarian intervention” can serve an important purpose for powerful states, one that is more strategic than moral in nature. The commonly formulated question raised by “humanitarian intervention” is that of “sovereignty versus human rights”. In my view, this paradigm of understanding can be used by powerful states to justify their dispensing with the normative and legal constraints of the international system even when taking military actions that are not of a moral character.

Since the 1999 NATO action against Serbia over Kosovo is seen as a definitive moment with regard to the question under discussion, I will examine this issue with particular reference to that conflict. I will do this in three stages. I will begin by critically examining the apparent presumption in the mainstream scholarly literature of the benign intent of the states carrying out this purported “humanitarian intervention”. I will cite contemporaneous examples of enforced population displacement and human rights abuses – in Turkey and East Timor - where the British and American involvement was markedly different to that seen in the case of Kosovo.

I will then examine the Kosovo action itself, firstly arguing that the war did not qualify as a “humanitarian intervention”; and, secondly, proposing some alternative reasons for why the action was undertaken.

Finally, I will turn to the above-mentioned question of “sovereignty versus human rights”, arguing that if humanitarianism was not the prime motive for the Kosovo intervention then, with this key assumption potentially discredited, the war’s implications for the international system as discussed in the scholarly literature will need to be comprehensively rethought. I will propose that the real issue at hand is not of “sovereignty versus human rights” but “sovereignty versus power”, where the concept of “humanitarianism” can be used by certain states to justify dispensing with elements of the legal and normative international system – e.g. sovereignty - that constrain their ability to project power.

The assumption of benign intent

The founding assumptions of debate

In examining the debate over the concept of “humanitarian intervention” we can learn as much by identifying points of consensus as we can by noting the points of contention. On this topic, there is some debate over whether “humanitarian interventions” are likely to meet with success, but less debate over whether the professed humanitarian impulses of the actors themselves are in fact genuine. Betts for example, whilst expressing strong reservations about the prospect that such endeavours will be successful, still characterises them as flowing from “the best of intentions” and “resonating with respect for the law and international co-operation” (Betts:1994:20-22).

These general scholarly assumptions apply to the case of the Kosovo war. Reviewing the literature on Kosovo and humanitarian intervention, David Chandler says that, “Apart from being seen as the first ‘humanitarian war’…the war over Kosovo has been generally recognised as a crucial point in the gradual evolution of a new set of international norms”. On this normative evolution, Chandler quotes Patrick Thornberry, who claims that “We are witnessing a sea-change in the relations between sovereignty and human rights”. Chandler says that “most commentators agree that, overall, this development is a progressive and desirable one”. (Chandler:2002:111).

It appears that for many commentators – whether they are in favour of “humanitarian intervention” or not – debate over the concept rests on the assumption that the relevant states’ professed concern for humanitarian values is genuine. Plainly this assumption is non-trivial. A “humanitarian intervention” that is not humanitarian is simply an intervention, a distinction that materially alters our conception of its character and legitimacy.

It is essential, then, to challenge this assumption of benign intent with possible countervailing evidence to see if it withstands scrutiny. At the outset of the Kosovo action Tony Blair spoke of “a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated” (quoted in Chomsky:2001:1). Was Blair’s government attempting to lead the world into the new era of the kind he described? There is evidence to suggest otherwise.

Countervailing examples- Turkey and the Kurds

The 1990s saw serious atrocities committed against the Kurdish population of Turkey as the government fought Kurdish nationalist guerrilla forces. Between 1994 and 1998 3,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed, at least 1.5 million people were made homeless and/or internally displaced, and many thousands were killed by Turkish security forces. To this day, widespread human rights abuses against the Kurds in Turkey are ongoing. The European Court of Justice accuses Turkey of subjecting the Kurds to house destruction, torture, ‘disappearances’ and extra-judicial executions.

Referring to Tony Blair’s statement that, under the “new internationalism” heralded by NATO action over Kosovo, “the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated”, we might ask why the West has not intervened in this case.

In a sense, the West has intervened, but on the side of Turkey. During the mid-1990s British and American arms exports to Turkey increased sharply, in correlation with the increase in atrocities. British arms sales and training of Turkish security forces continued after the New Labour government came to power in 1997. In the years before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Turkish forces were permitted to conduct operations in the US-UK-enforced ‘no-fly zone’ in northern Iraq. Turkish incursions sometimes lasted months, with villages burnt and atrocities committed (for all facts cited in this sub-section, see Curtis:2003:38-46).

Countervailing examples- Indonesia and East Timor

Also in the late nineties, another example of the brutal repression of an ethnic group, including population displacement and large scale atrocities, was unfolding in East Timor. Again, British and American involvement on the side of the repressor was long-established and remained apparently unaffected by the advent of the “new internationalism”.

Indonesia had invaded East Timor in 1975. In suppressing a popular insurgency and enforcing its rule it proceeded to kill an estimated 200,000 people, nearly one third of the East Timorese population. As in the case of Turkey’s repression of the Kurds during the 1990s, an increase in Western arms exports to Indonesia during the late 1970s correlated with the increase of atrocities carried out in East Timor.

A referendum on East Timorese independence in August 1999 was preceded by renewed abuses carried out by the Indonesian military and its proxies, commencing in November 1998. These were designed to intimidate the population in advance of the vote, and therefore qualify as a straightforward instance of terrorism. An estimated 3-5,000 people were killed (twice the death toll in Kosovo on both sides before the NATO bombing) and eighty-five per cent of the population were driven from their homes.

British and American arms sales to Indonesia continued throughout this period, including joint US-Indonesia military training exercises. Support was finally ended in September 1999 under massive public and international pressure, ten months after the new wave of atrocities had commenced, and also after the referendum that they had been aimed at influencing (though they had notably failed in this regard with the East Timorese voting in favour of independence). When Western support was withdrawn, the atrocities stopped almost instantaneously. Chomsky notes that this demonstrates the decisive nature of that support and strongly indicates that its withdrawal at any point over the previous quarter century could have saved many thousands of lives (for all facts cited in this sub-section, see Chomsky:2001:21-26).

Implications for US-UK humanitarianism

In both of the cases highlighted above the atrocities could have been ended, or at least mitigated, by the cessation of US-UK support for the repressor government. Even if one were to argue that the atrocities would have continued – ignoring the example of East Timor – the humanitarian policy choice would still surely have been to end complicity in “the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups”. Such a cessation of support would have carried relatively little cost, as compared to an armed invasion, but the humanitarian option was not taken.
That the US-UK did not adopt humanitarian policies in the above-mentioned cases does not logically preclude the possibility that they might have chosen such policies in the case of Kosovo. But it does enable us to say three things before proceeding further:

1. that intrinsic US-UK humanitarianism does not appear to exist and certainly cannot be casually assumed;

2. that claimed US-UK humanitarianism in the case of Kosovo should therefore be examined very closely; and

3. that if such an examination reveals the humanitarian credentials of the Kosovo action to be suspect, then this, coupled with the non-humanitarian approach taken in similar contemporaneous cases, must disprove the scholarly consensus that the “war over Kosovo [was] a crucial point in the gradual evolution of a new set of international norms” where henceforth “the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated”.

It is therefore to Kosovo that we now turn.

Kosovo - a humanitarian intervention?

To assess whether or not the war over Kosovo qualifies as a “humanitarian intervention” we may ask three pertinent questions:

1. was it a war of last resort?

2. did it avert a humanitarian crisis? and

3. was it fought in accordance with humanitarian principles?

The account of the war set out by the historian Mark Curtis provides some revealing answers to these questions. Facts cited in this section are from his account of the conflict (Curtis:2003:134-157).

A war of last resort?

Curtis’ account of diplomatic activity in the run-up to the war strongly suggests that NATO avoided a peaceful settlement. It is hard to envisage any country accepting the demands it made of Serbia at the Rambouillet conference in March 1999; for example that NATO forces be given free right of movement throughout the Former Yugoslavia. Curtis quotes a senior US administration official who told the media at the conference, “we intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing and that’s what they are going to get”.

During the war, German and French attempts to impose a peaceful settlement were also rejected. However, the final peace accord after the war dropped many of the most onerous demands put forward by NATO at Rambouillet, suggesting, as Curtis points out, that scope for a peaceful settlement had existed before military action was taken. Since these options were not explored we cannot say whether they would have been successful, but we can say that military action was not a last resort taken after all possible alternatives had been explored and exhausted.

Did war avert a humanitarian crisis?

Curtis cites authoritative sources indicating that, far from averting a humanitarian crisis, the war in fact precipitated one, and furthermore that this was a predicted consequence of military action being taken. For example, the OSCE’s account of the war noted that a “vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage [took place] once the NATO air war began”. That Serbia would instigate full-scale ethnic cleansing in response to a NATO attack was expected by those prosecuting the war. NATO commander Wesley Clark said that “The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt”. The Guardian reported on 28 April 1999 that “MI6 is understood to have warned that bombing would accelerate ethnic cleansing”. In fact, four weeks after the bombing commenced Clark said the operation

“…was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea…”.

Was the war fought in accordance with humanitarian principles?

Again, the factual record does not suggest that humanitarian concerns were a priority for the war’s instigators. After the war, with NATO troops on the ground, the Kosovo Liberation Army instigated atrocities and ethnic cleansing against Serbs without serious interference from NATO. Furthermore, the conduct of NATO itself in the course of the war raises questions about its humanitarian credentials. Extensive use was made of cluster bombs during the war; in fact, half of all British bombs dropped during the campaign were of this variety. Cluster bombs are inherently indiscriminate and therefore pose particular dangers to civilians. In addition, direct attacks were carried out on non-military targets such as Serb radio and television.

Human rights groups condemned NATO’s prosecution of the war. Amnesty International said that “NATO forces [had] violated the laws of war leading to cases of unlawful killings of civilians”. Human Rights Watch said: “We are concerned that NATO bombed the civilian infrastructure …because its destruction would squeeze Serb civilians to put pressure on Milosevic to withdraw from Serbia”. This latter interpretation of NATO conduct, if accurate, would amount to a charge of terrorism.

If not humanitarianism, then what?

If military action over Kosovo was(a) not taken as a last resort; (b) taken with the expectation that it would precipitate a humanitarian crisis; and(c) if humanitarian principles were repeatedly violated in the course of it being fought, then the scholarly consensus that this was “the first ‘humanitarian war’” is seriously undermined. It also logically follows that the claimed reasons for fighting the war may not have been the real reasons, and that we should therefore consider this possibility together with any other potential reasons for why military action might have been taken.

Curtis notes that the other reason given by Tony Blair for going to war, aside from humanitarian concerns, was “credibility”. “To walk away now” said Blair on the eve of war, “would …destroy NATO’s credibility” (Curtis:2003:141). What is meant by credibility? Policymakers may describe military “credibility” as simply the establishment in the popular understanding of one’s willingness and capability to defend oneself and one’s allies against aggression. This was no doubt the case that Blair wanted to make. But unless we propose that states in general, and the US and UK in particular, only take military action for defensive reasons, we must recognise that credibility also has an offensive, proactive nature, i.e. the establishment in the popular understanding of one’s willingness and capability to proactively advance one’s own interests via military action, if such action is deemed necessary.

Michael Ledeen – a scholar close to the Bush administration – is reported to have made a statement that, though somewhat stark, effectively describes the essence of this latter meaning of credibility. "Every ten years or so” Ledeen reportedly said, “the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." (Goldberg:2002). The NATO approach to the war set out in Curtis’ account suggests that we must consider the possibility that it was not the former, defensive form of credibility that was in the minds of NATO planners.

Curtis also points out another potential reason for NATO to take military action, namely that “Serbia posed the last real barrier to openly expressed British, EU and US aims in Eastern Europe”, i.e. the implementation of “Washington consensus” economic policies and the extension of NATO up to the borders of Russia. According to John Norris, “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war”. During the war Norris had been director of communications for Strobe Talbott, a Deputy US Secretary of State closely involved in the campaign. Talbott says that Norris’ account explains “how events looked and felt at the time to those of us that were involved” (Achcar & Chomsky:2006:253).

At this point it may be useful to ask what the NATO policy might have been if, in early 1999, Serbia had been an integrated part of the Western economic and military system. The support given to Turkey and Indonesia in the cases discussed above suggests a possible answer to that question.

If the war was fought for the reasons given by Norris, then this would be consistent with a demonstration of credibility of the kind described by Ledeen. This essentially Realist interpretation – of states acting in accordance with self-interest largely irrespective of ethical concerns – is also consistent with British and American policies toward their Turkish and Indonesian allies. This interpretive consistency contrasts with the difficult questions and inconsistencies raised by the claimed humanitarian motives, as discussed above.

Implications for the scholarly consensus and the international system

These conclusions have serious implications for the scholarly consensus described by Chandler. Thornberry said that Kosovo signalled “a sea-change in the relations between sovereignty and human rights”: a state’s sovereign impunity for events occurring within its borders could now be overridden by other states seeking to prevent human rights abuses being committed within those borders. But if humanitarianism was not an operative factor in US-UK decision making over Kosovo, then whilst we can say that a normative change may have occurred, we cannot say that it is the one described in the scholarly literature.

We are therefore forced to look at an alternative issue: not “sovereignty versus human rights” but “sovereignty versus power”. This is a very different proposition, which for example gives new meaning to Chandler’s observation that “the NATO powers asserted that the restriction on the use of force and presumption of equal rights of sovereignty [under the “Westphalian” system and the UN Charter] were a barrier to effective international regulation” (Chandler:2002:114).

Having failed to get Security Council approval for military action against Serbia, NATO did not attempt to gain UN General Assembly approval, in the expectation that the vote would be lost (Chandler:2002:112). The “new internationalism” described by Blair would therefore be inaugurated without the consent of the international community. Under the normative revolution that was actually taking place, “effective international regulation” was to be the task of certain states – necessarily the powerful ones.

This international opposition shows that the scholarly consensus on the significance of the Kosovo war as described by Chandler is not the universal consensus. In April 2000, the Group of 77 nations – comprising the governments of eighty per cent of the world’s population – stated that “We reject the so called right of ‘humanitarian intervention’”, viewing the new normative order as imperialism in a different guise (quoted in Chomsky:2001:4). The facts reviewed here indicate that this view has merit. We may indeed argue that, in this respect, the widely acknowledged unilateralist tendencies of the current White House administration have a parallel with the policies of its predecessor and its allies. Both administrations – perhaps attempting to take advantage of US global pre-eminence in the post Cold War era – challenged the “barrier to effective international regulation” presented by the international system. Under President Clinton, this was justified on the basis of “humanitarian intervention”, whereas under President Bush the justification is the “war on terror”.

Conclusion

My argument here has not been against humanitarian intervention. In fact I have lamented a lack of humanitarianism in US-UK foreign policy. Noam Chomsky has said of humanitarian intervention that “the proclaimed principle has merit, or would, if it were upheld in a way that honest people could take seriously”. I have shown here that an honest appraisal of US-UK foreign policy in general, the Kosovo war in particular and the implications of such actions for the international system are not encouraging for those concerned with humanitarianism in world affairs. If genuine “humanitarian interventions” are to be possible – as we must hope they are - then a critical appraisal of the credentials of the states proposing such interventions will be essential. This is particularly true when such actions have seminal implications for the international system. Otherwise we risk the concept of “humanitarianism” being put in service of far less enlightened ends than those for which we might hope.

Bibliography

Achcar. G., and Chomsky. N., (2006), “Perilous Power”, (London:Hamish Hamilton)

Betts. R.K., (1994), “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention”, Foreign Affairs 73(6): 20-33

Curtis. M., (2003), “Web of Deceit”, (London:Vintage)

Chomsky. N., (2001), “A New Generation Draws the Line”, (London:Verso)

Chandler. D., (2002), “Kosovo and the Remaking of International Relations”, Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 1(4):110-118

Goldberg. J., (23 April 2002), “Baghdad Delenda Est, Part Two”, National Review Online. Viewed online 7 March 2007

Blair in numbers

Tony Blair has announced that he will step down as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007. Strong stomachs will be required over the next seven weeks as the political classes feed us a steady diet of nostalgia and hagiography. This should reveal, for anyone who doubted it, that something approaching a personality cult exists around Blair, as it did around Thatcher and Reagan before him.

A government memo describing the plans for Blair's departure was leaked last September. Its call for Blair to go "with the crowds wanting more" with the PM as "the star who won't even play that last encore" was the cause of much hilarity from the general commentariat. And yet, pathetically, that's exactly the send off that he is now getting. And more pathetically still, the wails of anguish from the punditocracy as the dear leader departs couldn't be more at odds with the views of the apparently irrelevant public.

So BBC political editor Nick Robinson tells us that "love him or loathe him...Blair will be missed" and will "leave Downing Street after a decade in office without being forced out, and with a smile on his face - a feat which no other modern prime minister has matched". Whilst the BBC's graph tracking Blair's approval rating throughout his time in office, show his support steadily declining from a post-97 election high of around 75 per cent to a current low of less than 25. There are highs and lows, but the trend line heads downwards inexorably. Hard to see what he's smiling about. And if he's not being forced from office, is that his achievement or our democracy's failing?

Then we have the headline on the front page of today's Guardian, which tells us that a "Poll shows [Blair] will leave with voters' respect". The framing of the poll results in question, both in that headline and in the article, are a masterclass in editorial spin. Someone has plainly decided that something positive needed to be said about Blair in this piece. One is almost forced to admire the valiant efforts of hapless writer Julian Glover to make completely contradictory facts support the preordained conclusion.

For instance:

"Despite Iraq and Labour's steep decline in public support, Mr Blair will be remembered as a force for change in Britain - although not necessarily for the better - by 60% of all voters and 70% of Labour ones"

Its hard to see exactly where the word "despite" comes in here, unless one had already decided to say that there were positives in the poll to offset Blair's recent disasters, and then had to find a way to present the facts so as to support this conclusion. As the article admits, being a "force for change" is neither a positive nor a negative, so where's the "on the one hand Iraq, but despite that...." angle here?

I'm sure many Iraqis see Blair as a "force for change".

"Asked to give their impressions of the prime minister, taking into account his entire decade in power, 80 per cent of Labour voters say that he was good for the country. Overall, 44 per cent of voters agree - a rating that stands well ahead of Labour's current position in the polls."

Blair then can at least say that most of the people who vote for his government think he's been good for the country. A mighty achievement. But that still leaves the 56 per cent of the general public who were not able to say the same.

"But despite the police investigation into cash for honours, 44 per cent of all voters and 73 per cent of Labour ones still say that they think Mr Blair was "an honest kind of guy"."

Another curious use of the word "despite". 56 per cent of the public can't say that Blair is honest. More than a quarter of people who actually vote for his government can't say that Blair's honest.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't see anything in this poll that says that Blair "will leave with voters' respect".

Let's look at the results of another poll, which appeared in The Observer last month. See if you can find any of these conclusions fairly reflected in the political obituaries of Blair that appear in the coming weeks.

Respondents are asked to rate Blair from 0 to 10, where where 10 means strongly like, and 0 means strongly dislike. 48 per cent rate him 0, 1, 2 or 3. 24 per cent rate him at 0. 19 per cent rate him in the corresponding 4 places at the top of the scale (7, 8, 9 and 10). 3 per cent rate him at 10.

56 per cent of respondents say their view of Blair has deteriorated over 10 years. 5 per cent like him more.

55 per cent believe that Blair is too influenced by the rich.

57 per cent say Blair "has stayed in office too long". 9 per cent think not long enough.

6 per cent think Blair's performance in office has been very good. 20 think good. That leaves 71 per cent. Of these 42 are evenly split between poor and very poor.

Its unsurprising that 58 per cent think Iraq was Blair's biggest failure. But how many times will we see reflected in political coverage the fact that the next on the list was his presiding over an increase in the gap between rich and poor? That polled 10 per cent, well above the fuel tax (3), foxhunting (3) and Europe (1). Plainly the public and the punditocracy have different political priorities (and the claim of the rightwing tabloids to "speak for Britain" might need a review).

Finally, lets look at the big myth on Blair's popularity - Blair the electoral wizard. Geoffrey Wheatcroft nailed this myth in an article last August. As he points out:

"...that first landslide [1997] needs to be deconstructed. There were several factors at play... The Tory vote collapsed by an astonishing 4 million (not least because rightwing Europhobic parties picked up nearly a million votes)."

"Then the British learned the art of tactical voting for the first time since the 1920s, as demonstrated by the fact that the Lib Dems won more than twice as many seats in 1997 as five years earlier with substantially fewer votes, both absolutely and as a percentage. And finally, as Herbert Morrison put it, "When the British people say something they say it in italics," meaning that our electoral system distorts the result in favour of the winning party, in 1997 giving Blair 63% of parliamentary seats with only 44% of the popular vote."

"Since then it has been downhill all the way. When the desperate last-ditch Blairites talk about Tony's electoral flair, remember that in 1997 Blair and New Labour won fewer popular votes than John Major and the Tories in 1992; that in 2001, Blair won fewer popular votes than Neil Kinnock and Labour in 1992; and that in 2005 Labour won fewer popular votes than the Tories had in the 97 disaster."

"Over three elections under Blair, his party's vote has fallen from 13.5 million to 10.7 million to 9.6 million. And that .....is what statisticians call a trend line."

So Between 1997 and 2005, Labour lost nearly 4 million popular votes; the same amount the Tories lost during the living death of the Major years. And this in the face of no meaningful parliamentary opposition. Yet Major was a disaster and Blair is a magician. And this is the view, not just in the Guardian offices but across the political spectrum, even in Tory central office.

Worth keeping a few of these figures in mind when you're watching TV news or reading the papers over the next few weeks and wondering if you've missed something where Blair's alleged popularity and political skills are concerned.

Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Cheney

Juan Cole right on the money, as is so often the case, describes here two 21st centuries: the actual 21st century and the one in Dick Cheney's mind.

"I caught a clip of Dick Cheney on Sunday saying that "in the 21st century," the US could stay in Iraq and ensure that a stable government was established that could defend itself.

I was struck by his invocation of the 21st century, as though it were automatically on the side of the US, or more especially on the side of American hawks.

The Project for a New American Century was always a project for a new American empire, an empire of the old rickety nineteenth-century sort. Its time passed a long time ago. Peoples of the global south don't have to surrender their independence to European district commissioners anymore. They have enough biopower to forestall that fate. "

read the rest here.

Also today, in the Guardian, Jackie Ashley launches a powerful attack on the rest of the political class for focusing on trivialities like the career of Defence Secretary Des Browne and marginalising discussion of the ongoing carnage in Iraq:

"What matters is the disaster. What matters is the blood dripping into the sand, day after day, week after week. What matters is the obvious thing, the hideous civil war destroying Iraq, and the murders and the bombings, and our complicity in that....We have made this situation, rolled out the pitch on which civil war and terrorism are being played out, and have failed to find any way of binding the wounds we opened. The answers are hard, expensive, and possibly humiliating - they certainly involve dialogue with the Iranians. But that's what the Commons should be debating today, not Des Browne and his stupid inquiry."

I'd make a couple of points on Ashley's article.

Firstly, she praises the elements of the web-based non-mainstream media that have focused on what matters in respect of Iraq and mentions two sites: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count and Iraq Body Count. Of these, she says that the former "confines itself to collating news reports and is therefore, it says itself, undercounting", which is also true of Iraq Body Count, but she neglects to mention that. This is important because she cites the IBC death toll of "between 61,391 and 67,364" whereas the most reliable estimate is probably that published in the Lancet medical journal [pdf] last year which cited a figure of 655,000. The Lancet report, whilst rubbished in public by the government, was privately admitted to have come "close to best practice", using "robust", "tried and tested" methodology which may even have lead to an underestimate according to one adviser.

Secondly, while Ashley characterises the conflict as a civil war, the Lancet report noted that a large proportion of the deaths, in fact most of those whose cause was identifiable, came as a result of coalition air strikes. Plainly the nature of the conflict has changed over the years, but coalition air power is still very much active today, so the meaningful focus that Ashley calls for would have to look at this element as well.

But credit to Ashley for making two compelling and important points that need to be made far more often in mainstream discourse: firstly, that Iraq is first and foremost a tragedy for the Iraqi population (as opposed to a disaster for Western prestige, Tony Blair's legacy or some such triviality) and secondly, for acknowledging that the US-UK share a large part of the responsibility for the sectarian element of the conflict.

The Iran hostage crisis in context

Now that the UK-Iran hostage crisis has come to a close, it is possible to draw a few conclusions on the meaning of what has taken place over the last fortnight. However, standing in the way of our efforts to do so, we will find a broad cross-section of the Western news media which, since the crisis began, have reliably undertaken their standard task of caricaturing and infantilising the official enemy. Much effort has been spent ascribing to Iran the fanaticism, aggression and various other pathologies that constitute the designated framework within which we are told its actions must be understood. These depictions, implicitly or explicitly, have begged the question of how Britain, as a mature and reasonable nation state, can best deal with the unruly children in Tehran and their latest unprovoked tantrum.

These cartoon-like portrayals of the situation may make us feel warm and fuzzy about Western power, and instil suitable levels of contempt for the barbarians on the periphery, but they are unlikely to give us a realistic or productive sense of what has been happening over the last two weeks. Let us then step out of the standard conceptualisation and instead consider an alternative Iranian viewpoint: not that of the half-crazed spoiler of Anglo-Saxon missionary work in the Middle East, but instead as another reasonably rational (though undoubtedly unpleasant) state actor in a volatile region, which volatility presents it with a number of substantial issues to deal with. Using this alternative paradigm, we may approach the situation with fresh eyes and ask ourselves a couple of pertinent questions: what might Iran’s reasons for arresting the British service-people have been, and how have the various actors involved benefited or lost from crisis? To answer these questions through an understanding of a rational Iranian point of view requires an appreciation of the context within which these events have taken place. A look at the relevant history is therefore required.

The historical context

In the broader context of a Persian history that spans over two millennia, the involvement of Britain and the West is a relatively recent chapter, beginning in the late 19th century as Russia and Britain fought for control over Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil reserves in Iran, and the British navy’s switch from coal to oil, drew London and Tehran closer, particularly during the Second World War when Iran was divided between Russia and Britain for the duration of the conflict. In the early 20th century, Britain moved swiftly to secure the Iranian oil concession on favourable terms, enjoying vast profits through the Anglo-Persian oil company (which later became BP) while much of the Iranian population languished in squalor, seeing practically nothing of their nation’s riches.

Britain’s maintained a steady and decisive level of interference in Iranian politics throughout the first half of the 20th century, with the aim of maintaining its control over Iranian oil reserves. This manipulation peaked with the coup of 1953, effected with the US in the lead, that overthrew the elected Iranian prime minister - Mohammad Mossadegh - and replaced him with a repressive dictatorship. Mossadegh’s crime had been to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, inspired by the radical notion that a country’s resources should benefit its own population, not the ruling elite of a distant power. For Britain and the US, such misbehaviour could not go unpunished. As penance, Iran would spend the next quarter century subjected to a reign of state terror under the Shah and his notorious secret police the Savak which Amnesty International described as “beyond belief” and which was backed to the hilt by the US and the UK.

This regime was brought to an end by the revolution of 1979, which ushered in the era of limited democracy compromised by severely authoritarian clerical rule that continues to this day. The West’s antipathy to this new regime is generally put down to the latter being a repressive theocracy that provides backing for international terrorism. To asses this claim, it will suffice to say that such descriptions are even more true of Saudi Arabia, which continues to enjoy a relationship with London and Washington that is unusually close for any state, let alone one of the most brutal on the face of the planet. It is plain that the objection to Iran’s government is not one of principle. If only Iran were our terrorist-backing tyrannical theocracy, it could be far more repressive and have far closer links to far worse terrorists and suffer no adverse repercussions from the West. The problem for London and Washington since 1979, as in the early 1950s, has been Iran’s independence, not its moral character.

As per imperial traditions that long predate the current era of Western pre-eminence, punishment of independent behaviour must be swift and fierce. The centrepiece of the ensuing attempts to discipline this once-again rebellious nation was the West’s backing for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. This included Iraq’s large scale use of chemical weapons, which the West had helped Iraq to acquire, and escalated throughout the war to the point where the US was all but fighting alongside Iraq, providing active and extensive logistical back-up. The war had a profound effect on Iran, which lost hundreds of thousands of its people on the front and in Iraqi attacks on its population centres. The international communities failure to censure Iraq’s illegal war of aggression (note the contrast with the case of Kuwait in 1990) did not go unnoticed in Iran. Nor indeed did the fact that it had been isolated and systematically pulverised over eight devastating years with the material connivance of world’s powers.

Threats and responses

Bringing ourselves up to the present day, Iran has been declared a member of an “axis of evil” by a US government that has unilaterally declared its right to launch “pre-emptive” wars at will, without the approval of the international community or the cover of international law. It has seen this new doctrine put into action by the invasion and occupation by US-led coalitions of two of its major neighbours – Iraq and Afghanistan. Its attempt in 2003 to discuss all outstanding issues with the US with a view to reaching a long term settlement (including over relations with Israel, based on the Arab initiative) was ignored. It is currently being pursued through the Security Council by the West over its alleged nuclear weapons programme, despite a fatwa from the Supreme Leader banning the production of nuclear weapons and no evidence that his ruling is being transgressed. It is informed repeatedly that the US takes “no options off the table” in dealing with this much alleged but still unproven threat. It is also accused repeatedly, and again without serious substantiation, of aiding insurgent attacks on US forces in Iraq.

With global demand for oil sharply increasing just as global production comes close to its projected historical peak, Iran finds itself sitting atop a strategic and material prize – its carbon energy reserves – whose value to the world’s powers has never been greater. Those powers that have most aggressively pursued Iran’s wealth and sought the subjugation of its government are visibly manoeuvring themselves into diplomatic, political and military positions that a rational Tehran could only find threatening in the extreme. Putting the diplomatic and political scenes to one side, on a military level Iran is currently surrounded by US forces and/or allies, in Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. And as talk of US air strikes against Iran continues, with the strength of the Fifth fleet in the Persian Gulf increasing incrementally and with that fleet conducting “war games” simulating an assault on Iran, only the most reckless Iranian politician could refuse to see war as at least a realistic prospect.

To appreciate the Iranian perspective, we need only imagine that this history were our history, that this regional and political landscape were our own and that our nation were faced with hostile foreign powers whose raw military strength was so out of proportion to that available to us. In such a situation, any government whether liberal or authoritarian would view the fact and nature of the threat in much the same way, and could expect the population to share this view.

How then would a rational state deal with this situation? Its task would be to defend itself, but also to remain conscious of the disparity of forces available to it compared to its antagonists. It could not, unlike either of the superpowers in the Cold War for example, rely on the threat of massive retaliation to preclude any attack. It would therefore need to search for asymmetric methods of deterrence; a way to warn the unwelcome presence on its doorstep that any attempt to forcibly cross the threshold would carry risks sufficient to deter such action. All of the above principles apply both to the military and to the diplomatic scenarios faced by Iran.

In fact, significant asymmetric engagement between Iran and the West has been occurring over several months, perhaps even years. The fact that we have not heard so much of it in the West – let alone the howls of righteous indignation we’ve been treated to the past fortnight – is doubtless because it has been Iran on the receiving end of these efforts and not Britain or the United States. American troops have been detaining Iranians in Iraq in increasing numbers over recent months, including Iranian diplomats present in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government (demonstrating where true power really lies in the Middle East’s newest democracy). In addition, several credible sources report that the West is constantly violating Iran’s territorial integrity. These have been said to include pilotless drone flights, US pursuit of “suspected insurgents” into Iran, and the backing of ethnic separatist terrorist groups within Iran whose activity the West hopes will destabilise the regime.

Losing at chess

In the context set out above, it appears that Iran’s arrest of the British service-people was aimed at drawing a line in the sand. To take similar action with US personnel would have precipitated a crisis that probably could not have been prevented from escalating into armed conflict. In addition, the disputed border in the Shatt al-Arab waterway offered a safety valve whereby the dispute could have been ended by being put down to a simple misunderstanding. Indeed, it was not clear (and, given the disputed nature of the border, could not have been clear, contrary to both London and Tehran’s claims) whether the British service-people were in Iranian or Iraqi territorial waters at the time of their arrest. But what was clear throughout was both Iran’s desire to see its territorial sovereignty respected and its willingness and ability to enforce that sovereignty.

Beyond this, a more important message was being sent by Iran: that it can apply pressure as well as receive it. Britain will now be painfully aware of the vulnerability of its troops should a US-Iran war break out. It will know of Iran’s deep ties with its Shia co-religionists in Iraq, and it will know that any US attack on Iran, even if Britain’s support was only of the diplomatic and political variety, would result in Iranian countermeasures-by-proxy that would see its troops dying or disappearing across Iraq in numbers not seen since 2003. None of this was a secret before, but the point has been well underlined.

But more striking than this for British officials will be manner in which Iran has demonstrated the shallowness of London’s international alliances and the limits of its strength on the world stage vis a vis Iran. This culminated in the rare sight of a visibly chastened Tony Blair putting on palpably uncomfortable performance before the cameras outside Downing Street shortly after Ahmedinejad’s announcement that the British troops would be released. It will not have escaped Blair’s notice that Iran released those troops not because of any decisive application of international pressure marshalled by London, not perhaps in the end even because of some deal that London was able to offer, but at a time and in a manner more or less entirely of Tehran’s choosing, which certainly caught Whitehall 100% off guard.

Recall that after a few days of relatively mild diplomacy in the initial stages of the crisis, Tony Blair had grandly announced that matters would enter a “new phase” if the Iranians didn’t come to their senses. There followed a staged presentation of information from Britain’s Ministry of Defence, designed to prove to the world that the troops had indisputably been in Iraqi waters. Instead this probably only served to remind the world (a) that what are Iranian and what are Iraqi waters in the Shatt al-Arab are not decided, and are certainly not to be decided by Britain, and (b) that where the Middle East is concerned, the world has heard rather too much from British and American intelligence already in recent years. Certainly the UN Security Council was not overly impressed. While Iran was chastised for arresting Britain’s troops the Council’s language was milder than that recommended by Whitehall and, crucially, member states did not endorse the view that the troops had been in Iraqi waters. Britain then took its case to the EU, where again, whilst condemnation was forthcoming it did not have the teeth that Whitehall was looking for, with Brussels failing to agree to tough sanctions against Tehran. In short, Blair’s “new phase” had fallen rather flat. Tehran had watched London attempt to internationalise their dispute and come up with very little. From there on in it would be between Britain and Iran, not Iran versus the “international community”; at least not to the significant degree that London had hoped for.

At this point, Britain’s language began to soften. The “new phase” was apparently old news. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett came as close to an apology as Tehran could possibly have expected when she told reporters that “the message I want to send is I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen. What we want is a way out of it."”. Then, after a week and a half when the British government apparently had not been able to get in touch with him, Iran’s chief security official Ali Larijani spoke, not to FCO diplomats but to Britain’s Channel Four News, criticising British attempts to internationalise the dispute and explaining that matters could be solved diplomatically between the two countries. Finally, following a brief flurry of speculation in Britain on what such a deal between the two countries might involve, Iran staged a final piece of theatre, releasing the troops as an “Easter gift” to Britain, entirely wrong-footing Whitehall diplomats which had expected bi-lateral discussions to continue for some time yet.

The message was not merely that Iran can reach British troops with relative ease. It was also that on the diplomatic front, Iran does not simply have to react to events as an isolated actor surrounded by a disapproving “international community” reciting condemnations dictated by London and Washington. In this situation, Iran appears to have been more or less in control of the narrative while a relatively isolated Britain has been at the mercy of events, with this being most especially and dramatically true at the conclusion of the crisis last night. Finally, the events of the last fortnight can be seen as a microcosm of how Iran would like the West to see the broader set of disputes between them. Internationalisation is futile, but direct bilateral engagement on the basis of mutual respect – of the kind offered by Iran in 2003 – can yield positive results.

The photos released by Iran of the British troops playing chess in captivity provides us with a useful image. Iran has played a short game of chess with the UK and won fairly convincingly. But this limited result has greater significance. Iran may not be able to prevail in a straightforward military contest with the West, but it does have significant strategic options available to it. Iran has sent the message that in the wider game of chess with its adversaries it has effective ways and means of striking back and should not be underestimated. Iran may not be able to directly deter the Israeli or US administrations from any military action against it or from increasingly aggressive moves in the diplomatic sphere. But Britain has certainly been warned, and any resulting increase in caution on London’s part will cause problems for US-Israeli hawks. And in addition to showing the limits and risks of the current Western stance, Iran has also demonstrated an alternative and more productive path for its adversaries to take. Audaciously, Tehran has turned the tables to a small extent, and adopted a carrots-and-sticks approach to those it perceives as threatening it.

Conclusions

What are the lessons for those of us in Britain? One is that any US-Iranian war will have severe repercussions for British service-people (along with wider consequences that could be disastrous in the extreme). Another is that Britain’s standing on the international stage is not nearly as strong as policymakers in Whitehall might hope, and that this loss of prestige, influence, goodwill and credibility can not be unconnected with our adventurist foreign policy of recent years. But finally, if we approach what has happened and the context in which it has happened with a degree of honesty, it is a reminder of Britain’s real role in the world. We remain a nation complicit in aggression towards other countries far from our own borders, a clear and present danger to the peace and security of many people in the world. It should not take a demonstration of the costs of such policies to ourselves, a lesson dished out by one of the world’s most odious governments, to illustrate the fundamentally immoral nature of our self-appointed role in Iran’s history, in its present and in the Middle East more generally. Because for all the intricacies of the diplomacy over the last two weeks the question in the minds of many people around the world will have been a simple one: what business did the UK have in or around Iranian waters in the first place? Above all, it is that interference in the affairs of others, that drive to manipulate the outside world to our advantage, that lies at the root of the current crises.

********************

Note - 13/4/07

An anonomous journalist at the Financial Times points out here that the term "hostage" in this context is a politically loaded one. It assumes that the British servicepeople were arrested by Iran in order to extract concessions.

In actual fact, though this article does not assume that the sailors and marines were in Iraqi waters at the time of capture, it does nevertheless argue that they probably were detained for political reasons. But in any event, had I considered the points made by the FT journalist, as I should have done, I might have used more neutral terminology. I'm not minded to correct the piece now, but I insert this note so that the issue's at least highlighted.

Britain retreats from Iraq

I've frequently cited and recommended the US Middle East scholar, Juan Cole, and in his short, sharp summation of Britain's withdrawal of many of its troops from Iraq, announced today, he doesn't disappoint:

"This is a rout, there should be no mistake. The fractious Shiite militias and tribes of Iraq's South have made it impossible for the British to stay. They already left Sadr-controlled Maysan province, as well as sleepy Muthanna. They moved the British consulate to the airport because they couldn't protect it in Basra. They are taking mortar and rocket fire at their bases every night. Raiding militia HQs has not resulted in any permanent change in the situation. Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights.

Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come."

I would only add a note of caution to that last point. This is being very successfully spun in the UK, with little suggestion in any of the coverage I've seen thus far that British forces are not withdrawing at their own leisure.

Here in the UK we probably hear as much about the situation regarding US forces as we do our own. I have to admit that I've some guilt on that score myself. The fact is that the occupation is an American operation. We're complicit, but we're not in the driving seat (a "pillion passenger" as the Royal Institute for International Affairs put it), so one tends to home in on the activities, conduct and fate of US forces.

As a result of this, a lot of people in Britain simply won't recognise the picture that Cole describes. We don't see reports like this from the Washington Post on the front pages of our newspapers (nor perhaps even in our blogs) though we undoubtedly should. Here's what Cole's talking about:

"BAGHDAD, Aug. 24 -- British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday ...... a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called the first expulsion of U.S.-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center.

Maj. Charlie Burbridge, a British military spokesman, said the last of 1,200 troops left Camp Abu Naji, just outside Amarah, at noon Thursday, after several days of heavy mortar and rocket fire by a local militia, which local residents identified as the Sadr-controlled Mahdi Army.

The withdrawal sparked wide-scale looting at the base and then intense clashes late Thursday between Iraqi army forces guarding the camp and unknown attackers, a military intelligence official said. The volatile situation worsened when the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi army's 4th Brigade mutinied and attacked a local military outpost, said the official, who spoke on condition that his name not be used.

Burbridge acknowledged that constant shelling of the base in Amarah by militia forces, including 17 mortar rounds fired in recent days that wounded three people, were part of the reason the camp closed.

"By no longer presenting a static target, we reduce the ability of the militias to strike us," he said. But he rejected Sadr's claim that the British had been defeated and pushed out of Amarah. "It's very difficult to claim a victory without causing significant casualties."

The mood was quite different in Amarah, where jubilant residents flocked to Sadr's office to offer their congratulations. Drivers in the street honked their car horns in celebration. Some prepared to take to the streets to rejoice.

"Today is a holiday in our province," said Abu Mustaffa, an unemployed 45-year-old from the city's al-Hussein district. "Thanks be to God!"

Abu Mustaffa said anger toward the British reached fever pitch in recent days after soldiers entered a mosque and arrested several local men. The provincial government is controlled by Sadr's movement, he said."

As I've pointed out many times, the majority of Iraqis want our armed forces to leave their country. For example, a poll conducted by the British Ministry of Defence in 2005, showed a majority - 67 per cent - believing that the occupation has made the security situation worse (less than one per cent believed it had improved matters) and 82 per cent "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops. I rather doubt that those numbers have improved in the last 18 months.

Two things should be noted here before proceeding further: firstly - in terms of what will and will not help security - that Iraqis are rather better placed to judge the situation they are living through themselves than we are from our vantage point several thousand miles away; and secondly, that whatever we think is irrelevant in any case, since its what Iraqis want for Iraq that counts.

Given the dissonance between our proclaimed mission to bring the gift of democracy to Iraq and our explicit rejection of the population's clear wish for us to leave their country, it should come as no surprise that the same MoD poll found that 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens in Maysan province - one of the four provinces under British control at that time - believed that attacks against coalition forces were justified. Hence the expulsion from the base in Amarah, and the jubilant scenes thereafter. Only last Sunday, UK forces clashed with Iraqi militiamen armed with machine guns and RPGs in Basra. And last month, Royal Air Force Tornado jets provided cover for the US Air Force in what is increasingly looking like a massacre of Iraqi tribesmen in Najaf.

What's been announced today has little to do with spreading democracy or improving the general welfare of the people of Iraq (much less the "war on terror" or the long-forgotten weapons of mass destruction). The British government it seems has done what the US Republican senator George Aiken urged Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to do during the Vietnam war (only to be ignored): declare victory and leave.

One final thought. If the US attacks Iran, as many senior figures in the US establishment fear, Iran responds asymmetrically via regional proxies and allies, as is widely expected, and southern Iraq goes up in flames, what will then happen to Blair's victorious exit? UK forces aren't leaving tomorrow. They will remain there at least til the end of George Bush's term in office.

Update: 22/2/07

Yesterday I said: "This is being very successfully spun in the UK, with little suggestion in any of the coverage I've seen thus far that British forces are not withdrawing at their own leisure."

In fairness, I reckoned without the excellent Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, whose front page story is entitled..

"The retreat from Basra

It is an admission of defeat. Iraq is turning into one of the world's bloodiest battlefields in which nobody is safe. Blind to this reality, Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain could safely cut its forces in Iraq because the apparatus of the Iraqi government is growing stronger.

In fact the civil war is getting worse by the day. Food is short in parts of the country. A quarter of the population would starve without government rations. Many Iraqis are ill because their only drinking water comes from the highly polluted Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Nowhere in Mr Blair's statement was any admission of regret for reducing Iraq to a wasteland from which 2 million people have fled and 1.5 million are displaced internally.

Nadia al-Mashadani, a Sunni woman with four children, was forced from her house in the Hurriya district of Baghdad under threat of death by Shia militiamen on 25 December. She was not allowed to take any possessions and is living with her family in a small room in a school in a Sunni neighbourhood. She told The Independent: "They promised us freedom and now we find ourselves like slaves: no rights, no homes, no freedom, no democracy, and not enough strength to say a word." Like many Sunni she believed the US had deliberately fomented sectarian hatred in Iraq to keep control of the country."

The LA Times also has some good coverage:

"The British military is approaching "operational failure," former defense staff chief Charles Guthrie warned this week.

"Because the British army is in essence fighting a far more intensive counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, there's been a realization that there has to be some sort of transfer of resources from Iraq to Afghanistan," said Clive Jones, a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Leeds, who has closely followed Britain's Iraq deployment."It's either that, or you risk in some ways losing both," he said. "It's the classic case of 'Let's declare victory and get out.' "

Vice President Dick Cheney called the reduction "an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well," ...

But the Pentagon, in its most recent quarterly report to Congress, listed Basra as one of five cities outside Baghdad where violence remained "significant," and said the region was one of only two "not ready for transition" to Iraqi authorities

British bases in Basra regularly come under mortar fire. British troops engage in almost daily gunfights with militiamen. In recent months, the British all but evacuated their downtown base and moved to a more secure site on the grounds of the city's airport."

Its also worth noting that even this small reduction in forces has given ammunition to Bush's critics and put the White House on the back foot. It hints at the impact a full repudiation of our role in the war could have in Washington and thereby implies the political strength the White House gained from British support, begging the question: what if we hadn't joined the invasion in 2003? Probably the war would have gone ahead. But would Bush have won that narrow re-election the next year, isolated on the world stage and with the insurgency on the rise?

The New York Times reports that Bush administration officials were forced onto the defensive by yesterday's announcement:

"On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied suggestions that the British withdrawal plans meant the coalition forged to topple Saddam Hussein had crumbled

Democratic leaders in Congress saw it differently.

"By announcing its decision to redeploy troops from Iraq, the British government has acknowledged a reality that President Bush still stubbornly refuses to accept,” said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “There can be no purely military solution in Iraq.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, “the announcement by the British government confirms the doubts in the minds of the American people about the president’s decision to increase the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.”"

See also:

Juan Cole: "The British retreat from Iraq brings peril for U.S. troops", at Salon.

The Blairite future of Britain's military

Bradford University's security expert Paul Rogers writes a very good regular column for openDemocracy. His latest discusses the future British foreign policy that the Prime Minister is attempting to set in place before he leaves office.

"Blair made it quite clear - again, both in the speech [in Plymouth last week] and in the ensuing discussion - that [the threat of terrorism] must be met primarily by the vigorous "hard" power of military force, with the "soft" power of diplomacy, sanctions and other instruments a long way behind. This set of priorities was needed, Blair argued, because the decline in states willing to exercise such hard power constituted one of the crisis-points facing western nations. There was a great danger that Britain would join this band of weaklings."

Take your pick from the articles on the "Best of the Diary" page to see how I assess the nature of British foreign policy. No need for me to comment further here on Blair's declared "visions" of Britain's role in the world and their relationship with reality.

What I found interesting was the military balance that the government apparently wants to set in place for Britain going forward. Firstly, Rogers describes "the decision to replace the Trident nuclear force with a new system, setting Britain as a nuclear-armed power for thirty-five years or more". Secondly, there is "the extraordinary plan to build two massive new aircraft-carriers. These, each weighing 65,000 tons and deploying the new and hugely expansive US F-35 joint strike fighter, will be far larger than any other warship ever deployed in the Royal Navy's history - three times the size of the current Invincible-class and much larger even than the battleships of the global 1939-45 war".

As Rogers points out, "the relatively modest size of the British economy, even allowing for Blair's wish to see an increase in defence spending, means that the new carriers will soak up resources to such an extent that all other military roles will be constrained", and the cost of Trident will only accentuate this. Given the recent debates over the lack of financial support given to British soldiery, these future plans seem to indicate an intention to tip the balance away from close-range infantry deployments and towards distance power-projection via air, sea and nuclear power. In other words, it appears that we now intend to bomb or threaten to bomb countries from a great height, rather than get into the messy business of invading them.

This tells us a couple of things. Firstly, it says something fairly straightforward about how human life is valued in government. Bombing from a great height is pretty indiscriminate in terms of killing civilians. It does however reduce the danger to western troops. This isn't to say that foreign civilians are intrinsically less important to governments than their own troops. There's a straightforward political calulation involved. What's been brought home to the British and American governments is the political costs to their own ambitions that military deaths represent. Without those costs the lives of western troops would I suspect be as cheap as those of Iraqis, whose deaths we can barely be bothered to count. Aside from this, its clear that any concentration of material resources into military power of this kind displays a willingness to kill innocent people indiscriminately and in large numbers in order to achieve your objectives.

Secondly, we learn something about how the state of Britain's military credibility is perceived in Whitehall. As far as Iraq is concerned, the Prime Minister has clearly decided to brazen out the issue. But if a long-term switch of resources away from the ability to commit large numbers of troops and towards aerial bombing and threats of nuclear force is indeed being planned, then the official verdict on Iraq - as a seminal failure - has been delivered in emphatic and unequivocal terms. Such a change in military balance would constitute an admission that fighting on the ground, even against the 'weakest' of enemies, has not only failed, but will continue to fail as far as can be foreseen.

The lessons of Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan (twice), Lebanon and Iraq may now have been fully digested, at least by British planners. Major powers are far less able than once was the case to impose themselves by putting boots on the ground. Occupying militaries, no matter how well equipped, can not match guerrilla forces rooted in the population and deploying asymmetric tactics to grind down the invaders over time. Britain will therefore concentrate on more credible means of killing with which to threaten the world, lest the impression is given that we have been rendered unable to use organised violence to enforce our will.

The message to the disobedient of the world is simple: if we can't beat you face-to-face we will simply rain death upon you from the skies, and we don't mind too much who dies in the process. In its insistence on the legitimacy of projecting British power wherever we see fit, in its disregard for human life, and in its sheer petulance, this makes a fitting epitaph to Blair's foreign policy. The great man's legacy is secure.

Blair: maximum assurance, maximum delusion

""The point about Blair is that he combines maximum assurance with maximum delusion." The comment, made privately by the leader of a Labour council, is the exact and perfect judgment. No other analyst need apply.

To hear Tony Blair calling for continuous war on Friday was instructive. Smooth, ingratiating, as always, and utterly natural, he sounded like a man saying that this was clearly the weather for a scarf and a woolly hat. The words induced one more increment of despair. Of course we must keep up the war on terror, of course we must go on killing and being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, if necessary, London, unlike cowardly not-pulling-their-weight Stockholm or Paris.

There is something unbalanced about the jaunty normality the man imports into approving a course of conduct in its fourth year of calamity. The message is very assured, very delusional. "It would be catastrophic not to continue with the 'war on terror'." Let us re-phrase that very slightly: "It would be catastrophic not to carry on with the catastrophe." It is a pleasant, smiling, glamorous face, and it is our national duty to save it."

"If only he'd studied history" - Edward Pearce