Blair's Greatest Triumph, by Frank Spring
Blair's Record Matches His Rhetoric
By Marcus A. Roberts
Ten years after Tony Blair declared his desire to enact "an ethical foreign
policy" his international legacy is too often viewed solely through the prism of
Iraq. It is however, Blair's three great foreign policy speeches, his 1999 'Doctrine of International Community', 2001 'Global Interdependence After 9/11' and 2003 'The
International Effort Against Climate Change' that best represent both
Blair's values and policies. To view Blair through Iraq alone is to ignore his
extraordinary legacy in the areas of liberal interventionism, international
development and climate change.
Blair's ethical foreign policy ensured that hundreds of thousands of Kosovars
reside to this day not in Albanian refugee camps or mass graves, but rather in
their own homes. For the people of Sierra Leone it provided delivery from fear
of the machetes of the West
Side Boys while Australia's intervention on behalf of the people of East
Timor owed much to the example Blair had already set. Beyond military action,
Blair advanced an international development agenda of more direct aid, untied to
trade, Western agricultural subsidy reductions and debt relief for poor
countries. Lastly, Blair kept alive the cause of a multilateral approach to
tackling climate change, in the face of U.S. opposition and even enjoyed real
success in areas like the implementation of the Kyoto protocol.
On the issue of liberal interventionism, Blair outlined his vision for
matching the goals of liberal internationalism with the means of military force
in his speech to the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999. Blair argued that
nations that engage in egregious acts against their own citizens might find
their sovereignty challenged by armed force.
The genius, however, of Blair's Chicago speech lay not only in his
application of a humanitarian test to state sovereignty, but in the realism with
which Blair approached the immediate challenge of Serbia's ethnic cleansing of
the Kosovar Albanian population. Blair argued that it was worth the West paying
a price in terms of its own "blood and treasure" to prevent such humanitarian
catastrophes where it was possible for the West to do so. Blair eschewed the
idea that because the West could not act to save lives everywhere, it should not
act to save lives where it had both the diplomatic and military means to do so.
What followed were successful liberal interventions first by the British in
Sierra Leone and later by the Australians in East Timor in which military force
was used to defend those that could not defend themselves.
The second defining speech of Blair's ethical foreign policy was his address
to the Labour Party Conference a week after 9/11. Blair offered a grand strategy
for liberal interventionism that focused as much on international development as
it did on military force. Blair said: "The starving, the wretched, the
dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of
Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan:
they too are our cause."
Describing Africa as "a scar on the conscience of the world," Blair laid out
the importance of Western involvement not in mitigating the tragedies of
poverty, HIV, and AIDS on the continent, but in ending them once and for all.
Blair made real commitments to provide more aid, untied to trade, to write off
debt, to encourage Western investment, and to lower Western trade barriers.
It's as easy as it is wrong to believe that Blair's vision was empty
rhetoric, and that the military adventure of Iraq was all that came of it. In
2005, under the British presidency of the G8, Blair led world leaders at the
Gleneagles Summit in committing the West to an unprecedented effort to address
the root causes of extreme poverty and climate change, with huge new financial
resources in developing country aid, and potentially as important for African
development, a significant reduction in Western agricultural subsidies.
The major agreements Blair brokered for developing countries came the same
week of al Qaeda's 7/7 bombings in London and serve as a demonstration of his
commitment to an ethical foreign policy—even in the face of bombings in his own
capital.
This refusal to give up on his wider ethical agenda mirrored his 2003 speech
on the environment given as Britain prepared for war with Iraq. Blair put the
case for western engagement in tackling climate change in a way that went beyond
short-term national interest. Blair said: "We face a situation in which 50
million people in Asia could be killed or displaced by floods, further swathes
of Africa could be reduced to desert, accompanied by massive deforestation in
central and South America, and huge increases in disease, particularly malaria.
And it is the poorest countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, which will
suffer the most devastating effects of these changes."
With George W. Bush in the White House, Blair found it difficult to advance
his agenda of multilateral action against climate change. Blair therefore
focused on leading by example with Britain achieving its Kyoto commitments seven
years ahead of schedule and piloting green tax incentives to promote private
sector innovation. Blair then leveraged his domestic record not only by pushing
at the governmental level within the EU for a tougher approach to climate change
policy but also with striking new initiatives, such as his alliance with
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on curbing greenhouse emissions.
Blair's foreign policy agenda will outlast the shadow of Iraq. At the
international level, this is evidenced by the UN's adoption of the Responsibility to
Protect doctrine, which Blair's diplomats gave their all to make a reality.
The policy offers international legitimacy to Blair's approach to liberal
interventionism. In terms of international development, each year's G8 meeting
now results in more money from rich nations to poor countries for development
and progress on issues of trade and subsidies. The climate change agenda,
sustained by Blair for years on the world stage, is now taking form as a
powerful movement that crosses boundaries of politics and nationality.
Lastly, for Blair the master politician, it is fitting that his legacy will
endure at the political level. Blair's successors in both Europe and America
have adopted his language and foreign policy priorities. Britain's Gordon Brown,
France's Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, John
Edwards, and Barack Obama all focus on issues like the need for intervention
against genocide in Darfur, the cause of ending extreme poverty in Africa, the
importance of tackling climate change—a political discussion markedly different
from the foreign policy debates of a decade ago. What actions will now come of
their rhetoric remain to be seen, but Blair's standing on these matters is
secure. His ethical foreign policy legacy in linking his rhetoric to the world's
reality from Kosovo to Africa to the world at large is a strong one. It is a
record that deserves great credit beyond Iraq.
Blair's Greatest Triumph
By Frank Spring
Tony Blair departs from Number 10 Downing Street this week to a chorus of
derision from critics of his decision to accompany the United States into war in
Iraq. His association with President George W. Bush has made him the target of
criticism in the U.K. and abroad. The May 25-June 7 issue of the British
periodical Private Eye is typical of this, featuring a cover of Blair
and Bush in the Rose Garden with a speech bubble rising from the outgoing Prime
Minister containing musical notes and the words "I Did It Your Way," and he has
elsewhere been called a lackey and lapdog of Bush.
This characterization is inaccurate. In fact, Blair has pursued his foreign
policy in a way that is altogether different from Bush, and there is no better
example of this than what might arguably be Blair's greatest triumph—peace in
Northern Ireland.
When Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, one of his first acts was to
declare an "ethical foreign policy" for Britain, repudiating pure power politics
as the model for his government and vowing to apply his nation's and his party's
(and presumably his personal) values in foreign affairs. This notion has
pleasant and potentially valuable connotations, but is open to charges of
vagueness. Increasing aid to destitute countries and populations and providing
military assistance to populations at risk are clearly part of such a policy,
but the implications of an ethical approach when a nation's national interests
are at stake are not immediately clear.
By contrast, the Bush Administration has pursued what might be termed a
"moralist foreign policy," and its application is straightforward—a simple
refusal to engage with anyone who does not meet a set of moral standards, in
this case determined by the Administration, for behavior and guiding beliefs.
While the effectiveness of the position is open to dispute, there is no escaping
its essential logic: If someone engages in behavior or holds essential beliefs
that you find to be abhorrent, they do not deserve engagement or rapprochement.
The operational test of Blair's commitment to an ethical foreign policy
came in Northern Ireland, where the conflict between Unionists and Republicans,
spilling over into the U.K., had tested British territorial integrity and cost
the lives of U.K. soldiers and thousands of civilians. The intensity of the
conflict escalated in the 1960s and had claimed the lives of over 3,000 people
by the mid-1990s.
Northern Ireland occupies odd ground on the spectrum of foreign and domestic
policy in the United Kingdom, being both a territory of the British Crown and a
fundamental priority of the Republic of Ireland. When asked whether Northern
Ireland falls into the realm of domestic or foreign policy, one British foreign
policy specialist answered "Neither. It falls under Northern Irish policy."
Whatever its official status, Northern Ireland clearly benefited from Blair's
ethical foreign policy. From its inception in 1997, the Labour government made
peace in Northern Ireland a top priority, dispatching top negotiators and
political assets to the region to secure peace. In this action the Blair
government was preceded by the government of John
Major, whose government issued the critical Downing Street proclamation [1993], paving the way for peace
talks by declaring for the first time that Northern Ireland had the right to
self-determination.
What makes Blair's decision to aggressively pursue peace in Northern Ireland
remarkable is his commitment in the face of resistance and his willingness to
deal directly with organizations and individuals of remarkably unsavory
reputation. The Irish Republican Army had attempted to assassinate both of
Blair's predecessors and a splinter group conducted the most horrific terrorist
attack in Irish history just a year after Blair's election in what is believed
to have been an attempt to derail the peace talks which led to the Good Friday
Agreement. Meanwhile, the Ulster unionist paramilitary groups, while less
inclined to overt hostility against the British, continued to conduct
assassination and violent reprisal missions against Republican groups during the
peace process, making Blair's job all the more difficult.
It isn't difficult to imagine how the Bush Administration would have
approached this problem. Rightly or wrongly, it would have pursued a policy of
non-engagement with the two sides until both behaved in a manner that the
Administration found constructive. It is hard to envision the same
Administration which chastised the world that "you cannot condemn al Qaeda and
hug Hamas" being willing to engage the IRA in a process which could ultimately
lead to its highest officers having a seat at the table of government.
The Blair government meanwhile remained resolute, and Blair stayed personally
committed to peace in Northern Ireland by any means available, including direct
negotiation with known murderers and terrorists. At no time did the British
government close the door to peace talks or waver from its commitments as laid
out in the landmark Good Friday Agreement, in spite of recalcitrance and
occasionally outright violence on both sides of the Northern Irish dispute. The
Blair government, in particular Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain,
also engaged in what might be termed creative diplomacy, driving the opposing
sides closer to a power-sharing arrangement by promoting policies in Northern
Ireland, which both found less than appealing, including increased sexual
education and gay-rights provisions.
The conclusion of this effort came in the winter of 2006, when negotiations
between Republicans and Unionists entered a critical phase. Blair was deeply
involved in these negotiations, personally calling leaders on both sides of the
talks during the Christmas period to smooth over conflicts between the parties.
The result was a power-sharing agreement for the government of Northern Ireland
with the potential to bring lasting peace to the region.
From a strictly moralist perspective, the result is not necessarily a
success. Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander,
will act as Secretary of Education in the new government, while the Reverend Ian Paisley,
who for decades was one of Northern Ireland's most divisive figures, serves as
First Minister. There is merit to the belief that McGuinness should be in prison
and Paisley, whose virulent anti-Catholic polemic has been a roadblock to peace,
deemed unfit to govern.
From an ethical perspective, these criticisms are cosmetic. After 40 years of
violence, there is now the possibility of lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
That the Blair government deigned to negotiate with dangerous and vicious men in
order to achieve this does not diminish the value of the peace, nor will it make
the slightest difference to the families of those who would otherwise have been
murdered had the conflict continued unchecked. Time will tell if the Northern
Irish peace will hold, but Blair need not reach for the broad sweep of history
to justify his decisions in Northern Ireland—they have saved lives already, and
his ethical foreign policy has succeeded where a moralist one would not even
have begun.
