Blair Doctrine and the cynical British

His Tonyness announced this week that he had donated the advance and royalties of his memoirs to the Royal British Legion. The money is to help fund a new center to help the rehabilitation of injured service men and women. Unquestionably this is a very important and worthwhile cause.

However Tony Blair must be wondering what the hell he has to do to get some good press out of this. Up front it’s about $8 million, and potentially substantially more. When his donation was announced the London Times ran a headline “”Guilty” Blair gives £5m book cash to troops”. While the Times has never actually endorsed Blair or Labour outright (the paper gave no endorsement in ’97 and a conditional backing of the Tories in 2001) and has been a vocal critic of Blair over the year, the “Guilty” part of the headline seemed to sum up the mood rather well.

Over the following days the deal was questioned – would they get the full advance (yes)? Film rights? Yes. Foreign sales? Yes. What if the book did not sell? No refund to Blair. Would it be named after Blair? No. And finally would Blair take the tax relief on the donation? No, the legion would get the benefits.

So the deal was real, the money was guaranteed and still there were headlines claiming this was blood money and Blair was just clearing his conscience with it.

Unquestionably the British are a land of cynics and Blair is a global figure with a global reputation to protect. In the US there was a “huh, really?” response to the rather hostile reaction by the British papers. The Washington Post did not understand what it called the “withering response” the announcement was greeted with in the UK.

It’s simple, Blair led the country to war on a false premise, and the country has not forgotten that.

His legacy as a Prime Minister was tied so closely to Iraq and it being seen, in hindsight as a justifiable war.

The so-called “Blair Doctrine” described what a “just war” looked like. In short he felt that using preemptive action to prevent humanitarian disasters, such as genocide was the right way forward, and there is much to commend that idea. It advocated intervention for the right reasons and motives rather than for military ambitions.

In a speech in 1999 Blair proposed that five questions that should be asked:

1. Are we sure of our case?
2. Have we exhausted all diplomatic options?
3. Are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake?
4. Are we prepared for the long term?
5. Do we have national interests involved?

Where the answer to all five questions is “yes” then there is a strong case for intervention.

The British generally see three conflicts in the last eleven years that this test has been applied to by the Labour government

Kosovo – probably the strongest argument for the Blair doctrine. Ethnic cleansing was halted, the Serbs removed and leaders tried for war crimes. While not totally stable today, it’s been left in better condition than in 1999. Not perfect, but it’s arguable it meets the case for intervention.

Afghanistan – The humanitarian side was a secondary consideration to the defensive war that justified regime change after 9/11. So far so good. The Taliban was routed, but al-Qaida was not eliminated. With a few exceptions the west has largely walked away. One thing the Afghanis and al-Qaida have is patience, they know the west will get tired and move away eventually. The way the British, Ottomans and Soviet Union have in the past.

Iraq – Tony Blair’s legacy in the eyes of many British people.

In 2004 Tony said of Iraq under Saddam – “Containment will not work… The terrorists have no intention of being contained. Emphatically I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But we surely have a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation’s people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam’s.”

This speech represents a huge shift from the five questions that he used to lay out the Blair Doctrine. In this speech he gave sanction for the removal, by force of a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. This was a war fought based on poor intelligence and designed to stop potential future terrorist attacks. The link to the humanitarian principle is remote at best.

Blair lost a great deal of his credibility in Britain during the final years of his time in Downing Street. First by going to war with Iraq despite it not fitting his own doctrine, despite the intelligence saying that WMDs were present being questionable at best. And secondly refusing to apologize for what he did.

Since leaving office he has had no issue with using his profile and name to amass a significant personal fortune though business interests, meetings and speeches. This donation to the British Legion is seen by many as an attempt to improve his legacy with the British electorate.

The question is was this really a cynical attempt to wipe the slate clean, or is he honestly trying to makes amends? As someone who voted Labour in ’97 and ’01 I hope it’s the latter.

Finally, to answer the earlier question about what Blair has to do to catch a break from the British electorate. Saying you were wrong to start this war would be a good place to start.