'Everything we think about the wars on terror is wrong'

Matthew d'Ancona

20 May 2006

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Philip Bobbitt tells Matthew d’Ancona, we must start from scratch if we are to beat the terrorists

Onward the philosophical convoy moves, to Iran. Here, Bobbitt compares the shambolic strategy of today’s nation states, interacting in the UN and the EU, to the doomed Mafia Commission of the 1950s. ‘They were criminal, for heaven’s sake! Why would you expect it to work? Well, we’re having trouble organising nation states. We’re having a great deal of difficulty, whether it’s Darfur or Iran, or climate change – why? They’re nation states, what is so surprising about that? They will look at their national interests, often in a very short-sighted way, and they’ll find themselves almost incapable of co-ordinating a response. Now, many times that doesn’t matter, but for some things, they can only be solved collectively, it’s a real problem. You know, I think there are market-state things that can be done with Iran and they maybe involve bribery, if that’s not too provocative a way of putting it. I don’t think they involve marching into Tehran and I certainly don’t think they involve throwing bombs at six sites, and I could never be persuaded, never, that they involved bombing these sites with nuclear weapons, to be able to penetrate some of the protected laboratories.... And I’m afraid I agree that right now you have to say it looks as though in a few years, maybe four or five, maybe ten or 12, that the Iranians will have some kind of nuclear capability.’

And then? ‘It doesn’t mean that Iran will acquire a nuclear capability that is a threat to this country or anyone in the United States; it doesn’t mean they can’t denuclearise some day in the future, as South Africa, Ukraine and Libya and other states have done. It doesn’t even mean that they will be incapable of protecting what weapons they have from terrorists. But it probably does mean that once Iran has deployed nuclear weapons, the Saudis will want weapons, the Egyptians will follow suit and then the Iraqis will resume their pursuit of such weapons.’

Back to basics? You bet. Bobbitt reminds me of Yeats’s long-legged fly, moving ‘upon the stream’, surveying the great movements of history. And what does the Texan guru, this adviser to presidents, see from up there? Alas, that our difficulties are barely beginning.

‘Al-Qa’eda is not, I think, the mature threat that I worry about.’ The Texan reflects for a moment, ruefully. ‘It may sound absurd to say this. But I think these are our salad days.’

A full transcript of this interview can be found at www.policyexchange.org.uk.