Why Blair is standing by Bush now

26 July 2006

Whether Tony Blair decides to step down at the next party conference, or hang in there until 2007, doesn’t much matter when it comes to appraising the much-mocked Blair–Bush relationship.

Blair and Bush hold similar views. The Prime Minister played guide dog rather than poodle in 1999, when Bush’s principal foreign-policy concern was still how to share the water of the Rio Grande with his state’s Mexican neighbour. In his now famous Chicago speech the Prime Minister made the case for intervention in the affairs of sovereign states if they were behaving badly, and cited Iraq as one state warranting such attention. He went on to argue that spreading democracy is the surest way to create a civilised and peaceful world order. Bush later signed on to those propositions, adding the wrinkle of creating coalitions of the willing when the UN proved unable or unwilling to act.

Which brings us to the Middle East. The idea that Blair got nothing in return for his support of Bush’s Iraq policy may sell books by former ambassadors, but it has a serious defect: it can’t explain the appearance of the Middle East ‘road map to peace’. Any Washington insider will tell you that Bush quite sensibly wanted no part of any such intervention in the contorted politics of the Middle East. But Blair insisted, on two grounds: it was the right thing to do, always a compelling reason for him to take a position, and he needed a road map to appease those in his party who have persuaded themselves that terror attacks from New York to Bali to Madrid to the London Tube are somehow an outgrowth of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

Blair needed some tangible proof that his American comrade-in-arms truly shared his goal of making the two-state solution a reality. The all-powerful American President gave in to his supposed poodle, and modified American policy to suit the wishes and needs of the British Prime Minister. Score one for the value of the special relationship to the UK, and for the reciprocity and trust on which the Blair–Bush relationship is built. The PM has said more than once that he can trust ‘George’ to do exactly what he promises, and the President says he knows that when the chips are down he can count on Tony.