How Gordon sees the world

26 August 2006

Mark Leonard, an authority on Labour foreign policy with strong connections to the government, has spoken to those close to the Chancellor in search of Brown’s notoriously opaque views on international affairs. This is what he discovered

So would a cautious Brown be willing to risk withdrawing from Iraq? It is the sort of decision that new prime ministers can make: José Luis Zapatero did it for Spain, Romano Prodi for Italy. And now even Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, one of Bush’s staunchest allies, has announced that his troops will go home. Withdrawing from Iraq would certainly put David Cameron and Sir Menzies Campbell on the defensive: the Liberal Democrats have called for it themselves, and the Tories would find it hard to oppose. Brown would also have the comfort of knowing that — for all the sound and fury unleashed in Washington — the dwindling President Bush would be out of office within a year. But there would be a lot of pressure on a newly appointed Labour prime minister — without a foreign policy track record — not to risk the perception that he was cutting himself off from Washington. Much would depend on the situation on the ground in Iraq and Brown’s ability to claim that the British mission had been accomplished.

Would Prime Minister Brown be willing to send British troops abroad? Iraq and Afghanistan were wars of choice rather than necessity, and their legacy will probably be a decline in American interventionism (not least because so many troops are still committed in these countries). In recent years the West has decided to sit out major conflicts, preferring to support existing peace operations (such as the African Union on Darfur or the United Nations in Congo) or provide civilian support through policing missions. The one exception could be Iran, which might come to a head shortly after Brown takes office. Many Americans agree with the presidential frontrunner, John McCain, that the only thing worse than military strikes is a nuclear Iran. Most Europeans would prefer to contain and deter Iran than to attack it. If diplomacy fails to halt Tehran’s nuclear programme, Brown might have to take sides. It is impossible to know which way he would go, but having seen the destructive effect of the Iraq war on the Labour party and on Tony Blair’s authority, it seems unlikely that he would involve Britain in any attack — even if his American friends asked for moral support.