‘If Brown pulls a stunt over Iraq...’

30 May 2007

James Forsyth talks to insiders in Washington and London about the biggest dilemma facing the next Prime Minister — and finds that, as much as Brown might like to break free of an unpopular conflict, his options are severely limited

To date, though, Brown’s comments on Iraq have been anodyne. There has been no thorough analysis of what went wrong. He acknowledges that the war has been ‘divisive’, hardly a novel insight. He stresses the importance of economic reconstruction, rightly citing the massive unemployment in Iraq as a failure of the Coalition. Unemployment in Iraq hasn’t dropped below 25 per cent since the invasion and might now be as high as 40 per cent. But this failure is actually the product of another failure: the failure to create order, without which economic revival will remain a pipe dream.

Even those who argue that Iraq is still salvageable do not believe there is much opportunity to push economic reconstruction in the current circumstances. But the Bush administration will be keen to work with Brown on it, if only to keep him on board. Brown’s overwhelming emphasis on the importance of economics in creating peace is met with a roll of the eyes by many foreign-policy experts. Certainly, the view that more jobs would have instantly healed the scars of decades of totalitarian brutalisation in Iraq or that freer trade between Israel and Palestine will lead to the end of that conflict is as naive as the neocon dream that a democratic tsunami would follow the liberation of Iraq. Yet a former Bush administration official, who did not always have the easiest relationship with Brown, praises him for his work on the issue. He predicts that there will be ‘more robust development carry over to Afghanistan and Iraq’ under this new partnership.

Brown creates a division in Washington. If you’re a Democrat, or work in development, you probably know him and respect him. If you’re a ‘hard-power guy’ and a Republican, he’s a mystery to you. His contacts with the Bush administration to date have been mixed. He had a disastrous meeting with Condoleezza Rice in February 2005, revealed in this magazine. Considering that Rice is almost family to Bush (she once referred to him as ‘my husband’ at a Washington dinner party) this could be a major stumbling block. But set against that is an excellent relationship with the treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, the coming power in the administration.