“Blairaq” screamed the headline on the front page of Tuesday’s Independent. This was a reference to a poll that revealed 69 per cent of Britons believe Blair will be remembered for the war in Iraq. “Remarkably,” continued the paper, “his next highest ‘legacy rating’ — just 9 per cent — is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush.”
Needless to say, the Indy took it for granted that this was an out and out catastrophe for Blair — and this in spite of the fact that the poll also revealed that 61 per cent of the public think he has been a “good” Prime Minister.
I, too, believe that Iraq will be Blair’s most enduring legacy and that, by and large, he has been a good Prime Minister. However, I don’t see any conflict here. On the contrary, I approve of Blair precisely because of his conduct over Iraq.
How can I defend such a position? Well, to begin with, I’m not basing my assessment of Blair’s decision to wage war on the current situation in Iraq — and not because it looks so bleak, either. Even if there hadn’t been a single civilian casualty, it would still be far too soon to cast judgment. The fact is, we won’t know whether the decision was right or wrong for at least a quarter of a century and anyone who claims otherwise is talking out of their hat. As Zhou Enlai said when asked the significance of the French Revolution, it is simply too early to tell.
So why do I think Blair was right to go to war in spite of the apparently disastrous short-term consequences? Because it was the course of action most likely to preserve the Atlantic alliance — an alliance that has proved to be the West’s greatest bulwark against tyranny and oppression. What would have been the outcome if Blair had decided not to commit British troops to the war in Iraq? Admittedly, I’m entering the realm of conjecture here — something I’ve forbidden Blair’s detractors from doing — but it seems a near certainty that the historic alliance between Europe and America would have crumbled.
I’m not arguing that Britain should always throw in its lot with America, regardless of how misguided it is (their country, right or wrong). But whatever Blair and Bush’s disagreements over how to oust Saddam Hussein, they surely weren’t great enough to merit risking the Atlantic alliance. Nor should Blair be ridiculed for not being able to exercise more influence over the prosecution of the war once it had begun — as if his decision would only have been justified if he’d been able to moderate the behaviour of Bush and his Cabinet. On the contrary, it is precisely because Blair must have realised how little influence he had over the Bush administration in the months leading up to the war — knew that America would wage war on Iraq irrespective of Britain’s position — that he was right to fall in with Bush’s plans. Why? Because to do otherwise would have risked a permanent rift in the alliance. There may come a time when Britain and America’s interests are sufficiently divergent to justify a British Prime Minister taking such a risk — the issue of whether to declare war on Iran might be just such a time — but this wasn’t it.
If I was Tony Blair, I wouldn’t be too downhearted to discover that the British public think Iraq will be my most enduring legacy. What would his legacy have been if he’d done the bidding of the war’s opponents? In all probability, the collapse of an alliance that has preserved North America and Western Europe from Fascism and Communism and been responsible for the flourishing of liberal regimes in Eastern Europe and beyond.
In those circumstances, I very much doubt he’d still have a 61 per cent approval rating.
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