 |
|
||||
| Qatar News |
| World News |
| Business News |
| Sports News |
| Entertainment |
| Features |
| Young Editors |
| Commentary |
| Editorial |
| Photo Gallery |
| Discussion Forum |
| From Our Archives |
| Search | ||
| Free Newsletter |
| e-mail: |
| Contact Us |
| Contact Details |
| Advertising |
| Newspaper Subscribe |
| Letters To The Editor |
| Site Feedback |
 |
| Blair faces
following friend Bush into new minefields (by Michael Portillo) Ask a civil servant whether Tony Blair ever squares up to George W Bush and a weak smile crosses the mouth and the head shakes sadly. To the puzzlement of Whitehall the prime minister never forces any issue with the president. Some see a parallel with Blair’s failure to get tough with Gordon Brown. While officials who brief Blair for his visits to the White House always expect him to demand concessions as recompense for British support in Iraq, Blair believes that overestimates his leverage. To him it seems natural for the UK to respond as a loyal ally to America’s calls for support after decades in which US forces have guaranteed European security. He sees national advantage for Britain in standing alongside the world’s only superpower. He has a point. Blair knows, too, that when Bush gave him things in the past he could not deliver his side of the bargain. The president overruled his advisers in order to help the British when America plunged into the thicket of the United Nations before waging war on Iraq. However, Blair then failed to persuade Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroder or Vladimir Putin to back the coalition. So British briefing ahead of Blair’s visit to Washington lowered expectations and, thanks to that device, the sight of Bush emerging from the discussions to speak animatedly about the Palestinian problem looked like a good outcome. It was cleverly crafted. In fact the president is committed to nothing except devising a strategy. And even that depends on the Palestinians accepting democracy. With seven years’ experience of high level diplomacy Blair must be a realist, at least in private, about what can be achieved. The death of Yasser Arafat offers an opportunity but it is hard to be overly optimistic. His demise removes a man who Bush despised because he pledged to renounce terror but lied. So the chances of engaging the White House in making peace are better now that he is dead. The president has had to acknowledge that welcome change but was rightly unwilling to tie himself down. His way of running America has been endorsed at the ballot box. Colin Powell, the nearest thing that the administration has to a dove, warned last week that Bush would continue with an “aggressive” foreign policy. Bush may be wary, as many of his predecessors were, of domestic pressure groups. It is not so much the Jewish lobby that will concern him. Most American Jews voted for Kerry and many are anti-Ariel Sharon. Christians are more influential: 72 per cent of white evangelicals and 44 per cent of all Americans believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people, while “only” 36 per cent of Americans say this is not literally true. Maybe the president shares the majority view. However, a second-term president can be more relaxed about lobbies and can focus on his place in history. But even if Bush is amenable, until a new Palestinian leader emerges Washington has nobody to do business with. There is little reason to believe that, say, Abu Mazen could command the support of his people in forswearing violence and making the concessions needed for peace. More likely Hamas, the terror organisation, may gain an upper hand. Arafat alone had the standing with his people needed to make a deal and he blew it. In the words of Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister (and joint Nobel peace prize winner with Arafat), “he chose to be popular with his people rather than to make life better for them”. The tragedy was played out in the closing weeks of President Bill Clinton’s second term and the Israeli government headed by Ehud Barak, as Bush prepared for office. The opportunity for peace was lost. Bush concluded that a president, however well intentioned, can emerge from peacemaking looking impotent. He does not owe Blair that much. It is handy for the world to blame Bush’s past indifference for the parlous state of Palestine. Much more responsibility lies with Arafat, whom the French provocatively gave a hero’s farewell last week. The current intifada followed not from Bush’s inaction but from the failure of Clinton’s peace initiative. It is not even clear that rolling out the road map would make things better. Another failure at negotiated peacemaking could increase Palestinian frustration, if such a thing is possible. So Blair will have known better than to risk his credibility by demanding too much of Bush in an area where the president has good reasons to be cautious. The most that he could obtain was Bush’s blessing for peace efforts. What Bush actually achieves will not rest on his good or bad intentions but on “events”. After all, he came to the White House as an isolationist until September 11 drove him off his course. He did not know that he would transform American foreign policy by “proudly overthrow(ing) all four of the pillars that have supported US legitimacy in the post-war world: its commitment to international law, its acceptance of consensual decision making, its reputation for moderation and its identification with the preservation of peace” (in the words of a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson). Perhaps Bush in his second term will follow a wholly different course, but do not bet on it. During the course of their tete-a-tete dinner Bush and Blair may have concluded that conflict, not peace, beckons around the world. Blair is almost alone among European Union leaders in understanding the full impact on the American psyche of September 11. Al Qaeda launched an attack on the American state aiming to tear out its heart and its attempt to destroy the Pentagon and the White House nearly succeeded. So the European view that America has over-reacted (with Guantanamo Bay and other violations of human rights) counts for nothing in Washington. The administration is focused on future threats and will counter them as necessary. North Korea has chemical weapons. Evidently it tests them on political prisoners in a glass-walled laboratory that enables scientists to observe their deaths. The regime has boasted of its progress towards acquiring nuclear weapons. The United States has tried engagement with the pariah state, offering to supply it with nuclear power provided that it renounces any ambition to develop nuclear weapons, but the policy has failed. North Korea sells its ballistic missiles to all-comers because it is poor and wants to foster instability in the world outside its borders, which it considers its enemy. There is reason to fear that it would share its nuclear weapons with terrorists. UN inspectors should soon be able to tell us how close Iran is to joining the nuclear weapons club. The regime has a history of supporting terrorists and is hostile to the United States. Hopes that the moderates would gain the upper hand have faded. The Iranian government has crushed students campaigning for a separation of religion and state with brutality, torture and murder. Following the invasion of Iraq, without explicit UN sanction, there is no consensus on when pre-emptive military action against a developing threat is merited. Europeans argue that the idea of pre-emption has been discredited by events in Iraq. That is absurd. Certainly the failure to find weapons of mass destruction has given the concept of pre-emption a bad name, but in other places and circumstances it may well be justified, even demanded, in the future. The United States does not have the appetite for another land war nor enough troops for a new campaign. But as Israel demonstrated when it destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facility at Osirak in 1981, there are options available short of ground attack. Such ideas are not palatable to Blair’s cabinet or his party. Jack Straw has taken care to box himself in by saying that action against Iran could not be justified and is inconceivable. It reminds me that Margaret Thatcher was toppled not by a mutiny in the ranks of her party but by an officers’ coup. It was when the cabinet became fed up with having to support unpopular policies on which they had not been properly consulted that they forced her out. Blair in his remaining time in office could face decisions so difficult that he will feel nostalgic for the relative calm of his life during Bush’s first administration. -The Times |
 |
Commentary
Commentary Archives Editorial Archives |