Iraq

Hillary the hawk

Intervention it is then. Cue lots of politicians walking around with rousing West Wing music in their minds’ ears. This is the part where they get to play the good guys. Until something goes wrong, and they are bungling idiots again. Of course, it’s good for everyone to feel that a bombing campaign in Libya is a multi-lateral, UN decision – not an Iraq. But if this turns into a long campaign, American airpower will be expected to do the vast majority of the work. And while Obama may be reluctant to engage on a third front, there are plenty of enthusiasts in Washington – none more so than Hillary

Learning from recent history

With a UN resolution now passed, Prime Minister David Cameron has displayed diplomatic skills his critics believed he did not possess. As NATO is planning to enforce an expansive no-fly zone over Libya, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider such a mission’s aims and to learn the lessons from recent wars. The strategic aim of the mission cannot only be to protect Libyan civilians. Framed in this way, the international community will face the same problems it did Bosnia: for instance, the Srebrenica massacre happened while a no-fly zone was already in place. A no-fly zone will not force Colonel Ghadaffi from power. As troops are not

The Limits of British Influence

To be fair to Gary Gibbon, he’s not the only member of the lobby to have lost the plot when it comes to David Cameron, Libya and Washington. Ben Brogan has a sadly-fatuous piece today asking “Does Anyone in Washington Listen to David Cameron?” He writes: Robert Gates was far from flattering when he dismissed the PM’s initial no-fly suggestion as ‘loose talk’. The Coalition made a virtue of putting the US-UK relationship on a more low-key footing. There was to be none of the cosyness of Blair-Bush or the neediness of Brown-Obama. But Britain’s post-war strategic interest relied in part on its position as the one ally with the

How to deal with Bahrain

If you find yourself on the same side of an issue as Iran, it is wise to think carefully what path you have chosen to walk. Today, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned the foreign military intervention in Bahrain to confront the protests as “unacceptable.” To my dismay, I agree with what Tehran says; but, I suspect (and hope), for very different reasons. The grievances driving the Bahraini protests stem from years of discrimination by the Sunni elite of the Shia majority. Evidence of the problem is well-documented. Last year, Amnesty said that the Bahraini authorities had “failed to investigate alleged torture of detainees”. The State Department’s annual human rights

Liberal hawks

From the moment David Cameron started agitating for a no fly-zone, he’s been looking for allies. France and Denmark look like they will support him, with Russia and India opposed and China perhaps willing to abstain at the United Nations. But what about closer to home, inside the coalition? Since the formation of the coalition, every policy has been tested by what will it do for relations between the parties? Oddly, however, there has been no such test about Libyan policy. Newspapers have not been writing about splits, differences and agreements. That may be because Lord Ashdown went on the Today Programme and voiced conditional support for a no-fly zone.

New World temporarily postponed

We are meant to be living in a multi-polar world, one where US power is waning, and where countries reject the prying interference of the West. Except, erm, we aren’t. Today’s world looks exactly as it did yesterday. First, many of the 20th century issues people thought would disappear – dictators, repression and democracy – remain as prevalent now as then. The Iraq War has tempered people’s appetite for humanitarian interventions without extinguishing it. The key difference seems to be that support is now minimal on the Left and still strong on the neo-con Right. Everyone is also still focused on what the US will or will not do, even

Lessons from wars gone by

As the situation deteriorates in Libya and the international community begins to look at various options, including military ones, policymakers would do well to remember a number of key lessons from the last 15 years of warfare. Like all history, they don’t provide a guide to the future, but can be a warning nonetheless. The Bosnian experience of the mid ’90s contains four key lessons. The first is that international handwringing costs lives. Many lives. (The same lesson emerges from the post-Gulf War I slaughter of the Kurds and Shia by Saddam Hussein). Wait, and the situation usually gets worse not better. The second lesson is that however great the

The emergence of a Cameron doctrine

Daniel Finkelstein makes a simple but important point in the Times today (£): a Prime Minister’s foreign policy is determined by events more than by instincts. The revolts in the Middle East are defining David Cameron’s diplomacy. The emerging policy is a realistic expression of Britain’s current domestic and international capabilities. Cameron’s speech to the Kuwaiti parliament did not match Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech because Britain no longer disposes of continents. Likewise, Tony Blair’s messianic tendencies belong to a past era. Colonel Gaddafi’s murderous stream of conscious could have given cause to evoke the moral certainty of an ‘ethical foreign policy’. Cameron still empathises with Blair’s cause in

A new dawn for Dubya?

Who is the unsung hero of the Egyptian revolution? Why, the 43rd President of the United States of course. (And, presumably, Tony Blair as well.) Reuel Marc Gerecht leapt to praise Bush in the pages of The New York Times. ‘President George W. Bush’s decision to build democracy in Iraq seemed so lame to many people because it appeared, at best, to be another example of American idealism run amok — the forceful implantation of a complex Western idea into infertile authoritarian soil. But Mr. Bush, whose faith in self-government mirrors that of a frontiersman in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” saw truths that more worldly men missed: the idea of

Democracy is now Halal

The popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have exposed as nonsense the notion, held in many quarters, that Middle Easterners – be they Arabs, Persians, Muslims and Christians – are uncommonly uninterested in democracy. But as former CIA agent and Middle East expert Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the New York Times: ‘A revulsion against the Iraq war and a distaste for President Bush helped to blind people to the spread of democratic sentiments in the region. It blinded them to the fact that among Middle Easterners, democracy, not dictatorship, was now seen as a better vehicle for economic growth and social justice. Most important, Mr. Bush’s distastefulness helped to

Coffee House interview: Paul Wolfowitz

Nobody is as associated with George W Bush’s drive to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East as former US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. His role in the Iraq War, and belief that the US should promote democracy in a part of the world better known for authoritarian rulers, remains controversial to this day. But now that the Middle East is being rocked by pro-democracy protests – as people demand freedom, employment, and an end to tyranny – is this advocate of democracy finally being proven right? And what does he think about the dangers of democratic transitions? Dr Wolfowitz kindly agreed to answer a few questions about

Coffee House interview: Ursula Brennan

Few government jobs are as demanding as that of Permanent Under-Secretary, or PUS, in the Ministry of Defence. With Liam Fox as your boss, General David Richards as your colleague, and an exhausted, overspent department to run, it is no surprise that when Bill Jeffrey retired many of the government’s most senior officials – including, it is said, No 10’s Jeremy Heywood – balked at the challenge. Forward stepped Ursula Brennan, who until then had held the ministry’s No 2 job before a career in the Ministry of Justice, and what is now the Department for Work and Pensions. Here, Mrs Brennan has kindly agreed to answer a few questions

Phoney Blair? On the contrary, Iraq was his most honest moment.

Tony Blair’s reappearance at the pointless Chilcot Inquiry – pointless because it won’t change anyone’s mind about anything or have any meaningful impact upon future policy – has at least permitted an interesting revision of the historical record. Rod Liddle sums this up in his typical pithy style: The more you read, the more you discover that it was Blair – entirely alone in the country – who wished to invade Iraq in 2003. The cabinet didn’t want to, even Blair’s cabal didn’t want to. Even Alastair Campbell had grave reservations. Everyone around him thought it wrong, or illegal, or both. I assume we may ascribe that “entirely alone” to

Déjà vu | 21 January 2011

Tony Blair is beguiling the Chilcot Inquiry once again. He was majestic last time – quick witted, sincere and convinced. There was nothing in that benign hearing room to alter, as he might have put it, the ‘calculus of risk’. His ease was sufficient to crack subtle jokes at Gordon Brown’s expense, and most emerged from the hearing believing that Britain had actually been at war with Iran. He is already ploughing those same furrows, albeit with a barely audible note of impatience, irritated that these banal proceedings continue. Iran is the new Iraq, Blair says, and he publicly takes a ‘hard line’ against Tehran, just as his government, in

The return of Chilcot

The Chilcot Inquiry is back, and with bang not a whimper. In his opening statement, Sir John said: ‘There is one area where, I am sorry to say, it has not been possible to reach agreement with the government. The papers we hold include the notes which Prime Minister Blair sent to President Bush and the records of their discussions. The Inquiry recognises the privileged nature of those exchanges but, exceptionally, we sought disclosure of key extracts which illuminate Prime Minister Blair’s positions at critical points. The Cabinet Office did not agree this disclosure. On 10 December last year, in accordance with the Protocol, I asked the Cabinet Secretary to

Stability versus freedom? 

Since the Iraq War, there has been a protracted silence about whether or not the West should promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East. Predominantly, we have looked away as venal but seemingly stable regimes abuse their citizens, but events in Tunisia have reignited the debate. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Roger Cohen argues that the West’s support for stability in the Middle East proved in the end a recipe for radicalisation:   “Arab regimes, many of them U.S. allies, have lost touch with young populations. Their ossified, repressive, nepotistic, corrupt systems have proved blind to the awakening stirred by satellite TV networks, Facebook posts, tweets, Web

Sherard v The Generals

As wars begin to end, arguments about their conduct begin. Such is the case with the British campaign in Helmand. In a submission to the Foreign Affairs Committee, the former British ambassador in Kabul – and one of the best diplomats of his generation – Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles blasted the Army: “Almost by definition, good soldiers are irrepressibly enthusiastic, unquenchably optimistic, fiercely loyal to their service and to their own units within that service, and not especially imaginative.” But his strongest criticism was reserved for the Army’s strategy of seeing Helmand through the prism of the SDSR – looking to save brigades from being cut, not looking primarily to win

The clot at the heart of the MoD

Gibbon wrote that the Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of its own stupendous fabric. So too is the Ministry of Defence. An investigation by the Times (£) has revealed that bureaucratic intransigence has cost the taxpayer £6bn and several servicemen their lives. We have been here before with the Nimrod disaster and the subsequent Gray and Haddon-Cave reports. ‘A culture of optimism’ in procurement and maintenance leads to unsustainable costs, expensive delays, and, occasionally, the indefensible loss of life. At last, the Commons Public Accounts Committee is volubly shocked and has called for urgent reform.  The Times and the Committee blame the labyrinthine complexity of Whitehall’s last great monolith,

Laughing Mohammad Larijani, the Comical Ali of Iran

In the week when the Iranian regime forced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to goulishly re-enact the murder of her husband on TV, it is worth reading Newsweek’s interview with Mohammad Javad Larijani, a regime insider. His answers call to mind Comical Ali, whose delusional denials of the US advance in Iraq made everyone realise how detached from reality Saddam Hussein’s regime really was. First on the matter of torture, routinely said by the UN, former prisoners and defectors to be used by Iranian officials: “Torture is forbidden by the Constitution. Any law officer who tortures civilians will meet a very harsh punishment.” Of course, he admits, the Iranian system could “need

Time for an Afghan Inquiry

The Iraq Inquiry had been conspicuously silent, but now John Chilcot’s team has called Tony Blair to give evidence again. It’s expected that our former PM will make the trip to the Queen Elizabeth II centre early next year. That would push the expected deadline for the inquiry’s work finishing – at the end of this year – into 2011. Few people, however, expect the inquiry to say anything novel or get Tony Blair to say anything different than before. Its well-phrased final report may change policy in the margins – but in the security establishment there is little question of what needs doing. RUSI has published reams of reports