center-left, critics claim that
Blair's penchant for rhetoric and personal
grandstanding trumped actual progress every time.
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq Now for the
Middle East. Unlike Kosovo and Sierra Leone,
Blair's liberal interventionism has surely
faltered in Iraq. The price of liberating Iraqis
from Saddam Hussein has been high. His decision to
support the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with
43,000 British troops, after a year of political
maneuvering at the United Nations, ate corrosively
into his reputation abroad. Iraq alienated
many
in the EU and, crucially, Russian President
Vladimir Putin. The current nosedive in
Anglo-Russian relations is partly the result of
Putin's distrust of Blair from this period.
Recent evidence now suggests that Blair
was actively concerned about post-invasion
planning in the run-up to the invasion and warned
US policymakers repeatedly. But this concern was
not transformed into coherent action. The results
of this - plus the disbanding the Iraqi Army, the
failure to secure Iraq's borders and a
misunderstanding of the power of sectarianism -
will bedevil the coalition facing insurgency in
Iraq for years to come.
And results have
been slow in coming. Recent UK plans for a 29%
troop draw-down by the end of this year - 2,100
troops down from about 8,000 - have yet to take
place fully. A total of 152 British soldiers have
died thus far, with several hundred wounded. The
cost to the national Treasury to date is some 4.5
billion pounds (US$8.98 billion).
In
Afghanistan, where Blair committed British forces
in 2001 to daily clashes with the Taliban in
Helmand province, he bequeaths an open-ended
commitment. Britain's ambassador to Kabul, Sherard
Cowper-Coles, suggested this week that a British
presence would be needed for perhaps 30 years and
British troops for a decade. The cost continues in
blood and treasure. Sixty British soldiers have
died in Afghanistan since 2001, 35 alone during
2006-07 in Helmand.
UK relations with Iran
are no better. Blair's criticism of Iranian
nuclear ambitions, suspected Iranian links to
attacks on British soldiers in southern Iraq, an
embarrassing naval-hostage crisis this year and
Iranian anger over the knighthood of Salman
Rushdie all point to a legacy of poor relations
for the future.
The Arab-Israeli peace
process has not benefited tangibly from Blair's
attentions. Blair's efforts have proved a chimera.
It is true that Blair invested considerable
efforts in convincing President Bush of the need
for priority focus on a roadmap toward a two-state
solution. Tony Blair stated that it was a
political and moral bargain: UK support for Iraq
and the "war on terror" accompanied by real
pressure on Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to
reach a solution. But this pressure never
materialized. Then came the short-lived but nasty
Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon last
year.
Blair's sanctioning of US flights
carrying munitions via UK airports to Israel
during the conflict dented his credibility as an
impartial broker. Domestic controversy, centering
on Blair's own Middle East envoy, Michael Levy,
Baron Levy, arrested twice by police as part of
the ongoing cash-for-honors inquiry, further
weakened the Blair policy's credibility.
Elsewhere, after the Hamas election victory in
January 2006 in Gaza, Blair's response - along
with those of the US and Israel- has come in for
sharp criticism.
Just this week, UK
charity Christian Aid spoke for many regional
stakeholders when it claimed that Blair's 18-month
strategy of non-negotiation with the Hamas-led
National Unity government in Gaza had
"exacerbated" the current conflict. It castigated
Blair for raising hopes, then breaking promises.
Last December, Blair suggested he wanted his
legacy to include peace between Israelis and
Palestinians. Christian Aid now says such rhetoric
is light-years from today's reality.
About
80% of Gaza's Palestinian families have no regular
income and depend on the UN and EU for food and
other basics. The current standoff between Hamas
and Fatah in Gaza has now deflected British, EU
and US attention away from regional solutions
toward the more pressing need to prop up the
government of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West
Bank, making an early-brokered Israeli/Palestinian
agreement ever more elusive.
But for the
future, Iraq will be Blair's real legacy. A moral
episode of brave action to liberate the Iraqi
people from Saddam Hussein or ill-planned disaster
leading to bloody insurgency and sectarian
conflict - it depends on one's point of view. At
the moment the evidence is not good. Blair - as
with so much else in his premiership - will want
to turn this around.
What next for Tony
Blair? At 54, he says he will stay on as an MP in
the House of Commons until 2009. It is highly
unlikely he will accept a peerage in the House of
Lords. "Not my scene," he says.
A
lucrative future on the international lecture
circuit and the penning of a 4 million pound
memoir certainly beckons. After all, he has a 3.5
million pound mortgage on a central London house
to consider. Last year, his candidacy as a future
EU president was much mooted, as was a role
leading a new "Blair Foundation" think-tank or a
senior role at the UN or World Bank.
Yet
Blair says he is not finished with the Middle
East. Reports this week say he is under
consideration to fill a vacancy as roving Middle
East peace envoy for the so-called Quartet - of
the United States, the European Union, Russia and
United Nations - seeking to broker peace between
Palestinians and Israelis. Given his past
associations for many in the Middle East and
within the Quartet itself, this is possible,
perhaps likely, but it will be a tough sell. Like
so much else with Anthony Lynton Blair, it will
all be a matter of credibility.
Ronan Thomas is a British
correspondent.
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