Matt T

Why did he do it?

There's a good essay in the LRB on why Blair decided to take part in the invasion of Iraq? It takes a pyschological approach, which I usually think can mislead, but in this case I think is perhaps the only explanation. The article is long, and worth reading in full, but you need to be a subscriber. I'll try to quote some of the best bits of the first half.

Runciman starts by asking whether Iraq is Blair's Suez, and noting the similarities in planning and execution. In particular:

"Above all, though, what seems to unite Eden and Blair is the sheer recklessness of their military adventures, their willingness to stake everything on wars they could have avoided if they had wanted to. Both Suez and Iraq were huge, and seemingly foolhardy, political gambles with the futures of their respective governments. Neither prime minister was in entirely clear political waters before he went to war, but each was in a pretty secure position: both had recently won decisive election victories, and though both had critics within their own parties, there was nothing there or on the opposition benches that called for drastic action. Certainly nothing in domestic politics demanded from either of them an all-or-nothing roll of the dice."

However,

"Yet while it is true that both Eden and Blair were ready to risk everything on the outcome of military conflicts they could not ultimately control, these were in fact very different kinds of gamble, from very different kinds of gambler. Blair's Iraq is distinguished from Eden's Suez by the different attitudes towards risk that these episodes reveal. The differences are as telling as any similarities between them."

Basically he argues that Blair is

"a highly risk-averse politician who nevertheless likes to play for very high stakes.This is not quite as crazy, or as uncommon, as it sounds. Some poker players like to wait until they have what they feel certain is a winning hand, and then put everything on the table, even if it risks driving everyone else out and shrinking the size of the pot. The thought that they can drive everyone else out is what reassures them."

This is what guides Blair's political decisions, according to Runcimann.

"Tony Blair has not committed political suicide, not yet anyway. It is one of his great strengths that he has a pretty sure sense of when he has more political capital in the bank than his opponents. When he does, this is the risk strategy he likes to adopt: to be ready to stake everything to guarantee some success, even if the rewards are relatively small. "

An early example was over Clause Four, then Kosovo, and indeed tuition fees and the Hutton Report.

"This risk-averse, high-stakes strategy is one of the things that set Blair apart from the two other most significant British politicians of the last decade. Gordon Brown is another risk-averse politician, but one who prefers to play for low stakes, endlessly and tirelessly working the percentages to build up his political reserves. Ken Livingstone, by contrast, is a politician who seems genuinely happy to take big risks, and to gamble everything on uncertain ventures that offer the prospect of spectacular rewards. Blair has frequently been frustrated by what he sees as Brown's excessive caution, particularly over the euro, about which the chancellor is not willing to take any chances. Likewise, Blair has invariably been appalled by Livingstone's cavalier disregard for the safe option, and for the finer details of political calculation. Nevertheless, he has enough in common with each of them to be able to work with both."

"Blair's attitude to risk helps to explain why he was ready to commit himself so early to Bush's military plans for dealing with Iraq. In one sense, this represented a huge gamble. By allying himself with a staunchly right-wing American president, against the wishes of many in his own party and a large section of British public opinion, Blair was risking his own political reputation and that of his government on what appeared to be a whim. But in Blair's eyes, this was absolutely not a whim; rather, it was the only risk worth taking. Blair is drawn to the Americans because of their overwhelming strength. He recognised that nothing would stop Bush getting his way in Iraq in the end. In the circumstances, he seems genuinely to have believed that it was too risky to allow the United States to go it alone. Everyone involved in the Iraq crisis thinks that everyone else has been reckless in one way or another ('reckless, reckless, reckless', Clare Short said shortly before she failed to resign). Blair's view is that those who opposed the war, including the French and German governments, were risking the unity of the West for the sake of an argument they could not win. It is not in Blair's nature to believe that it is worth taking a chance on weakness rather than strength. But nor is it in his nature to believe that once you take a chance, it is worth holding anything back."

"This is what makes Iraq so different from Suez. Both were huge gambles, but Eden's government staked its reputation on what was essentially an enormous bluff. To succeed, it needed its opponents to believe that it was stronger than it was. When Eisenhower's administration withheld military and financial support for the operation, that illusion could not be sustained, and the bluff was exposed. It is inconceivable that Blair would ever allow himself to get into such a position. This is in part a matter of temperament: he just doesn't feel comfortable bluffing. But it is also because Blair's personal attitude to risk coincides with the lesson that the British political establishment drew from the Suez debacle: it is never worth bluffing the Americans. In this respect, Blair's Iraq policy is an inversion of Eden's recklessness at Suez, because the one thing Blair was not willing to contemplate was being frozen out by the US. Indeed, he seems to have been prepared to risk almost anything to avoid that fate. "

posted by Matthew @ 5/27/2004 08:14:00 AM Comments: 0