If Tony Blair came in preaching the gospel of intervention in answer to the public cry of “something must be done,” about the Kosovan Albanians, the Bosnian Muslims and the Iraqi Kurds, he goes out to the clamor of exactly the same question, about Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma. Only, of course, he and President Bush have made it infinitely more difficult to answer the question after the invasion of Iraq. What the prime minister has proclaimed most as the ideal of international politics he has done most to harm.
Not that the cry has been killed. More than 60 percent of the UK population, according to this week’s BBC poll, think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. But more than 60 percent still believe it is right to intervene for humanitarian purposes elsewhere.
Rightly so. In a global world, when everyone can see the pictures and feel the pain of people oppressed, starved or massacred, it would be truly terrible if the effect of Iraq was to make ordinary citizens believe that their concern was useless, that their governments should avert their eyes with a shrug that “nothing can be done.” The question is: what? And it is a question that we have hit full on in the case of obvious outrages such as Darfur and Zimbabwe. We can’t bear to watch it, but the international community seems to have no mechanism, or, perhaps, will, to stop it.
But there are mechanisms, and means, of at least trying to so something, if only we would learn the lessons of the Bush-Blair mistakes. The invasion of Iraq was wrong not because moving to a more ethical policy was mistaken in concept. It was wrong because it had very little to do with ethics at all.
The rhetoric of humanitarianism was, in essence, just a rehash of the Victorian vision of the “white man’s burden,” the belief that it was our manifest destiny to bring civilization to the deprived of the world. And in the same way that Victorians used moral rhetoric to mask the self-interested reach for trade and power, so the calls to unseat a tyrant in Iraq in reality glossed a plan to reform the whole region in the interests of Western security and energy supply. The actual needs and interests of the ordinary Iraqis were never looked at in detail.
Indeed, the invasion came after a decade of sanctions imposed in the interests of containing a tyrant who impoverished his people, greatly increased his personal power, corrupted UN officialdom and led to appalling rates of child mortality and disease among the citizens of Iraq at large.
Not that the post-invasion rhetoric has been any more forward looking, or wise in its understanding of what went wrong. The claims of Blair and Bush that we are facing new threats and a world of struggle with the forces of extremism are, at bottom, little more than a reversion to the rhetoric and attitudes of the Cold War with the specter of Islamic fundamentalism and Al-Qaeda replacing that of communism and the Soviet Union.
Going back to the Fifties, however, is the last thing we should be doing. It will only end with us making all the same mistakes of elevating local conflicts into grand confrontations between West and East that brought so much misery. Instead of promoting democracy in the Middle East and Central Asia, we are back to supporting all the most authoritarian regimes from Egypt to Pakistan and Uzbekistan because they are “on our side” in this great struggle with the forces of darkness.
There is an ethical policy that is possible for this new century, but it has to be based on three things. The first must be an attempt to understand countries and peoples in their own terms, not ours. We marched into Iraq with almost total ignorance of the people and the conditions, and we did so because, in the end, the needs and aspirations of the people weren’t our primary concern. If we are to take an active interest in the affairs of such countries as Sudan and Zimbabwe, it has to be based on an understanding of the history and politics of the countries concerned.
Lesson two is, if we do act to intervene, it has to be in cooperation with others, particularly the regional forces concerned. We went into Iraq in a “coalition” entirely drawn from outside the region. If the international community is getting somewhere with North Korea, it is largely because of China. If it is to get somewhere with Iran, it will be with the help of Russia and Iran’s immediate neighbors.
The UN is the other port of call, although much weakened by the events of the past five years and the appointment of a poor new secretary-general. But it still has the benefit of legitimacy and the possibility of action, if only the main powers would support it. But the third and most important point is the need for realistic appraisal of what we can or cannot do. The cry of “we must do something” is self-defeating if all it leads to is the paralysis we see over Darfur and Zimbabwe.
Iraq has, one hopes — the Iranian crisis still threatens — put out of court military intervention except in the most extreme circumstances. If anything, it has reinforced, rather than ended, the principle of the sanctity of boundaries and the prohibition of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, except in the most specific circumstances, and then only with the full backing of the UN.
Punitive sanctions are a blunt, and often self-defeating, club with which to beat regimes into submission, as we have seen from Iraq. But as a symbolic gesture of international disapproval, they have their uses. More effective is the withdrawal or refusal of carrots in the form of trade agreements, investment financing, membership of associations and, not least, the access to international travel and bank accounts for individuals.
Even short of intervention, there is much that can be done to look after the refugees from internal oppression and welcome asylum seekers. Far more could, and should, have been achieved, including air, as well as ground, protection for the refugees from Darfur. In the end, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe collapsed because the citizens were no longer prepared to accept it and the soldiers were not prepared to fire on them. It happened from the inside, not outside, and was the more effective for that.
Behind the smoking fires of Iraq there is a lot going on in the world that is optimistic. Global communication and education has aroused expectations and undermined traditional hierarchies. In the Middle East, as Central Asia and Africa, there are growing movements for change. They could do with our encouragement. But not our ordering and certainly not our military muscle. Iraq should have exploded that dream. And for that we should all be grateful.
