What a difference a couple of days can make in international realpolitik. Boy George was in the midst of his first presidential foreign foray, visiting President Vicente Fox of Mexico, on the Friday afternoon when Iraq was being bombed. He was, naturally, ready for questions about the aerial pounding at the joint Bush-Fox press conference afterwards – a television feed that I happened to see. “It is a mission about which I was informed,” Boy George assured his questioner. Then, doubtless realising the implications of what he had just said, poor Dubbya quickly added: “And I authorised [it].”
Phew. What a relief. Boy George was firmly in charge of what was going on, after all. Meanwhile, not only were fellow Nato members such as Turkey kept in the dark about the bombings, but even senior Congressmen were not accorded the customary courtesy of being informed in advance by the White House – much to the fury of Republicans and Democrats alike. Back in Mexico, Boy George proceeded to ramble on about the air strikes being a “routine mission” to “enforce the no-fly zone” and thus force Saddam Hussein “to conform to the agreement that he signed after Desert Storm”. There were two problems with this: the air strikes were clearly not a “routine mission”, and no-fly zones were not even mentioned in the post-Gulf war agreement with Saddam.
Though readers of the next day’s London Times would see a banner headline that “Bush and Blair” had ordered the bombing of Iraq, Britain’s involvement was seen only as an added footnote here – a symbolically useful one, certainly, given that it was important for the US not to be viewed as the unilateral aggressor. For news junkies, it was left to CNN’s superstar correspondent Christiane Amanpour to further clarify that “Prime Minister Blair was kept in the loop . . . but did not personally consult or talk with the United States on this . . . the entire operation was run by the United States . . . the US military ran the command and control for this operation.”
Digging a little deeper, it was possible to establish that, in an attack force of 80 planes on that Friday, Britain had contributed just four Tornado GR1s, two Tornado F3s (designed for defence cover only) and two VC10 tanker aircraft. Now, the Tornado programme was initiated in 1968, with the first Tornado flying six years later; the VC10 programme, long since abandoned for passenger use by British Airways, was initiated by BOAC in 1962. The US military, meanwhile, was spearheading the attack with the vastly more up-to-date F-15Es (carrying AGM-130s) and US Naval F/A 18s. I point all this out not to be scornful in any way of the brave RAF men sent up, for purely symbolic and political purposes, in what would be flying coffins were they to be exposed to sophisticated anti-aircraft attack; I merely want to show the spuriousness of the claim that the bombing was a joint American-British operation.
The irony of it all, though, was that it fell apart on both sides of the Atlantic very quickly indeed. In New York, the US and UK found themselves furiously opposed by France, Russia and China on the United Nations Security Council. Potentially vulnerable Nato allies such as Turkey were equally infuriated. Colin Powell, Boy George’s secretary of state about to set out on a crucial Middle East tour, found himself outflanked by the Bush I defence troika of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (the hawkish defence secretary) and Condoleezza Rice (the national security adviser). In the words of the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine: “This action, as far as I am aware, is approved by hardly anyone.”
I suspect that Tony Blair, until all this unfolded, thought he had accomplished a nice little bit of PR before his visit to see Boy George at Camp David. Britain would show it was the loyal ally of America, cementing what Britons (but not Americans) still call the “special relationship”. Then he would explain to Dubbya that the 60,000-strong, notional European rapid reaction force – the notion of which he enthusiastically supports – was no threat to US and/or Nato operations in Europe, a fear already publicly expressed by Rumsfeld (but not, conspicuously so, by Powell).
Then Blair and Boy George would be able to emerge into the Camp David sunshine to say how strong ties between the US and UK remain: hacks would be privately briefed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spin-machine that Blair privately assured Dubbya that he would willingly play the role of buffer with the uppity French and generally be the mediator between those pesky Europeans and Washington. Blair would fly home to London, brimming with pre-election triumphalism and self-congratulation for what he had managed to pull off in Washington. He would then – being such a clever, scheming chap – be able to reassure the Europeans that he was handling Boy George, Rumsfeld and co.
But, assuming my thesis is correct, Blair had reckoned without two factors: first, the disillusionment of his own Labour backbenchers over Britain’s role as symbolic junior partner who lent a touch of moral legitimacy to a mission of doubtful military use; second, a brilliant piece of political undercutting by Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory shadow defence secretary. Duncan Smith got to the Bush administration, via Rumsfeld, before either Robin Cook or Blair succeeded in doing so, and he was able to reinforce Rumsfeld’s doubts over the European force and Blair’s support for it.
Now, therefore, Blair has his work cut out if he is to convince the Bush II administration – against the prevailing views of the Bush I defence troika who seem to be in charge – that the European force would not be a potentially un-American one, literally and figuratively. The Atlanticist right, on both sides of the Atlantic, have thus succeeded in having the notion of a European force dismissed – in the words of Richard Perle, the Republican defence hawk now playing a significant behind- the scenes role here again – as smacking of “French manoeuvres aimed at sidelining the US in Europe”.
All this is why the weekend visit by Blair here could turn out to be much more crucial than was supposed even a day before the Iraq air strikes. A couple of weeks before, Cook had been making soothing noises to Powell about the troika‘s proposed Reaganesque Star Wars II plan, aka the Nuclear Missile Defence policy. The role of Britain, again, was clear: in return for American use of the Fylingdales radar station in Yorkshire as part of Star Wars II, the US would treat Britain as its senior European ally.
But then – having seen the fury of the French, Russians, Chinese, Nato allies and its own backbenchers, to name just some of the opposition – the Blair government realised it was in a jam. Over breakfast here earlier this month, Cook was strangely smug about British support for Star Wars II. But, seeing the logic behind it all start to unravel over the weekend, the position reversed. The FCO spin-machine went into action: Cook, appearing on Breakfast with Frost, abruptly reversed his previous position (at least, as I understood it over that previous breakfast). With a casuistry epitomising FCO smart-aleckery, he started to voice opposition to Star Wars II – not because of its lack of merits, but on grounds of cost: “This is definitely an issue for the box marked ‘handle with care’,” he told Frost.
Meanwhile, frantic briefing was going on as part of the Blair government’s sudden and desperate backtracking. “Claims that Tony Blair was bounced by the US into launching military strikes on Baghdad intensified last night after it emerged that the Foreign Office signalled a relaxation of policy towards Iraq less than 24 hours before the air strikes,” the Independent informed us last Tuesday. The Guardian simultaneously reported: “Britain and the US have agreed to rethink their policy towards Iraq in the face of mounting hostility from the Arab world inflamed by last Friday’s air strikes, Whitehall officials said yesterday.”
Could those “Whitehall officials”, I wonder, be connected with the head of news at the Foreign Office? And if so, could he and his colleagues not have the courage to stand up and speak openly, instead of hiding behind the shield of anonymity so readily provided by the pliant media? Perhaps some enterprising MP will file a parliamentary question to ask whether such secret briefings have, indeed, been given by the Foreign Office.
It is a horribly ill-thought-out mess that was hardly anticipated a fortnight ago. Ruthless operators such as Rumsfeld are likely to put the squeeze on Britain to allow Fylingdales to be used in Star Wars II, if not this weekend, then very soon. And because of its eager willingness last week to be seen as a political and military stooge of the US, the UK has rapidly found itself at a sudden, unexpected crossroads in choosing between Europe and the US. America, Cook wrote a few weeks ago, will remain Britain’s “closest ally and our biggest export market”; opinion polls, in similar vein, always show that the British public prefer a strong relationship with the US to one with Europe.
But, it seems, an ill-judged sortie by eight ageing British aircraft over Iraq – with Blair “in the loop”, if we are to believe Amanpour rather than the covert FCO briefers – means that British foreign policy is decided by whim and spin, rather than by sound planning. Through his eagerness to please all, Blair has put himself in danger of ending up disappointing both European and American allies, and the US bombing mission over Iraq may well have forced his hand in a way he never envisioned just a week or so ago.
Even so, I have no doubts that we are in for a few days of photo opportunities of a smiling Boy George and Blair emerging from their Camp David talks – Clinton always made Blair seem like a willing, tail-wagging poodle, but I suspect it will be the same even with Boy George – amid proclamations by both men that they have a new understanding, that the everlasting bonds between our two great nations are now more firm than ever, and so on. By this time, though, Blair may already have found himself forced by the world’s only superpower into difficult decisions he thought he could weave cleverly around: and if the day of reckoning does not come this weekend, it certainly cannot be postponed much longer.
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