Intelligence

Bush, not Blair, is the key

Telegraph | Opinion | Bush, not Blair, is the key

(Filed: 23/05/2004)

On the BBC's The Week in Westminster yesterday, Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, made a thought-provoking observation about the relationship between Tony Blair and George W Bush over Iraq. "We've [given] near-as-damn-it total support in public," he said. "I don't think we've always had enough candour in private."

Last week, Michael Howard called for Mr Blair to make public at least some of his arguments with the President. The Tory leader took issue with "the view that any advice [Mr Blair] offers on US policy must be made in private and any disagreement kept secret".

Sir Christopher, who organised Mr Blair's first contact with Mr Bush before he was President, has provided a different perspective: namely, that it is the private negotiations themselves which are the problem. Britain had conspicuously failed, he said, "to get our views into the [US] administration and adopted, on how you handled Iraq after Saddam Hussein".

This failure is, in part, a reflection both of Mr Blair's strong conviction and of his emollient character. Precisely because he believed that Britain had a moral obligation to join the war in Iraq, he has sometimes been more reluctant than he should have been to exploit his position.

At the same time, his perception that Mr Bush values loyalty above all else and the Prime Minister's compulsive desire to please has made him more concerned with preserving good relations than with aggressive diplomacy. It is reported in the current Spectator that Mr Blair was provided with a "wish-list" of British demands before a pre-war meeting with the President and failed to raise a single one of them with Mr Bush. When officials expressed their exasperation to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary reportedly shrugged and said: "That's the nature of the beast."

The Prime Minister, it is true, played a significant role in persuading Mr Bush to seek UN authorisation for the liberation of Iraq and in the launch of the Middle East "road map" on the eve of the war. The trouble for Mr Blair is that both undertakings went disastrously wrong, and convinced many of the President's less friendly colleagues that the Prime Minister was becoming a liability, delaying US policy with his woolly preoccupations.

Mr Bush, it is quite clear, still regards the Prime Minister as a great asset to his cause. But the President is undoubtedly more receptive than he was to Mr Blair's critics in Washington. When the Prime Minister raised concerns about Ariel Sharon's plan for the West Bank and Gaza, Mr Bush appeared to listen sympathetically but then - to the consternation of Mr Blair's advisers - backed the plan anyway.

Even so, the President must be wishing - or at least should be - that he had heeded the warnings of the British Government about Ahmed Chalabi, the discredited pretender to the leadership of Iraq and creature of the Pentagon, which uncritically swallowed his bogus intelligence about Saddam Hussein's WMD. British ministers and officials also constantly warned their American counterparts about the likely perils of reconstruction in Iraq, emphasising that security must precede democracy.

The debate last week focused on the extent to which Mr Blair should make public his disagreements with the President. On the BBC's Newsnight, Peter Mandelson said that for the Prime Minister to do so would "demoralise British troops".

On the contrary: British servicemen, appalled by the images from Abu Ghraib, which they regard as only the most grotesque example of the hamfistedness of US troops, would probably be heartened if Mr Blair expressed a measure of irritation with the US armed forces. But the President himself has a part to play in this too, and - at a time when our two nations are spliced together in coalition - it is not inappropriate to remind him of this.

To a greater extent than is often appreciated, this President has always understood the need for America to pursue the war on terror as part of an international alliance. It is important that he and his administration realise, therefore, that this coalition is in a dire condition. Spain has already peeled off, and now the pressures upon Mr Blair are more intense than ever.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that he will not withdraw from Iraq for short-term political gain: but it is not hard to envisage a Labour Government led by someone else taking a very different view. The White House understands the need to support Mr Blair but does not, it would seem, grasp how precarious is his position: in practice, the collapse of the entire coalition is only a few well-organised Labour mutinies and a poll slump away.

It is for the President to decide how much this matters to him. But if he wishes this particular alliance to survive, and with it the campaign that will define his presidency's place in history, he must acknowledge unambiguously that he is listening to his closest ally, and that he has learned. At this dangerous moment, it is what Mr Bush - rather than Mr Blair - says that truly matters.

May 23, 2004 at 10:48 AM in Special Relationship | Permalink | TrackBack (271) | Top of page | Blog Home