Posts Tagged → Afghanistan
The Blair doctrine
On Thursday morning UK time, Tony Blair delivered a speech in Chicago on his “doctrine of international community”. It is worth a read because it sets out precisely the basis for a genuine “ethical foreign policy” for the centre-Left: a policy based on the international community being prepared to intervene, including militarily, to defeat and remove regimes which attack and oppress their civilian population.
Too many on the traditional Left believe that it is better to excuse and explain away oppressive regimes that stand in opposition to the USA rather than to argue for intervention in the interests of their people. Their anti-Americanism outweighs their internationalism.
Too many on the traditional Right believe intervention should only be considered if it is in their own direct national interest or to safeguard a special interest with which they allign themselves.
So, for example, many on the British Conservative Right were lukewarm or hostile to intervention in Kosovo but are pretty John Bullish about intervention in Zimbabwe. 
Too many liberals believe that intervention can only be supported if international institutions like the UN sanction it. This fails to recognise that the Security Council veto means that countries which do not accept, as a matter of stated policy, the notion of international action to overcome oppressive regimes because it represents “interference” in internal politics of a nation state will wield that veto come what may.
Worse, many on the liberal Left argue that it is wrong even to countenance action to deliver democracy and freedom for the population of Muslim fundamentalist countries in the mistaken belief that democracy and Islam are somehow incompatible.
So, the traditional Left, the liberal establishment and the traditional Right, all coalesce around opposition to action to safeguard the human rights and freedoms of oppressed peoples.
The Blair Doctrine – which the former prime minister reprised in his speech a decade after he first set it out in Chicago – is distinctly different. It calls for action against oppressive regimes based on the values of international solidarity with the oppressed rather than isolationism. It recognises that where action is not taken in the apparent short term narrow ‘national interest’ often, as with Afghanistan, the medium to long term consequences can be at best unpredictable and at worst, disasterous. And it argues for siding with the majority of Muslims against the extremists and fundamentalists and helping them defeat those who would pervert Islam to justify terrrorism.
Today, we rarely hear the case for military action to safeguard freedom. Tony Blair makes that case. It is worth a read.
Go for it Gordon
Gordon Brown will next week address a joint session of both houses of the US Congress. This is a tremendous honour for him and for Britain. When Tony Blair made a similar speech in 2003 it was a brilliant performance the impact of which was muted because of the death of Dr David Kelly the following day.
The Prime Minister should use his speech to make the case for continued intervention in Afghanistan; not just the social programmes and electoral registration but the tough, targetted military intervention that continues to benefit us all at home through tackling the Taliban who happliy hosted terrorist cells, the terrorists themselves who continue to plot ’spectaculars’ in our country and the narcotics industry that also deals in death.
He should argue for larger military commitments by NATO members – and a larger number of NATO members too.
Go for it Gordon. Don’t just make the easy speech about shared values but the tough one about shared military service, shared sacrifice and shared security.
Obama’s Presidency means the excuses have all gone
Well done John Hutton. Today, he has called for Europe to commit more troops to the struggle against terrorism and lawlessness in Afghanistan (and increasingly in parts of Pakistan too). He has complained about other NATO member states leaving the ‘heavy lifting’ to the USA and UK whilst benefiting from the additional domestic security which tying down the Taliban and Al Qaeda brings.
There really has never been an excuse for NATO members’ reluctance to commit the necessary troops and equipment to Afghanistan. The arrival of President Obama takes even the lame excuse of ‘being seen to support ‘ George W Bush out of the equation.
NATO members have now simply got to accept their responsibilities. The NATO meeting in Krakow is the place for NATO to begin again to act as an organisation based on collective security rather than a forum for collective indecision.
All those Leaders who were so quick to send their congratulations to Obama now need to put their military where their mouths are.
Obama is a progressive President. He is no neo-con. There really is no excuse now.
Democracy for all, not just a privileged few
Lord Paddy Ashdown, one of the more effective and serious liberal democrats, made some very interesting comments in his interview this morning on the BBC Today programme about Afghanistan. Encouraged by John Humphries, Lord Ashdown argued that “you can not impose mid-western American democracy on an Islamic middle eastern country.”
Firstly, on any assessment of Afghanistan’s geographical location it is not in the Middle East but central Asia.
Secondly, and more importantly, this is so patronising. Why on Earth is it acceptable to say that democratic systems of government are inappropriate for people wherever they live because of the religious beliefs of a majority of their population? Such an outlook, that there are some people who are capable of living in a democracy and those who are not, is the sort of rubbish used to defend every dictatorship, fascistic and totalitarian regime on the planet. It isn’t that long ago that people made a similar argument in defence of apartheid or the baathist fascist regime of Saddam Hussein.
Democracy is not an American invention although it would be no less attractive if it were. Nor is democracy an imposition. As Iraq shows, the people want democracy. It is the tyrant who imposes their own alternative system of government in order to keep power from the people. Sometimes it is necessary to depose the dictator so that democracy can find the space to breathe.
I for one, am fed up hearing Western liberals tell the oppressed people of other countries that democracy is not for them – whether it is because they live in an Islamic country or not. Iraq today is an Islamic country and a democracy – and is infinitely better off as a result.
As those who fell in its defence, whether fighting Hitler or Saddam or Al Qaeda show, democracy is always worth fighting for.
Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan: NATO members must do more too
In preparation for the expected Taliban spring offensive President Obama has announced the deployment of up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan – an army brigade and a brigade of marines.
America already has about 14,000 troops serving with the Nato-led mission and another 19,000 troops under sole US command fighting the Taleban and al-Qaeda insurgents. Britain has something like 9000 troops in Afghanistan.
So the US and UK already make up around 60% of the 55,000 troop deployment.
The President’s announcement further demonstrates the extent to which Britain and America are shouldering the Afghanistan (and Pakistan) burden, whilst the rest of the Alliance benefits from the increased domestic security these commitments bring.
Take for example Operation Diesel – jointly executed by British and American troops in Helmand province between 6 February and 11 February.
The Operation disrupted facilities for making improvised bombs as well as seizing heroin and drug-making chemicals with a street value of more than £50m.
I said on Sunday that NATO members must step up to the plate. The President’s announcement makes that even more necessary, even more urgent.
Hillary looks East
After all the focus on who would be the first overseas politician to receive the honour of being received first by President Obama (it was Tony Blair), the first overseas visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to have recieved less comment: she will visit Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia. Secretary Clinton said the decision to go East “signals that the US is not just a transatlantic power but also a transpacific power”.
There is a dual significance in this decision. It is a sure sign, if any were even necessary, that the World is indeed moving East – and the USA increasingly sees more of its strategic interests in that region. In recent decades, and since the warming in sino-American relations following Nixon’s historic visit to Chairman Mao, these visits have been largely about economics; the recognition that China represented a massive market for foreign direct investment. This trip though, is about politics more than economics. It is a recognition that China is an emerging superpower every bit as much as an emerging market.
The second point of significance is contained in Hillary’s comment about being a ‘transpacific power’ as well as a transatlantic one. The West should take a warning from her words. With NATO increasingly unsure of its direction, incapable of committing troops in sufficient numbers to Afghanistan and unwilling to expand its membership for fear of Russian reaction, the glue that bound the USA to its transatlantic allies feel a little weaker. The total lack of direction in which the European Union finds itself, especially at a time of deep recession, simply serves to make matters worse.
Secretary of State Clinton, and the Obama Presidency, are signalling that they have choices about whether they look East or West from the USA. The old certainties that that choice is always and inevitably towards us is no more. Such a World view, places the USA no longer just as the leader of the ‘West’ but at the fulcrum of the world map; at the centre of globalisation.
There is a significance in everything this new administration does in these early days, and not just the comfortable gestures around Guantanemo. Western Europe should wake up and smell the coffee: the US is looking both left and right, East and West more than ever these days. NATO members please note.
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