Blair out of the loop on Lebanon conflict
IHT
There has been a curious conceit in the British political village in these days of distant warfare and it goes like this: If only Tony Blair had joined his European partners in calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, so much of the bloodshed might have been avoided.
Objectively, of course, the argument is deeply flawed. In the diplomacy at the UN, Britain was apparently sidelined as France and the United States sought common language for a resolution. In terms of realpolitik, moreover, it is a stretch to imagine an Israeli or Hezbollah commander staying his trigger-finger at the behest of a call from 10 Downing Street.
Indeed, if this conflict has reaffirmed anything about what some Britons like to call their special relationship with the United States, it is this: There is only one special relationship in this fight, and it binds Washington to Tel Aviv, not London.
The Lebanon crisis, like Iraq before it, has illuminated both the limits of British influence and Blair's overweening desire to exert it, to stride the bigger stage - the great game of nations! - at a time when his hometown audience is increasingly restive. And the very attempt to hitch his star to the American wagon has further diminished his standing.
Why, then, does this sense of British influence seem to perpetuate itself, fed as much by the coverage of Blair as his own words? The answers lie both in the motives of those who question Blair and in his own ambitions.
Certainly he has sought to cast himself as a central player, delaying his Caribbean vacation to be seen to be at the helm - or at least, in the wireless room - manning the phones as they rang off the hook to Washington, Beirut, Paris and New York.
Politicians within his own Labour Party, meanwhile, have maintained a slow drip of reproach: Why could Blair not find it in himself to call Israel's response to Hezbollah's initial provocation "disproportionate," as his former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, did; why did he, once more, turn his back on Europe to embrace America; why did he even claim influence when, in the infamous St. Petersburg conversation with President George W. Bush in front of an unnoticed open microphone, he acknowledged that if he went to the Middle East he could "just go out and talk" without the expectations of success that would attend American diplomacy?
Why, above all, could he not bring himself to join the call for an immediate cease-fire in a war that is depicted as utterly skewed in terms of both the human and physical damage wrought by Israel's vastly superior forces? Indeed, by refusing to acknowledge the broad British view of an asymmetrical war, he has set himself against much opinion within his own party.
Significantly, few of Blair's most obvious critics come from the opposition Conservatives. The call for greater even-handedness has come largely from within his own Labour Party: Any perceived misstep on his part in global diplomacy plays inevitably into the well-rehearsed debate about his political longevity at home.
The calls for an immediate ceasefire, of course, evoke a deep and tangled historical relationship between the Middle East and Britain - ever since British officials promised Arabs independence in almost the same breath as they framed the Balfour Declaration in 1917 endorsing the establishment of a Jewish homeland. (That same history, in the form of the Sykes- Picot agreement of 1916, also enshrined French influence in Lebanon - a central factor in today's diplomacy.)
Over the years, those conflicting strands have twisted the nation between a sometimes ill-disguised, sometimes covert pro-Arabism and more even-handed policies - Lawrence of Arabia pitted against Chaim Weitzmann in the battle for the nation's soul. But rarely has Britain seemed so committed to the Israeli and U.S. narratives as in this war and the way to peace.
For some in Britain, that has left an anguished frustration that Blair seems to be doing nothing (even if he could do anything) on behalf of the Lebanese civilians caught up in the bombardment of southern Lebanon. (A protest last weekend through central London focused almost exclusively on Lebanon's plight, not on that of Israeli civilians under constant Katyusha attack. One placard read: We are all Hezbollah now.)
Others have argued that, as the columnist Jackie Ashley wrote in The Guardian, "by tamely following Bush into the biggest foreign policy mistake of modern times, Britain has too much blood on its hands to be taken seriously in the region, and Blair is seen as too one-sided."
But there is a more complicated element. Blair may be a weakened leader within the politics of the Labour Party and of Britain as a whole.
But he is still an ardent believer in the overarching vision that inspires the Bush administration. Virtually every public statement Blair has made in recent days has conjured an "elemental struggle" between moderation and terror, between democracy and extremism, between modernity and reaction with Islam itself. It is the same fight the White House defines in the attempt to create a "new Middle East." A man who sees himself on the front line of that global battle can hardly relish the idea of relinquishing political power.
It is a dogma, however, that ignores the nuances, or even the blinding distinctions, that define the roots of crises in Kashmir and Chechnya, Afghanistan or Gaza, Iraq or Lebanon. "Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time," Blair said at a news conference last week, "it is a global fight about global values." If that is the case, what room is there to maneuver around the dynamics of each separate crisis? And what does that argument offer those caught in the middle, called upon to choose between values defined by a militarized West and those articulated by the often self-appointed - and violence-prone - standard-bearers of their own faith?
Blair has hinted that he would like to embark on an effort to revive the so-called road map between the Israelis and the Palestinians once the guns fall silent in Lebanon - a last throw of the dice for the chance of a niche in history. But, his critics ask, even if he can persuade an increasingly skeptical nation at home to listen to his arguments, what interlocutors will he now find farther afield? Link
There has been a curious conceit in the British political village in these days of distant warfare and it goes like this: If only Tony Blair had joined his European partners in calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, so much of the bloodshed might have been avoided.
Objectively, of course, the argument is deeply flawed. In the diplomacy at the UN, Britain was apparently sidelined as France and the United States sought common language for a resolution. In terms of realpolitik, moreover, it is a stretch to imagine an Israeli or Hezbollah commander staying his trigger-finger at the behest of a call from 10 Downing Street.
Indeed, if this conflict has reaffirmed anything about what some Britons like to call their special relationship with the United States, it is this: There is only one special relationship in this fight, and it binds Washington to Tel Aviv, not London.
The Lebanon crisis, like Iraq before it, has illuminated both the limits of British influence and Blair's overweening desire to exert it, to stride the bigger stage - the great game of nations! - at a time when his hometown audience is increasingly restive. And the very attempt to hitch his star to the American wagon has further diminished his standing.
Why, then, does this sense of British influence seem to perpetuate itself, fed as much by the coverage of Blair as his own words? The answers lie both in the motives of those who question Blair and in his own ambitions.
Certainly he has sought to cast himself as a central player, delaying his Caribbean vacation to be seen to be at the helm - or at least, in the wireless room - manning the phones as they rang off the hook to Washington, Beirut, Paris and New York.
Politicians within his own Labour Party, meanwhile, have maintained a slow drip of reproach: Why could Blair not find it in himself to call Israel's response to Hezbollah's initial provocation "disproportionate," as his former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, did; why did he, once more, turn his back on Europe to embrace America; why did he even claim influence when, in the infamous St. Petersburg conversation with President George W. Bush in front of an unnoticed open microphone, he acknowledged that if he went to the Middle East he could "just go out and talk" without the expectations of success that would attend American diplomacy?
Why, above all, could he not bring himself to join the call for an immediate cease-fire in a war that is depicted as utterly skewed in terms of both the human and physical damage wrought by Israel's vastly superior forces? Indeed, by refusing to acknowledge the broad British view of an asymmetrical war, he has set himself against much opinion within his own party.
Significantly, few of Blair's most obvious critics come from the opposition Conservatives. The call for greater even-handedness has come largely from within his own Labour Party: Any perceived misstep on his part in global diplomacy plays inevitably into the well-rehearsed debate about his political longevity at home.
The calls for an immediate ceasefire, of course, evoke a deep and tangled historical relationship between the Middle East and Britain - ever since British officials promised Arabs independence in almost the same breath as they framed the Balfour Declaration in 1917 endorsing the establishment of a Jewish homeland. (That same history, in the form of the Sykes- Picot agreement of 1916, also enshrined French influence in Lebanon - a central factor in today's diplomacy.)
Over the years, those conflicting strands have twisted the nation between a sometimes ill-disguised, sometimes covert pro-Arabism and more even-handed policies - Lawrence of Arabia pitted against Chaim Weitzmann in the battle for the nation's soul. But rarely has Britain seemed so committed to the Israeli and U.S. narratives as in this war and the way to peace.
For some in Britain, that has left an anguished frustration that Blair seems to be doing nothing (even if he could do anything) on behalf of the Lebanese civilians caught up in the bombardment of southern Lebanon. (A protest last weekend through central London focused almost exclusively on Lebanon's plight, not on that of Israeli civilians under constant Katyusha attack. One placard read: We are all Hezbollah now.)
Others have argued that, as the columnist Jackie Ashley wrote in The Guardian, "by tamely following Bush into the biggest foreign policy mistake of modern times, Britain has too much blood on its hands to be taken seriously in the region, and Blair is seen as too one-sided."
But there is a more complicated element. Blair may be a weakened leader within the politics of the Labour Party and of Britain as a whole.
But he is still an ardent believer in the overarching vision that inspires the Bush administration. Virtually every public statement Blair has made in recent days has conjured an "elemental struggle" between moderation and terror, between democracy and extremism, between modernity and reaction with Islam itself. It is the same fight the White House defines in the attempt to create a "new Middle East." A man who sees himself on the front line of that global battle can hardly relish the idea of relinquishing political power.
It is a dogma, however, that ignores the nuances, or even the blinding distinctions, that define the roots of crises in Kashmir and Chechnya, Afghanistan or Gaza, Iraq or Lebanon. "Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time," Blair said at a news conference last week, "it is a global fight about global values." If that is the case, what room is there to maneuver around the dynamics of each separate crisis? And what does that argument offer those caught in the middle, called upon to choose between values defined by a militarized West and those articulated by the often self-appointed - and violence-prone - standard-bearers of their own faith?
Blair has hinted that he would like to embark on an effort to revive the so-called road map between the Israelis and the Palestinians once the guns fall silent in Lebanon - a last throw of the dice for the chance of a niche in history. But, his critics ask, even if he can persuade an increasingly skeptical nation at home to listen to his arguments, what interlocutors will he now find farther afield? Link
posted by exoplanet at 4:50 PM
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