Murphy said:
“If Kosovo were to happen in 2017, so we’re out of Afghanistan, I don’t want to get into a position where we would say, post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, ‘we couldn’t do another Kosovo’.”
“It’s important to make that argument. I’m not trying to nudge things in favour of another military intervention anywhere but you shouldn’t let the residual real anger that there is about the Iraq war defeat the pride that we have in what we did in Kosovo.”
“How do you stop one-and-a-half unpopular wars – with Iraq certainly being unpopular and Afghanistan at least partly there – creating an unpopular concept? The unpopular concept is that you have a responsibility beyond your own borders.”
“We sat and watched what happened in Rwanda as an international community. Everyone said ‘never again’ after the previous genocide. How do you prevent people’s genuine fury about Iraq stopping us from ever exercising force in the future without appearing like the ‘more war’ party. I don’t want to let the anger about Iraq trump the shame of Rwanda.”
He could just as easily have spoken about Sierra Leone as about the stopping of the Kosovo genocide, another case where Tony Blair used military force to secure a humanitarian objective, ending the slaughter by the rebel RUF forces.
Of course, I take the perhaps unfashionable view that we shouldn’t be apologetic about the UK’s role in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, or in deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, I can see there is a middle ground on the left of those who opposed Iraq but need to be persuaded not to jump from this to a blanket rejection of interventionism that would rule out a future Sierra Leone or Kosovo-type operation. I welcome Jim’s effort to try to persuade those people not to reject the use of force outright.
This morning I asked people on Twitter what they thought I should write about today. The first reply flew back from Jeremy Corbyn MP, who I had not realised was hanging on my every tweet. He asked me to write about “a foreign policy [based on] human rights and international law not arms sales and intervention”.
Being an ideological rather than cynical sort I actually share Jeremy’s concern for a “a foreign policy [based on] human rights and international law” but would probably delete the word “not” and insert the word “and” so it reads “a foreign policy [based on] human rights and international law [with the first trumping the second as a criteria] and arms sales [to carefully judged countries] and intervention”.
Here’s why:
• Without intervention, how do you ultimately guarantee human rights and international law? Moral persuasion and pressure and demonstrations outside embassies will take you only so far, and with the worst dictators only the timely arrival of warships, military aircraft and troops – or the threat of it – will stop them killing or torturing their own people.
• What happens when international law stops you from taking action to safeguard human rights? For instance when a human rights abusing country like China uses its veto on the UN Security Council to block intervention in another authoritarian country.
• Does Jeremy want us to stop selling arms to everyone? We can all agree with the current UK export control criteria that military equipment can’t be sold to countries where the UK Government believes there is a risk it will be used for “internal repression or external aggression”. But don’t democracies have a right to buy kit to defend themselves? Don’t less-unpleasant regimes have a right to defend themselves against bigger heavily armed neighbours? This is why we and other Western nations have sold arms to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia etc. These may be despotic regimes (and I’d like them to be overthrown and replaced by democracies, or better still transition peacefully to democracy) but compared to some of their neighbours they look angelic, and they have a right under international law to defend themselves against threats from Iraq (in the past) and Iran (now)- which they can’t do without equipment. Sometimes the UK gets it wrong and we sell kit that does end up being used for “internal repression” but there are types of defence equipment like minesweeping boats, submarines or air defence systems and missiles that have no possible internal or offensive use, and are for territorial defence against aggressors, but that Jeremy would subject to a blanket ban (the net result of which would be they would be bought from China, France or Russia instead).
There’s also moral grey areas that Jeremy’s simple formula can’t deal with (in fairness he was trying to summarise his position in a 140 character Tweet!).
There’s no universal consensus on who the heroes and villains are in global geopolitics. Jeremy is a big fan of Cuba and Venezuela. I’m not. I’d like to see the human-rights abusing regimes in both countries ousted. I’m not sure where his support for them sits with his apparently absolute position on human rights.
And sometimes you have to engage with unpleasant regimes to try to get them to reform, to detach them from alliances with even more unpleasant regimes, or to get them to behave in a less threatening way.
Which brings us to the current slaughter in Libya.
I believe Tony Blair was right to engage with Gaddafi in the mid-part of the last decade. There was no prospect then of regime change in Libya. Engagement ended Gaddafi’s WMD aspirations. Thankfully it means the current bloodbath is not being exacerbated by the use of chemical weapons against his own people as Saddam did at Halabja against the Kurds. If the West had not engaged with Gaddafi he would probably have those weapons and be mad enough to use them. It is odd that some of the same people criticising Blair and Bush for finding a peaceful way to get Gaddafi to give up on developing WMD opposed the alternative method used to tackle the same perceived problem in Iraq. Presumably they think we should neither engage nor intervene, but just moralise and hope for the best.
And as for now, with regime change possible and perhaps even imminent, and Gaddafi appearing to be intent on causing the maximum loss of innocent life during the process, I think there is a case for an early return to the liberal interventionism that characterised Blair’s premiership.
The person who has been boldest on this is former SDP Leader and Labour Foreign Secretary Lord Owen (I know that’s an argument against it for many Labour people but let’s address his proposal, not the history of the man making it). On Radio 4 he has called for a UN-sanctioned no fly zone to stop by force Gaddafi’s ground attack aircraft and helicopters gunships from bombing and strafing his own people. There are plenty of NATO bases within flying distance to make this work. If the UN Security Council can’t do it because of a Chinese or Russian veto, NATO should instead.
This is a moral imperative. We have the power to save lives so we should use it. We have the power to hasten regime change from despotism where there is popular demand for it and where it is a real possibility. And it is a geo-political game-changer which would transform the West’s reputation in the Arab world from the invaders of Iraq, to the humanitarian defenders of the Libyan people.
I hope that Labour will now make the running on calling for this, not leave it to Lord Owen. The alternative to intervention is warm words and treating the bloody transition to freedom in Libya as a spectator sport – and ultimately more dead civilians. The time for “another Kosovo” that Jim Murphy talked about is already here, now.
So Luke Akehurst, indulging his conscience ( a far better one than those we humble Little Englanders rely on) is desperate to take exhausted and over-extended British squaddies away from defending us and their families and recreate the British Empire under an Americo-UN or NATO aegis. The real danger for him is that the Libyan people, like the Egyptian, Tunisian, and hopefully others, might evade his imperial sway. The lesson of Rwanda is that Romeo Dallaire in disarming Tutsi people permitted the avengers of murdered Juvenal Habyarimanana a free run; now of course British client Paul Kagame holds no GENERAL elections (Hutus have to grovel even to be considered for a vote) and conducts genocide having occupied much of eastern Congo. In Kosovo genocide, as distinct from civil war, started with NATO bombing of Kosovar refugees under the fraudulent plea of the Racak “massacre” – of heavily armed Kosovar-Albanian guerrillas – a ‘massacre’ invented by General William Walker, and disproved by Helena Ranta’s and other inquiries (see http://www.tnec.net). Serbs, Roma, Jews, even Egyptians have been massacred in or expelled from all of ‘Kosovo’ outside the Mitrovica enclave. Now even Carla del Ponte gives support to the condemnation dreadful murders committed in pursuit of organ transplants by the criminal Hashim Thaci regime (see Dick Marty’s report, and Nebojsa Malic’s web columns). Presumably the ongoing strife and repression of women in post-invasion Iraq, as well as the horrors of today’s Rwanda, eastern Congo and Kosovo are examples of Luke Akehurst’s liberalism. Blairite invasions made these disasters the responsibility of the war faction that turned 2002 Conference into a warmongering rally – yet these shameless warmongers prattle about ‘drawing the line’ – not even a mention of the Curveball revelations. If anything will help Qaddafi, who carefully gave his speech in the ruins of the house where Reagan murdered his daughter in 1986, it is the news that the AngloAmerican imperialists are coming back. If Luke wants to contribute personally, his excellent connections with the arms trade should assist him in organizing a volunteer International Brigade who might combat Qaddafi’s Chadian mercenaries and assist the Libyan people without threatening their right to self-determination …
“Of course, I take the perhaps unfashionable view that we shouldn’t be apologetic about the UK’s role in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, or in deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan.” Over 100,000 people died as a direct result of the military intervention in Iraq, many more indirectly and millions were displaced. In Afghanistan, NATO forces support a kleptocratic regime and seem happy to support local war lords with views just as extreme as the Taliban. You list a few examples of weapons that cannot be used for internal suppression, but most of the arms sold by the UK to middle eastern dictatorships certainly can be used for internal suppression, it just wasn’t thought likely. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall was a complete surprise to western intelligence agencies, there was thought no prospect of democratic revolutions sweeping the middle east and so no need for any internal suppression. With its ‘judicial’ amputations and beheadings, I find it difficult to bracket Saudi Arabia as a “less unpleasant regime”, yet it is one of Britain’s largest customers for arms. Surely we must avoid selling arms to all dictatorships if we wish to take a moral stand. Of course we must engage with unpleasant regimes, but this cannot require us selling them arms. There is a case for interventions on humanitarian grounds, but these interventions must not involve starting wars. As the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials said: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
“Of course, I take the perhaps unfashionable view that we shouldn’t be apologetic about the UK’s role in liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, or in deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan.” Over 100,000 people died as a direct result of the military intervention in Iraq, many more indirectly and millions were displaced. In Afghanistan, NATO forces support a kleptocratic regime and seem happy to support local war lords with views just as extreme as the Taliban. You list a few examples of weapons that cannot be used for internal suppression, but most of the arms sold by the UK to middle eastern dictatorships certainly can be used for internal suppression, it just wasn’t thought likely. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall was a complete surprise to western intelligence agencies, there was thought no prospect of democratic revolutions sweeping the middle east and so no need for any internal suppression. With its ‘judicial’ amputations and beheadings, I find it difficult to bracket Saudi Arabia as a “less unpleasant regime”, yet it is one of Britain’s largest customers for arms. Surely we must avoid selling arms to all dictatorships if we wish to take a moral stand. Of course we must engage with unpleasant regimes, but this cannot require us selling them arms. There is a case for interventions on humanitarian grounds, but these interventions must not involve starting wars. As the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials said: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
How many states would you propose we intervene in right now Luke? How would you propose we square the circle of upholding universal rights whilst ignoring the veto of China or other countries on the Security Council of the UN – the only truly global body that we have? Why do you think that our intervention in Iraq was so disastrous for the country, whilst Egypt’s internal revolt – which Britain and America did nothing to support (quite the opposite) has been successful?
Liberal interventionism is a moral imperative and fundamental to a truly progressive political agenda – collective security cannot be achieved through the application of partiality. My rights are only protected when your rights are protected too – only collective human rights realisation makes sense and the application of limited force is sometimes the only option left available to ensure human security and protection from tyranny. Intervention in Kosovo stopped human suffering – liberal interventionism worked. Moving through the Kucanik Defile on 12 June 1999, onto Pristina and up to the Northern border in the first few days it was evident that intervention was the only effective means to stop a humanitarian crisis and widespread suffering. It should not be forgotten that it was under a Labour government that such bold and brave decisions were taken.
Another war?…and is the result in Kosovo and advert for Liberal interventionism?
What I’m slightly worried about is the implication that the only way we can defend human rights in another country is by military intervention – as you say, Luke, there are lots of grey areas and it isn’t necessarily an either-or situation. One way to promote human rights in countries currently abusing them is, for example, to make agreements with them that offer carrots and sticks depending on their human rights records. However, successive Trade Ministers, Labour and Conservative (and now, as he’s BIS Secretary, Lib Dem Vince Cable as well) have refused to include respect for human and environmental standards in trade agreements because we would be “imposing our values on others”, even if these values, such as core labour standards, have been agreed by international bodies like the ILO. Surely promoting the development of civil society, abolishing slavery, ensuring equal rights at work and so on are a better way of dealing with repressive regimes than bombing them back into the stone age?
Luke – it sounds like you are in favour of gun boat diplomacy! It’s not intervention that’s the problem, it’s the fact that we must do it in coordination with the international organisations which work for democratic change. Otherwise we have no legitimacy and probably no long term and sustainable strategy – and that was the problem with Iraq. Right now we just look like a bunch of self interested second rate arms salesmen trying to take advantage of volatile situations. Kosovo was a right move because it was undertaken after full consultation with and the full support of the UN and with a long term commitment to support the country on its journey back to peace.
No one man should ever again be able to go to war, Bl;air ended that over Iraq, and sadly many a person might now suffer because of Blair lies basically. Of course the Tories will end the UK ability to find with only a defense force.
Keep your imperialist nose out. The workers will sort this without you stepping in to defend the interests of international capitalist investment.
The view that we liberated Iraq is not, as Cllr Akehurst says ‘unfashionable’, (a word chosen no doubt for the effect it has of making light of the fact that a very large proportion of the population does not agree with him) but downright wrong. The deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians can hardly be termed ‘liberation’. To argue in favour of selling arms to ‘carefully judged countries’, not only on the grounds that they are needed for self-defence, but also on the grounds that ‘if we don’t someone else will’, is morally bankrupt. And yet again, Cllr Akehurst lashes out with unsubstantiated claims about Cuba and Venezuela being countries which abuse human rights; two countries which have brought universal free health and education to millions, and where there is absolutely zero evidence of either government turning their weapons against their people. If he really does believe that ‘at times you have to engage with unpleasant regimes’ then why does he continue to join in with the demonising and isolating policy of the US neo-liberal right towards these two countries, even if he judges them as ‘unpleasant’ as Saudi Arabia or Libya? Cllr Akehurst argues for a no-fly zone over Libya which, in the space of one sentence, escalated into a call for NATO to intervene in the event that the UN won’t do his bidding. It is not surprising that someone who is clearly not perturbed by illegal military intervention predicated on a blatant lie about WMD, does not consider that inviting the US to take the lead on military intervention might well be playing into the hands of oil companies chaffing at the bit to get a far bigger slice of Libyan oil than they do at present. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this piece is Cllr Akehurst’s naked opportunism. He hopes that ‘Labour will now make the running on calling for this, not leave it to Lord Owen’. If he truly believes that intervention is the right thing, does it matter who suggested it first? He says that ‘the alternative to intervention is warm words and treating the bloody transition to freedom in Libya as a spectator sport – and ultimately more dead civilians’. He has obviously forgotten how the invasion of Iraq was exactly that, a spectator sport courtesy of embedded journalists, and that there were alternatives to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians other than ‘warm words’.
The view that we liberated Iraq is not, as Cllr Akehurst says ‘unfashionable’, (a word chosen no doubt for the effect it has of making light of the fact that a very large proportion of the population does not agree with him) but downright wrong. The deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians can hardly be termed ‘liberation’. To argue in favour of selling arms to ‘carefully judged countries’, not only on the grounds that they are needed for self-defence, but also on the grounds that ‘if we don’t someone else will’, is morally bankrupt. And yet again, Cllr Akehurst lashes out with unsubstantiated claims about Cuba and Venezuela being countries which abuse human rights; two countries which have brought universal free health and education to millions, and where there is absolutely zero evidence of either government turning their weapons against their people. If he really does believe that ‘at times you have to engage with unpleasant regimes’ then why does he continue to join in with the demonising and isolating policy of the US neo-liberal right towards these two countries, even if he judges them as ‘unpleasant’ as Saudi Arabia or Libya? Cllr Akehurst argues for a no-fly zone over Libya which, in the space of one sentence, escalated into a call for NATO to intervene in the event that the UN won’t do his bidding. It is not surprising that someone who is clearly not perturbed by illegal military intervention predicated on a blatant lie about WMD, does not consider that inviting the US to take the lead on military intervention might well be playing into the hands of oil companies chaffing at the bit to get a far bigger slice of Libyan oil than they do at present. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this piece is Cllr Akehurst’s naked opportunism. He hopes that ‘Labour will now make the running on calling for this, not leave it to Lord Owen’. If he truly believes that intervention is the right thing, does it matter who suggested it first? He says that ‘the alternative to intervention is warm words and treating the bloody transition to freedom in Libya as a spectator sport – and ultimately more dead civilians’. He has obviously forgotten how the invasion of Iraq was exactly that, a spectator sport courtesy of embedded journalists, and that there were alternatives to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians other than ‘warm words’.
but you surely cannot compare Egypt with Iraq it is more secular if you like and not tribal ? factions which could have split Iraq with the Shia joining forces with Iran.Saddam,an evil despot who had people’s tongues cut out had to be stopped,a civil war would have killed more people? “The workers will sort this out ” seems a ridiculous statement when so any have no work ? Afghanistan where terrorists from Pakistan whose objectives were/are to strike at the west hide out, what were we to do about that? and the idea of clearing the way for delivery of oil from Turkmenistan via pipeline that would then not be attacked as say in Nigeria ? I am not as knowledgeable as you other commentators on these matters ,a simple member ,so don’t go bonkers ,but this is how many ordinary voters think.
and,sorry,but I have said before I wondered if we were committed to ally with America because financial war debt(WW 2) had not been cleared and I imagine there would have been a treaty to ally connected to that .T.B.made last payment in 97 I think ? also the Americans were going to Iraq) with ‘kill em all ‘ written on their helmets,revenge for 9/11,so he thought British /other forces might temper that? Yes I know the situation is appalling in Iraq now, but understand very little of such a complicated situation.
Kosovo is such a success!!!! How many of these failed states do we need, Luke?!?! http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2011/02/17/children-of-lies/
Luke has sparked some lively debate with his words. When I see a vicious dictator murdering his own people with such abandon I believe we have a duty to intervene, not walk on by. A united nations resolution would be best but innocent civilians die while talks drag. I say uk and united states crack on, start saving lives now with a no fly zone and send a message to gaddafi and all such dictators that genocide will not be tolerated.
I’m afraid I think this post is utterly misconceived. It ignores what really happened when NATO attacked Yugoslavia in an operation that was illegal, unnecessary, unjustified, incompetent, 100 per cent unsuccessful in achieving a single one of its objectives either real or proclaimed, and sold on a shamefully false prospectus. IOW, it had almost everything in common with the Iraq catastrophe four years later. If still in doubt, please see http://www.barder.com/3125. A worse model for an enlightened and honourable Labour defence policy it would be difficult to imagine. Iraq? Suez? Not many others! Brian http://www.barder.com/ephems/
Labour lost the public argument for the war in Iraq because they failed (miserably) to present the case “for” in any effective way. Admittedly, all the media (and Jeremy Corbyn) rallied against Blair (and subsequently, Brown) but neither government mounted a vigorous enough defence. Like a number of Labour policies PR was weak and ineffectual. As for ‘liberal interventionism’ in Libya, or other Middle East countries in the near future, I do not believe that Cameron’s ‘no-fly zone’ stands a cat-in-hells chance of either being implemented or (if implemented) effective. Further, this Cameron sabre-rattling threat was a perfect opportunity for EM to attack his foreign policy credentials – but he chose, instead, to support them!!! PS The subject of military intervention seems to bring out the most ill-informed and ignorant of views and opinions from contributors. It is as if many of them have stuck fingers in their ears, their head in the sand and turned into irrational emotionally crippled zombies destined to ignore history.
difficult to do PR one would think when dealing with covert intelligence.