Tony Blair offers a blinkered view
In a lengthy essay on the website of the Institute for Global Change that bears his name, Tony Blair sets out a case for continued Western intervention to curb the spread of radical Islam. He suggests this threat is every bit as great as the efforts of the Soviet Union to seed the doctrine of Marxismleninism around the world and needs to be countered in the same way as during the Cold War.
The criticism he levelled at Joe Biden for the “imbecilic” withdrawal from Afghanistan has been interpreted as a denunciation of the incompetent manner of the departure. Donald Trump has described the retreat from Kabul as a greater humiliation than the fall of Saigon. But Mr Blair is not talking about the logistical fiasco we are witnessing as thousands of Afghans who worked with Nato struggle to leave.
The former prime minister, who sent UK troops to joint the action against al-qaeda and the Taliban in 2001, is making a geopolitical point about future Western strategy.
Leaving Afghanistan, whether in an organised way or not, he considers to be “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary and not in their interests or ours.” He asks: “Has the West lost its strategic will? Meaning: is it able to learn from experience, think strategically, define our interests strategically and on that basis commit strategically? Is long-term a concept we are still capable of grasping? Is the nature of our politics now inconsistent with the assertion of our traditional global leadership role? And do we care?”
These are good questions but they come from a former leader who arguably super-charged radical Islam by backing the invasion of Iraq which removed the bulwark against Iran, seen then, as now, as the major threat to regional stability. Where was the long-term strategy then? Mr Blair’s essay mentions Iraq in passing, as a “lesson learnt”, before reprising his well-attested belief in interventionism.
We know this works in some circumstances, as in the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone. But the lesson to be learned from Afghanistan and the Middle East is that Western involvement is resented to the point of outright hostility. How is that in our national interest? Mr Blair says that “non-intervention is also policy with consequence” and he is right. But it would be easier to take his advice on these matters were he to acknowledge that the consequences of the invasion over which he presided were calamitous.