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Chilcot’s tough lesson

The Iraq Inquiry's report is a portrait of a country with only one ally left
July 8, 2016
Read more: Blair—the reckoning

There was a time in 10 Downing Street when it was believed that duplicity, deceit and military folly could all be covered up by throwing the evidence into the fireplace. The secret agreement signed in the Paris suburb of Sèvres in 1956 between Britain, France and Israel, that laid the plans for an invasion of Egypt which would allow Britain to regain control of the Suez Canal, was ordered to be destroyed by Prime Minister Anthony Eden. The document was seen as a “smoking gun” that would have exposed the lie Eden told in the House of Commons that he had “no foreknowledge” of Israel’s plans to invade the canal zone.

The 12 volumes of the Chilcot report on the Iraq war would have generated substantial heat if they had been tossed into a Whitehall furnace. But like Eden, who naively ordered the Sèvres Protocol to be burned by his cabinet secretary, Norman Brook, the individuals scrutinised in the mannered hit-job delivered by Chilcot will need far more than a bonfire to cleanse their damaged reputations.

The fallout affects not just individuals such as Tony Blair or those close to him. Britian’s international reputation will also suffer as a result—just as it did after Suez. One could feel a similar sense of national reckoning as Chilcot delivered his analysis.

The referendum result only makes matters worse. Just as Suez left Britain cut off from its European allies, Brexit will do the same. Europe will now develop an identity that does not include Britain. The UK’s foreign policy and security are now no longer as closely tied to Brussels as they have been. We may, again, need to explore just how special the “special relationship” with the United States can become because there may be no alternative if Britain is to move forward in this deeply uncertain time.

Chilcot found that Britain had justified advanced plans for an invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq through the deployment of suspect intelligence. He confirmed that Iraq posed no immediate security threat and that all avenues that could have led to a peaceful solution were not fully explored. Critically, there was a woeful lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq.

The case for war was exaggerated and the Commons was misled, certainly about the threat from a potential enemy. The similarities between Suez and Iraq are plain.

It is not always advisable, as Edmund Burke claimed, to plan the future with a serious evaluation of the past, but it’s unwise to ignore the big-picture lessons of relatively recent screw-ups. If Suez was a low water-mark, a humiliating end to Britain’s imperial ambitions, then what does Iraq represent?

On the surface Eden and Blair couldn’t be more different. Yet further inspection closes the gap. Eden was politically motivated by the mistakes of 1930s appeasement and saw the Suez crisis—Nasser’s seizure and nationalisation of the canal—as an aggression against a foreign-owned asset that was critical to Britain’s eastern trade routes. Eden’s view of Nasser was rooted in pre-war European politics—for the British prime minister, Suez was “Munich on the Nile,” and faced with provocation that he’d seen before, Eden’s instinct was for war.

Eden’s early game-plan, similar to Blair’s, was to talk up the extent of the threat, and proclaim that Britain’s protective intervention was therefore necessary. Cabinet documents show that those around Eden proposed different solutions, but that Eden believed only he understood how this crisis could be defused.

The role of the US during the 1956 Suez Crisis and in 2003 over Iraq has unsettling implications for UK foreign policy. Regime change was the objective for both Eden and Blair. George W Bush found a partner in Blair, who, spurred on by the open wounds of 9/11, was willing to adopt US foreign policy on a “with you, whatever” basis. Blair thought he could force the US to go down the United Nations route, securing an international consensus there before invasion. He was wrong.

Where Blair accommodatingly hitched himself and the country to Washington’s wagon, Eden misread the post-war position and authority of President Dwight Eisenhower. The US wanted no part in any conflict in Egypt and saw Eden engaging in an imperial last hurrah, just as the US’s strategic focus was shifting towards the demands of the Cold War.

When Eden ordered troops into the Sinai without so much as a warning telegram to Eisenhower’s White House, the US reaction was swift and brutal. Eisenhower ordered the International Monetary Fund to pull the plug on the UK’s emergency funding, and Eden had little choice but to abandon the invasion.

In their own ways, both Eden and Blair, regardless of their self-belief, embody the same political reality—that British prime ministerial authority is subservient to the masters on the other side of the Atlantic.
"In June, Britain voted to leave the European organisation that helped it to restore much of the international credibility that Eden lost after Suez"
When Eden’s deception over the Sèvres Protocol was leaked, he resigned. Despite the post-war inspections in Iraq finding none of the weapons of mass destruction that Blair assured parliament were there and real and capable of being deployed in 45 minutes, he did not resign. Instead Labour went on to win the 2005 general election. Eden’s humiliation was immediate, while for Blair it has been gradual but equally devastating.

The catastrophe of post-war Iraq, the rise of sectarian violence and the growth of Islamic extremism, the Sunni insurgency, the rise of Islamic State in Iraq, and the influence of jihadist propaganda, are all in their way part of Blair’s legacy. As Chilcot revealed, Blair was warned about the “unintended consequences” of military action, which would “increase the threat from al-Qaeda to the UK and the UK interests.” Eden’s deception and miscalculation, if we are kind, had a limited effect on the world’s order. Iraq is of a different scale.

The Iraq Inquiry report will do little for Britain’s international reputation. John Chilcot sounded almost disappointed in Blair that he had undersold the “special relationship.” He said the US was “strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests and judgments differ.”

There is an irony in the timing of the Iraq report. In June, Britain voted to leave the European organisation that helped it to restore much of the international credibility that Eden lost in the Suez crisis. The UK has no identifiable political leadership, its main political parties are in disarray, its economy is faltering, there is a heightened risk that Scotland will hold a second referendum on independence and Britain’s role in global affairs is fogged in uncertainty.

Bush and Blair’s failure in Iraq seeded a general sense of mistrust in those we elect and a deep sense of misgiving about the use of military force, no matter how strong the case for doing so. The hesitancy that met calls for early military intervention in Syria is a case in point. Suez was the last time Britain acted unilaterally—Iraq may be the last time it ever deploys a conventional military force at all.