Domestic Challenges to Blair's Iraq Policy

Despite British Prime Minister Tony Blair's unequivocal position on the threat that Iraq poses to the region, the West, and the world generally, he faces significant opposition at home and in Europe. That opposition is likely to wane once the inevitable war begins, and many of those now vociferously objecting to an effort to force Iraq to comply with U.N. mandates regarding weapons of mass destruction and regional security will seek to participate in Iraq's reconstruction after the war ends.

Faced with such opposition, it is important for U.S. policymakers to understand the monumental leadership Blair is showing on this issue.

Labour Party Opposition. Dissent within the Labour Party over Iraq has grown significantly in recent months. Among the 160 backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) who signed a Commons motion opposing military action in Iraq are 133 from Blair's own Labour Party, all 18 Liberal Democrats, and all nationalist party MPs from Scotland and Wales.8 The motion was sponsored by left-wing activist MP Alice Mahon, who is unstinting in her condemnation of U.S. policy. For example, she responded to reports of the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review by exclaiming that "lunatics have taken over the White House."9

A BBC poll of 100 Labour MPs found that nearly 90 percent believe there is insufficient evidence to justify military action against Iraq.10A survey of Labour constituency chairmen in the party's 100 most vulnerable parliamentary seats found that an overwhelming majority opposed such a war.11

The Labour leadership is braced for a storm of protest over the Iraq question at next month's party conference.12 Some Labour MPs warn the issue could deeply divide the party and even result in Tony Blair being forced to step down as Labour leader. Tony Benn, a veteran socialist MP, advised Blair to warn President Bush "that he should abandon his war plans or America will be totally isolated." A war with Iraq, Benn continued, "could cost Tony Blair his job, undermine public support for the government as a whole, inflict untold suffering on millions--and must be stopped."13 Tam Dalyell, the longest-serving member of the Commons, has condemned Blair's foreign policy as "catastrophic" and described him as "the worst Labour prime minister I've known."14

A deep-seated hatred of the current Bush Administration is evident in some quarters of the Labour Party, and the United States should be under no illusions that the party led by Tony Blair shares his pro-American stance. Labour traditionally has been a socialist movement that is hostile to many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, and there is growing resentment over U.S. policy on a wide range of issues, from the International Criminal Court and the Arab-Israeli conflict to the war on terrorism, missile defense, climate change, transatlantic trade, and the death penalty.

The Labour Party includes such extreme figures as Scottish MP George Galloway, senior vice-chairman of the parliamentary party's foreign affairs committee who holds one of the most prominent Labour foreign policy positions in the Commons. Dubbed by cynics as the "MP for Baghdad Central"15 and an "apologist" and "mouthpiece for the Iraqi regime over many years,"16 Galloway has visited Saddam Hussein on numerous occasions. On one such trip in 1994, he caused outrage by telling the Iraqi dictator, who has used chemical weapons on his own people: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability and I want you to know that we are with you."17

Galloway has called the campaign to eliminate Baghdad's WMD "the longest running hoax in the international community"18 and complained that "it is humiliating for Great Britain to turn itself into the tail of the American dog, particularly when the head of this dog belongs to a crazy person."19 This past August, on his return from his latest meeting with Saddam, Galloway asserted:

In my meeting with the Iraqi president last week, he seemed to believe that our own government, with its special relationship to Washington and its more nuanced take on Arab affairs, might be the one to break the log jam. Seeing Britain as Greece to America's Rome, many Arabs feel that Britain--the older though faded power--might guide the gunslinging Americans back to the negotiating path and adherence to UN resolutions and international law.20

Galloway believes the Iraq issue will divide the party and could lead to the defeat of the Blair leadership.21 In a thinly veiled threat to the Prime Minister, he warned, "If he joins this absolutely illegal, immoral and counterproductive war, not only will he not be doing so in our name: he may find he will soon cease to speak for us on anything at all."22

Some of the fiercest criticism of the government's support for the United States has come from former Labour ministers. Former Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd described recent remarks by U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to the BBC as "very much like the rhetoric we sometimes hear from fairly tinpot regimes...where the agenda isn't to convince the outside world but to make sure the public at home believes the regime."23 Gerald Kaufman, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary during the first Gulf War and an influential figure on the backbenches, has warned that an attack on Iraq could result in "a wholesale Middle East conflagration." His views on the Bush Administration are scathing: "Pity the man who relies on Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for counsel."24

Tony Blair may dismiss such statements as old-fashioned anti-American Labour rabble-rousing--indeed, as a former member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, he will have heard it all before--but he will find it harder to ignore the doubts expressed by figures such as Peter Mandelson, who twice resigned in disgrace from the Labour Cabinet. Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, is one of Blair's most trusted advisers. He has said that "we cannot have a system in which one state feels that it has the right to change the political system of another or foment subversion or seize pieces of territory it claims. Any nation doing that would be a recipe for chaos."25

Cabinet Opposition. There are also signs of a growing rift within Tony Blair's Cabinet over the Iraq issue. Former foreign secretary and Leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook has emerged as a leading opponent of an Iraq war. Cook, the architect of New Labour's "ethical foreign policy," was sacked by Blair after a series of diplomatic blunders, and there is little love lost between the two. He has been described as "a new and undeniably dangerous spokesman of old (moral) Labour."26 Cook is said to have deep reservations about Blair's support for President Bush, although he has not yet issued any public statements criticizing the government's position.

If Cook does speak out against military action, he is likely to be supported by International Development Secretary Clare Short, who resigned from the Labour Shadow Cabinet over the first Gulf War in 1991. Short is the most outspoken and left-wing member of the Blair team and has already warned that there is a "bottom line" to her support for future government policy on Iraq. She was admonished by Blair in April for publicly warning against "blind military action against Iraq."27 While no Labour minister in a Blair Cabinet has yet resigned on a matter of principle, it is conceivable that Short could step down over an Iraq invasion.

In contrast to Downing Street, Short believes the question of how to tackle Saddam is "still open." The position of Short and other critics in the Cabinet has been strengthened in recent weeks by what Short describes as "a lot of wise voices in the US (who) are saying it would be enormously dangerous for the US to go it alone."28 There is little doubt that the anti-war statements of such former U.S. government officials as James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Lawrence Eagleburger have embol-dened British and European critics of President Bush's policy of regime change.

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett also has publicly expressed doubts over the Prime Minister's support for the U.S. position on Iraq, tying "conflict in the world" with poverty and environmental degradation.29 Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown--who is most likely to take over if Blair is forced out of office--has privately expressed reservations about the effects an Iraq conflict would have on the global economy.30 Home Secretary David Blunkett, another leading contender for the future leadership of the Labour Party, has warned that Muslim youths may riot in British inner cities if war breaks out in the Middle East.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has been critical in the past of several aspects of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, including the President's State of the Union address and U.S. treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. He has been a leading advocate of "constructive engagement" of rogue states, such as Iran. While Straw has stood by Tony Blair's hard-line stance on dealing with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he still firmly believes that the best way to deal with the Iraqi threat is through the reintroduction of weapons inspectors.

Straw's belief that war can be avoided31 is different from Blair's. The Prime Minister has called for the unconditional return of U.N. inspectors but holds the view that a regime change will probably still be necessary.

Standing Alone in Support. Only Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has emerged as a strong supporter of the United States' (and Blair's) tough position on Iraq and rogue states. Hoon, by far the most hawkish member of the Blair team, has stated that Britain would be prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary against rogue nations that use WMD against British troops.32 Hoon believes that Britain would be "perfectly entitled" to use force against Iraq without a United Nations mandate if Baghdad posed a threat.33

The Risks for Blair. The real danger for Tony Blair lies in the possibility of a major Cabinet uprising combined with widespread Labour backbench opposition. The resignation of two or three Cabinet ministers, in conjunction with a sizeable backbench rebellion, could prompt calls for a "regime change" within the Labour Party.

At present, this scenario is unlikely. There are no immediate signs of a major Cabinet revolt. However Blair's own position may become substantially weaker in the coming months as the Prime Minister comes under increasing pressure from his own MPs, Labour Party activists, trade unions, and left-wing media to distance himself from President Bush. If the tide swings heavily against the government in the parliamentary Labour Party, this is likely to spur greater open opposition within the Cabinet.

Critics of War

An extraordinary coalition of Labour politicians, church representatives, trade union leaders, academics, former diplomats, and ex-military chiefs has evolved in recent weeks, making Iraq the biggest foreign policy protest issue in Britain since the late 1960s.

Many of the attacks on British and U.S. policy toward Iraq reflect deep-seated anti-Americanism and resentment at rising U.S. military power since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The frank views of Richard Dawkins, an eminent Oxford University zoologist, are representative of those of many British liberal academic elites. Dawkins has spoken out against removing Saddam Hussein from power and has made provocatively clear his disdain of the Prime Minister's close ties to President Bush:

Obnoxious as Saddam Hussein undoubtedly is, it is not obvious that he is more of a danger to the world than President Bush and his reckless handlers. It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair, a good man who has so much to offer this country, were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil spiv.34

The British clergy is also voicing strong anti-war concerns. Britain's two most senior churchmen--Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster--have led a cacophony of sanctimonious disapproval of Blair's close alliance with President Bush over Iraq. The Right Reverend Thomas McMahon, one of four Catholic bishops publicly opposed to the war, called action against Iraq "wicked and foolhardy."35

Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales, who is due to take over as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, has declared that an Iraq war would be tantamount to fighting "terror with terror" and a "violation of both the United Nations and Christian moral teaching."36 Williams has argued that the attacks of September 11 cannot be viewed as "an act of war."37

The anti-war Left has joined a curious alliance with senior former military officials and retired generals opposed to war. The specter of Suez and Britain's ill-fated intervention in the Middle East in the1950s once again haunts the opinion editorial pages of British newspapers. Sir Michael Quinlan, former head of the Ministry of Defence, for example, finds American claims of a "just war" against Iraq "deeply questionable," and says that a war with Iraq "could provoke more severe domestic division than Britain has seen since the Suez Crisis."38

Field Marshall Lord Bramall, former chief of defence staff, also drew parallels with the ill-fated British and French attack on Egypt in 1956, describing the current build-up to war as "a potentially very dangerous situation, in which this country might be swept into a very, very messy and long-lasting Middle East War." He questions America's motives, believing that in the aftermath of September 11 it could be "carried along with the same wave of emotion and a feeling of revenge."39 General Sir Michael Rose, former commander of international peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, fueled the debate by writing about "huge political and military risks associated with launching large-scale ground forces into Iraq."40

Conclusion

Britain is highly likely to join the United States in military action against Iraq, even perhaps without the support of the United Nations, and is expected to play a central role in a post-war security force. Its participation also is vitally important in helping America build an international military and diplomatic coalition to remove Saddam Hussein from power. If Britain does not participate in the regime change in Baghdad, there is a danger that the United States could well be left in splendid isolation on the international stage.

Ideally, both the London and Washington would like to see a "regime change" in Iraq with the blessing of the U.N. Security Council, but this may not be achievable. The British are under no illusions about the prevarication strategy of the Iraqi government, and they fully understand that Saddam Hussein's time-delaying tactics are a desperate attempt to halt a U.S.-led strike.

While the British Prime Minister is currently backing President Bush's stance on Iraq, that situation could change in the coming months. At present, Blair's position is strong enough to withstand Labour calls for Britain to drop plans to join America in a war against Iraq. His relatively powerful standing as both Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party could be eroded over the next six to 12 months by potential leadership challenges and by growing discontent on the Left of the party.

Blair should be able to win the battle of public opinion over the Iraq issue, but he may struggle to convince his own party. He will go into a war against Iraq only from a position of strength and if he believes his future is secure. The Bush Administration should be aware that Blair will come under increasing pressure to play a more forthright role in helping to resolve the current Palestinian conflict as well, and his appetite for action against Saddam could start to wane if Britain becomes enmeshed in international efforts to contain the Arab-Israeli dispute.

There are many reasons why the United States should act sooner rather than later if Iraq fails to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and abide by U.N. resolutions. Among them are the strong support from the British government for a U.S.-led action against Saddam and the political pressures on Blair to step back from that support. The Bush Administration must recognize the difficulties Blair faces in shoring up support domestically and across Europe and demonstrate its support for his courageous leadership. It should also focus on ways to strengthen the Anglo-U.S. "special relationship" while building an international coalition for a campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

--Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is a Visiting Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation.