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Justifying Empire: Blair's 'hard' and 'soft' power

by Liz Davies, January 2007

Independent columnist John Rentoul is one of the Prime Minister's last completely uncritical supporters (a rare case of a rat not deserting a sinking ship). He complains that the media misrepresented Blair’s speech to the military on HMS Albion last Friday. He calls the full speech "well-written, thoughtful and ambitious" and urges us to read it. So I did.

Let’s leave aside whether it is well-written and the historical errors ('Ceylon' achieved independence in 1948, not 1947). More concerning, and a clue to the ideological thrust of the speech, is the air-brushing out of history of atrocities by British armed forces. "In the decade after the war [British troops] were deployed in ...Kenya" is his reference to the Mau-Mau rebellion.

Specifically, that ideological thrust is that British armed forces in particular, and colonialism in general, are a force for good. Blair deploys his favourite technique: paint one picture that he claims (wrongly) as uncontroversial and then argue why that won’t be achieved without a much more controversial element. Here, Blair sets out a division between 'hard power' and 'soft power', assuming 'soft power', woollily described as 'peacekeeping', 'aid' and 'action against climate change', is uncontroversial. His case is that 'soft power' is dependent upon 'hard power': "For me, the setting aside of 'hard' power leads inexorably to the weakening of 'soft' power".

Blair’s 'hard power', unsurprisingly, is military intervention. British armed forces should "be warfighters as well as peacekeepers". The cost of 'hard power' is only domestic. Members of the armed forces will die, acknowledges Blair, as he weeps crocodile tears: "On the part of the military, they need to accept that in a volunteer armed force, conflict and therefore casualty may be part of what they are called upon to face". It will cost money. The public feels uneasy about military intervention, particularly in Iraq, and that makes politicians’ lives difficult: "The risk here ... is that the politicians decide it's all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing." 

No mention of 650,000 dead Iraqis, US and UK-run detention centres engaging in torture, more than a million Iraqis having left their homes or that the country has been thrust into violent chaos on an unprecedented scale. No, the problem according to Blair is that the British public doesn’t have the stomach for a lengthy conflict and the military – or their widows - complain when soldiers die. As a result, politicians, instead of pursuing an isolated but principled path of unswerving obedience to US foreign policy, do the cowardly thing and start to respond to the concerns of their electorate.

To back up his case for 'hard power', Blair inevitably discusses terrorism. In an extraordinary passage, he tells us that September 11 was not "the incredible action of an isolated group, a one-off strike masterminded by Osama Bin Laden" (wasn’t the invasion of Afghanistan supposedly to find bin Laden and 'bring him to justice'?). Instead, it was:

"the product rather of a world-wide movement, with an ideology based on a misreading of Islam, whose roots were deep, which had been growing for years and with the ability to mount a radically different type of warfare requiring a radically different type of response. ... It is global.  It has a narrative about the world and Islam's place within it that has a reach into most Muslim societies and countries."

Then why invade Afghanistan and Iraq? Or is Blair intent on invading "most Muslim societies and countries"?

What fuels terrorism? Blair says terrorism has 'deep roots', but fails to identify what might be nurturing those roots. Nowhere is there an acknowledgement that the US and UK’s global roles – supporting Israeli aggression, imposing sanctions against the Iraqi people, pursuing neo-liberal economic policies that make poor countries poorer – might be resented. No, it’s the fault of two groups of people: those who 'misread Islam' (why they might do so is unacknowledged) and those of us who question the US-UK role in Iraq.

The case for 'hard power' is pretty terrifying, but his false counterpoint – 'soft power' – is not exactly uncontroversial. It is rife with colonialist assumptions: that Britain should engage in global military 'peacekeeping', that 'aid' should be tied to recipient countries signing up to the battle for 'hearts and minds'. No mention, of course, of recipient countries also having to sign up to neo-liberal economic policies, but we all know that’s the reality.

Blair’s aim is to seduce liberals, who place faith in these tools of colonialist 'soft power', into biting the bullet and accepting military 'hard power'. But we don’t need 'soft power' to help alleviate world poverty. Britain should simply treat other countries as though it wasn’t a dominant power. Why not just cancel the whole of the debt, without strings attached? Enter into trade agreements that don’t drive Third World farmers into poverty? Take action against multi-national corporations stealing farmers’ right to their seeds by patents? Stop selling arms to repressive regimes? Renounce Britain’s permanent seat at the UN Security Council? Tackle climate change by cutting our own emissions? Get rid of our nuclear weapons?

The point, of course, is that Blair’s speech came within 48 hours of Bush’s announcement of an increase in troops in Iraq. The two sing from the same song-sheet.

Next week, our MPs will have the chance to prove themselves responsive to their electorates, and not to Blair. On Wednesday 24 January, the House of Commons will debate 'Iraq and the Middle East' – an adjournment debate so Blair will cheerfully ignore the result, but still significant. I hope that MPs calling for a withdrawal of troops will use Blair’s words against him: in today’s supine Parliamentary Labour Party, defying Blair by calling for a withdrawal of troops is not, as Blair would characterise it, 'the easy thing'. It’s the kiss of death to hopes of promotion. But it is 'the right thing'.

There are two Early Day Motions, both tabled by John McDonnell MP, calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq: EDM 335 "immediate withdrawal from Iraq" and EDM 573 "planned surge of US troops into Iraq". Not many MPs have yet signed either EDM. Emails, postcards, letters etc asking them to sign would help MPs to remember that they are responsible to their electorates, not to Blair.

Iraq Occupation Focus and Stop the War have also planned events around the adjournment debate. IOF will be holding a meeting at the House of Commons on Tuesday 23 January, 6.30pm with Glen Rangwala, Greg Muttit (Platform), Justin Alexander and Haifa Zangana. Stop the War are planning a lobby of Parliament and an evening demonstration on 24 January.

Liz Davies is the Chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. This article was first published in the Morning Star