After 10 years of service as head of the Labour Party and the prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair left office yesterday. He leaves behind a mixed legacy. His unyielding support for Turkey’s EU membership has been crucial for improving relations between Turkey and the UK. But Mr. Blair has also been a staunch ally of the Bush doctrine. How will history remember him?
In a rare show of political maturity, Mr. Blair gave a candid account of his 10 years in office in an essay published in The Economist (”What I have learned,” June 2, 2007). The tone of his essay and the areas it covers are reflective of Blair’s stellar rise and spectacular fall in politics. Ten years ago, Tony Blair was the young face of England and arguably the most dynamic and competent leader of Europe. His quest and support for the Third Way, a major social initiative and intellectual movement to revamp old politics in Europe, had made him the most promising leader of the future. Ten years later, Mr. Blair is a worn-out politician and hardly the hope of his generation.
No one would have predicted that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath would cost Tony Blair his political life. As he himself admits, foreign policy has been the main reason for his gradual fall. As the champion of the Third Way and an ardent supporter of the European Union, Blair was not ready for a wild ride in international affairs: “Ten years ago, if you had told me I would spend a significant part of my premiership on foreign policy, I would have been surprised, a little shocked and probably, politically, somewhat alarmed.”
Being acutely aware of the pervasive nature of globalization, Blair offers to embrace rather than reject it. To quote him again, “What happens today in Pakistan matters on the streets of Britain.” This global consciousness is part and parcel of Blair’s EU vision as well as his unflinching support for the war on terror. This is where things get murky and the great champion of the Third Way turns into a mere spokesperson for the Bush doctrine.
Blair’s position on the alleged weapons of mass destruction, which were never found, and the invasion of Iraq, which was never fully justified, was the beginning of the end. Now he is seen as responsible for the carnage in Iraq as his ally George W. Bush. The transatlantic alliance between UK and the US, which would have played a vital role in international peace and security, has never been despised as much as since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Sadly, Blair will be remembered as one of the two architects of the bloodiest invasion and destruction of a Middle Eastern country in recent memory. We shall see if his intention to devote a good part of his time and political capital to the Palestinian issue will change that perception.
It seems Mr. Blair is not troubled by the fact that embracing the doctrine of “global war on terror,” a neocon invention to conveniently to start a global war without global terror, has been the deadliest mistake of his political career. This war has not brought more security to either Muslim or Western countries. Given the number of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq alone over the last four years, it has killed more people than any terrorist would have imagined. The global war on terror itself has become a source of terror.
What was lost in all of this was the promise of the Third Way. Formulated by such prominent thinkers as Anthony Giddens and advocated by Bill Clinton in the US and Gerhard Schroder in Germany, the Third Way is more a philosophy of governance than a political program. Its promise is to secure a middle path, sometimes called the “radical middle,” between the traditional excesses of the right and the left. It defends social policies against the economic individualism and laissez-faire approach of the old right and a competitive and free market against the largely interventionist and protective stance of the old lef
