Web Of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy

by Mark Curtis

  Britain’s real role in the world is a great betrayal of people in this country. I believe they expect the government to uphold the moral values abroad that most people uphold in their daily lives. This is partly why, as I argue in this book, the public is in reality seen by elites as the great threat to pursuing their priorities.

  In the chapters that follow, I look at some of the major foreign policies of the Blair government: its illegal wars; its support for a ‘war against terrorism’ that is acting as a pretext for a new phase of global intervention and US imperial power; its support for repressive elites and state terrorism; its arms exports that help sustain repressive governments; its aim to reshape the global economy; and its extraordinary new role as recognised international expert on state propaganda (mislabelled ‘spin’).

  I also tell the story of several long-forgotten past British interventions revealed in now declassified documents – in Iran, Malaya, British Guiana and Kenya. These interventions were much more brutal than usually believed and make exceedingly worrying reading – in Kenya alone, 150,000 Africans died as a result of British policy in the 1950s. These interventions reveal a contempt for grand ethical principles that has passed easily from Conservative to Labour and from the colonial era to the present.

  I also sketch an outline of the ideological system that prevents the public from seeing the reality of Britain’s role in the world. This system makes it easier for elites to pursue policies in their interests and against the public interest. It is not a conspiracy; rather, the system works by journalists and academics internalising sets of values, generally accepted wisdom and styles of reporting.

  It means that even big stories can rarely if ever see the light of day. One example is how the British government was complicit in the genocide of Rwanda in 1994 that killed a million people. Another is Britain’s role in the slaughter of a million people in Indonesia in 1965 – a story as much buried as British complicity in Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975. Meanwhile, the people of Diego Garcia, thrown off their islands and the subject of a decades-long Whitehall conspiracy to banish them from history, continue to seek justice in a brave struggle but remain largely unknown to the British public.

  The liberal intelligentsia in Britain is in my view guilty of helping to weave a collective web of deceit. Under New Labour, many commentators have openly taken part in Labour’s onslaught on the world, often showering praise on Tony Blair and his ministers for speaking the language of rights, development and global security as they proceed to demolish such noble virtues in their actual policy. To read many mainstream commentators’ writings on Britain’s role in the world is to enter a surreal, Kafkaesque world where the reality is often the direct opposite of what is contended and where the starting assumptions are frighteningly supportive of state power. My view is that the intelligentsia suffers from the same malady of ‘elitism’ as policy-makers, generally choosing to side with them, often being willingly taken in. The British liberal intelligentsia generally displays its servitude to the powers that be rather than to ordinary people, whether here or abroad.

  The view has long been held that Britain ‘has lost an empire and not yet found a role’, in the famous words of US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, several decades ago. Yet Britain’s real role is easily discovered if we are concerned enough to look; the problem is that the results of such a search are quite unpleasant. Britain’s role remains an essentially imperial one: to act as junior partner to US global power; to help organise the global economy to benefit Western corporations; and to maximise Britain’s (that is, British elites’) independent political standing in the world and thus remain a ‘great power’.

  In the final chapter, I end with some thoughts on the major challenges ahead if we are serious about changing for good Britain’s role in the world – a truly necessary task, in the light of its past and present record.

  PART I

  THE OUTLAW STATE

  For any government committed to promoting the highest ethical standards in its foreign policy, violating international law would surely be an ultimate sin. Under New Labour, however, violating international law has become as British as afternoon tea.

  As the chapters in this section show, even before the war against Iraq started in March 2003, the Blair government had apparently indulged in at least six specific violations of international law: in conducting without UN authorisation the wars in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia; in committing violations of international humanitarian law in the bombing of Yugoslavia; in the illegal bombing of Iraq in December 1998; in maintaining the illegal ‘no fly zones’ over Iraq, a permanent ‘secret’ war; and in maintaining sanctions against Iraq, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

  Even this is only half the picture. The other half is that Britain under New Labour has been supporting, or condoning, numerous further violations of international law and human rights by its key allies, such as Turkey in its Kurdish regions, Russia in Chechnya, and Israel in the occupied territories.

  The reality is that the Blair government is seriously out of control – an outlaw state, undertaking its foreign policy in open contempt for international ethical standards, including riding roughshod over the United Nations. As one of the dominating facts of New Labour’s foreign policy, this is hard to miss, but it has been obscured by a web of government propaganda and media and parliament’s failure to disclose the reality of state policy.

  1

  IRAQ: IGNORING PEOPLE, MAINTAINING ORDER

  It [the crisis over Iraq] does have to be resolved, yes to deal with Iraq, but also to ensure that the authority of the international order is maintained.

  Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

  IMAGINE A CRIMINAL in front of a judge being asked whether he will in future obey the law, replying ‘well, it depends on the circumstances’ and ‘it is desirable but not absolutely essential’. This is the British government’s view of international law over Iraq.

  By defying the UN in launching the invasion of Iraq – which has begun as I write – British leaders could hardly have displayed more open contempt for international law. Tony Blair has said starkly that ‘lawful and legitimate are not necessarily the same thing’. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that ‘we do not regard it as absolutely essential’ to secure a UN Security Council resolution that would explicitly authorise the use of force against Iraq; simply that this would be ‘desirable’. Similarly, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, asked whether such a resolution was needed, replied: ‘it depends on the circumstances’. He added: ‘it is always a matter for individual member states as it is for the United Kingdom to determine whether or not force will be used’.1

  In fact, the circumstances under which force can be legally used are very limited under the UN charter, restricted to action taken in self-defence and collective action authorised by the security council. Tony Blair hit on a formula of saying that ‘what the UN has got to be is a way of dealing with it [Iraq], not a way of avoiding dealing with it’. The message from London has clearly been: we will work through the UN if it gives us what we want and ignore it if it doesn’t. Only massive public pressure made the Blair government think twice about upholding the UN charter and principles. London’s position has echoed the US, whose White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, said that ‘the UN can meet and discuss but we don’t need their permission’.2

  The government abandoned the attempt to secure a UN resolution explicitly authorising the use of force in the face of opposition from France, Russia and most non-permanent members of the Security Council. Even if London and Washington had secured that resolution, however, they have long served notice that upholding international law is not an imperative. Bribes, sweeteners and pressure were being used to bring other states on the security council into line, making a mockery of multilateral cooperation. Blair even introduced a new concept to justify ignoring the UN – the ‘unreasonable veto’, that could be cast by other permanent members of the securit
y council.

  Whitehall’s position in 2003 echoes that over the British invasion of Egypt in 1956. Anthony Nutting, Conservative Foreign Office minister at the time, explained that Britain then refused to commit to a UN route to deal with its enemy, nationalist Egyptian president Nasser, since ‘neither the security council nor the general assembly could give us what we wanted’.3

  Open defiance of the UN is a permanent feature of British foreign policy. In the last twenty-five years of the cold war, 1965–1990, Britain cast twice as many vetoes in the security council as the Soviet Union – twenty-seven compared to thirteen, mainly to support the racist regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. I can find no mention of this fact anywhere in the mainstream political culture, which continues to promote the myth of Britain’s enduring support for the UN.

  As London and Washington were insisting that Iraq comply with UN resolutions, they were themselves violating the very same. Resolutions 687 and 1284, for example, affirm the ‘sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence’ of Iraq. Although the Iraqi regime is despicable, British and US policy is clearly to remove it, which obviously undermines Iraq’s ‘political independence’ agreed at the UN. Well before the invasion was launched, Blair had said that: ‘I agree entirely that a broad objective of our policy is to remove Saddam Hussein and to do all that we can to achieve that … If we can possibly find the means of removing him, we will.’4

  Resolution 687 also calls for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon free zone and the ‘control of armaments’ in the Middle East. This is also being defied by London and Washington as the US de facto supports Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and both the US and Britain continue to arm their allies in the region. Thus the dominating fact about the Iraq crisis has been both sides’ contempt for international legal processes.

  It is a myth, in my view, that Britain and the US have mainly wanted Iraq to comply with UN resolutions requiring it to be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction. Rather, their policy was initially based on punishing and ‘containing’ the regime, notably through a policy of sanctions. Policy then became based on overthrowing the Saddam regime. It is quite clear that Iraq has hampered and blocked weapons inspectors and has only grudgingly complied with some of the UN demands. But Iraq’s disinterest in weapons inspections has essentially been matched by Britain and the US. US leaders more or less openly said that inspections were simply a tool for proving Iraq’s lack of compliance with the UN so as to justify the military attack Washington was already bent on.

  Evidence of disinterest in weapons inspections (ie, the UN route) was legion before the current crisis set in. In an article in Foreign Affairs, Rand corporation analyst Daniel Byman argued that ‘an impasse over [arms] inspections is actually the best realistic outcome for the United States’ and its allies. The ‘most dangerous’ scenario ‘is the possibility that Saddam will cooperate’ which could ‘spell … the end of sanctions’.5

  The Times reported in February 2002 that: ‘Key figures in the White House believe that demands on Saddam to readmit the United Nations weapons inspectors should be set so high that he would fail to meet them unless he provided officials with total freedom.’ A US intelligence official said the White House ‘will not take yes for an answer’. The Financial Times also reported that the US’ dilemma would ‘grow even sharper if a diplomatic solution is devised which satisfies the UN and its arms inspectors.’6

  US and British leaders have openly said for years that sanctions would not be lifted while Saddam was in power, whatever the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, said in 1997 that ‘we do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted’. Clinton also said, according to the New York Times, that ‘sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as he lasts’.7

  The British Foreign Office’s view in 1994 was reportedly that sanctions could never be lifted ‘whatever the degree of Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions, as long as President Saddam remains in power’. John Major had said in 1991 that Britain would veto any attempts to weaken sanctions ‘for so long as Saddam remains in power’. Similarly, Malcolm Rifkind, Major’s Foreign Secretary, said in 1997 that ‘we won’t lift the sanctions while he’s in power’.

  New Labour leaders were more careful not to state that this was also their policy, partly, presumably, since they were advised that such a policy was illegal – but there is little doubt that this has been their longstanding policy, as Blair informs us above.8

  Rather than being an attempt by the US and Britain to uphold international law and the UN, the current attack on Iraq is better viewed as a next step in the creation of a new US-led imperial order. Initially New Labour leaders appeared to see the war as following other military adventures against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in helping to rewrite international law to make such interventions even easier in the future. Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien said in September 2002, for example, that ‘if our peers accept that what we are doing is a proper, indeed a moral, response to the situation we face, it will become a building block for the development of international law’.9 In other words, if we invade other countries enough times under a moral pretext, and our peers (ie, NATO allies) accept it, we will rewrite the law. This is how the new rulers of the world, in John Pilger’s phrase, are trying to rewrite the rules of the game to impose their priorities. Unfortunately for Blair and Bush, some key allies this time refused to play along.

  Even more frightening are US and British military plans. The past few years have seen a massive increase in ‘power projection’ capabilities, most recently under the cover of the ‘war against terrorism’. Both British and US leaders now openly speak of using military forces as ‘coercive instruments’ and of using ‘pre-emptive’ military force worldwide, evidently to maintain US global hegemony as the sole superpower, with the junior partner in tow, described further in chapter 3.

  The key overall aim is to maintain ‘the authority of the international order’, Jack Straw explains in the quote cited at the beginning of this chapter. This echoes the view of his predecessor, Robin Cook, who said in 1998 that a ‘dominant theme’ of Labour’s first year in office was ‘the necessity of backing diplomacy with the credible threat of force against those who challenge international stability.’ The enemy, Straw explained in a speech to British ambassadors, are ‘those who seek to undermine global stability’, whether states like Iraq or terrorist groups like Al Qaida.10

  Robert Cooper, a British diplomat despatched by Blair to become special envoy in Afghanistan, has written that ‘international order is created by force, preserved by force and backed by the threat of force’. He added that ‘questions about whether it is legal or not seem – at this stage in world history, at least – merely pedantic’.11

  The outlaw state under Blair is acting according to these concerns – that the world will continue to be ruled by force, and that it will be our force rather anyone else’s. The aim is consistent with that of British foreign policy described in this book – whereby upholding ‘international order’ means preserving the privileged position of Anglo-American power and ensuring that key countries and regions remain under their overall control. Moral pretexts are deployed as required.

  In this light, it is worth asking why exactly Iraq under Saddam is regarded as such a threat to Western leaders. They have, after all, gone to extraordinary lengths to counter the regime – the 1993 and 1996 cruise missile attacks, the 1998 bombing campaign and various escalations of bombings in the ‘no fly zones’ over the past decade, and now again in 2002/03. The official answers are obviously false. Clearly, it has nothing to do with Iraqi human rights abuses against Kurds – as noted below, Britain supported Saddam during the 1980s’ terror campaign against Kurds and stepped up that support after the worst of the atrocities.

  Also, as noted above, the issue
is only partially to do with disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. If the regime does possess them and if this were the major concern, the obvious course would have been to prioritise the UN weapons inspections process, which has substantially disarmed Iraq and which was proceeding relatively successfully at the time war was launched.

  Rather, the Iraqi regime is a threat to the Anglo-American conception of international order, with the previous punitive attacks against Iraq surely intended to demonstrate who’s boss; but which failed to instil the proper discipline in the Iraqi regime, which continued to defy the US. The major threat posed by Iraq under Saddam is of an independent regime in a critical region that the US by definition controls.

  The 1991 Gulf war following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait served notice that anyone challenging fundamental US interests would be obliterated. As then US Secretary of State James Baker told Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, just before the onslaught was ordered, ‘Iraq will be turned into a backward and weak state’. And so it was, as the US and Britain proceeded to destroy Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, such as factories, the electricity network and water treatment facilities, committing mass violations of international law in so doing. The punishment continued with sanctions, holding the nation ‘hostage’, as described by UN humanitarian coordinators to Iraq, because of the failure of the Iraqi leadership to obey orders from Washington. Pentagon spokesman Kevin Bacon cheerfully said in 2000 that ‘Iraq is contained … It has a broken economy. It is an isolated state’.12

  The timing of the most recent US attack against Iraq is instructive. First, following Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and now acting under a new pretext for global intervention following September 11th, the US clearly sees a greater opportunity for removing major threats to its hegemony. Second is the serious current situation concerning Middle Eastern oil.