Web Of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy
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It also means abandoning notions of ‘international competitiveness’ as the solution to national regeneration. Rather, a good future depends on acting according to the reality of global interdependence and sustainable development, thus deepening a culture of ‘global citizenship’. Economic and social policies need to be based on recognising that our future depends on cooperation within and between countries and, indeed, on promoting genuinely ethical foreign policies.
Much of history is about people’s struggle for democracy in the face of elitism, and it is a long, hard one. But I think that establishing democracy in Britain, alongside deepening the sense of global interdependence among people, is the big challenge in transforming Britain’s foreign policy. It is desperately needed to halt what is currently being done in our name and to reconfigure Britain’s role in the world to at long last promote human values.
NOTES
Foreword
1. In Lord Justice Scott’s draft report of the Arms-to-Iraq inquiry (which was leaked and published), Scott accused William Waldegrave, then Foreign Office Minister, of writing letters in ‘terms that were apt to mislead the readers as to the nature of the policy on export sales to Iraq … Mr Waldegrave was unquestionably in a position to know that this was so.’ In the final version, Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq and Related Prosecutions (HMSO, London, 1996), there is the following change: ‘Mr Waldegrave was in a position to know that was so although I accept that he did not intend his letters to be misleading and did not so regard them.’ Waldegrave and others had been allowed to read Scott’s judgements on them and successfully demand amendments.
Introduction
1. Tony Blair, speech to Labour party conference, 3 October 2001, and ‘Doctrine of the international community’, Chicago, 23 April 1999, www.pm.gov.uk
2. Peter Hain, ‘We cannot be effete: it’s time to fight’, Guardian, 24 September 2001; Clare Short, ‘Poverty eradication and the role of business: New challenges, new partnerships’, London, 20 April 1999, www.dfid.gov.uk
Part I Blair’s outlaw state
1 Iraq: Ignoring people, maintaining order
1. Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Blair to order invasion force this month’, Guardian, 8 October 2002; Evidence to House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), 25 September 2002, para 22, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102; Norton-Taylor, ‘Troops decision up to PM, says Hoon’, Guardian, 11 November 2002
2. Patrick Wintour, ‘Blair will urge Bush to win backing for action’, Guardian, 5 September 2002; Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘US will attack without approval’, Guardian, 11 November 2002
3. Anthony Nutting, No end of a lesson: The story of Suez, Constable, London, 1967, p. 58
4. Tony Blair, House of Commons, Hansard, 17 December 1998, Col. 1103
5. Simons, The scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, law and natural justice, Macmillan, London, 1998, p. 67; Anthony Arnove, ‘Introduction’, in Arnove (ed), Iraq under siege: The deadly impact of sanctions and war, Pluto, London, 2000, p. 16
6. Milan Rai, ‘No justifications for war – no link to September 11th’, 6 March 2002, www.zmag.org; Bruce Clark and Roula Khalaf, ‘US in same old dilemma on how to deal with Iraq’, Financial Times, 10 February 1998
7. Cited in Naseer Aruri, ‘America’s war against Iraq: 1990–1999’, in Arnove (ed), p. 27
8. Simons, p. 106; Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The politics of revenge, Bloomsbury, London, 2000, p. 342
9. Mike O’Brien, ‘Morality in asymmetric warfare and intervention operations’, 19 September 2002, www.fco.gov.uk
10. Jack Straw, interview on Channel 4 news, 23 January 2003, www.fco.gov.uk; House of Commons, Hansard, 27 November 1998, Col. 440. Emphasis added; Jack Straw, ‘Strategic priorities for British foreign policy’, 6 January 2003, www.fco.gov.uk
11. Robert Cooper, ‘In the name of the law’, New Statesman, 9 September 2002
12. Simons, p. 12
13. Introductory paper on the Middle East by the UK, 1947, Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1947, Vol. V, p. 569; Selwyn Lloyd to US Secretary of State Dulles, 23 January 1956, FRUS, 1955–57, Vol. XIII, p. 323
14. Memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Petroleum Division, 1 June 1945, FRUS, 1945, Vol. VIII, p. 54; cited in A. J. Chien, ‘Iraq: Is it about oil?’, www.zmag.org
15. Cited in James Paul, ‘Iraq: The struggle for oil’, December 2002, www.globalpolicy.org
16. ‘US begins secret talks to secure Iraq’s oilfields’, Guardian, 23 January 2003
17. Miriam Pemberton, ‘War in Iraq: The oil factor’, Foreign Policy in Focus, Talking points, September 2002, www.fpif.org; cited in Paul
18. Anthony Sampson, ‘Oilmen don’t want another Suez’, Observer, 22 December 2002
19. Jack Straw interview with Persian Morning Daily, 12 October 2002, www.netiran.com
20. ‘Iraq hits back with CIA offer’, Guardian, 23 December 2002; ‘Secrets of Saddam’s hidden arsenal’, Guardian, 5 September 2002
21. Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘UK spies reject Al Qaida link’, Guardian, 10 October 2002
22. Mike Berry, letter to the Guardian, 22 January 2003
23. Cited in Peter Oborne, ‘The silence of the sheep’, Spectator, 15 January 2000
24. House of Commons, Defence Committee, Fourteenth report, session 1999/2000, paras 254–7, 324, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900
25. Economist, 6 October 2001
26. Mark Leonard, ‘Diplomacy by other means’, Foreign Policy, September/October 2002, www.foreignpolicy.com, Emphasis added
27. Fred Halliday, ‘Manipulation and limits: Media coverage of the Gulf war, 1990–91’, in Tim Allen and Jean Seaton (eds.), The media of conflict: War reporting and representations of ethnic violence, Zed, London, 1999, pp. 132–5; Dorril, The silent conspiracy: Inside the intelligence services in the 1990s, Mandarin, London, 1993, pp. 415–6
28. Ian Black, ‘The propaganda war’, Guardian, 14 November 1998; Ian Black and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Propaganda drive against Iraq’, Guardian, 25 March 1999
29. Ministry of Defence, ‘The future strategic context for defence’, www.mod.uk/issues/strategic_context
30. Julian Borger, ‘Air strikes on Iraq rise sharply’, Guardian, 7 September 2002; ‘Blair says UK must pay US “blood price”’, Guardian, 6 September 2002; Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Britain and US step up bombing in Iraq’, Guardian, 4 December 2002
31. House of Commons, Hansard, 17 December 1998, Col. 652
32. Eric Herring, ‘The no fly zones in Iraq: The myth of a humanitarian intervention’, http/geocities.com; Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Bombing strikes stepped up in “secret war” against Iraq’, Guardian, 8 June 2000
33. Sarah Graham-Brown, ‘No fly zones: Rhetoric and real intentions’, 20 February 2001, Middle East report, www.merip.org; Phyllis Bennis, Stephen Zunes and Martha Honey, ‘US policy towards Iraq: Policy alternatives’, June 2001, www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org
34. Graham-Brown, ‘No fly zones’; Julian Borger, ‘Allies taking aim at Iraqi regime’, Guardian, 6 February 1999; Norton-Taylor, ‘Bombing strikes’
35. Borger, ‘Allies taking aim’
36. Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Allies hit hard at Saddam’s air defence sites’, Guardian, 11 August 2001
37. House of Commons Defence Committee, Thirteenth report, session 1999/2000, 26 July 2000, www.publications.parliament.uk/pac/cm199900, minutes of evidence, 19 April 2000, para 21
38. ‘US military builds up huge attack force’, Guardian, 13 September 2002
39. Bennis, Zunes and Honey; Voices in the wilderness, ‘Myths and realities’, Arnove (ed), p. 73; Graham-Brown, ‘No fly zones’
40. House of Commons Defence Committee, Thirteenth report, para 31
41. Timothy Garden, ‘This war can’t be left to the politicians’, Guardian, 20 August 2002
42. Voices in the Wilderness, ‘Myths and rea
lities’ and George Capaccio, ‘Sanctions: Killing a country and a people’, in Arnove (ed), pp. 67, 141
43. Peter Pellett, ‘Sanctions, food, nutrition and health in Iraq’, in Arnove (ed), p. 161
44. Cited in letter from aid agencies including Human Rights Watch and Save the Children UK, 4 August 2000, in Human Rights Watch, ‘Groups call on security council to address Iraq humanitarian crisis’, 4 August 2000, www.hrw.org; cited in Pellett, p. 163
45. Cited in Eric Herring, ‘Between Iraq and a hard place: A critique of the British government’s case for UN economic sanctions’, Review of International Studies, 2002, pp. 39–56; House of Commons, Hansard, 16 December 1998, Col. 532
46. Cited in Arnove, ‘Introduction’, p. 15
47. Cited in Felicity Arbuthnot, ‘Iraq still on the rack’, Tribune, 2 March 2000; David Edwards, ‘Iraq in the gunsights’, 28 February 2002, www.zmag.org; Robert Fisk, ‘The hidden war’, in Arnove (ed), P. 97
48. Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, ‘The hostage nation’, Guardian, 29 November 2001
49. Cited in Herring, ‘Between Iraq and a hard place’, pp. 39–56; Simons, p. xviii
50. Simons, p. xvii
51. Blair statement on Iraq to House of Commons, 17 December 1998, www.pm.gov.uk
52. Von Sponeck and Halliday, ‘The hostage nation’
53. Reuters, ‘Washington blocks $5bn supplies to Iraq’, Guardian, 21 February 2002
54. Simons, pp. 119, 166; John Pilger, New Statesman, 3 May 1999; House of Commons, Hansard, 13 January 2000, Col. 220
55. Von Sponeck and Halliday, ‘The hostage nation’
56. John Sweeney, Trading with the enemy: Britain’s arming of Iraq, Pan, London, 1993, p. 52
57. Richard Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept: Inside the Scott enquiry, Guardian Books, London, 1995, pp. 57, 204; Sweeney, p. 29
58. See, for example, Richard Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept, and Norton-Taylor, Mark Lloyd and Stephen Cook, Knee deep in dishonour: The Scott report and its aftermath, Victor Gollancz, London, 1996
59. Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept, pp. 52–3
60. Norton-Taylor, Knee deep, p. 21; Truth is a difficult concept, p. 26
61. Sweeney, pp. 29, 95, 119; Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept, pp. 198–9
62. Sweeney, p. 140; Norton-Taylor, Knee deep, pp. 20, 81–2; Truth is a difficult concept, p. 49
63. Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept, pp. 49, 53, 55; Sweeney, p. 93
64. Sweeney, pp. 101–2
65. Cited in Norton-Taylor, Truth is a difficult concept, 1995, pp. 59–60
66. Sweeney, pp. 107–8; ‘Anger over Straw’s dossier on Iraqi human rights’, Guardian, 3 December 2002; Nicholas Watt, ‘Media and political salvo hits activists’, Guardian, 3 December 2002
67. Sweeney, p. 95
68. Dorril, The silent conspiracy, p. 350
69. Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot, ‘How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them’, Sunday Herald, www.sundayherald.com/27572
70. Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Don’t trust Bush or Blair on Iraq’, Guardian, 21 August 2002
71. Prime minister’s press conference, 4 September
72. House of Commons, Hansard, 9 February 1998, Col. 11
73. House of Commons, Hansard, 15 January 1998, Col. 272, and 27 April 1998, Col. 27
74. House of Commons, Hansard, 4 December 1997, Col. 340
75. HRW, ‘Displaced and disregarded: Turkey’s failing village return programme’, October 2002, www.hrw.org
76. HRW, ‘Human Rights Watch analysis of the 2001 regular report on Turkey’, December 2001; HRW, World report 2002, ‘Turkey’
77. HRW letter to the Financial Times, 15 October 2001; HRW, World report 2002, ‘Turkey’; House of Commons, FAC, Sixth report, session 2001–02, 23 April 2002, para 35, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102
78. HRW, ‘Hits and misses on Turkey’s EU accession targets’, 7 October 2002, www.hrw.org
79. Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) memorandum to the FAC, Sixth report, inquiry into UK relations with Turkey
80. FAC, Sixth report, para 42; House of Lords, Hansard, 11 June 1998, Col. WA101
81. MPA news service, 31 March 1997, www.geocities.com
82. HRW, ‘Human Rights Watch analysis of the 2001 regular report on Turkey’, December 2001
83. House of Commons, Hansard, 18 January 2000, Col. 667; John Battle, speech to the Turkish-British business council, Istanbul, 8 November 2000, www.fco.gov.uk
84. FAC, Sixth report, para 94
85. Letter from Dr Kamal Mirawdeli to Tony Blair, 6 December 1999, www.kurdishmedia.com
86. FAC, Sixth report, para 20
87. cited in Sheri Laizer, Martyrs, traitors and patriots: Kurdistan after the Gulf war, Zed, London, 1996, pp. 144–5
88. John Pilger, New Statesman, 19 March 2001
89. Defence Committee, Thirteenth report, minutes of evidence, 19 April 2000, paras 88–90
2 Afghanistan: The new Unpeople
1. HRW, ‘Afghanistan: US bombs kill twenty-three civilians’, 26 October 2001, www.hrw.org
2. George Monbiot, ‘Gagging the sceptics’, Guardian, 16 October 2001; ‘We won’t lose our nerve or falter, Blair tells doubters’, Guardian, 31 October 2001
3. Jonathan Steele, ‘Forgotten victims’, Guardian, 20 May 2002; Marc Herold, ‘Counting the dead’, Guardian, 8 August 2002
4. Defence Committee, Second report, Session 2001–2, 12 December 2001, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102, ‘Summary’; Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘A quarter of US bombs missed target in Afghan conflict’, Guardian, 10 April 2002
5. Rory Carroll, ‘Marines seize al-Qaida caves as Afghan violence escalates’, Guardian, 9 April 2002
6. HRW, World report 2002, ‘Afghanistan’; Jonathan Steele, ‘Fighting the wrong war’, Guardian, 11 December 2001
7. HRW, ‘Afghanistan: New civilian deaths due to US bombing’, 30 October 2001
8. ‘Restraint urged over prisoners’, Guardian, 24 November 2001
9. Kathy Gannon, ‘Kabul awakes to the aftermath of another night’s heavy bombing’, Guardian, 27 October 2001; HRW, World report 2002, ‘Afghanistan’
10. Marc Herold, ‘A dossier on civilian victims of United States’ aerial bombing of Afghanistan: A comprehensive accounting’, December 2001, www.medialens.org; Marc Herold, ‘Who will count the dead?’, in Roger Burbach and Ben Clarke (eds.), September 11 and the US war: Beyond the curtain of smoke, City Light Books, San Francisco, 2002, p. 119
11. ‘“Arab CNN” first berated, then bombed by US’, 14 November 2001, www.zmag.org
12. HRW, ‘Cluster bombs in Afghanistan’, October 2001
13. Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Afghanistan littered with 14,000 unexploded bomblets, says UN’, Guardian, 23 March 2002; Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘Long after the air raids, bomblets bring more death’, Guardian, 28 January 2002; Marc Herold, ‘A dossier on civilian victims’
14. Rory McCarthy, ‘Pashtuns suffer in brutal raids by rival ethnic groups’, Guardian, 3 April 2002; HRW, ‘Afghanistan: Return of the warlords’, June 2002, www.hrw.org
15. ‘Media ignores the mass death of civilians in ‘Afghanistan’, 3 January 2002, www.medialens.org
16. Stephen Sackur, BBC 10 o’clock news, March 4, 2002; David Cromwell and David Edwards, ‘Debate over Iraq’, 11 March 2002, www.zmag.org
17. ‘Blair plays it cooler’, Guardian, 31 October 2001
18. ‘Tony Blair’s dilemma’, Guardian, 5 November 2001
19. ‘The world at war’, Guardian, 8 October 2001; Martin Woollacott, ‘A military response is risky but necessary for America’, Guardian, 21 September 2001
20. Ewen MacAskill, ‘Legal warning on assault aims’, Guardian, 4 October 2001; Michael White, ‘Blair says Bush asked for cruise attacks’, Guardian, 8 October 2001; Stephen Shalom and Michael Albert, ‘9/11 and Afghanistan’, 9 October 2002, www.zmag.org
21. Paul
Rogers, ‘There was an alternative’, Red Pepper, December 2001
22. ‘Blair’s response to jitters’, Guardian, 29 October 2001; ‘Travelling hopefully’, Guardian, 3 November 2001; ‘Mindless and mistaken’, Guardian, 11 January 2002
23. Cited in Noam Chomsky, ‘The world after September 11th’, 8 December 2001, www.medialens.org; RAWA, ‘Let us struggle against war and fundamentalism’, 22 March 2002, www.zmag.org
24. John Cooley, Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America and international terrorism, Pluto, London, 2001, pp. 90–1
25. William Blum, Rogue state: A guide to the world’s only superpower, Zed, London, 2002, pp. 34–7
26. Cooley, Unholy wars, pp. 120, 226, 228; Luke Harding, ‘Chasing monsters’, Guardian, 24 November 2000
27. Cooley, Unholy wars, pp. 3, 146
28. Fred Halliday, Two hours that shook the world: September 11, 2001, Saqi Books, London, 2002, p. 38
29. Chomsky, World orders, old and new, Pluto, London, 1994, pp. 97–8
30. Cooley, Unholy wars, pp. 95–7, 81
31. Mark Urban, UK eyes alpha: The inside story of British intelligence, Faber & Faber, London, 1996, pp. 35–7; Dorril, MI6, p. 752
32. Otto Kreisher, ‘US copters not as vulnerable as Soviet craft in Afghanistan’, 20 October 2001, Copley news service, www.signonsandiego.com; John Fullerton, ‘Afghan authorities hand in Stinger missiles to US’, 4 February 2002. Reuters, www.in.news.yahoo.com
33. Cooley, Unholy wars, pp. 93, 95–7; Dorril, MI6, p. 752; Dorril, The silent conspiracy, pp. 391–2