Chilcot inquiry

How India Nearly Gave in to US Pressure to Enter the Iraqi Killing Zone

In the summer of 2003, senior ministers like L.K. Advani and a number of Indian strategic commentators kept up a steady drumbeat calling for the country to send troops to help the Americans. But Vajpayee kept his cool and refused.

This article, first published in 2016, was republished on March 19, 2023, on the 20th anniversary of the US’s invasion of Iraq.

New Delhi: While the massive 12-volume Chilcot inquiry report on the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq is being parsed and debated in Britain, the return of that controversial war to news headlines around the world has revived memories of India’s close brush with disaster.

While India stayed out of the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ in the months leading up to the invasion, pressure from Washington for Indian ‘boots on the ground’ started to ramp up once the occupation of Iraq began. For nearly two months, Lutyens’ Delhi was fully occupied with how to respond to Washington’s request – which would have meant deploying about 20,000 Indian soldiers in Iraq – with divergent opinions coming from influential voices both within and outside the government.

On March 20, 2003, US President George W. Bush announced the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “It is with the deepest anguish that we have seen reports of the commencement of military action in Iraq,” read the first line of the foreign ministry’s official response. When the Indian parliament re-convened after its recess on April 7, one of its first acts was to pass a unanimous resolution deploring the military action and its attendant regime change:

‘Reflecting national sentiment, this House (Lok Sabha) deplores the military action by the coalition forces led by the USA against a sovereign Iraq. This military action, with a view to changing the Government of Iraq, is unacceptable. The resultant suffering of the innocent people of Iraq, especially women and children, is a matter of grave human dimension [sic]. This action without the specific sanction of the UN Security Council and is not in conformity with the UN Charter. The House, therefore, expresses profound anguish and deep sympathy for the people of Iraq.’

Forty-two days after the invasion began, Bush, on May 1, 2003, strode across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a ‘mission accomplished’ banner hanging in the background, to announce the end of the military phase of the invasion.

Ironically, the formal (though ultimately premature) end of hostilities proclaimed by Bush was when American heat on India began to mount.

In New Delhi, Bush’s close friend Robert Blackwill was ambassador, but was nearing the end of his term. After his predecessor Richard Celeste had carefully steered ties in the post-Pokhran phase two years earlier, Blackwill had described his term as seeing a “transformation” in the India-US relationship. And he made it his mission to get India to Iraq.

In an oral history interview two years after his retirement, US diplomat Albert Thibault Jr, who was the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in India in 2003, recounted how Washington mounted a concerted campaign to keep New Delhi in the loop about the Iraq invasion:

“The administration was very keen on lining up as many other countries as possible to join us, particularly with, as they say, boots on the ground. In that regard we came very close to getting a large Indian contingent in Iraq.”

During the Iraq war, “at Blackwill’s initiative”, Thibault held daily formal briefings for Indian government officials on the military developments. He described it as an “unprecedented step on our part, drawing from all sources including classified ones, to give them a sense of what was going on and to promote a serious dialogue between us”.

The NDA government had already gone through a trial of fire in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his ministers sticking to the position that the UN framework was the only platform to meet the concerns of the international community about weapons of mass destructions (WMDs) under the Saddam regime. “If unilateralism prevails, the UN would be deeply scarred, with disastrous consequences for the world order,” Vajpayee said in a statement to both houses of parliament on March 12. By that date, it was clear that the US, UK and their allies would go ahead with the invasion, without the UN’s blessings.

Vajpayee criticised for not backing US war

There were, of course, critical voices who attacked the NDA government for “harking back to the old consensual approach”. “It would be double dangerous now to be pushed, by entirely ignorant and non-serious politicians and a public opinion determined by touching emotion rather than cold reason, to be committed to a process of strengthening the UN, introducing new stresses on our relations with the US,” wrote Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta in an article titled ‘Unshackle, seize the moment’ in the paper’s March 15 edition.

What has the UN done for India, Gupta asked, except for “providing lucrative secondments to so many in our very bored and underpaid bureaucracy and a plethora of do-nothing multilateral postings for our foreign service?”

In the aftermath of the parliamentary resolution in April, an ‘editor’s note‘ in India Today said that through a “badly timed, badly worded resolution,” India had “lost an opportunity to be on the right side of history”.

“Ideally, in this war, India should have been the moral companion of the US. The war in Iraq, after all, was the second stage, and more decisive, of the post-9/11 war on terrorism,” the editorial said.

Push for Indian troops

In the first week of May, National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra toured the capitals of the US, UK and France. He met with US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage in France, and the US leadership – Bush, secretary of state Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice – in Washington. It was at these interactions that the US first made its request for the deployment of an Indian army division in Iraq.

Later that month, on May 25, strategic analyst C. Raja Mohan wrote in The Hindu that if Vajpayee took the “bold decision” to send troops into Iraq, his “political standing” would “dramatically” rise among the community of world leaders.

“Underlying the final decision by India to send a large force into Iraq will be the political readiness in New Delhi to exercise its military power beyond the subcontinent. An India that evades this opportunity will put out the word that it is not yet prepared to break out of the narrow South Asian political box,” Raja Mohan said.

Raja Mohan pointed out that whenever India had wanted to flex its “military muscle” in the neighbourhood, it had “never sought the cover of the United Nations”.

“The very prospect of India sending its troops into Iraq has apparently given it a voice in shaping the unanimous UN Security Council resolution on Iraq [UNSC resolution 1483]” passed in May with “quiet consultations” between New Delhi and Washington leading to the incorporation of “three of India’s concerns into the resolution”, he wrote

Divisions at the top

The interpretation of UNSC resolution 1483 – which was actually intended to address Iraq’s status now that it had been invaded and occupied – would be a key component of India’s decision-making.

Like the Left parties and the Congress, the Sangh parivar had already vocally expressed opposition to the US-led invasion and therefore supporting any move to contribute Indian troops to that war was unthinkable. “If they want to fight terrorism, they should look at Pakistan which is the epicentre of terrorism. Why Iraq, which has no proven links to international terrorism?” RSS chief K.S. Sudershan was quoted as saying in Outlook’s April 14, 2003 edition. But BJP’s top leaders were divided.

Yashwant Sinha, former finance and external affairs minister, and father of Jayant Sinha. Credit: PTI

Yashwant Sinha, former finance and external affairs minister. Credit: PTI

Speaking to The Wire, Yashwant Sinha, India’s foreign minister at that time, said Vajpayee had already made up his mind about not sending Indian troops to Iraq “quite a few weeks, if not months, before it was conveyed to the Americans”. “I knew it from well before,” he said, adding that Vajpayee’s “style was that he liked to work on the basis of consensus”.

Vajpayee invited Congress party president Sonia Gandhi for a meeting after she wrote him a letter opposing any proposal to send Indian troops to Iraq. “She came accompanied by her advisers and there was a discussion in which ideas were exchanged. Then Mr Vajpayee called a meeting of the NDA – the alliance partners – and there also the idea was discussed. Then he discussed in the cabinet. Then, in all the three meetings, the consensus that emerged was that India should not send its troops to Iraq. Finally, this was the view that was communicated to the Americans,” Sinha recounted.

Within the government, Sinha confirmed that the external affairs ministry took the view that acceding to the US request for troops “was not in India’s interest”.

In another part of South Block, however, sections in the ministry of defence were apparently more ready to take up the gauntlet.

According to Thibault, Indian and US defence officials were already in “very intense dialogue,” with defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and army chief General Eric Shinseki landing in Delhi and Indian defence minister George Fernandes going to Washington “for talks on this issue (of a large Indian contingent in Iraq)”.

“The Indian army was institutionally disposed to dispatching up to a division, as I was well aware, dealing personally with several of the senior generals,” he claimed. The US department of defence was “extremely keen to get that presence in Iraq because the Indians, unlike some other nations, represent a serious fighting force”.

Vajpayee’s doubts, Advani’s Yea

India’s concerns were spelled out in “five questions” that Vajpayee mentioned during a press conference at Lausanne on June 2.

1. Why are the Indian forces being asked for?

2. Would they be tasked with maintenance of law and order, or in the event of any potential revolt, would they be required to use force?

3. How long will our troops be required to stay?

4. What is the road-map for Iraq?

5. Under whose command would our troops function?

Within Vajpayee’s cabinet, deputy prime minister L.K. Advani was leading the camp inclined to accede to the US request. In early June, he travelled to Washington to an unusually warm welcome. Bush “dropped in” during Advani’s meeting with Rice, just as he had during Mishra’s meetings the month before. The US president also reportedly told Advani that he would do “some blunt talking with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on cross-border terrorism” when they met.

India’s former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani with former US President George W. Bush and ex-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. Credit: PTI

It was during his meeting with US vice president Dick Cheney that Advani apparently gave certain positive assurances about Indian troop contribution. “He (Advani) had mentioned it to Dick Cheney who was the vice president,” Sinha told The Wire, adding that this was not Vajpayee’s view, which prevailed.

On June 16, a US state department team led by assistant secretary of state Peter Rodman arrived in Delhi to “outline the political and operational context of a possible deployment of troops by India in Iraq”.

The cabinet committee on security met twice, but deferred a decision to the cabinet.

“These issues were generally discussed at the cabinet committee on security, which is a very small body of five members. But, this issue was taken to the cabinet. That was also a deliberate move by Vajpayee. He wanted a larger body to discuss the whole thing. And in the cabinet, the overwhelming opinion was not to commit our troops,” Sinha clarified.

Mounting American pressure

In the meanwhile, the US kept up the pressure. On June 19, Blackwill said that India would be part of the “inner board of directors” that managed security in Iraq’s transition to democracy.

A question that dominated public discourse on the issue was about financing the cost of sending and maintaining 17,000 Indian troops in Iraq. “…Our view is that the nations that choose to do this will do it for their own interest and, therefore, should pay for it,” Blackwill told The Hindu.

There were some media reports that claimed the Indian army had already zeroed in on three divisions from which to pick troops to send to Iraq, with plans of transportation and deployment outlined.

“The Indian army was quite ready to go, quite prepared. They had identified the units that would be deployed and it seemed that it would happen. But as word of the dialogue between the two governments began leaking to the media, there was a counter reaction, particularly among the opposition parties and therefore in parliament, expressing reservations about this,” Thibault noted.

In line with his earlier views, India Today’s Aroon Purie was one of the prominent commentators who supported sending Indian troops to Iraq.

“True, there is risk, for post-war Iraq is yet to have a civil society; rather, it is violent and anarchic. Still, the Iraqi mess should not be the concern of the US and Britain alone. The world has a stake in Iraq, and it is not subordinated to lucrative construction projects. India, being an emerging regional power in this world, cannot – should not – run away from its responsibility. Forget American pressure, send the troops under national pressure,” read the magazine’s June 23 ‘editor’s note’.

A few days later, Financial Express editor Sanjaya Baru, who also batted for Indian military deployment, asserted that such a decision would be financially viable. He argued that it was “not about cleaning up the mess created by the United States and the coalition forces,” but about “investing in our energy security in the long run”.

“All the rhetoric about being a big power in a multipolar world will remain just that, pompous hot air, if we cannot cough up the funds required to ensure the security of our neighbourhood,” Baru wrote, calculating that the exchequer’s bill would be around an “affordable” $200 million.

New Delhi was told that Indian troops would be stationed in north Iraq – to keep peace in the Kurdish majority regions.

Baru told The Wire that he stands by his views expressed at that time, “and [will] only say that I was not in [the] government but my views were based on high-level briefing from within [the] government”.

“As you probably know the government was divided on the issue, and finally the PM took the call and gave up the idea of sending troops… As I say [in the article], I think the idea at the time was only to send troops to Kurdish areas. With hindsight we can say that sending troops would have been a bad idea, but hindsight is only available in the future!” he added.

Back in the summer of 2003, the questions kept piling up in New Delhi – from the American timeframe of deployment of “up to a year” to the nature of the Iraqi authority to whom Indian troops would report. “Certain clarifications we have sought are simply not there, in terms of timelines, political process…there are no clear answers,” Outlook quoted a “senior diplomat” as saying on June 30.

Just as India held consultations with Iraq’s neighbours, Rajendra Abhyankar, secretary in the foreign ministry, was sent to Iraq to make a first-hand assessment – a necessity since, as the then foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal had noted, the US did not have all the answers for India and had “no roadmap”.

Abhyankar met with Jalal Talebani and Masoud Barzani, the two main Kurdish leaders.

Even as the foreign office cast a wide net to get a better sense of the impact of any direct Indian involvement, the opinion was firming up in South Block that India could not afford to get caught in the spiralling cycle of violence in Iraq.

‘Indian troops would do better than Americans’

Yet, voices advocating the dispatch of Indian troops remained – but this time relying on the argument that India would certainly be much better at managing the situation on the ground than the US-led coalition. Head of the coalition provisional authority L. Paul Bremer III had disbanded the Iraqi army on May 23, 2003, further fuelling the insurgency that had continued to simmer in pockets despite the overwhelming presence of Western troops.

Well-known author and journalist Salil Tripathi wrote a commentary in the Wall Street Journal on July 11, which was admittedly more nuanced than the headline – ‘Let India’s troops go to Iraq‘.

In his piece, Tripathi quoted extensively from an article in Outlook by Lieutenant General Satish Nambiar, the former commander of the UN Protection Force to the former Yugoslavia, to suggest that there was a UN umbrella under UNSC resolution 1483 to send troops.

Lt Gen (Retd) Satish Nambia. Credit: globalzero.org

Lt Gen (Retd) Satish Nambiar. Credit: globalzero.org

When The Wire contacted him about his 2003 article, Tripathi said that he hadn’t suggested “then, or now, that India should have been part of the ‘coalition of the willing’ that Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair put together”. “The piece was written in July, after Saddam’s fall, and was meant as thoughts about how India should respond to that US request,” he said.

Tripathi noted that in his article he said, “quite clearly, citing Nambiar, that India could have sent troops to the Kurdish areas (which have largely remained at peace) as peacekeepers, under the authority derived from the UN’s resolution which called upon all states to cooperate to help bring peace to Iraq. Had India done that, that would have been fine”.

Nambiar’s article, published on July 7, was widely quoted in various publications as representing a significant voice for India’s active role in Iraq. Nambiar notably began his article with an important caveat in the first line that he was totally opposed to the US’s “unilateral” military intervention.

“If anything, subsequent events and the current state of affairs in Iraq, appear to vindicate the position I then took,” Nambiar told The Wire when asked whether he had changed his stance since the publication of the article in 2003.

Nambiar said the Chilcot inquiry report vindicated his strong criticism of the US-led action. In fact, he said, it was his “unreserved and critical position” that led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to invite him to the 16-member high-level panel to identify new global threats to security and ways for the world body to address them.

Nambiar said that his position at the time had been “based on moving ahead from the unfortunate intervention scenario, in the better interests of the Iraqi people and the region”.

“I served in Iraq as a member of a training team in the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel for a year-and-a-half in 1977-78, and had the pleasure and privilege of receiving the consideration and affection of the Iraqi people,” he said.

With the coalition dealing with the occupation “pretty ham-handedly,” Nambiar remains “convinced that had we responded positively to the US request to send troops (obviously not in order to do their bidding), many other non-Western countries like Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan, etc may well have joined in the effort to restore order in Iraq, and things would not have come to the sorry pass that prevails today. [But] “this of course remains is in the realm of speculation”.

Vajpayee pulls the plug

Rudra Chaudhuri, a scholar at Kings College, London, who had interviewed Brajesh Mishra and others for his book on India-US relations, published in 2014 as Forged in Crisis, told The Wire “there is no doubt in my mind that in the first month after the [UN’s] April resolution, his mind was wide open. He watched and learnt. And this, knowing fully well that the PM was against any form of intervention.” Chaudhuri said Vajpayee and Mishra asked C. Rangarajan, who was chairman of the National Security Advisory Board, to “draft a report on the pros and the cons” of Indian deployment. In Chaudhuri’s view, “Mishra saw this initially as a potential opportunity to cement ties with the US. However, my own research underlines that by the end of May he was increasingly convinced that Iraq was a bad idea.”

If Vajpayee and Mishra’s game plan in dealing with the Americans was to send mixed signals and create the impression that India was indeed seriously considering their request for troops, says Chaudhuri, “for Advani and Jaswant Singh it was far more straightforward: intervention is the way to go… In fact, Rumsfeld told me clearly that after the meeting with Advani in DC, the Americans had little doubt that India was on board.”

That assumption proved to be totally wrong.

The union cabinet was scheduled to meet on July 14 to take a final decision. But two days before the meeting, news of India’s decision to turn down the American request was leaked to The Hindu’s highly-regarded Delhi bureau chief, Harish Khare, who ran a front-page story on July 13, with the headline ‘India not to send troops to Iraq‘.

Speaking to The Wire, Khare, who is now the editor-in-chief of The Tribune, recalled the sequence of events. “Vajpayee had personally told me about his decision a few weeks earlier but had asked me to wait before I did a story because senior leaders like Advani were not on board. But on July 12, Brajesh Mishra met me and repeated the PM’s view and said I was free to write about it.”

On July 14, the cabinet meeting put its stamp on the decision in a “mere 10 minutes”, Khare wrote in a story published the date after, but took 45 minutes to draft the press note. Such were the divisions at the highest levels that the government decision, released through the Press Information Bureau, had no negative phrases and did not directly turn down the US request. Instead, it said, “Were there to be an explicit UN mandate for the purpose, the Government of India could consider the deployment of our troops in Iraq”.

The decision was clearly a reflection of popular opinion. A survey by Outlook published on July 21 found that 69% of urban Indians, albeit in a small sample size, were not in favour of sending Indian troops to Iraq.

Washington may have accepted the ‘no troops for Iraq’ decision, but the government’s Indian detractors persisted. Four days after the July 14, 2003 announcement, the MEA dismissed a report by Shishir Gupta in the Indian Express that suggested the US had asked India to show its “1998 (Pokhran) guts”. The ministry also said in its statement that any suggestion “that Indian troop deployment in Iraq was linked by the U.S. to specific quid pro quos mentioned in the article, such as progress on trinity issues, reimbursement of the cost of troop deployment or recovery of Indian investments in Iraq is equally baseless and false.”

The issue would linger on and be periodically revived, if not at the government level than certainly in the media till the end of 2003.

Thirteen years on, with the families of the British soldiers killed in Iraq talking of using the Chilcot report to pursue criminal charges against Tony Blair, the Indian politicians who sought to send Indian soldiers into the Mesopotamian quagmire are probably grateful they were overruled.

Cameron Exits Parliament Just as Committee Blames Him for Libya’s Collapse

The UK went into Libya with gusto – but ended up in a morass of mission creep and bad planning.

David Cameron in parliament. Credit: Reuters

After a summer recess, the House of Commons has returned with one fewer member: David Cameron announced that he was stepping down as MP for Whitney in Oxfordshire. Apparently, he wants to get on with writing his memoirs and undertake new challenges. But conveniently, it also means that he was not in Westminster to hear the damning conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which has released a report on the British government’s 2011 action in Libya.

The committee has found that the action “was not informed by accurate intelligence”, that the threat to civilians was overstated, and that the opposition to Gaddafi contained a “significant Islamist element”. It argues that the planning for a post-conflict Libya was flawed, that that failing has led the country to collapse – and that the blame lies with Cameron.

The report also finds that the UK government had been driven into action initially by France, whose then-president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was apparently keen to advance French national interests and bolster his own electoral prospects. The British government, it says, lacked detailed knowledge of the tribal context in Libya and overestimated Gaddafi’s abilities, leading them to conclude he was more dangerous than perhaps he actually was. The military action’s aims were apparently rather confused, with the initial civilian protection brief morphing gradually into a regime change mission.

Perhaps most damning, particularly given lessons that should have been drawn from the Iraq War, the report notes that the British government did not consider any other courses of action other than military force. The committee describes how diplomatic pressure and sanctions were simply discounted, with military action suddenly becoming an accepted policy.

Lessons never learnt

Perhaps the most mystifying element of this is how familiar it seems. The criticisms made by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee are strangely reminiscent of those made of Blair after the Iraq war. Again, the committee has been forced to tell a story of a British prime minister failing to plan for the stabilisation of a post-confict state, relying on bad or ill-advised intelligence, and ultimately helping to speed up the disintegration of an already unstable nation.

Indeed, the committee argues that US President Barack Obama was fairly accurate when he reportedly described the situation in Libya after the conflict as a “shit show”.

One of Cameron’s final tasks in the House of Commons before handing over to Theresa May was to respond to the conclusions of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. Chilcot argued, over many hundreds of pages, that Blair had over-relied on intelligence reports and failed to plan for a post-conflict nation.

In his response, Cameron noted that mistakes had been made in Iraq, but that the same mistakes had not been made in Libya: “I believe it was right to intervene to stop Gaddafi … we did have a United Nations Security Council resolution … we worked with a transitional Libyan government.”

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee clearly disagrees. How can it be that the lessons of Iraq have so quickly been forgotten? Perhaps they were just never learnt in the first place. Nor, it seems, were other lessons besides: the Blair government made foreign intervention in the name of human rights a key part of its foreign policy, but like many Western nations, it also tried to have its cake and eat it, loudly talking up pro-democracy causes in one-party states while supporting dictators who ensured stability and encouraged a pro-Western outlook.

The practical implications of this “pragmatism” meant some very difficult decisions had to be made – and unfortunately, a great many people on the ground paid with their lives.

What next, then, for Cameron? Perhaps he can leverage his international standing to personal advantage and/or humanitarian ends, as have Blair, Gordon Brown, David Miliband, and others. But like Blair before him, his legacy has been tarnished by foreign affairs, and as this report makes plain, Libya is perhaps the darkest stain.

Victoria Honeyman is lecturer in British politics at the University of Leeds.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

British Foreign Policy Since 1940 is As Much to Blame For Iraq As Tony Blair

What the Chilcot report got wrong was to declare the Iraq war as exceptional and place blame only on one man. Both Iraq and Blair are part of a historical pattern within an imperial world view.

British soldiers are seen in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2005. Credit: Reuters

The Chilcot report on the Iraq war has rightly criticised former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for misrepresentations on a consistent basis. Blair exaggerated threat levels of non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, backed the US’s war plans regardless of diplomatic initiatives seeking peaceful outcomes and improperly equipped British troops once the occupation of Iraq began. This has led to the denunciation of the war as neo-colonial by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and renewed calls for Blair to be charged with war crimes or crimes against peace by others.

While Blair was pivotal in British decision-making that led to aggression against Iraq in 2003, he was hardly alone in promoting a close alliance with the US and the case for outright military intervention for regime change. Not only did the Tory opposition at that time support the war, Conservative leader David Cameron endorsed violent regime change. Indeed, apart from Robin Cook, who resigned as leader of the House of Commons in opposition to the ‘false prospectus’ on which the Labour government pinned its strategy, support for the war was strong throughout the political and state elite – military, intelligence and other. Besides, Iraq was hardly the first time Britain had hitched its war machine to the US.

The Anglo-American bond

Indeed, if we place Iraq in the sweep of post-1945 history, and in the context of a powerful British foreign policy establishment that sprang from the imperial era and became allied with US power elites after 1940, Blair appears as another example of the Conservative and Labour leaders’ attempts to hang on to global influence through a one-sided ‘special relationship’ with the US. Far from being exceptional, as Chilcot claims, the Iraq War stands in a long line of Anglo-American imperial violence in the global south in increasingly desperate bids to maintain Western supremacy. We need only to think of the Korean War, the Vietnam War (in which Labour leader Harold Wilson provided diplomatic and other support to the US), the first Gulf War and support for repressive regimes the world over, including the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and ensuing chaos in Libya since 2011, to see that the Iraq war and Blair are part of a broader pattern of Anglo-American military violence. Focusing on Blair alone obscures the bigger picture and makes impossible, by venting against one man alone, a truly illuminating understanding of British foreign policy.

“The UK’s commitment of resources – financial, military, diplomatic – in support of US global priorities remains unparalleled,” said a (Wiki)leaked US state department cable. Britain, it went on, is able and willing to fight wars in faraway lands alongside the US and mobilising allies. This makes Britain almost indispensable to the US. To former Conservative foreign secretary William Hague, the US was the “essential” nation to which Britain turned. The Anglo-Saxon powers had broadly shared interests in the global order, which, after all, they had constructed during and after the second world war – Bretton Woods, the UN, IMF, World Bank, Marshall Plan, NATO, among others. While these arrangements suited the West, global poverty in the third world continued apace.

The foundations of the post-1945 order were laid during the second world war. According to cabinet papers, the key decisions were made in 1944 over whether to pursue a pro-empire or pro-American foreign policy. Choosing the empire “will be regarded by the Americans as a Declaration of War…” at a time when the empire itself was disintegrating and its parts leaning towards the US. And the US would “certainly make economic war upon us. So much has been made clear to us. And the armoury of the United States is a very powerful one”. Britain signed up to the US-dominated Bretton Woods system because it seemed the best means to preserve its global influence as its imperial power waned.

This is why ‘socialist’ Labour leader Clement Attlee sent to Korea thousands of British servicemen despite the military chiefs of staff indicating that Korea was of little economic or strategic value to British interests. The war – waged under the banner of the fledgling UN – lasted three years and led to over 3 million Korean and Chinese deaths, tens of thousands of American and British fatalities. It ended in stalemate – a ceasefire remains in place today dividing the north from south. Attlee announced that Britain would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the US – words Blair echoed in 2003; wherever the Stars and Stripes flew, the Union Jack would be alongside it. Thus we saw two imperial powers – one in denial about its decline, the other hubristic and inexperienced imperial masters of the universe – trying to force the world to maintain a ‘liberal order’ through unrestrained violence (featuring napalm and relentless aerial bombing of a rural country with rudimentary weapons) teaching the communists a lesson and repeating the same thing in Vietnam a few short years later.

Decades later, not much had changed. Concluding his unofficial enquiry into the first Gulf War, former US attorney general Ramsay Clark declared the Anglo-American bombing campaign as “the most sophisticated and violent air assault in history against a virtually defenceless people”.

Chilcot’s narrowness of vision is probably understandable – one could hardly expect it to look at a broader pattern of history or the place of Iraq in the world order after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But on that basis to declare the Iraq war exceptional and therefore no source of lessons for the future, and to focus so intently on the person of Blair, pivotal though he was, is a major flaw both practically and for our understanding of the dynamics of Anglo-American power. It renders Iraq unique and places blame on one man, when it is plain to see that Blair’s behaviour fits a long historical pattern within an imperial world view that continues to saturate the British foreign policy establishment.

Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics at City University London.

Chilcot: An Abject Lesson in How Not to Go to War

If one word sums up Chilcot’s approach to future ‘interventions’ of which recent British governments have been all too fond it is ‘caution’. This is as it should be.

Demonstrators protest before the release of the John Chilcot report into the Iraq war, at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, Britain July 6, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Paul Hackett

To anyone outside the UK, it might be difficult to grasp the levels of anticipation for the Chilcot inquiry of British involvement in the Iraq war. Iraq has been truly toxic, not least for the perception of politics and politicians. The main reason for this, amongst many, was the popular view that former prime minister Tony Blair had misrepresented the case for war and that he exaggerated the risk posed by Iraq’s supposed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs), which, unfortunately for Blair and his government, were proven not to exist.

Several inquiries over the past decade have mulled over these matters. One, led by former civil servant Robin Butler, adopted the usual tone of the British establishment and prevaricated. Another probe was led by a former judge Brian Hutton, although it was technically an inquest into the death of a government scientist who had killed himself after being exposed by the government as the source for a report by a BBC journalist. The journalist had alleged that the government had “sexed up” the case for WMDs. Hutton’s findings were widely viewed to be little more than a whitewash, placing no blame whatsoever on any government body and essentially exonerating Blair and his team from any culpability in “sexing up” intelligence or causing the scientist’s death.

Surprisingly critical

After a great deal of pressure, in 2009, Gordon Brown, who was prime minister at the time, agreed to set up a more definitive panel to be led by John Chilcot, yet again a pillar of the establishment. For two years, evidence was taken from many senior officials, civil and military, involved in the war. Given Chilcot’s background and that of his colleagues on the inquiry team (a couple of senior academics, a former diplomat and an expert in British social policy), hopes were not high for a forensic and critical examination of Britain’s involvement in the war.

Those hopes were dampened even more by a constant drip of delays. It was regularly pointed out that the report was taking longer to produce than Britain’s involvement in the war had lasted. Rumours abounded of attempts by individuals and institutions to obstruct the inquiry or restrict access to relevant documents. US officials became involved in a long wrangle over whether certain US cables, long in the public domain, could be formally reviewed by the committee. Needless to say, these documents were potentially embarrassing. Throughout all of this process, the inquiry chairman maintained a dignified silence, despite being blamed for delays that were outside his control.

So when he stepped up to the podium on Wednesday morning to deliver a calm but highly critical report summarising his conclusions, the surprise was palpable. The report is 2.6 million words, and outside the inquiry team, it will be a long time before anyone will have read all or even a large portion of it. It is said to be six times longer than the Bible and seven times longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Yet the tone is now clear and its results are becoming apparent.

For many years most people, or most interested people in the UK, have fallen into one of two camps. Either they accept that Blair was justified in his actions or they believe that he is at best deluded but perhaps serially dishonest. Wherever people stand – and the latter group is far larger than the former – there is now official sanction for the view Chilcot has now put forth: that “the options had not been exhausted” prior to the invasion of Iraq.

The conclusion, in other words, is that the war was not a last resort and that its legal basis was unsound.

The report states that the evidence available to the government did not justify the case that was made and the decision was based upon “flawed information”. Planning for the post-war phase was poor to non-existent and the army was ill-equipped for the war it found itself in – a counter-insurgency – after the initial invasion. Finally, he stated that Blair had committed the UK to going to war alongside the US prior to any serious consideration of the merits, let alone legality.

Given the lamentable performance of previous investigations into the Iraq war, many people were surprised at the relatively definitive and firm tone of the Chilcot inquiry. That notwithstanding, it now stands, effectively, as the establishment’s verdict on the conduct of the conflict from the British perspective. Therein lies its importance. It is tempting, therefore, to see it as an end in itself. This would be a mistake.

The fixing that’s needed

At least of equal importance to the nature of the report as a landmark is what happens now. What is its significance? Clearly it will take many weeks for the report itself to be digested. By that time, the news cycle will have ploughed on. First, it is entirely possible that there may be some attempts at legal action against Blair and his associates. My own view, for what it is worth, is that these are unlikely to bear much fruit, unfortunate though that may be. In the longer term, however, there is much to be gained from a close study with a view to looking critically at civil and military procedures, and culture and practices relating to how we conduct war.

Other countries do this far, far better. The US report into the 9/11 attacks – taking less than the two years provided for it – for better or worse, is a roadmap to how the country’s security services were to go forward in a very different world. Similarly, after the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel’s Winograd Commission savagely indicted the Israeli political and military leadership with a view to ensuring that the nation’s security and defence structures were reformed.

With a seriously compromised military and political class, it is clear to many that the UK needs a similar overhaul. For example, there is a culture of compliance within the UK military that is deeply embedded within its current DNA. In the past, failures in warfare ensured that the right cultures were developed and the right people promoted. I have in mind particularly World War II, when the equivalent of the chief of the defence staff, general Alan Brooke, was very commonly heard to inform his political masters, notably Winston Churchill, “I flatly disagree” when the prime minster came up with ideas that were impracticable or down right ill-advised.

If only we had such officers now. The current crop may be better, but our military commanders during the Iraq war would rarely be heard openly disagreeing with Blair. On the contrary, they seemed rather more keen to ‘crack on’; in Blair’s own words they were “up for doing it”, by which he meant invading Iraq. It is the first duty of a military advisor to a senior political leader to ensure that there is a strategy in place prior to engaging in conflict. As the famous Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz put it, “No one in their right mind should start a war…without being clear as to what he is trying to achieve and how he proposes to achieve it”. It’s his duty to ask, “What do you require of us?”

It is this sort of reflection that needs to migrate from academic and journalistic discourse to reality. Sadly, having had some close interactions with senior military command over the last decade, I think that this may be a step too far. Still, one can hope but one will not be holding one’s breath.

One area where there really does seem to have been some serious reflection and change has been intelligence. The SIS (Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6) were badly burnt by the WMD fiasco. Their reputation was if not quite trashed, then very seriously compromised. The report raised some matters that I certainly had never heard of, including accounts of quite breathtaking credulity.

This naivety accompanied the rather better known failure of integrity implicit in their various ‘dodgy dossiers’ presented as ‘intelligence’ but really little more than propaganda. There is no doubt at all that they are fully aware that their watchword must be caution. I believe it is highly unlikely that MI6 will be caught out again, at least not in such an unconscionable manner.

If one word sums up Chilcot’s approach to future ‘interventions’ of which recent British governments have been all too fond it is ‘caution’. This is as it should be.

A former British military intelligence officer, Frank Ledwidge is a senior fellow at the Royal Air Force College at the University of Portsmouth.

Chilcot Inquiry Slams Blair Over Iraq War, Reveals Secret Promise to Bush

The report says the threat of Saddam Hussein was overplayed and post-war planning was inadequate. However, it has not called the war illegal.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair leaves his office in London, Britain July 5, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

London: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told then US President George W. Bush eight months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq “I will be with you, whatever” and relied on flawed intelligence and legal advice to go to war, a seven-year inquiry concluded on Wednesday.

It strongly criticised Blair on a range of issues, saying the threat posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction had been over-hyped and the planning for the aftermath of war had been inadequate.

Blair responded that he had taken the decision to go to war “in good faith”, that he still believed it was better to remove Hussein and that he did not see that action as the cause of terrorism today, in the Middle East or elsewhere.

“The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong. The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined,” the former prime minister, looking gaunt and strained, told reporters. “For all of this, I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you will ever know.”

The only Labour prime minister to win three general elections, Blair was in office for ten years until 2007 and was hugely popular in his heyday, but Iraq has severely tarnished his reputation and legacy.

The inquiry report, about three times the length of the Bible, stopped short of saying the war was illegal, a stance that is certain to disappoint Blair’s many critics.

“We have, however, concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for military action were far from satisfactory,” said John Chilcot, the inquiry’s chairman, in a speech presenting his findings.

Blair said the report should exonerate him from accusations of lying, which have been made by relatives of some of the 179 British soldiers who died in the conflict.

“The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit,” he said in a statement. “Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.”

‘Shambolic episode’

Demonstrators wearing masks to impersonate Tony Blair and George Bush protest before the release of the John Chilcot report into the Iraq war, at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, Britain July 6, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Peter Nicholls

Relatives of some of the British soldiers who died in Iraq said they would study the report to examine if there was a legal case to pursue against those responsible.

“We all know who the key players are…who took part in this most shambolic episode in British politics. We would like to see all those key players face some form of accountability,” said Reg Keys, whose son, 20-year-old Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, was one of those killed. “If that’s through the legal channels, then we will look at that and see what’s viable and appropriate. It has been passed over to lawyers.”

The report shed light on what happened between Blair and Bush in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, an interaction that has long been the subject of speculation about secret deals and pledges.

In a memo dated July 28, 2002, eight months before the invasion, Blair told Bush: “I will be with you, whatever. But this is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties.”

“The planning on this and the strategy are the toughest yet. This is not Kosovo. This is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf War.”

Chilcot said Blair had sought to influence Bush’s decisions, offering Britain’s support while suggesting possible adjustments to the US position.

But the inquiry chairman added that Blair had over-estimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq.

His report also said there was no imminent threat from Saddam at the time of the invasion in March 2003 and the chaos in Iraq and the region which followed should have been foreseen.

By 2009 at least 150,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, had died and more than a million had been displaced.

The report said Britain had joined the invasion without exhausting peaceful options and that it had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council by doing so.

Flawed intelligence

“It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged and they should have been,” Chilcot said.

He also said that Blair’s government’s judgments about the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were “presented with unjustified certainty”.

No such weapons were discovered after the war.

Chilcot said Blair changed his case for war from focusing on Iraq’s alleged “vast stocks” of illegal weapons to Hussein having the intent to obtain such weapons and being in breach of UN resolutions.

“That was not, however, the explanation for military action he had given before the conflict,” Chilcot said.

Iraq remains in chaos to this day. ISIS controls large areas of the country and 250 people died on Saturday in Baghdad’s worst car bombing since the US-led coalition toppled Hussein.

The inquiry’s purpose was for the British government to learn lessons from the invasion and occupation that followed.

“We cannot turn the clock back but we can ensure that lessons are learned and acted on,” Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament in a statement on the inquiry.

“It is crucial to good decision-making that a prime minister establishes a climate in which it’s safe for officials and other experts to challenge existing policy and question the views of ministers and the prime minister without fear or favour.”

Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader of the Labour Party and a fervent pacifist, told parliament that the war was an act of aggression based on a false pretext that had fuelled and spread terrorism across the Middle East.

(Reuters)