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The panel debate 'After Iraq: is intervention dead?' took place at 'Change the World', the Fabian new year conference 2008 on Saturday 19th January 2008 at Imperial College London. The speakers were Baroness Shirley Williams; Sunder Katwala (Fabian Society); Alex Bigham (Foreign Policy Centre); John Kampfner (New Statesman), with Fabian Research Director Tim Horton chairing.
Saturday, 19th January
The fallout of the Iraq war and the rise of new powers leave the liberal project of a rule-based internationalism at its weakest point for two decades, claims New Statesman editor.
Prospects for a liberal internationalist worldview of a rule-based multilateralism are weaker than at any time since the end of the cold war, New Statesman editor John Kampfner told the Fabian 'Change the World' conference.
Kampfner predicted mean much less interest on issues of human rights and democracy, not just because the consequences of the Iraq war had discredited liberal intervention, but also because of a more fundamental power shift from west to east.
'Power is shifting from the west. There are veto powers at the UN who confidently reject what they see as a US-driven world view', said Kampfner.
Alex Bigham of The Foreign Policy Centre argued that it would be a mistake for Iraq to mark the end of intervention, and called for a new emphasis on the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to ensure there were limits on state sovereignty where it led to oppression.
This meant keeping the use of military force as an option in cases of genocide: 'It won't be enough to do it all through soft power, which people think of as nice and fuzzy. Soft power matters, but if you rely on soft power alone then that is only half a foreign policy', said Bigham.
Shirley Williams stressed that a key lesson of the Iraq war intervention required legitimacy – and 'that can only come through the United Nations'.
John Kampfner said that, having reported on the Rwandan genocide, he had never been in the 'never intervene anywhere' camp. But he was pessimistic about the prospects for those who were, rightly, pushing for a new emphasis on multilateral institutions needed to recognize a fundamental shift of power within the UN.
China had taken an active part in UN diplomatic efforts on North Korea, but had shown no interest in supporting pressure on the Burmese regime: 'On Burma, they simply don't see that it is in their interests to do anything', said Kampfner.
Williams also wanted to see the Responsibility to Protect agenda implemented but said that she was 'very angry' about empty posturing on Darfur, where there had been a failure to deploy or equip more than half of the international force which had been mandated.
'We have not offered a single helicopter', she said.
Sunder Katwala, Fabian General Secretary said that 'We need to rescue liberal internationalism. But it will be very difficult.
We can only do this if we understand and learn from the mistake Tony Blair made over Iraq, as well as remembering the lessons of Rwanda and Yugoslavia in the 1990s when did too little', he said.
'Tony Blair's Chicago speech in 1999 was called 'new rules for the international community. It is an important agenda. His mistake was to think he shared that agenda with people on the US right who don't believe in international rules or that an international community exists', said Katwala.
Liberal internationalists need to show how their belief in multilateral legitimacy and the importance of state-building meant a very different agenda to promote democracy and human rights from that of the neo-cons, said Katwala:
'The failure is post-war Iraq was not just a failure to plan; it was an ideological choice based on Donald Rumsfeld's theory that if you knock over tyranny, then what results automatically is freedom. Social democrats know that you have to build the institutions of the state if you want a democracy or a market', he said.
Kampfner said that David Miliband's comments that 'there are military victories, but no military solutions' were evidence of new thinking in the UK government about Iraq.
The military surge had brought improvements in security, but argued that there was now a propagandist effort to overstate the case and claim the US was on course for a military victory:
'It is the 'hell has got a new coat of wallpaper' school of thinking', he said.
Katwala argued that a 'humbler' liberal internationalist agenda could make slower, but deeper progress:
'Membership of the multilateral club is the best tool governments have for voluntary 'regime change'. That is why Europe should keep the door open to Turkey. But we should also work out how to promote universal values in each specific context and from the bottom up. The first question we should ask is what do democrats in Burma, Pakistan or Kenya want in solidarity from us?', said Katwala.
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