us and them

Tony Blair last night gave a speech on the future direction of the Middle East. A central theme was that Iran is ultimately responsible for many of the key sources of instability in the region, and that the appropriate response is to focus on neutralising Iranian interference across the region.

Blair’s speech was vague on one point, however – who he purports to speak for. Self-evidently he represents British interests. His speech alludes to the ‘Western world’ without clarifying or defining which countries are included in the phrase. He also uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ repeatedly. He emphasises the importance of Britain’s relationships with the US and EU. Most confusing though is the following passage:

What is happening in the Middle East today is not complex. It is simple. Iran is being confronted over its nuclear weapons ambitions. Its stock market has lost a third of its value in the last year and foreign credit is increasingly hard to come by. The statements of its President – such as wiping Israel from the face of the earth – are causing alarm, even in Iran.

To be fair, they have a genuine, if entirely misplaced fear, that the US seeks a military solution in Iran. They don’t. But we all want Iran to suspend its enrichment process which if allowed to continue, will give them a nuclear weapon. Under the agreement we brokered in June, the US has said they will talk to Iran direct for the first time in 30 years, if they abide by the UN demand to suspend enrichment. But Iran is refusing to do it.

Instead they are using the pressure points in the region to thwart us. So they help the most extreme elements of Hamas in Palestine; Hizbollah in the Lebanon; Shia militia in Iraq. That way, they put obstacles in the path to peace, paint us, as they did over the Israel/Lebanon conflict, as the aggressors, inflame the Arab street and create political turmoil in our democratic politics. [emphasis added]

None of Britain, the US, or the EU was directly involved in the Israel/Lebanon conflict. Why then, does Blair suggest that Iran sought to paint “us” as the aggressors? Presumably the implication is that Israel, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in its broader form) is on the same side as the other members of Blair’s vaguely defined collective.

At the same time Blair was giving his speech, that outdated organisation from the forgotten era of multilateralism, the UN, was receiving the results of a report produced by an international panel of academics, religious and political leaders which warned that (from The Guardian):

…cultural stereotypes were turning negotiable disputes into “seemingly intractable identity-based conflicts” and that the clash-of-civilisations theory has obscured “the real nature of the predicament the world is facing”.

The report emphasised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a key cause of tension, and suggested that it is politics, not religion, which lies behind much of the tension between the ‘Western’ and ‘Muslim’ worlds. ‘Seemingly intractable identity-based conflicts’ seem to be a natural consequence of the ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mantra of the War on Terror. Back to Blair:

When I said, after 9/11 that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with America, I said it because I believed it. But I also thought it was profoundly in Britain’s interests. I knew this attack wasn’t aimed at America per se; but at America as the leading representative of our values.

Not content with reinforcing the perception of ‘the West’ as a monolithic entity whose values are under assault, however, Blair goes a step further and refuses to countenance any attempt to distinguish between a rejection of the current US administration and the United States, the country, itself:

But – runs the more sophisticated argument -: America we like, this American President we don’t. This is a comforting argument. It separates anti-America from anti-Bush. However it is also a cop-out. Let us not kid ourselves. 9/11 would have changed any American President’s foreign policy. 3000 innocent people dead in the streets of New York; the Al Qaida operatives who did it, trained out of Afghanistan. Following 9/11, American policy was going to shift. It was going to get out after the terrorists with all America’s might and any President who didn’t do it, wasn’t going to be President for long.

Bush may have managed to squeak in for a second term, but his party has been shown the door by the American public, who evidently feel that opposing the administration does not amount to ‘anti-Americanism.’ Iraq was widely acknowledged as one of a handful of key issues concerning American voters in the mid-term elections, and Americans have been saying for some time that they are not satisfied that their country is moving in the right direction. It is not too much of a stretch to infer that the Iraq war, and US foreign policy since September 11, have contributed to this view. The election result highlights the difference between patriotism and unquestioning approval, and should be instructive for Blair at a time when the seemingly hopeless Tories are resurgent in Britain and his own party is increasingly restless, rebellious and eager for a leadership handover.

According to the UN report, “perceptions of double standards in relation to international law and human rights are increasing resentment among Muslims around the globe.” Blair would do well to consider why that might be and what can be done to address it, rather than spending the last months of his Prime Ministership encouraging the perception that complex international issues are as simple as ‘us and them’, where ‘us’ refers to a poorly defined collection of the United States, Britain, Israel and ‘the West.’