TB on IOs

For my flight to Berlin, I picked up a copy of Tony Blair’s memoirs and read sections of it for his take on international organizations and multilateralism. I should confess that I’ve always been a fan of Blair and the way that he combines a general belief in the importance of international organizations with an understanding that they will have to be circumvented on occasion. He details in the book what I consider to be one of Blair’s finest moments: his leadership during the Kosovo crisis and his insistence that NATO not back down even as the air campaign against Milosevic seemed to be falling apart and the alliance was in disarray. (He doesn’t even mention an earlier moment of courage in the Balkans shortly after he took over as prime minister: In the summer of 2007, Blair authorized British special forces to start nabbing war criminals in Bosnia. I was in Sarajevo then and remember distinctly the way the operation reverberated politically, changing the dynamic on the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords considerably.)

His account of the run-up to the Iraq War and the question of Security Council authorization doesn’t include much new. He has a good description of the frantic last days of diplomacy in March 2003 when his political future seemed briefly to hang on whether he could get a second resolution from the Council.  It’s clear though that Blair (himself a lawyer) doesn’t think much of the view that Council authorization fundamentally changed the legitimacy or legality of the war. 

I understood the importance of the second resolution in terms of political survival and so forth. In confess I always thought it a bit odd in terms of the moral acceptability of the course of action or not. It bestowed more legitimacy, it was true, but whether we got a second resolution or not basically depended on the politics in France and Russia and their calculation of where their political interests lay.  We had acted without UN authority in Kosovo. It would have been highly doubtful if we could ever have got UNSC agreement for either Bosnia or Rwanda. I never even thought about it for Sierra Leone.

Blair also describes his stance as an EU supporter in Britain, a country with an often rabidly anti-Brussels press. He has little patience for a truly Euro-skeptic view, which he describes as "hoplelessly, absurdly  out of date and unrealistic." But for all that, Blair flashes a bit of Euroskepticism himself, particularly when it comes to the European Parliament, the EU’s gargantuan, unwieldy, and only occasionally effective legislative arm. "A bit like the Labour party," he writes, the European Parliament "likes nothing more than a valiant loser." In describing a 2005 speech to a hostile European Parliament during one of Britain’s stints as EU president, he outright mocks the body for its pretensions to vigorous debate, particularly compared to the British parliament. "[A]fter the House of Commmons at [Prime Minister’s Questions], it was like being in a girls’ school playground after serving a long stretch in a high-security prison."

His account of the 2005 G-8 summit in Gleneagles is notable for his frank admission that he was hoplelessly distracted as the summit began by Britain’s bid to host the Olympics (ultimately successful) and for this fantastic exchange between Blair and former President George W. Bush, who was nonplussed by the presence of Belgium’s prime minister at the summit. Bush watches the Belgian speak for a few moments and then turns to Blair:

Bush: Who is this guy?

Blair: He is the prime minister of Belgium.

Bush: Belgium? Belgium is not part of the G8.

Blair: No, but he is here as the president of Europe.

Bush: You got the Belgians running Europe?