Chilcot shows myth and reality of UK-US special relationship

The Chilcot Inquiry reveals Tony Blair's hubris in trying to influence a US bent on war in Iraq, writes Stephen Blackwell

Illustration by Pep Montserrat for The National

‘I will be with you whatever.” This unconditional pledge from former British prime minister Tony Blair to his then counterpart, United States president George W Bush, is one of the key revelations from this week’s publication in London of the findings of the Iraq Inquiry led by Sir John Chilcot, a former career civil servant.

In the context of the Chilcot report’s severe criticisms of the British government’s decision to play a major role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr Blair’s private note to Mr Bush during the build-up to the war will in all likelihood be seen as a watershed moment in the enduring history and recurrent mythologising of the Anglo-American “special relationship”.

Mr Blair’s willingness to offer blanket support to the Iraq intervention is only intelligible in the context of the historical Anglo-American relationship and his personal standing in the Bush White House.

The then-prime minister’s willingness to take such an audacious risk stemmed from his friendly and candid exchanges with both Mr Bush and his predecessor Bill Clinton, and the strong support he offered to the US after the trauma of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A frequent guest at the White House, Camp David and Mr Bush’s ranch in Texas, the prime minister’s status with his hosts reflected other famous friendships such as the empathy between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the Second World War partnership of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

The enduring legacy of these relationships, founded on shared values, a common language and a shaping role in the post-Second World War global order, strongly informed the accord between London and Washington cemented in late 2002 and early 2003.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq was launched, Mr Blair wrote to Mr Bush to outline his conviction that they had the power to shape a new era in global affairs: “This is the moment when you can define international priorities for the next generation: the true post-Cold War world order.”

However, Mr Blair’s value as a close ally did not prevent Mr Bush, along with influential figures such as vice-president Dick Cheney and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, from seeking the hard-headed pursuit of specified US objectives. As revealed in the Chilcot report, the convivial relationship between the White House and Downing Street masked the reality that Britain’s input into the major decisions over Iraq was negligible.

The report concludes that the Blair government drew “false comfort that it was involved in US decision-making from the strength of that relationship”. Washington’s disinclination to take London’s advice on post-war Iraq was demonstrated by the exclusion of British representatives from the Coalition Provisional Authority set up after the end of hostilities. The British were left with the “uncomfortable and unsatisfactory situation of accepting shared responsibility without the ability to make a formal input into the process of decision-making”.

The concrete example of Britain using its influence to any effect was Mr Blair’s role in persuading Mr Bush in late 2002 to make one last attempt to secure a new resolution in the UN Security Council authorising military action. Other than that, the report is clear that the British government failed in its duty as it “did not press President Bush for definitive assurances about US post-conflict plans or set out clearly to him the strategic risk”.

Mr Blair’s trust in Washington ultimately meant that he had little leverage over US foreign policy. His idealistic conception of Anglo-American relations reflected a mythical conception of the alliance at variance with a historical record of recurrent clashes between London and Washington during Second World War and after over their diverging interests.

The notion of a “special relationship” originates in a phrase used by Churchill shortly after Second World War. Close wartime cooperation, institutionalised by the role of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in their oversight of military campaigns against Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan, in fact masked frequent bitter disputes between British and US planners over strategic priorities in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Far East.

The aftermath of the Second World War saw further instances of Anglo-American rivalry. Britain’s desire to assert its imperial presence in the Middle East led to a brief suspension of relations after the Eisenhower administration, mindful of Arab nationalist sentiment, blocked the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956.

In the 1960s, prime minister Harold Wilson, preoccupied with Britain’s economic decline and withdrawal from a world role, doggedly refused US entreaties for support for its doomed campaign in Vietnam.

Nevertheless, despite the legacy of an occasionally fractious alliance, the mythical conception of Anglo-American relations has persisted in many sections of British opinion.

London’s political elite is now digesting the Chilcot report amid the political and economic fallout from the recent referendum vote to leave the European Union. For those British Europhobes enthusiastic about loosening ties with Europe and falling back on the old, assumed certainties of the transatlantic alliance, the damage inflicted by the Chilcot report on Mr Blair’s reputation should serve as a cautionary tale.

Although the most vociferous opponents of the Iraq adventure have accused Mr Blair of deliberately misleading Parliament and the British public, Chilcot’s findings suggest that the prime minister was drawn into a dubious undertaking because he was rather too close to the US president. The prime minister’s ease of access to the White House, along with personal laudations such as “vice-president of the free world”, may have flattered him to the extent that it affected his assessment of Britain’s best interests.

From the British perspective at least, the decision to topple Saddam Hussein was the consequence of an excessive degree of Anglo-American intimacy that distorted the policy-making process in London and ultimately inflicted severe reputational damage on a prime minister who won three successive general elections.

Historians are likely to judge that the ghost of the “special relationship”, expressed through excessive zeal in staying in step with the White House regardless of the risk, inspired a decision leading to disastrous consequences that will haunt Mr Blair’s legacy in perpetuity.

Stephen Blackwell is an inter­national politics and security ­analyst