Tony Blair’s War
The Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq – surely one of the defining events of the last decade – may well, if we are lucky, answer some of the pressing questions about that disastrous episode. We may, as a result, be able to confirm with greater certainty that the invasion was illegal, and that it was based on a lie.
What seems unlikely, however, is that we will be any the wiser as to why – from a British standpoint – the invasion was undertaken at all. The question, when applied to the Americans, admits of a relatively straightforward answer. There may have been for George W. an element of filial piety, and a sense of a task uncompleted, and controlling the oil may always have been a factor, but the main impetus was surely the conviction of that powerful group of conservatives who controlled the Bush administration – advisers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle – that “if you have the power, use it”. The use of what was imagined to be overwhelming American power to change the Middle East map was too tempting to resist.
For these ideologues, alarmingly ignorant as they seem to have been of the world beyond American shores, everyone in the world – whatever their ethnicity, culture or religion – would be Californians if they could; all that was needed was to remove obstacles like Saddam Hussein, and the dominoes would, for once, fall in the right direction. The invaders, it was confidently predicted, would be welcomed by the liberated with flowers.
But when we ask the question of the British, the answer is less clear, and the Chilcot process seems unlikely to produce any real insights from the only person who could respond with any accuracy and authority. We may be forced to seek the answer for ourselves.
There are of course the explanations derived from realpolitik; there was,first, the supposed need to control future oil supplies and then the constant imperative to stay close to the Americans.
The oil question was regularly advanced as a plausible explanation for the Iraq adventure at the time. But, in retrospect, it carries little conviction. There is no evidence that Saddam was any more likely than anyone else to cut off oil supplies to the West; the main obstacle to the continued flow of Iraqi oil was, after all, the sanctions applied by the American-led alliance.
But, it could be argued, if the Americans – even if erroneously – believed that Saddam had to be removed if the oil supply was to be guaranteed, that was surely reason enough to support the invasion, if only to assure the US that it could rely on Britain. And it is certainly true that, following Suez, the imperative to never stray too far from what the Americans wanted was deeply ingrained in British foreign policy, as I discovered at first hand when I joined the Foreign Office in the late 1960s.
Even so, the case for the invasion on the basis that it was essential to do whatever the Americans wanted does not bear scrutiny. If that had been the British attitude, and given the weight of the legal, ethical, military and foreign policy arguments against such a dangerous venture, the sensible course would have been a measured degree of diplomatic support, or at least a defensive refraining from overt opposition. The large-scale and enthusiastic commitment of direct British military support was a step of a wholly different order, and can be explained only by identifying a quite extraordinary additional motivating factor.
That factor was the personality of the then Prime Minister. It can safely be asserted that, although many could be found at the time to support the invasion, there was no one else in British public life who, given the opportunity, would have had the confidence and moral certainty to take this country to war as Tony Blair did, particularly on the basis of a story that he knew to be false. Where did this amazing chutzpah come from?
Prime Ministers who serve a reasonable length of time are always in danger of succumbing to what I call “Prime Ministerial syndrome” – the belief that, after years of acolytes hanging on their every word, they are infallible. Tony Blair was temperamentally peculiarly susceptible to this condition, exacerbated in his case by his extraordinary ability at that time to persuade the British people of anything he chose. It is easy to see how he came to believe that whether or not the stated reasons for the Iraq invasion were true simply did not matter; the fact that he himself supported the venture was enough.
Why did he support it? He had by this time convinced himself that he was a world statesman, equipped to partner George Bush in a duumvirate which would re-shape the world. Underpinned by a hitherto undeclared religious conviction, he increasingly saw the world in terms of absolutes – good and evil, right and wrong. Like the American conservatives, but for moral and religious reasons rather misplaced ideological opportunism, he could not resist the chance to strike a blow not only for enlightenment but for his own destiny.
This messianic posture was brilliantly exploited by the Bush administration. After six years of the increasingly tedious and vexatious business of governing Britain, what a wonderful confirmation of his destiny it must have been to receive the unalloyed plaudits of a fawning American establishment and media. The carping of domestic critics could safely be ignored when the world’s greatest power recognised him as a saviour.
We invaded a foreign country to assure Tony Blair of his place in history. The irony is that it will not be the one he had imagined.
Bryan Gould
7 January 2010.
This article was publioshed in the online Guardian on 25 January
Labour’s Coup
The most disturbing aspect of Labour’s latest attempted and abortive coup is neither that it took place nor that it failed. It is the level of incompetence, self-interest and self-delusion in Labour’s ranks that it reveals.
The latest damp squib reflects little credit on any of those involved. The self-designated coup leaders in 2010 showed as little aptitude for conspiracy as their predecessors did in 2009. They appear to have had no alternative policy programme, no leader-in-waiting ready to take over. They had not, in other words, made the slightest attempt to ensure the success of their venture. They seem to have launched their bid to unseat Gordon Brown on the basis of no more than disappointed personal ambition.
Those, including Cabinet members, who apparently promised support and then chickened out when the chips were down deserve even less credit. Each of these ersatz soldiers presumably made their own calculations as to where personal advantage might lie. If the coup were to succeed, they would each wish to be on the winning side; but no one of them was prepared to take the risk of putting their heads above their parapet until hostilities had been successfully concluded.
The next group deserve little better. These are the senior parliamentarians who decided, after careful calculation, that the attempted coup was led by amateurs, and that it suited their interests to show their belated and conditional loyalty to a leader who looked likely to survive only as long as he was hooked up to a life support machine. Each of them, after careful consideration lasting many hours, succeeded in the difficult task of drafting statements that expressed the minimum degree of support needed to keep the life support machine ticking over for a few more weeks or months. They remain ready and eager to switch off the machine as soon as it suits them.
The usual suspects – the serial plotters – played their usual ineffectual role. They remained available as foot soldiers to any general, or at least subaltern, who cared to raise the standard of revolt. But they lacked any firepower of their own and seemed to have little idea of where or how to get any. Constant exercises on the parade ground proved of little value when and if real hostilities threatened to begin.
But perhaps the most culpable group are those who soldier on, prepared to change nothing, unwilling to risk anything, ready to accept inevitable defeat, as long as they can prolong their own tenure and cling on to their seats for as long as possible. These are the MPs who have lost faith in the Labour government and who will either not stand again or will throw themselves on the mercy of the voters and hope that they have a better view of that government than they have themselves.
What attitude should be taken by Labour MPs? The first step is to wake up – to realise that the voters’ judgment in the next few months will be made of Labour’s total record in government under both Blair and Brown, and their sense of where a re-elected Labour government might take them. That judgment would be only marginally affected by a last-minute change of leader, even if it could be arranged, especially when no credible candidate currently presents himself or herself. And what serious leadership candidate would willingly step forward at this point to carry the can for election defeat when a new start would be available after Gordon Brown has lost the election?
The next step is to rally behind the leader so as to present a united front and minimise the damage inflicted by election defeat. The success of the election campaign should be judged according to how well – and how much of – Labour survives. The priority is to live to fight another day. There are never any final battles in politics. And – taking the most optimistic view – if a miracle is available, it may be best achieved when it is least expected.
After the election, there must be a genuine contest for the leadership – no more coronations – and an acknowledgment and re-appraisal of the mistakes made in government. The goal should be a renewal of Labour, with a new programme that is true to Labour’s values but is also attuned to the aspirations of Labour supporters, both actual and potential. The “newness” in each of these senses should abjure the capital “N” that has now run its course.
It may be too much to expect Labour MPs to take the long view when election defeat stares them in the face. But a frenetic obsession with the short-term will only make matters worse. Gordon Brown’s duty now is not to promise an improbable election victory, but to ensure that his troops face the coming battle as a disciplined and united force, so that they leave the battlefield – victorious or otherwise – in good order.
Bryan Gould
7 January 2010
This article was published in the online Guardian on 7 January.
Macro Economic Policy Is What Counts
As we begin the New Year with the hope of climbing out of recession, we are in danger of overlooking – or misunderstanding – one of the lessons we should have learnt from the global downturn. What the meltdown should have taught us is that economics, as Keynes insisted, is a behavioural science. It is not subject – like physics – to inexorable scientific laws, nor is it to be captured or foretold through mathematical formulae. Economics is the attempt to account for and predict how people – with all their foibles – will behave in response to the stimuli that economic circumstances provide to them.
Governments, and economic policy-makers, understand this, even if they say they don’t. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother with changing those stimuli in the hope of improving economic performance. Even monetarists, whose basic attitude is that all governments can do is to hold the ring and let people get on with it, are keen interventionists when it comes to pushing this button or pulling that lever.
What we seem to have difficulty in grasping, however, is that the most powerful economic stimuli are those provided by macro-economic policy – the way in which we manage the economy as a whole. We insist on treating that as a given, beyond the reach of policy-makers to influence. “There is no alternative” we are told, either explicitly or implicitly; the ability of governments to influence economic developments is said to be limited to pushing or prodding at specific supposed pressure points. Even 25 years’ experience of the failure of such measures to raise our overall economic performance does not deter us from pushing on doggedly with new versions of old and usually failed remedies.
But this represents a total failure to understand Keynes’ basic insight. The most important economic function of government is to adjust the macro-economic context so that – in a market economy – the overall market and the response people make to it will do the job for us. If macro-economic policy settings allow the market to function efficiently, then much specific intervention will be rendered unnecessary.
Conversely, the less attention we pay to the macro-economy, the greater will be the apparent need and temptation to intervene with specific measures, in an attempt to make up for the deficiencies in economic performance that our macro policy – or lack of it – has made inevitable, and the greater will be the (repeated) disappointment when those measures prove ineffective.
The basic concerns of macro-economic policy should be the overall competitiveness and profitability of our productive sector. The focus should not be any particular firm or industry but the economy as a whole. If those concerns were properly addressed, our productive industry would – without specific intervention – help us to balance our current account, invest in new capabilities for the future, provide worthwhile job opportunities to the whole population, pay proper attention to sustainability, produce buoyant tax revenues to the public purse, and generally produce a more successful and easily managed economy and society.
So, set alongside these goals, how does our macro-economic policy shape up? Does it provide the stimuli that will produce the right responses?
Well, we begin by defining macro-economic policy virtually out of existence. We insist that it is really just a question of monetary policy, and monetary policy for a very limited purpose – the control of inflation. We pay no attention to other policy objectives like competitiveness, profitability or full employment. We have, in other words, fallen at the first hurdle.
We then engage the limited tools of monetary policy – principally interest rates but also exchange rates as an inevitable concomitant – to do a job they are not designed for. Instead of helping efficient market operations by providing market-clearing prices, interest rates and exchange rates are used to distort the market in the interests of controlling inflation – and not very well at that.
Macro-economic policy thereby becomes, not an instrument for promoting the overall economy, but a guarantee that it will not be allowed to prosper. If, by virtue of superhuman efforts by our farmers and manufacturers, or of strokes of good luck such as the rise in dairy prices, we manage briefly to improve our trading performance, the response of our policy-makers (with the help of the foreign exchange markets) is to stimulate a rise in the exchange rate which will wipe out any gain in profitability. And that is a problem because unless there is improved profitability which can be re-invested in productive capacity, there is no escape from our disappointing economic performance.
We insist, in other words, on delivering the message to our most dynamic producers that there is no point in investing in New Zealand’s productive capacity because our policy-makers have other priorities. The power of the overall market forces we set in motion as a result of our neglect of macro-economic policy is such that no amount of poking or prodding at small parts of the economy will have much effect. Little wonder that Kiwis conclude that housing is a better investment than productive capacity.
The stimuli our macro policy provides to our overall economy are, in other words, the very converse of what Keynes would recommend. It is time to recognise that the Keynesian approach offers not just the only way of escaping from recession (as is now reluctantly recognised by most commentators) but is also a long-term blueprint for the health of our economy. If we want a better economic performance, we need to think harder about the “behaviours” that our policies make inevitable.
Bryan Gould
29 December 2009
This article was published in the New Zealand Herald on 4 January 2010.
We Owe the Brash Task Force A Debt of Gratitude
Don Brash and his Task Force, with their bizarre ragbag of extreme nostrums from thirty years ago, have – in at least one respect – done us all a favour. We now know that we can safely consign to history the doctrines that have dominated our economic policy for so long. If we are to make any sense of the goal of closing the gap with Australia, we need to look forward rather than backwards.
Even without the Task Force, it has become clear that the landscape of economic debate has changed substantially. The global recession has forced an “agonising reappraisal” of what works and what doesn’t. Phil Goff recognised this when he proclaimed that the consensus of the last 25 years was ended; and the Prime Minister was not far behind him in quickly acknowledging that the Brash Task Force report would be largely ignored.
So, the search is now on for a policy agenda that will make the difference. In that search, there is an immediate obstacle to overcome. We have been told for so long that “there is no alternative” that we are inclined to think that any departure from the former orthodoxy will require something dramatic and revolutionary. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The effective and sensible course that this country should now follow requires nothing more than the application of common sense and tried and true policies. It is only the absence of any real debate in New Zealand about economic policy over the past 25 years that has made them seem unfamiliar.
The first step we should take is to re-focus our macro-economic policy. The Brash theory has been that, if we focus exclusively on controlling inflation and leave the rest to market forces, everything else will fall into place. The problem has been that the counter-inflationary instruments we chose – ever higher interest rates and a consistently overvalued exchange rate – distorted the operation of market forces and did enormous damage to our productive economy. Little wonder that, by loading the dice against ourselves so that we made it difficult to develop export markets or to resist import penetration, we fell behind those who did not handicap themselves in this way.
What we need now is a better balanced, broader-based policy which treats inflation not as the sole focus of policy but as just one of the targets we should aim at. We need a macro-economic policy that aims at full employment, so that we fully use our resources, and above all maintains and improves the competitiveness and therefore profitability of New Zealand industry.
This requires both monetary and fiscal policy to be integrated so that a stable level of demand is maintained and New Zealand’s competitiveness in world markets is improved. Interest rates and the exchange rate should be allowed to do their proper job and set accordingly. Government has a role to play in doing those things that private industry finds difficult. Other countries, like Singapore – more successful than we have been – have shown how this is done. Only if we can set ourselves on the path of export-led growth can we expect to arrest the long decline in our comparative economic performance.
Oddly enough, this approach places more faith in the capacity of the market to show the way forward than the Brash-inspired distortions implicit in manipulating interest rates and the exchange rate for counter-inflationary, non-market purposes for which they are not intended. Only if our producers – in industry and agriculture – are able to compete effectively in world markets, including our own, can we expect them to make a return which will finance the investment in our productive capacity which is the key to better productivity and rising living standards.
None of this means that we should abandon the fight against inflation – far from it. To stop prostituting the whole of macro-economic policy to the single, narrow task of controlling inflation does not indicate that we need not bother about it. It simply means that we should use all the instruments of macro policy for wider purposes – the health of the economy as a whole – and deal with inflation through measures specifically targeted at inflationary pressures.
There is no shortage of appropriate measures available, if we are prepared to analyse carefully what stimulates inflation. It is increasingly clear that, with the prudent management of public finances over the last decade and the demands necessarily now made on public spending in recessionary times, it is not – as Don Brash continues to maintain – government spending that is the culprit.
What we need to target is the excessive investment in non-productive assets, like housing, that is both the consequence and cause of the bias in our economy against productive investment. The fastest- growing element in our domestic money supply has been bank lending on housing. That is where we should be concentrating our counter-inflationary attention; it is no accident that the tax treatment of housing as an investment and the restraint of bank lending are rapidly moving up the agenda.
A less doctrinaire and more commonsense approach to economic policy would, as a start, give us a level playing field on which to take on the Aussies – and, as we know, that’s all we need to give us a fighting chance.
Bryan Gould
6 December 2009
The All Blacks – Just Another Team?
The All Whites’ success reminds us yet again of the remarkable sporting record achieved by this tiny country which has for much of its short life been only about half as big – in population terms – as the City of Birmingham. When we add to the All Whites’ exploits the success enjoyed over the years by our teams in rugby league, softball, hockey, and cricket and the individual triumphs in athletics, rowing, cycling, equestrian events – the list is endless – we can see how much we punch above our weight in international terms.
Yet none of this – remarkable as it is – remotely approaches our record of achievement in a sport which is truly international and which could be regarded as one of the three or four most important team games in world sport. The All Blacks, who have again this week resumed their number one world ranking, have dominated the sport of rugby union for more than a century.
No other country gets even close. Over the whole history of rugby as an international sport, the All Blacks’ record is incomparable. This is not to say that the All Blacks always win, or are not at times overshadowed briefly by others. But year-in year-out, the All Blacks have established a statistical record that makes them the “winningest” national team not only in rugby but in any international sport.
Look at the figures. The All Blacks have over more than a century achieved a winning percentage in all their international matches of 74%. The next best percentage among major rugby nations is South Africa’s, at 63%, with the French, English and the Australians coming next at 55%, 53% and 52% respectively. All of these competitors trailing in our wake have both populations and in most cases rugby player numbers much greater than ours.
What’s more, the All Blacks have a positive winning record against every other international team. Even after three successive defeats this year against the Springboks, our winning ratio against them is 42 to 33. The record against another proud rugby nation – Wales – is 22 to 3.
Nor do the statistics tell the whole story. The “aura” of the All Blacks (something debated in some quarters over recent days) means not only that they are the best-known and admired rugby team in the world – the one that others most want to play and beat – but they are probably the most famous national team in world sport. The haka, the black jersey, the silver fern, are potent symbols of sporting success. Whereas the rugby teams of other nations are usually referred to by their country’s name, the All Blacks have established their own powerful identity.
One consequence of this success is that the All Blacks are hugely important to New Zealand’s national identity. For millions of people around the world, the All Blacks are what they know best (or perhaps all they know) about New Zealand. Their perception of our country is formed by what they see and know of the All Blacks.
And who can doubt the significance of the All Blacks in the development of how we feel about ourselves as a nation? Together with our experience on the battlefields of two world wars, nothing has contributed more to our sense of nationhood than our success on the world’s rugby fields. It is no accident that rugby is a game that requires great individual skills, courage, strength and resilience but also requires the individual to subordinate his or her interests to those of the team – exactly the qualities required to build our small nation from the earliest days.
And what a happy miracle that the qualities required were not only those demanded of the earliest settlers but were also displayed in abundance by the tangata whenua. Rugby asked our two founding cultures to make common cause by bringing to their enjoyment of the game an arena where they could also learn mutual respect. Rugby has done much to bring our society together.
Given the success of rugby and its importance to New Zealand, how surprising it is to find, at least in some quarters, that in recent times rugby is denigrated, the All Blacks diminished. Yes, of course, we should celebrate sporting success in other arenas, but we can surely do so without demeaning our achievements in rugby. It is almost as though some journalists and commentators resent our rugby success, or (reflecting their profession’s constant quest for novelty) have grown bored with it. They seize upon the chance offered by success elsewhere to compare rugby unfavourably with the latest (usually transient) triumph.
The All Blacks, and rugby’s administrators, make their fair share of mistakes, and should not be immune from criticism for doing so. But do the carping (and sometimes sneering) critics realise what a national taonga they so carelessly demean? Do we have to do ourselves an unnecessary injury by thoughtlessly devaluing something we might appreciate fully only when we have lost it?
Bryan Gould
18 November 2009
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 20 November.