A Just War: Prime Minister Tony Blair and the End of Saddam’s Iraq

Abstract

Serious analysis of prime minister Tony Blair’s policy towards the regime of Saddam Hussein must be founded on the fact that, both before and particularly after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, that regime posed a fundamental challenge to the international order established after the end of the Second World War, and revived after the end of the Cold War. Blair recognized this challenge. His response to it was foreshadowed by his leadership in restoring the Labour Party to respectability before 1997, and by his response to other foreign policy crises before 2001. He supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 because it was based on the liberal international values in which he believed, and which he had twice been elected to pursue. The British disillusionment with the war, which contributed to Blair’s resignation in 2007, reflected both the retreat of the left from those values, and Blair’s own inability to build a culturally, internationally, and militarily coherent base for his policy.