The politics of good intentions: History, fear and hypocrisy in the new world order

The Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear and Hypocrisy in the New World Order

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages

  Runciman, David ^a  

^a NONE

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References (156)

1. Hugo Young, "The free world must decide how its values are protected", The Guardian, 13 September 2001 (www.guardian.co.uk).
2. Matthew Parris, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall", The Times, 15 September 2001 (www.timesonline.co.uk).
3. Tony Blair, "The opportunity society", Speech to Labour Party Conference, 28 September 2004 (www.labour.org.uk).
4. Dick Cheney, Speech to Republican Party Convention, 1 September 2004 (www.gopconvention.com).
5. The same applies to critics of the restrictions on civil liberties introduced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. One of the staunchest of these in Britain has been the journalist Simon Jenkins, who wrote of a debate in the House of Commons in December 2004 on the introduction of identity cards: "One MP after another stood up to parrot that '9/11 changes everything'. Like Reds under the bed, this slogan has become the catch-all for any restriction on civil freedom." (Simon Jenkins, "I never thought I'd say this, but thank you to the Lords, the Libs and the law", The Times, 22 December 2004 (www.timesonline.co.uk).)
6. See John Kampfner, Blair's Wars (London: Free Press, 2003), especially pp. 140-41 and 263-64, where he quotes an unnamed British official: "Bush listens politely, agrees that the points being made are good. He says things like: 'I'll do what I can.' As soon as Tony is in the air on the way back home Bush forgets the conversation and we know he has forgotten. There have been several moments when Tony felt Bush had got it. Tony would say things like: 'We really are on the same page. Bush has finally clicked.' Then a few hours later soberness would set in and he would realise he hadn't."
7. Tony Blair, "Doctrine of the international community", in Neo-Conservatism, ed. Irwin Stelzer (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), p. 107.
8. Tony Blair, "The threat of global terrorism", Speech in Sedgefield, County Durham, 5 March 2004 (www.scottishlabour.org.uk).
9. See Peter Stothard, 30 Days: AMonth at the Heart of Blair'sWar (London: HarperCollins, 2003), especially pp. 106-07.
10. Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), pp. 18-19.
11. This was a repeated remark in Cheney's stump speech during the campaign (see, for example, "Vice President's remarks in Los Lunas, New Mexico", 31 October 2004 (www.whitehouse.gov)), following a quote attributed to John Kerry in a New York Times Magazine interview published on 10 October 2004 ("We have got to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, they're a nuisance").
12. David Hare captures the full flavour of this cynicism in his play about the build-up to the Iraq war, Stuff Happens: "Cheney: OK, I admit it, if we want him, Blair's good at the high moral tone. If you want to go into battle with a preacher sitting on top of a tank, that's fine by me. But bear in mind, preacher's one more to carry. Needs rations, needs a latrine, like everyone else." (David Hare, Stuff Happens (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 104.)
13. Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), p. 137.
14. The journalist Simon Hoggart, commenting on Blair's performance in the House of Commons on 23 February 2005-Blair had said on that occasion: "If there were to be a serious terrorist act in this country, and afterwards it was thought that we hadn't taken the measures necessary, believe me, no one, no one, would be talking about civil liberties"-captured the essence of this appeal. "Suppose hundreds of people died in a mass bombing, and the government knew the identity of the suicide bomber whose limbs were being carried away in the same body bags as his victims-and had been unable to do enough to stop him? And suppose this happened just before an election? There are horrors of which those of us who are not elected never have to face." (Simon Hoggart, "Howard's fury at lack of time for desperate choice", The Guardian, 24 February 2005 (www.guardian.co.uk).)
15. Blair, "Doctrine of the international community", p. 109.
16. Tony Blair, Speech to the United States Congress, 18 July 2003 (www.number-10.gov.uk).
17. See, for example, Dennis Thompson, Restoring Responsibility: Ethics in Government, Business and Healthcare (Cambridge University Press, 2004), especially "Introduction: the need for institutional responsibility".
18. See, for example, The Norwegian Study of Power and Democracy (www.sv.uio.no/mutr/english/index.html). A summary of some of the findings of this study is given in "Wealth and decay", Stein Ringen, Times Literary Supplement, 13 February 2004 (www.the-tls.co.uk).
19. European Constitution, Article 1-3: "The Union's Objectives" (www. europa.eu.int/constitution).
20. If this does happen, it will not happen in the short term. "Perhaps over decades such functional arrangements, if made subject and properly answerable to national parliaments, can develop along institutional evolutionary lines into organs of representative federal government." (John Gillingham, European Integration 1950-2003: Superstate or New Market Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 484.)
21. For example, see Jeremy Rifkin, Why Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream (Cambridge: Polity, 2004) and Mark Leonard,WhyEuropeWillRunthe 21st Century (London: Fourth Estate, 2004). For a more balanced view, see Timothy GartonAsh, FreeWorld:Whythe Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time (London: Allen Lane, 2004).
22. A good example of this was provided by the acrimonious exchanges in the London Review of Books between European and American intellectuals in the weeks immediately following September 11, 2001. A fairly narrow constituency of highbrow readers was deeply and profoundly divided in their emotional response, on the basis primarily of national identity (see London Review of Books, Volume 23, Numbers 19-23, especially contributions by Mary Beard and Marjorie Perloff).
23. Francis Fukuyama, State Building: Governance and World Order in the Twenty-First Century (London: Profile Books, 2004), p. 159.
24. A similar case for politicians and the publics they represent to get used to having it both ways has been provided byAnne-Marie Slaughter. She writes: "National governments and national government officials must remain the primary focus of political loyalty and the primary actors on the global stage. If, however, they are to be actors in national and global policymaking simultaneously, officials would have to be able to think at once in terms of the national and the global interest and to sort out the relative priorities of the two on a case-by-case basis ... In short, to avoid global government, national government officials will have to learn to think globally. Following the old Roman god of gates and doors, or beginnings and endings, they must become Janus-faced, with one face pointing forward and the other backwards. In this case, however, one face must look inward and the other outward, translating quickly and smoothly from the domestic to the international sphere." (Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 234-35.)
25. The shining exception to this is Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Allen Lane, 2002) (see Chapter Seven).
26. Constant's most resonant account of the temptations and perils of seeking to escape the public domain and indulge in the delights of mere privacy is provided in his novella Adolphe (1816) (see Benjamin Constant, Adolphe, ed. Leonard Tancock (London: Penguin, 1964)).
27. Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 327-28.
28. For the definitive neo-Kantian statement of this position, see John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 36: "I follow Kant's lead in Perpetual Peace in thinking that a world government- by which I mean a unified political regime with the legal powers normally exercised by central government-would either be a global despotism or else would rule over a fragile empire torn by frequent civil strife as various regions and peoples tried to gain their political freedom and autonomy."
29. For instance, Isaiah Berlin identified Constant as unequivocally on one side in the great political divide between the advocates of "negative" and "positive" liberty (see Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (OxfordUniversity Press, 1969)).
30. "Rumsfeld's hostage", The Guardian, 1April 2003(www.guardian.co.uk).
31. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (CXCIII, June-July 1868), col. 525.
32. See, for example, Tony Blair, Speech to the United States Congress, 18 July 2003 (www.number-10.gov.uk).
33. In the most recent English translation, the title is given as "The profession and vocation of politics", to capture the double sense of the term Beruf (see Max Weber, Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Richard Speirs (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 309).
34. See Richard Grunberger, Red Rising in Bavaria (London: Barker, 1973).
35. See M. J. Bonn,Wandering Scholar (London: Cohen and Bent, 1949), p. 213.
36. Weber, Political Writings, p. 362.
37. See Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography, ed. Harry Zohn (New York:Wiley, 1975).
38. Bonn, Wandering Scholar, p. 207.
39. Michael Walzer, "Political action: the problem of dirty hands", Philosophy and Public Affairs (2:2, 1973), p. 177.
40. See H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone 1809-98 (Oxford University Press, 1997). Matthew summarizes Gladstone's own account in his diaries of these episodes as "a strange mixture of detail, thoroughness, generality and principle, carried through with cool efficiency, passion, self-confidence and religious repentance" (p. 92). Gladstone described his dealings with prostitutes as "the chief burden of my soul"
41. Weber, Political Writings, p. 342.
42. Blair acknowledged at the time that these encounters were part of a political strategy, rather than just a horrible mistake, though he did seem taken aback by some of the hostility he had to endure as a result (see Stothard, 30 Days, p. 5). The phrase "masochism strategy" came into everyday journalistic parlance during the early days of the 2005 general election campaign, when journalists were encouraged by Downing Street insiders to describe Blair's television encounters with studio audiences in theseterms-the idea being to assemble groups of disgruntled voters in order to allow Blair to treat them with a kind of long-suffering, earnest, sympathetic loftiness. This was meant to show Blair at his best. The difference between Blair and Gladstone is well captured by the thought that it would be hard to imagine the latter deploying his masochistic impulses as a vote-winning strategy, never mind briefing the press about it.
43. Weber, Political Writings, p. 357.
44. W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches, ed. M. R. D. Foot (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 129.
45. On Lincoln's Weberian qualities, see James E. Underwood, "Lincoln: a Weberian politician meets the constitution", Presidential Studies Quarterly (34:2, 2004), pp. 341-65.
46. Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Letters 1832-65, ed. Paul Argyle (London: John Dent, 1957), p. 269.
47. Hansard (House of Commons Debates), Volume 330, col. 335 (www.publications.parliament.uk).
48. Weber, Political Writings, p. 358.
49. See Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo (London: Pluto Press, 1999).
50. "Interview with Ian McCartney", New Statesman (12:563, 1999), pp. 18-19.
51. Siôn Simon, "The Dome may be a failure, but it's a heroic failure", The Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2000 (www.telegraph.co.uk).
52. See Blair, "The opportunity society".
53. For a less political, but equally damning, assessment, see UK National Audit Office Report: The Millennium Dome (HC 936, 1999/00) and National Audit Office Report: Winding-up the New Millennium Experience Company Ltd. (HC 749, 2001/02).
54. Matthew Parris, "Are we witnessing the madness of Tony Blair", The Times, 29 March 2003 (www.timesonline.co.uk).
55. Weber, Political Writings, p. 367.
56. On Blair's relationship with Brown, see Andrew Rawnsley, Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000), especially pp. 151-56; also Robert Peston, Brown's Britain (London: Short Books, 2005).
57. Robert Peston, Brown's Britain (London: Short Books, 2005).
58. Blair, "The threat of global terrorism".
59. Martin Rees, Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty- First Century? (London: Heinemann, 2003). See also Richard Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Oxford University Press, 2004).
60. Blair, "The threat of global terrorism".
61. See, for example, Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle, ed. Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel Tickner (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999).
62. Cass Sunstein, The Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
63. Blair, "The threat of global terrorism".
64. "What amazes me is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don't get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot.Yes, let's get rid of them all. I don't because I can't, but when you can, you should." (Stothard, 30 Days, p. 42).
65. The warning was revealed in the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee Report, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction-Intelligence and Assessment (September 2003), p. 34 (www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk).
66. Financial Times, 16 March 2004 (www.ft.com).
67. Lord Hutton, Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G. (London: The Stationery Office, 2004), p. 654.
68. Hansard (House of Commons Debates), Volume 401, col. 760.
69. See Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), pp. 117-18.
70. Tony Blair, "My pledge to the refugees", BBC News online, 14 May 1999 (www.bbc.co.uk/news). The background to this very personal pledge is described in Kampfner, Blair's Wars, pp. 54-55.
71. Blair's support for the London Olympic bid was seen at the time as a big gamble, but again it seems likely that Blair only threw his full personal weight behind the bid once he had been persuaded that London stood an excellent chance of winning. This coincided with the appointment of Sebastian Coe as team leader of the London bid, and the knowledge that Coe could rely on the support of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch if Madrid's bid failed. Blair's risk temperament suggests that the frantic last-minute lobbying he undertook before the IOC vote in Singapore was less a cause of London's ability to triumph than an effect of it.
72. The event is described in D. R. Thorpe, Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon 1897-1977 (London: Chatto &Windus, 2003), p. 523. (Thorpe records that he was a 13-year-old eyewitness to the event.)
73. Hugh Thomas, The Suez Affair (London:Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1967), p. 163.
74. These were: Iraq'sWeapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government (London: The Stationery Office, September 2002); and the socalled "dodgy dossier", Iraq-Its Infrastructure of Deception, Concealment and Intimidation (London: The Stationery Office, February 2003). This second dossier was discovered by Dr Glen Rangwala of Cambridge University to have been extensively plagiarized from an article in the Middle Eastern Review of International Affairs by Ibrahim Al-Marashi, entitled "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis", first published in September 2002.
75. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years. Waging Peace 1956-61 (London: Heinemann, 1965), p. 52.
76. See Leon D. Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964).
77. See Peston, Brown's Britain, pp. 324-354.
78. In a Political Studies Association poll of the best Prime Ministers of the last 100 years taken among academics and published in December 2004, Eden came 20th out of 20 (and was some way behind the 19th placed candidate, Alec Douglas-Home). Blair was ranked 6th. Clement Atlee came top.
79. Frederick Schauer, Profiles, Probabilities and Stereotypes (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2004).
80. The desire to stamp out prejudice in making these kinds of risk assessments lay behind the conclusion of the 1996 Gore Commission on Airport Security and Racial Profiling, which argued that such assessments should avoid "stereotypes and generalizations" as far as possible. This conclusion is absurd, because risk assessments are impossible without the deployment of some stereotypes and generalizations. (See Schauer, Profiles, Probabilities and Stereotypes, pp. 182-83.)
81. Frederick Schauer, Profiles, Probabilities and Stereotypes (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2004).
82. Schauer, Profiles, Probabilities and Stereotypes, pp. 182-83.
83. Hansard (House of Commons Debates), March 2005, col. 1858.
84. Judgments-Secretary of State for the Home Department vs. Rehman (AP), 11 October 2001, Sections 55-56 (www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk).
85. Hansard (House of Lords Debates), March 2005, col. 859.
86. Hansard (House of Commons Debates), March 2005, col. 1583.
87. Hansard (House of Commons Debates), March 2005, col. 1509.
88. Hansard (House of Lords Debates), March 2005, col. 866.
89. James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few, and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (New York: Little Brown, 2004).
90. John Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London: Atlantic Books, 2005).
91. Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton University Press, 2003).
92. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (NewYork: Harper, 1942).
93. Adam Przeworski, "Minimalist conception of democracy: a defense" in Democracy's Value, ed. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
94. Gerry Mackie, Democracy Defended (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
95. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, ed. J. M. Dent, p. 309 (London: Orion, 1993).
96. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, p. 10.
97. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed. Maurice Cranston (London: Penguin, 1969).
98. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, pp. 77-83.
99. John Lloyd, What the Media are Doing to our Politics (London: Constable & Robinson, 2004).
100. Tristram Hunt, "D-Day's outcome was the beginning of a new Europe", The Observer, 6 June 2004 (www.guardian.co.uk).
101. Speech to "104th National Convention of the Veterans of ForeignWars" in San Antonio, TX, 25 August 2003 (www.whitehouse.gov).
102. www.defense.gov.transcripts.
103. "United States encouraged by Vietnam vote", New York Times, 9 April 1967.
104. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, p. 45 (London: Macmillan, 2000).
105. Adam Przeworski, "Institutions matter?", Government and Opposition (39, 2004), pp. 527-40.
106. Fukuyama, State Building, p. 141.
107. James MacDonald, A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003).
108. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London: Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 269-70.
109. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 89.
110. Noel Malcolm, "Hobbes's theory of international relations" in his Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford University Press, 2002).
111. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 87.
112. Dominique deVillepin's Statement to theUNSecurity Council, 14 February 2003 (www.globalpolicy.org).
113. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 120.
114. Robert Kagan, "Power and weakness", Policy Review (113, 2002).
115. Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (London: Atlantic Books, 2003).
116. Kagan, Paradise and Power, p. 3.
117. "Perpetual Peace" in Immanuel Kant, PoliticalWritings, ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
118. Kant, PoliticalWritings, p. 105.
119. Rawls, The Law of Peoples.
120. Kagan, Paradise and Power, p. 60.
121. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Why America is Different (London: Allen Lane, 2004).
122. Garton Ash, Free World, p. xxx.
123. Kagan, Paradise and Power, p. 7, note 2.
124. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles.
125. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, pp. 732-33.
126. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2002).
127. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, p. 475.
128. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, p. 37.
129. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, p. 234.
130. Quentin Skinner, "From the state of princes to the person of the state", in his Visions of Politics, Volume II (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
131. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, p. 139.
132. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, pp. 79-80.
133. Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), p. 117.
134. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, p. 212.
135. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, p. 32.
136. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, pp. 321-24.
137. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
138. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Political Writings, ed. Michael Sonnenscher (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 2003), p. 94.
139. V. I. Lenin, "Two tactics of social-democracy in the democratic revolution", in Selected Writings, Volume I (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1947).
140. Sieyès, Political Writings, p. 157.
141. "Brutus", ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 456.
142. Sieyès, Political Writings, p. 12.
143. Murray Forsyth, Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbé Sieyes (Leicester University Press, 1987).
144. Sieyès, Political Writings, p. 131.
145. Forsyth, Reason and Revolution, p. 155.
146. Sieyès, Political Writings, p. xxxiii.
147. Michael Sonnenscher's introduction to Sieyès, Political Writings, pp. lx-lxiii.
148. Constant, Political Writings, pp. 325-26.
149. Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2000), Chapter 2.
150. Adam Curtis's, "The Power of Nightmares" (BBC series, 2004).
151. Mark Danner, "HowBush really won", New York Review of Books, 13 January 2005.
152. Mayor of London press conference, 16 March 2004 (www.bbc.co.uk/ news).
153. Danner, "How Bush really won".
154. Blair, "The opportunity society".
155. Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford University Press, 2004).
156. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 465.