Tony Blair means only one thing when he talks about his values

[Briar]

Tony Blair means only one thing when he talks about his values

He claims his aim is to spread democracy and the rule of law, but his true commitment is to the global market

Peter Wilby

So now we know. The purpose of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan was not regime change, Tony Blair explained in Los Angeles on Monday, but "values change". By bombing and shooting their way into Baghdad and Kabul, he and President Bush wanted to convince the benighted locals of the benefits of democracy, free markets and the rule of law.

...What does Blair mean by values? Both in Los Angeles and, the previous day, in San Francisco, addressing the big cheeses from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Blair tried to give some coherence to his political philosophy, and explicitly linked it to the Middle East. The "isms" that now dominate debate, he argued, are not socialism or capitalism. (Nor, we must assume, communitarianism, one of Blair's forgotten favourites.) They are "protectionism, isolationism, nativism". It is a battle between "open or closed" responses to globalisation, between "modern or traditional attitudes to a changing world".

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The key word here is "modern". It comes up repeatedly when Blair speaks. The "global fight", he said in Los Angeles, is "about modernisation". "Everywhere," he said at his monthly press conference in London yesterday, "we support a process of modernisation." This modernity, in Blair's mind, is associated with the "competitive global market" that he wishes the whole world, including Muslims, to embrace. That is what gives his political thinking, domestically and internationally, a kind of unity.

If he believed wholeheartedly in the rule of law, he would have a greater care for civil liberties and international conventions about when and how to wage war. If he were as committed to democracy as he says he is, he would pay more respect to the British public's views on the Iraq war and on Israel's bombing of Lebanon and to the Palestinian and Lebanese votes for Hamas and Hizbullah respectively. But Blair's true commitment is to the global market.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1837059,00.html