OXFORD, ENGLAND -- Last Sunday, British cabinet member Clare Short called Prime Minister Tony Blair's hawkish stance on Iraq "extraordinarily reckless" and said she would resign in protest if Britain went to war without United Nations approval. Blair was reportedly furious with the remarks, and speculation immediately surfaced that he planned to sack Short. But nearly one week later, he hasn't -- and that perhaps says more about Blair than it does about Short. For the last six months, Blair has managed to (barely) balance America's appetite for war against the dovish inclinations of most British voters. Soon, however, something will have to give. And Blair will either become the most prominent enabler of an Iraq invasion or the last, best hope that war can be avoided.
Blair has set himself up for either role because he has been, in many respects, the most mature actor on the world stage during the buildup to war. Standing between an obstinate France and an imperious America, Britain has tried repeatedly to craft compromises (though so far none has worked). Moreover, while George W. Bush's pro-war rhetoric has often descended into crass cowboy-speak, Blair has served as an effective spokesman for war's moral imperative. Even those who question whether the prime minister is wise to support the war would be unlikely to question his purity of purpose.
But now, as White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is so fond of reminding diplomats and journalists, time is running out. Should no second resolution pass the UN Security Council, the conventional wisdom holds that America will go to war without authorization from the international community. And without the legitimacy that would be conferred on war by a second UN resolution, a British government that joins the United States in battling Iraq will look as if it's under Bush's thumb.
Things don't have to turn out that way, however. By pulling out, "Blair could stop the war if anyone could," says Dana Allin, an expert in trans-Atlantic relations and a senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. In the absence of a second UN resolution, America's alliance with Britain will become all the more important as a means of providing Bush with some semblance of multilateral cover for his actions. True, Bush has pledged to invade Iraq no matter who joins him. But Britain's involvement in the endeavor will likely mark the thin line that separates a multilateral war from a unilateral one.
Furthermore, Blair's alliance with Bush is probably the only thing keeping countries such as Spain in line with the United States. Most of America's allies have electorates that are overwhelmingly against the war -- in Spain polls show that more than 70 percent of the population opposes an invasion -- and leaders of those countries are no doubt growing anxious that the war could ruin their political careers. If Blair gives in to his public on the war, it could very well provide a signal to other allies that they too should abandon the United States while they still can. "In practical terms, Britain is the ally," Allin says. The current American coalition is like a Jenga tower: If Britain pulls out, the entire alliance is likely to collapse. And of the nations that appear ready to join Bush in this war, only Britain has a significant combat force ready for action in the Persian Gulf. Blair has now committed 40,000 troops to join 200,000 Americans in Bush's "coalition of the willing." If Blair withdraws, the Brits go home -- and the veneer of multilateralism that the United States has struggled to keep up would depart the Middle East with them.
So, in a sense, Blair holds the cards. But will he deal them?
From a domestic political standpoint, he could certainly do better than throwing his lot in unconditionally with Bush. Late last month, 122 MPs from Blair's Labour Party staged their biggest rebellion since the prime minister came to power in 1997, voting for a motion that called the case for war "unproven." A poll published in last week's Times (of London) showed that 62 percent -- up from 57 percent last month -- of respondents did not believe that Britain and the United States had put forward a convincing case for war. And according to a survey conducted last month by the firm Market and Opinion Research International, Blair's approval rating has dwindled to 31 percent.
It doesn't help that the United States has bungled its diplomacy with Britain (much as it has recently bungled its diplomacy with just about everyone else). At a press conference this week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that if Britain couldn't get its act together, the United States would take on Iraq alone.
"Their situation is distinctive to their country," Rumsfeld said. "They have a government that deals with the Parliament in their distinctive way. What will ultimately be decided is unclear as to their role. That is to say their role in the event a decision is made to use force."
What Rumsfeld probably intended as a sympathetic "out" clause for Blair -- should the prime minister decide not to join the war -- in fact managed to make Blair look politically weak to a nation already concerned that he is the Bush administration's puppet. Following conversations with British defense officials, Rumsfeld issued this attempt at clarification: "In the event that a decision to use force is made, we have every reason to believe there will be a significant military contribution from the United Kingdom."
So a shoulder-to-shoulder alliance with Bush hasn't been kind to Blair politically. But there is a problem for those who hold out hope that Blair could single-handedly call off the war: the prime minister's own conscience. Blair has made passionate arguments for war on moral grounds -- arguments that he seems to truly believe -- and to back away from those now would no doubt be a difficult step.
That's the bad news. The good news for doves is that if you look at the last six months, there can be no doubt that Blair retains considerable pull over U.S. foreign policy. If not for pressure from the Blair camp, the United States might have become fed up with the UN process long ago. "The U.K. did need its leverage to make the U.S. keep to the UN route this long, but time is running out for this," says Malcolm Chalmers, an international-politics professor in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.
But Blair's loyalty to the United States may, in effect, be destroying any further leverage he wields in preparation for war. "The reason he doesn't have leverage," Allin says, "is because it's so unlikely he would pull out."
If Blair ultimately sticks with the United States, as seems likely, the strength -- or lack thereof -- with which he establishes his diplomatic leverage now may serve him well in terms of domestic politics once war begins. Even if America proves unwilling to back down, Blair can argue to his constituents that he still has a chance to shape the war and its aftermath.
"Perhaps the next debates will be about how the war is fought . . . and how Iraq is run," Chalmers says. "Blair will defend our participation in the war partly because it will help check U.S. unilateralism in these two areas, which it could well do." So Blair can either be the man who stops the invasion or the man who at least ensures that post-war peace is secured in Iraq in accordance with progressive values. Either way, liberals can take some comfort in Blair's presence on the world stage -- if he uses his leverage wisely.
Asher Price is a former editorial assistant at The New Republic. He studies comparative social policy at Oxford University.
