AS WE wait with trepidation for Tony Blair's new war on Iraqi terrorism, the
Labour Party, indeed much of the country, is in dire need of a new international policy. The US-led efforts to
curb weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism have been weak-minded and counterproductive.
Indian, Israeli, Pakistani and even Japanese nuclear ambitions are ignored or welcomed. No effective policy
has been directed against the two leading bogeymen, Iran and North Korea. And thousands of Russian and US
weapons are genuinely still ready to fire in 45 minutes. Al-Qaeda has begun a global guerrilla war that
threatens the very survival of the West through the sabotage and seizure of oil supplies. The bulk of US ground
forces are trapped in unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, recruiting for the resistance with each shot
fired and unavailable to meet any real threat. Other issues with a global impact, from the Israel-Palestine
conflict to global warming and corporate power are treated with meaningless incantations of concern.
Once we put present threats in context we can more clearly see solutions. The problems we face today are
minor compared with those faced by Churchill and Roosevelt in the struggle against Hitler yet they managed to
win the war and build the peace while they were doing it.
The wartime leaders set a clear goal of international disarmament as an explicitly realist objective.
Fortunately, the triumph of the UN inspectors in controlling Saddam's weapons programmes provides a precedent
of effective control of a very difficult case, in contradiction to the idea that arms control is ineffective.
The opportunity presented by this victory is to create a renaissance in arms control, building on the great
treaties of the Reagan and Gorbachev era. These agreements already tightly regulate the military forces of the
50 nations of the wider Europe. They include proven, verified means of scrapping weapons of all kinds. The task
now is to make these agreements global. There are two sides to this process. First, the major powers with
nuclear weapons China, France, Russia and the US need to begin to eliminate them. This will create the
incentive and the legitimacy to put pressure on the nuclear small-fry. Britain is in a separate category, since
it imports its WMD from the US and is no more an independent producer than Ford UK is independent of the parent
company. The supply is secured only through support for US policy, so cancellation of this arrangement is the
sine qua non for any independence from Washington.
Of course, both disarmament and the UN itself will be dismissed as unrealistic. But it is worth remembering
that the UN was founded by Roosevelt and Churchill, as the wartime alliance that defeated Hitler. They saw the
necessity of a new international organisation because, even before the atom bomb, they understood that war
between industrial nations had become self-destructive. At the height of the battle of Arnhem, Churchill
observed: The United Nations is the only hope of the world.
The UN needs to be understood as Churchill understood it, as a necessity and not as a badge to be pinned on
when the mood takes us. Our enemies would need to be worse than Hitler and our allies more intransigent than
Stalin to require a change to these assumptions. And both Hitler and Stalin had more pervasive support in
Britain than bin Laden can dream of. In consequence, every weakness of the UN becomes a requirement to
strengthen it, rather than deride it. A first step will be to encourage democracies to add a permanent
political representative to the diplomatic mission in New York.
A strong international community is also essential in the first guerrilla war in the global village.
Unfortunately, although the British Empire is often referred to as a model to emulate by American
conservatives, they have ignored the key precepts of imperial policing. These principles include redressing
grievances, strict adherence to the rule of law, building a favourable political climate and securing ones own
base.
Today, the redressing of grievances includes approaching regional issues from Chechnya to Palestine with
the same degree of patience that eventually brought results in Northern Ireland. Redressing grievances also
requires a reaffirmation of social security and labour rights as core values alongside those of corporations,
something understood and highlighted by Churchill and Roosevelt themselves during the struggle against
Nazism.
To adhere to the rule of law includes respecting the UN, its charter and treaties, including the Geneva
conventions. And also the application of habeas corpus to the inmates of Belmarsh and Guantanamo. In Iraq, as
the eminent historian Sir Michael Howard has observed, only a fixed date for military withdrawal can hope to
re-establish any confidence among Iraqis that they are not to be part of a new Christian Empire.
In order to secure our base it is necessary to introduce an emergency programme to shift from a reliance on
petrol to electric vehicles backed by renewable sources which, notwithstanding the claims of the nuclear lobby,
exist in abundance. And before Jeremy Clarkson starts to rev up his derision, Honda itself claims that the new
engines give better torque. Financially, the shift from petrochemicals would be a great deal. Oil price
fluctuations cost the global economy about $400 billion (£266 billion) a year, not including the price in
blood and treasure. A shift to a fuel with a stable long-term price would be a proposition to attract a loan
from the most conservative of bankers.
As to the realism of these proposals, compared with the policy that produced the Iraq war, they might be
considered over-cautious. Self-styled realists of geopolitics warn us that we are entering a new world war, and
yet the proffered strategy amounts to little more than war and rigged elections. It is left to the head of the
US Army's own war college to complain that the US has no strategy for war, but only for battle. And battles
there are to be a plenty.
Dan Plesch is author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace
