- By Andrew Sullivan, of course:
The American Prime Minister
Blair Reborn
You can see the stress in his face. Over the past few months, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has evolved from the buoyant, almost boyish persona of his recent past. The eyes have sunk into his forehead; the hair has receded; gray now frames his face; and that arched left eye-brow, once almost playful, has become etched in place. When he rose in the House of Commons last week to defend his precarious political position and to urge the rambunctious deputies to go to war, he seemed finally old. A man once derided as slippery in his political pragmatism had become a weathered, unbudgeable rock.
All of which makes one realize how much the war now unfolding is, in many respects, Tony Blair's war. No, he didn't initiate it; his military forces are only a small part of the operation; Washington remains the unquestioned seat of the hyper-power. But, as his own poll ratings revive, the British premier can reassure himself that has had more input into the war's evolution, rationale, and timing than any other foreign leader; and as much influence as the most senior figures in Washington.
And this is oddly quite popular among many Americans. In some ways, Blair is the prime minister Americans long for, the foil to a president with great strengths but some obvious limitations. Where Bush is formally eloquent but informally brusque, Blair speaks extemporaneously like a skilled prosecutor, nailing down debating points with a parliamentary skill no former governor of Texas has ever been required to master. Where Bush is instinctually a believer in American power, Blair understands the dynamics of a Europe increasingly bound together by a web of pooled sovereignty, a reliance on "soft" economic power, and an acquired aversion to conflict and risk. While Bush is a conservative, Blair is an old-style liberal, in the mould of Britain's great nineteenth century imperialist prime minister, William Gladstone. Bush is eager to engage the world in order to deter and defeat evil. Blair is a man who looks at the troubled globe and sees also an opportunity to do good.
What brings these two men together is a shared Christian faith - Blair is lampooned in London for having the self-righteous fastidiousness of an Anglican vicar. And what soldered the bond was the horror of September 11. Blair's supreme political gift is a swift, intuitive, unerring sense of the public mood. He cemented his hold on the British public by his poignant response to the death of Princess Diana. And he felt - by visiting America in the days after the massacre - that the country had changed deeply. Alone among foreign leaders, Blair understood what 9/11 meant. He shared America's grief and rage; recognized that there was no point in resisting its power; and set about figuring out how to harness it for the world's good.
The United Nations route to Iraq was therefore at least in part Blair's policy. The final, desperate attempt to win unanimity on the Security Council - stymied in the end by France - was Blair's project. The announcement before the initiation of the Iraq war that Washington would soon endorse the "road-map" to Israeli-Palestinian settlement had Blair's finger-prints all over it. But in some ways, this understates Blair's broader impact. For a whole section of centrist and liberal opinion in America, Blair's uncompromising endorsement of regime change in Baghdad has helped solidify support for war, especially among influential elites. And his almost masochistic willingness to expose himself to debate, animosity, and relentless criticism at home made his pro-war stance seem, to skeptics, far less dubious in motive than, say, Dick Cheney's. Blair helped prove not only that this war was necessary. He helped show that it was also moral. That is no small achievement.
And that dimension will surely only become more important in the months ahead. Winning the war in Iraq requires Bush's tenacity and will. Winning the peace will demand Blair's insistence on democratic governance, liberal order, and further outreach to the Arab world. Blair's motives are not entirely selfless, of course. His stance means that not only does his relatively small country carry disproportionate leverage in the war on terror, his influence in Washington also translates into real clout in Europe. The European anti-Saddam coalition - Britain, Spain, Italy and the Eastern bloc - could emerge as the dominant force in the European Union in the next decade, edging out the old Franco-German axis, with Blair at its head. Those are high stakes in geo-politics; and Blair, in that respect, is as ambitious as Bush is. By being the indispensable nation's indispensable ally, Blair is more powerful than any British prime minister since Churchill. And many Americans, from nervous liberals to even hard-nosed neo-conservatives, find that oddly reassuring.
March 29, 2003, Time.
copyright © 2000, Andrew Sullivan
