21st Century Security Entails Defence of Justice and Sovereignty

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21st Century Security Entails Defence of Justice and Sovereignty

It is interesting to note that, according to Tony Blair, speaking to an audience onboard the HMS Albion in Plymouth last month, ten years into the New Labour government the Cabinet is conducting a review into every major aspect of policy to set its direction for the future.

This is a task which belongs also to the whole polity, but one which the government provides no mechanism for. Tony Blair a few days later had something to say on New Labour being in step with public opinion. But that is another story.

His subject on January 12 was 21st century security. What is mainly of concern is Tony Blair’s justification for what he terms "hard" power. One of three defining aspects of Britain’s foreign policy, he declares, is the combining of "hard" and "soft" power. "Hard" power is his euphemism for military force.

Tony Blair’s argument, though he goes into it at length, is very stark. The issue is that "Britain has been at the forefront of the fight against terrorism", in alliance "with America on the one hand and Europe on the other". This fight, this foreign policy, "has been governed as much by values as interests" and "it is by furthering our values that we further our interests in the modern era of globalisation and interdependence". The thread of the argument here then relies on the sleight of hand that "our values" are the only legitimate ones: "Global interdependence requires global values commonly or evenly applied."

The argument continues that, for Tony Blair, "the setting aside of ‘hard’ power leads inexorably to the weakening of ‘soft’ power". In other words, armed might and military force are justifiable to enforce the values which "we", the western world, the big powers, the upholders of the values of the European nation-state and neo-liberal democracy, espouse. Using some horror story about the Taleban, and bringing in also the Anglo-American doctrine of pre-emption, Blair makes this explicit. "Using force against them to prevent such an act is not ‘defence’ in the traditional territorial sense of that word, but ‘security’ in the broadest sense, an assertion of our values against theirs." [our emphasis]

What is then necessary, when public opinion is so against this use of force, is, Blair argues, domestically and internationally to engage in a battle for "hearts and minds". Along with military alliances, nation-building alliances are critical to military success. But it is "military might" which is primary in this equation.

This argument can only be put forward when the values and the nation-building projects put forward by the Anglo-Americans are themselves in profound crisis, and the struggle in the world has to be defined, as Tony Blair does, in terms of the "war on terror", the "fight against terrorism". He sketches an apolitical, a-historical, account of Britain’s post-war and colonial wars, to give credence to the imposition of Eurocentric values by force around the world.

The reality, which Tony Blair tries to deny time and again until he is blue in the face, is that it is this project to impose an Anglo-US dictate, to assert by force values which serve the interests of the Anglo-Americans, the colonisers, the proponents of hegemony in the global market, which is causing such unprecedented disasters for the world’s people. This is a project which is a manifestation of the failure of the Anglo-Americans to dictate their way of life to the peoples of the world. When this dictate is resisted by the people, the imperialists scream that this "way of life" is under threat, and the spectre of terrorism, a terrorism for which they are responsible, is invoked to justify their wreaking revenge against what Blair calls a "world-wide movement". This movement, Tony Blair, acting as theologian, describes as having an ideology "based on a misreading of Islam". This is an assertion that those that have fidelity to their conscience and beliefs are the "radicals", are the "extremists", who must be wiped out globally with the use of "hard" power.

Peoples or nations opposing this dictate are labelled as constituting "failed or failing states", where this term is not used to refer to the assassinations, strife, divisions and violence instigated by the imperialists themselves causing chaos and anarchy. In fact, in a telling repetition of his remarks after the July 7 bombings, Tony Blair says that what "we" face is not some "fringe terrorist organisation", but: "We face something more akin to revolutionary Communism in its early and most militant phase."

Tony Blair’s "hard power" is state terrorism and aggression, a project for the imposition of retrogressive values where the end justifies the means.

Security in the 21st century, it need hardly be said, cannot be safeguarded in such a way. Security in the 21st century has to be a project of the people taking up principles of justice, defence of sovereignty and the demand that the use of force to try and settle international, or national, issues be outlawed. Tony Blair’s project, which he is trying to justify and impose on the working class and people as Britain’s foreign policy in the 21st century, is one based on outmoded and crisis-ridden conceptions which entail wrecking all international and civilised norms in the name of "civilisation" and "civilised values". It is a project which is doomed to failure and defeat. But the working class and people cannot afford to reconcile themselves to this failure and defeat but must demand that this retrogression is ended forthwith. They must themselves work to safeguard security by taking up the fight for an anti-war government and in defence of the rights of all, nationally and internationally.