Blair legacy: foreign policy: Blair's foreign policy was based on morality, writes Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
The year was 1999, the setting an auditorium at the Chicago Economic Club. A fresh-faced Tony Blair strides on stage to deliver a speech that will set out his plan for a new British foreign policy.
Just days earlier, according to John Kampfner, author of Blair's Wars, the military historian Lawrence Freedman had been asked to draw up "a philosophy that Blair could call his own", outlining examples of when states should intervene in other countries' affairs.
It marked a radical departure from the self-interested realpolitik that had traditionally driven British foreign policy. Here was Blair's vision of a brave new world in which a "doctrine of international community" would allow for morally guided military intervention.
Two years into his term of office, Blair wanted to put his own stamp on the idea he hoped would be his enduring legacy. A prime example was the Nato-led bombardment of Kosovo that had begun just weeks before.
"This is a just war," he said of that military campaign, one he had argued passionately for. "Based not on any territorial ambitions but on values."
Eight years on from such heady declarations, Blair's foreign policy legacy looks very different to what he then imagined.
As his doctrine evolved, Blair sent British soldiers into battle five times in six years: in Iraq to support then president Bill Clinton's Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign in 1998; Kosovo in 1999; Sierra Leone in 2000; Afghanistan in 2001; and, most fatefully, Iraq in 2003.
Today, even those who cheered Blair's policy of "humanitarian intervention", whether in Sierra Leone, the Balkans or Afghanistan, admit it has largely become a dirty word, its credibility badly frayed by Iraq.
A recent independent report assessing British foreign policy since Labour took power in 1997 put it bluntly: "Despite a number of successes, especially in his first term, Tony Blair's time in office will be overshadowed by the disaster in Iraq."
The report, published by London think-tank Chatham House, describes the invasion of Iraq as a "terrible mistake", adding that the absence of a UN Security Council resolution authorising use of force drove a "horse and cart" through Blair's much-trumpeted notion of international community.
Iraq divided Blair's government, party and country. For many the 2005 London bombings confirmed fears that Blair's foreign policy manoeuvres made the country a prime target.
Last year a House of Commons foreign affairs committee report said the Iraq war had provided "a powerful source of propaganda and a crucial training ground for international terrorists".
September 11th proved a watershed for Blair. It reinforced his interventionist convictions but also brought him closer to the Bush administration and the Manichean world view of President Bush's "war on terror".
Having forged a close working relationship with Bill Clinton, bonding over the Northern Ireland peace process and nudging a reluctant president into action over Kosovo, Blair's relationship with his successor has proved one of the most contentious elements of his foreign policy. His belief that Britain's interests were best served by allying itself at all costs with the Bush administration was to lose him support at home and abroad.
Apart from backing Bush over Iraq, Blair's unwillingness to distance himself from US support for Israel during the war in Lebanon last summer created further fractures within his own party.
Furthermore, there are indications from Washington that the so-called special relationship is perhaps not as special as Downing Street would like to believe. In remarks hastily dismissed by mandarins on both sides of the Atlantic last year, US State Department official Kendall Myers described the relationship as one-sided. "There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we've noticed. We typically ignore them and take no notice," he said.
The Chatham House report is scathing in its appraisal of the Bush-Blair alliance. "The root failure of Tony Blair's foreign policy has been his inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice - military, political and financial - that the UK has made," the report concludes. "Blair has learned the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for nothing and his successor will not make the same mistake of offering unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy."
While Iraq casts a long shadow, Blair's foreign affairs legacy includes some positives. His work on climate change flew in the face of Washington but helped push the issue up the international agenda. Likewise, the Blair government has been praised for its approach and results on Africa policy.
Blair's aspirations in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were to founder, however, while his initial wish to transform Britain's relationship with the EU from one of widespread euroscepticism never quite materialised.
Early pledges to put Britain "at the heart of Europe" raised high hopes that Blair would be the most pro-European prime minister Britain had ever seen. Many expected him, as a champion of EU enlargement, to also guide Britain into the single currency, a possibility firmly routed by Gordon Brown.
Tussling over the rebate issue raised hackles in Europe, culminating in a bitter row with France in 2005 when Blair demanded farm subsidies to the French be slashed in return for conceding some of the rebate. His insistence that the proposed EU constitution would have to go to a referendum in Britain dismayed many.
As Iraq sinks ever deeper and the once-lauded Afghanistan campaign unravels due to a newly resurgent Taliban, many of Blair's political obituarists have sought to paint him as an idealist undone by hubris. But the man himself remains unrepentantly committed to the defining interventionist policy he outlined eight years ago.
In a valedictory address delivered earlier this year on board HMS Albion, Blair all but reprised his famous Chicago speech, albeit with a stronger emphasis on Britain's security. "What happens in the Middle East affects us. What happens in Pakistan, or Indonesia, or in the attenuated struggles for territory and supremacy in Africa for example, in Sudan or Somalia - the new frontiers for our security are global," he said.
"Our armed forces will be deployed in the lands of other nations far from home, with no immediate threat to our territory.
"My choice is for a British foreign policy that keeps our American alliance strong and is prepared to project hard as well as soft power; and for us as a nation to be as willing to fight terrorism and pay the cost of that fight wherever it may be."