Tony Blair is smart enough to know that different military circumstances require different tactics, writes Tom Wright
Last week, in these pages, Fintan O'Toole criticised the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for ignoring the lessons of the Northern Ireland conflict in his determination to back the US in Iraq.
Mr O'Toole was giving voice to a widely held belief in Ireland that the Northern Ireland peace process is a model for how to deal with insurgency and terrorism in other parts of the world. While this belief is understandable, it is also very probably wrong.
Historical analogies can all too frequently be an impediment to clear thinking rather than a tool for understanding, particularly if the analogy appears to be obvious and ever-relevant to a wide series of cases. If you already know what answer you want, it is easy to find a historical parallel to provide it.
For instance, the Munich appease- ment of 1938 and the Vietnam war are regularly misused as relevant analogies in political debate in the US. Those who believe that the US is too accommodating of tyrants see Munichs wherever they look, from the Suez to Iraq. On the other hand, for opponents of military action, everything is a Viet- nam, regardless of geographical, strategic, or political context.
In Ireland we are in danger of falling into a similar trap; every where we look we see Northern Ireland's.
The problem is not as much in the analogies themselves but in the lessons that are drawn from them. The most oft-cited lesson of the North is, as Mr O'Toole put it last May, that "there are no military solutions to political problems".
The use of force by the state, so the argument goes, will alienate the masses, strengthen the enemy and produce more violence than it stops. Take a moment to digest the implications of this "lesson". It does not say that military force alone in the absence of a political strategy is ineffective, something any rational person could agree with. Rather, it says that any strategy involving the use of military force will be counterproductive.
This will come as news to the British who successfully defeated insurgents in 1950s Malaya, a textbook example of effective counterinsurgency and more recently in Sierra Leone.
It will also be a surprise to Australian special forces who have been particularly effective against guerrillas in East Timor. Although Afghanistan remains unstable, it can also be fairly claimed that American actions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the aftermath of September 11th have been a stunning example of the efficacy of military force properly applied.
There is even reason to believe that this lesson is not true in the case of Northern Ireland itself. It was increasingly successful British military operations, both regular and covert, in the 1980s which significantly degraded the IRA's capacity to wage war. This created a "hurting stalemate" which paved the way for a peace process in which republican paramilitaries had to abandon some of their most cherished beliefs which previously prevented compromise with unionists, most notably opposition to the principle of consent.
Of course, military force needs to be just one part of a comprehensive strategy that includes political, diplomatic, humanitarian and civilian elements. However, it is equally true that any counter- insurgency or counterterrorist strategy which eschews military options will merely embolden and strengthen the enemy.
The second lesson regularly drawn from the North is that it is necessary to negotiate and compromise with the enemy. This is a non-starter in Iraq. There the insurgents appear to be a toxic cocktail of Baathists and foreign Jihadists. Neither is interested in compromise or a power-sharing arrangement. Both will view a drawing down of forces or a relaxation of security as a weakness to be ruthlessly exploited. Just ask the UN or the Red Cross.
The alternative to the continued presence of coalition forces in Iraq is not an Arab equivalent of the Good Friday agreement but an Iraqi civil war and the destabilisation of every moderate Islamic regime from Jordan to Indonesia if the global Jihad is perceived to have driven out the Americans.
However, the greatest problem with the Northern Ireland analogy is the sense of defeatism which it creates, the feeling that all efforts against terrorism are doomed to fail. The occupation of Iraq is in some trouble but the blame for this rests with the overly optimistic and foolish neo-conservatives who failed to plan adequately for the war's aftermath. In other words, the problem is with one particular strategy, not with all possible strategies.
In fact, one could argue that the current setbacks are the result of poor intelligence about the enemy and too few troops. The solution might be better intelligence and more troops, which would amount to an intensification of the effort rather than a weakening of it as Mr O'Toole's argument implies.
Interestingly, while Mr O'Toole sees little good in the American occupation, Iraqis tend to disagree.
A recent Gallup poll shows that 67 per cent of Iraqis believe that their country will be in a better condition in five years than it was before the invasion while only 8 per cent disagree. Crucially, 62 per cent believe that the ousting of Saddam is worth the hardships endured since the war began.
By a three-to-one margin, Iraqis want US troops to stay longer than a few more months. Interestingly, only 36 per cent believe that there are some circumstances in which attacks on US troops can be justified, an incredibly low number given that the US has been effectively at war with Iraq since 1990. As this poll shows, the hope of most Iraqis rests on the continuing commitment of the coalition to Iraq while its greatest enemy is an early exit strategy.
Tony Blair's insight has been to recognise that one size does not fit all. Compromise with terrorists in Northern Ireland does not mean that it is necessary, wise or desirable everywhere else. He is smart enough to know that different circumstances require different tactics. We should praise, not bury, him for his apparent inconsistency.
Tom Wright is a journalist and postgraduate student in international relations at Georgetown University.