International Affairs: Former left-winger William Shawcross offers a trenchant defence of the war in Iraq and the Bush-Blair axis, writes Richard Aldous.
The war in Iraq ended 10 months ago, but the political endgame on both sides of the Atlantic remains intense. Tony Blair, Britain's most successful war leader since Churchill, last week confounded his critics by walking away unscathed from the Hutton Report. The BBC, his principal antagonist, was condemned. Resignations followed, starting with Gavyn Davies, the BBC's humiliated chairman, and Greg Dyke, the director- general. Meanwhile, as the US gears itself up for an election, opponents of President George W. Bush have jumped on assertions by David Kay, the former US chief weapons inspector, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. They say the administration lied. Kay replies that the president deserves an apology from western intelligence services for getting the assessments so wrong. Amidst the cacophony of accusation and counter-accusation, with inquiries looming, reconciliation between the advocates of war and those who opposed it seems as distant as ever.
Every generation or so, a conflict such as Iraq comes along that fractures world opinion in the most dramatic way. The Spanish Civil War achieved it in the 1930s, as did Suez in the 1950s, and Vietnam in the 1960s. And then there are issues on which minority voices are ridiculed and castigated, but turn out to be right. Fellow Tories shouted down Winston Churchill in the House of Commons during the 1938 Munich debate for suggesting appeasement made war inevitable; by 1940 he was their leader.
Debates that go beyond a straightforward left-right split are often the most vindictive. This is what makes Allies, by William Shawcross, such a fascinating book. Shawcross is one of the finest journalists the British left has ever produced. Sideshow, his indictment of President Nixon's secret war in Cambodia, made him an instant hate figure to the right. Yet here he is offering a trenchant defence of the Iraq war that is sympathetic not just to Tony Blair but also to President Bush and the hawkish "neo-cons" who surround him. Shawcross's former friends on the left, not surprisingly, have been merciless in condemning him.
Perhaps sensing this would happen, Shawcross made sure to get his retaliation in first. The tone of the book is for the most part elegant and urbane. When it comes to addressing critics of the US, however, his condemnation is brutal. Take the example of Margaret Drabble, the left-wing British novelist.
"My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph shortly after the war. "I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world."
Shawcross is apoplectic in response.
"What the United States has done to Iraq?" he demands. The US had just freed that nation from a monstrous tyranny, and "as Drabble was writing in London, Iraqi women and children were scrabbling through the dirt of the latest mass graves to be found, searching desperately for the remains of relatives murdered by Saddam".
Shawcross's assessment of French and German efforts to create a "counterweight" to American power is hardly less dismissive. He mischievously quotes Claudio Veliz saying that while France and Germany have "the nicest military uniforms, the shiniest boots, the best martial music parades", they also have a humiliating record of defeat. Germany's last military victory came in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War; France's was the defeat of Austria in 1809. If force of arms is required, Shawcross argues, only the US has the capacity and will to lead a defence of the West.
In the end, it is Americanism and anti-Americanism that are at the heart of Shawcross's engaging polemic. His argument rests on the conviction that the US remains the world's surest guarantor of peace and prosperity.
"Much of what was bravest and best during the [20th] century came from America or was sustained by American support and by the knowledge of American partnership," he writes. "America, more than any other single nation, has a vested interest in the world it helped to create and largely pay for during the past 100 years."
Shawcross's admiration is not uncritical. He catalogues mistakes made by the US and the West in Iraq. Intelligence assessments were wrong. The US under-prepared for the task of reconstruction. Iraqis were not properly informed or engaged. The UN system could have been used more skilfully.
"But if the United States can help the Iraqis build a decent society," he suggests, "it will have shown once again to all those who are prepared to see, that aside from protecting its own interests, the United States is still the only country that can really change the world for the better."
Richard Aldous teaches international history at UCD. His Harold Macmillan and Britain's World Role is published by Macmillan
Allies: The US, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq. By William Shawcross, Atlantic Books, 259pp. £14.99