Public Opinion, Legitimacy and Tony Blair's War in Iraq

James Strong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315513997
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the wake of the publication of the Chilcot report, this book reinterprets the relationship between British public opinion and the Blair government's decision-making in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It highlights how the government won the parliamentary vote and got its war, but never won the argument that it was the right thing to do. Understanding how, why and with what consequences Britain wound up in this position means understanding better both this specific case and the wider issue of how democratic publics influence foreign policy processes.

Taking an innovative constructivist approach to understanding how public actors potentially influence foreign policy, Strong frames the debate about Iraq as a contest over legitimacy among active public actors, breaking it down into four constituent elements covering the necessity, legality and morality of war, and the government's authority. The book presents a detailed empirical account of the British public debate before the invasion of Iraq based on the rigorous interrogation of thousands of primary sources, employing both quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods to interpret the shape of debate between January 2002 and March 2003.

Also contributing to the wider foreign policy analysis literature, the book investigates the domestic politics of foreign policy decision-making, and particularly the influence public opinion exerts; considers the domestic structural determinants of foreign policy decision-making; and studies the ethics of foreign policy decision-making, and the legitimate use of force. It will be of great use to students and scholars of foreign policy analysis, as well as those interested in legitimacy in international conflict, British foreign policy, the Iraq War and the role of public opinion in conflict situations.

1
Introduction: understanding a controversial war

Britain has fought controversial wars before, but its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq proved unusually contentious. Negative opinion polls, hostile media commentary, the largest parliamentary rebellion ever and the largest street protests in history failed to stop the Blair government joining the Bush administration in overthrowing Saddam Hussein. From an FPA perspective, this all looks somewhat odd. Democracies are not supposed to fight unpopular wars. Britain did. Rational politicians are not supposed to court career disaster by ignoring what the public wants. Blair government ministers did exactly that. Studying what made this possible offers us the chance to say something more general about democratic foreign policymaking. Does public opinion matter? Does this case prove that determined leaders can ignore even quite concerted domestic opposition as they pursue their chosen foreign policy course? What did the 2003 invasion mean, to ministers, to elites and to the public at large? What does it mean as we look back on it now, in the aftermath of the Chilcot Report?

To answer these questions, this book investigates how the British domestic debate over Iraq played out. It defines public opinion in constructivist terms, as a social fact constituted through elite debate, and highlights its relationship with foreign policy legitimacy. It uses dozens of opinion polls, hundreds of parliamentary speeches and thousands of press comment pieces to reconstruct both the direction and the nature of public attitudes. It draws on contemporary government statements, declassified and leaked government documents and the recent Chilcot Report to chart both the outlines and the narratives of what was a twisting, broad and often angry debate. It is an empirical study, in other words, but one structured by a particular FPA approach.

The book’s underlying goal is to understand how it was possible that Britain wound up fighting what many British people considered an illegitimate war in Iraq. In the process, it aims to say something about the domestic legitimacy deficit that still surrounds the prospect of using force abroad. That many people in this country think the Iraq war illegitimate seems obvious. One poll on the invasion’s tenth anniversary found just 27 per cent of respondents agreed it had been the right thing to do. Over 50 per cent disagreed (YouGov 2013). A clear-cut victory on the ground might have dispelled pre-invasion doubts (Mueller 2005, 109; Michalski and Gow 2007, 151). Pre-invasion doubts, however, ensured few British people expected a clear-cut victory on the ground. It is in any event difficult to ‘win’ the sort of messy, ‘post-modern’ conflict that the Iraq War became. It is doubly so when domestic audiences consider the entire enterprise to be wrong (Finnemore 2003, 18; Reus-Smit 2007, 165).

Even after four major public inquiries, the most recent and most comprehensive of which produced a report two million words long, the Iraq issue still retains an unparalleled capacity to provoke argument. Its legacy casts a pall over how Britain thinks about taking military action abroad (Daddow 2013; Strong 2015b). Parliament now gets involved in major combat deployment decisions. Tony Blair felt forced to grant MPs the chance to veto his invasion. His successor David Cameron followed suit to prove how much more open and consultative he was compared to Blair. Together they set new precedents and forged a new political convention, a “parliamentary prerogative” that grants the House of Commons a say over the use of force as a foreign policy tool (Strong 2015a). This development made a direct difference in August 2013, when MPs voted against intervention in the Syrian Civil War. Iraq made the Syria veto possible, by putting pressure on Blair to concede power to MPs. It also made it thinkable, by giving MPs a language in which to justify saying no. Before 2013, no government had lost a House of Commons vote on a matter of military action since 1782, when Lord North’s administration collapsed over its failure to rein in the rebellious North American colonies. Against the backdrop of Iraq, a repeat suddenly became practically possible and conceptually conceivable. Newly empowered as self-appointed guardians against dangerous military overreach, MPs saw too many shadows of Blair’s conduct ten years before in the Cameron government’s approach to Syria. They felt the “spectre of the debate on Iraq” behind them. They saw “the ghost of Tony Blair” looming overhead. They did not trust their leaders to tell the truth about the need for force. One Conservative backbencher told Cameron she could “not sit here and be duped again” (Hansard 2013, cols. 1473, 1545 and 1510). Four years after British troops withdrew from Basra, MPs saw the prospect of further military intervention through the prism of Iraq.

Two related factors drove this phenomenon. To begin with, the Iraq War obviously went wrong. It lasted far longer, cost more in treasure and in lives (mainly Iraqi, though also British) and delivered less peace and stability than most opponents, let alone supporters, anticipated. Even Blair, who otherwise still defends the approach he took, accepted partial responsibility for the rise of Da’esh in a 2015 interview (Blair 2015). More pernicious still was the sense, widely shared, that the entire enterprise was wrong from the start, however it turned out. This stemmed above all from the widespread belief that the Blair government did not tell the truth during the build-up to war (Heffernan 2006, 592; Kennedy-Pipe and Vickers 2007, 206; Hill 2007, 276; Dunne 2008, 340). Internal Labour Party polling, conducted after the 2005 general election and later leaked, found 60 per cent of voters thought “the people and the Parliament were lied to about the reasons for going to war” (Penn, Schoen and Berland 2005). This was an incredible figure. It marked a dramatic turnaround for Tony Blair’s once unimpeachable public image. It underscored the crisis of legitimacy he faced. And it made sense. British ministers claimed that Iraq’s continued development of banned WMD posed a threat, both directly to national security and indirectly to the international order. But Iraq was not actually developing WMD. They said the war was legal even without explicit UN Security Council approval. That turned out to be an aggressive and eminently contestable interpretation of international law. Most legal experts disagreed with the Attorney General’s arguments, finally leaked shortly before the 2005 election, while Chilcot dismissed the claim that ignoring the Security Council was the only way to uphold the Council’s own wishes. Blair repeatedly asserted his personal authority to direct Britain’s armed forces in the name of its citizens. But many insisted he did not speak for them, accusing him instead of being President Bush’s ‘poodle’, an impression he struggled to dispel. Blair argued that changing the Iraqi regime was the morally proper thing to do. But Iraq, after Saddam, deteriorated into a drawn-out sectarian conflict from which it is yet to emerge. Doubts about how the government made the case for war reinforced concerns stoked by casualties and battlefield setbacks. Every death, and every disaster, made ministers’ pre-invasion claims look that much worse. As Blair himself admitted, every time something went wrong on the ground it reminded people that they doubted that British forces should be in Iraq at all (Blair 2010, 374).

Understanding how all this was possible from a FPA perspective offers us the opportunity to say something more general about Britain’s recent doubts about military action. Even more active in military terms than Blair, after coming to office in 2010 David Cameron repeatedly asked MPs to approve the use of force. Every time he felt compelled to refer to Iraq. Asking approval for a no-fly zone over Libya in March 2011, he promised “this is not another Iraq” (Cameron 2011, col. 709). Looking to respond to the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Syria in August 2013, he insisted “this situation is not like Iraq” (Cameron 2013, col. 1427). Proposing to fight Da’esh in Iraq in September 2014, he maintained “this is different to the decision the House made in 2003” (Cameron 2014, col. 1263). Calling for further action to fight Da’esh in Syria in December 2015, he concluded by observing “this is not 2003” (Cameron 2015, col. 339). Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour Party leadership thanks in part to his concerted opposition to Tony Blair’s wars. Corbyn was chairman of the Stop the War coalition, an anti-war pressure group founded to campaign against Western states using force in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks. He was one of only 13 MPs who voted against intervention in Libya. True to form, Corbyn warned MPs considering action against Da’esh in Syria to acknowledge the “spectre of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya” haunting them (Corbyn 2015, col. 347). A strong sense remains amongst political elites, the media and the wider public that the invasion of Iraq was fundamentally wrong. It fuels a wider scepticism about the use of force abroad. This, in turn, raises significant questions about Britain’s role as a great power, as an ally and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It leaves the integrity of the office of the Prime Minister, of the intelligence services and the government’s legal advisors in doubt. Understanding Iraq is, consequently, still vitally important if we are to get to grips with contemporary Britain’s attitudes to the use of force.

Others have written books about Iraq. This study builds on published participant accounts in the form of memoirs (Cook 2003; Blair 2010), wider theoretical reflections (Powell 2010) and edited diaries (Campbell and Stott 2007). It is further enriched by evidence produced in a series of public inquiries, from Lord Hutton’s account of the untimely death of British chemical weapons expert Dr David Kelly, through Lord Butler’s dissection of the government’s ‘dossier’ on WMD to Sir John Chilcot’s comprehensive investigation of every aspect of the war.

This book adds two things. First, it adds an FPA perspective on how Britain wound up fighting in Iraq, and what the consequences were. It adopts a constructivist theoretical approach, aimed at “understanding” the meaning of the debate from the perspective of insiders rather than “explaining” it from outside (Hollis and Smith 1990). Constructivists prefer “how possible” to “why” questions, looking at how particular interactions among participants make certain outcomes thinkable and others not (Doty 1993, 298). The book consequently explores how the way the Iraq debate played out made both the decision to go to war and the legitimacy deficit that subsequently surrounded it possible. It will, in the process, contribute to a wider constructivist literature on the discursive construction of legitimacy in international conflict. With the Cold War over, the question of what makes a Western state’s engagement in international conflict legitimate has become more complex. There is no longer a single clear overarching narrative of international politics within which such decisions are subsumed (Cole 1996, 105; Clark 2005, 158; Voeten 2005, 546). Most contemporary conflicts involve intervention in other states’ internal affairs rather than the more traditional form of inter-state war (Finnemore 2003, 2). That makes the sort of debate chronicled here all the more important.

Second, this book adds a detailed empirical focus on the pre-war period, something the current literature does not really address despite its importance (Robinson et al. 2010). It presents an in-depth, original analysis driven by contemporary primary sources, including 2,115 newspaper comment pieces and 333 parliamentary speeches alongside dozens of official documents and participant accounts. In the process, it aims both to debunk some of the later myths about the pre-war debate, and to present a well-evidenced ‘first cut’ historical account.

Structure

This book proceeds in three related parts. Part I looks at public opinion. Chapter 2 makes the case for adopting a constructivist approach to understanding the relationship between British public opinion and foreign policy. It sets out ontological, epistemological and methodological foundations for the empirical investigations reported through the remainder of the book. It highlights how ‘public opinion’ exists to the extent a society, or a group within a society such as a political elite, thinks that it exists. Public opinion, from this perspective, is best described as a “social fact” constituted through public debate (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986, 765; Onuf 1989, 94; Wendt 1992, 406; Searle 1995, 27). This chapter consequently suggests a ‘holistic’ empirical approach combining survey results with quantitative and qualitative analysis of press commentary, parliamentary debate and street protests to build up an interpretive picture of public attitudes, while using contemporary documents and public statements alongside later reflections to triangulate policymakers’ views. In the case of Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq, it also shows how the range of material produced by repeated public inquiries and continued public and media interest can support academic research.

Chapter 3 presents a predominately quantitative overview of the UK public debate prior to the invasion of Iraq, derived from a large-scale content analysis exercise showing the pattern of public attitudes across the different sources comprising the holistic approach. It highlights three factors that help us understand how it was possible that concerted public opposition failed to stop Britain joining the Iraq war. To begin with, although opinion polls, press commentary and parliamentary speeches showed consistent opposition to the prospect of war throughout the pre-invasion period, the Blair government accurately predicted a ‘rally ’round the flag’ effect once battle commenced. Second, ministers enjoyed significant pockets of support in public debate, including politically pivotal forces such as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and the opposition, the Conservative Party. Both supported military action against Saddam Hussein more vociferously even than Tony Blair himself. Finally, official communication efforts largely worked, at least in the short term. While they may not have changed many minds, the government’s contributions to public debate successfully lowered the salience of Iraq as an issue. In effect, they reduced the intensity without changing the direction of public opposition, and that proved sufficient. Through setting out these points, this chapter further highlights key ‘moments’ in the debate that prove significant in Part II.

Part II moves on to talk about legitimacy. Chapter 4 outlines a discursive understanding of what legitimacy is and where it comes from. It argues for treating legitimacy as a product of public debate, and introduces two distinct “Foucauldian” and “Habermasian” normative approaches to understanding how this works and what it means in practice (Reus-Smit 2002, 487). For Foucauldians, government communications can generate consensus, but not legitimacy in any normative sense. Whatever support ministers achieve reflects their power over domestic audiences, nothing more. For Habermasians, by contrast, a properly conducted public deliberation can produce the sort of agreement among democratic actors that legitimacy derives from. To secure this normative status, leaders must be honest, open to public debate and flexible in the face of opposition. Understanding the legitimacy deficit surrounding Iraq therefore means looking both at the substance of the arguments the Blair government made, and the form in which it made them.

The following discussion breaks down the pre-invasion debate along lines of reasoning that the Blair government and its critics actually used. In the process, it sacrifices the conceptual insight t...