You seem to have used an awful lot of words here (Congratulation - i did actually read through to the end) to say very little that is new.
Bush wanted to “kick some butt to look tough” and Blair didn’t want to risk losing our “strongest” ally. This is of no great surprise but if you are going to justify 9 pages of analysis, then surely it could take into account the peripheral issues, such as oil as a motivating factor, and GB and US hypocrisy in dealing with Saddam…

Furthermore, I understand you are trying to be dispassionate about the concept of realpolitik but I get the impression that you use it as apology for looking at world events as a singular moment in time and. Where consequences need not be heeded.

“the sole purpose is to advance the national interest, irrespective of whether this is, in turn, in the interests of others, even – and some would argue, especially - your allies.”

Surely in todays “international” society, the interests of our allies need to be considered before we act. Is that not the realpolitik of international politics/economics in the long term.

I appreciate what you’re saying here, Stu - a nine pages, the core conclusion that the key driver in US Policy on Iraq was as simple demonstration of force can appear to be a bit of a ’sledgehammer to crack a nut’.

Having said that, the worrying part of, in particular, the US administration’s stance on Iraq is that it really is as simplistic as it seems - something that only become clear once you start looking at the detail behing the policy.

One of the key flaws in many of the analyses of events leading to the Iraq war is that people have gone looking for subtlies and nuances in policy that simply don’t exist. Oil genuinely was a peripheral issue that had little influence on governmental policy - it becomes germaine only when you look past the White House and consider whether there may have been any private interests acting behind the scene, which is certainly a possibility - almost a certainty in fact.

That’s why realpolitik is so useful as an anaytical framework when it comes to Iraq, because it shows very clearly how little consideration there is, within the Bush administration, of anything other than the US national interest and that, presently, that national interest is defined within very clear but limited terms.

The best way I can characterise the prevailing policy stance of the US under Bush is as being one of ‘aggressive isolationism’ - the US is isolationist, in the sense that its defines itself almost exclusively in terms of its own interests and to the exclusion of the interests of others - even its closest allies - but aggressive in sense that unlike the policy of isolationism in the 1920’s and 30’s, under which the US genuinely did sequester itself away, for the most part, from the rest of the world, the US ‘national interest’ is now so diffuse and global in nature that it can’t retreat into itself - it can pursue an isolationist stance only be acting on a global scale but almost entirely in its own ’self interest’.

Why this has come about is because is most cases government is based on a balance between ideology and pragmatism which acts as a brake on ideological excess, or pragmatic inertia - in policy-making.

For example, the ideologues in government might push for massive tax cuts becuase that is what fits their ideologically driven world view. The pragmatists will then, usually, counter such a proposal by raising a wide range of practical considerations - how will this affect business or the stock market? would it cause the economy to overheat? All the perils of playing ‘boom and bust’ with the economy.

Government, or should I say ‘good government’, will then balance out these factors to arrive at an acceptable compromise - in the above scenario this would usually mean a smaller tax cut than the ideologues would like, one which won’t unbalance the economy, keeping the pragmatists. Its a system of checks and balances which tend to keep government on a fairly even keel, all things being equal.

The big problem with the Bush administration is that it is almost wholly dominated by ideologues - pragmatic views don’t get a look in because they never reach the ears of the President and, to be frank, even if they did, he wouldn’t understand them anyway. Bush really is a simple man who understands thing only in simple terms and this allows a whole raft ot vested interests in around the US government to more or less operate without any of the usual restraints of considering the wider implications of their actions and policy decisions.

You’re right, of course, the wider interests of our allies should be a factor in thinking about foreign policy, and if we were talking about Nixon, Ford, Clinton or even GHW Bush, these things would require careful consideration but the simple and rather frightening truth is that none of these thing matter to the current president or US administration and, unlike the last occasion where the US had a blatantly ideological adminsitration, under Reagan, this time there’s no Cold War, no Soviet Union and no global balance of power to hold the US back and force them into consideration of the impact of their global policies on others.

That’s why I said that this was not for the ‘politically fainthearted’ - because the wider implications for the rest of the world of an ideologically driven US operating globally and almost wholly without restraint is about as frightening and disturbing a prospect as I can think of.

Without breaking Godwin’s law, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty of thinking of other nation states which have, in past, become wholly driven by ideology in Government - now apply what history has told us about those states to the US, in its present position - not a pleasant thought, is it.

I accept your conclusions about the driving force behind US policy towards the war, I even agree with the singular manner in which you concentrate your argument in this piece but I think that to consider the peripheral issues as “subtleties and nuances in policy that simply don’t exist” is potentially simplistic.
You accept the private interests that are acting behind the scenes in the White House. The significance of these - while they can be, and are often, overstated - surely cannot be dismissed entirely? Can these private interests be examined as a factor behind the Bush ideology? I am sure commentators can come up with 101 different definitions of US National Interest so what is driving the Administration’s beliefs? In search of the answer to this do you not need to consider personal interests?
I personally do not accept that oil was a driving force for invading Iraq - at least not in an economic “let’s help make daddy some money” sense. But control of those oil fields must surely be a factor in increasing global power.
Having said that, they are peripheral issues and I do not want to labour on them too much. I will leave that to Michael Moore – he does a much better job than I could.

As for the issue of considering our allies, I intended to refer more specifically to our own Mr B. To be honest, I think Bush may have the intention of imposing global hegemony now that, as you said, he is not restricted by the balance of power. But the UK on the other hand needs to consider her allies. I did not mean we should consider our allies in a sense of fraternity and co-operation (although that would be nice). I intended to follow on from your idea of realpolitik. The UK should act pragmatically in accordance with her own national interests. Once again, I suppose, it comes down to the definition of what is our nation interests. My thoughts are merely that, our national interests extend further than placating the incumbent US Administration and therefore it was not inevitable, or at least need not have been necessary, to follow bush blindly into Iraq. Also our national interests extend beyond the here and now. There will always be consequences.

Sorry - copied the text into the text box and lost all the line breaks - makes for very bad grammar!!

I have to say, Stu, that I agree with you entirely in respect of you interpretation of how Britain should, pragmatically, view its national interest.

What concerns me most, and in part drove to write this piece, was the apparent extent to which Britain’s interests are increasingly becoming subsumed and overtaken by those of the United States to the point where we define our own interests almost exclusively in relation to theirs.

Iraq is one very recent illustration of a trend which began during the 1950’s and which can seen in everything from our approach to Israel and the Palestinian crisis where, over the last 30-40 years, we’ve more or less slavishly followed the US line to the exclusion of our own historically strong associations with the Arab world.

In simple terms, before WWII, the Arabic world was one of our strongest and closest allies, a relationship which we’ve denuded and largely turned our back on, with perhaps the exception of Jordan, in order to back up the US’s almost unequivocal support for Israel.

Another perfect and largely unknown example is the treatment accorded to the Ilois by Britian under the Labour government of Harold Wilson - I won’t try to run through the full story as it would take too long and I try to stick to a limit of one monster article a week, but you can get a good picture of what I mean here - http://www.iloistrust.org/

Britain’s choice on Iraq is, in my own view, rooted even at the level of realpolitik in a deep-seated ethical bankruptcy which run through not only government but the entire machinery of state, which the really worrying thing.

What bothers me at this level is not so much what Blair might or might not have done - which is what most are arguing vehmently about at the moment - but the sense I get that it may really not have mattered which party was in power when this issue came up as they would have all reached the same conclusions and made the same decisions that the present government did and for all the same reasons, including those I set out originally.

If that is true then we’re already part of the US hegemony whether we, the people, like it or not - its just that no one in government is telling us that.