Larvatus Prodeo

A lot of things are of historical significance today, it seems. Guy, over at wsacaucus, refers to Tony Blair’s “historic address to a joint sitting of Federal Parliament today”. Blair is no doubt a good orator, and has some charm, but his pseudo-Gladstonian liberal Imperialism falls apart very quickly when examined logically. Andrew Bartlett gets it in one:

“Prime Minister Blair is the last person to be giving anyone advice on what should be done in Iraq,” Senator Bartlett told reporters today.

“His record is appalling and his complete inability to admit he’s made mistakes is rivalled only by our own prime minister’s.

Let’s have a look at Blair’s values shtick.

Mr Blair told MPs and senators who crowded into the House of Representatives that the struggle facing the world today was not just about security.

“[It is also] a struggle about values and about modernity, whether to be at ease with it or enraged at it,” said Mr Blair, the fifth world leader granted the honour of addressing federal parliament.

“And to win this struggle we have to win the battle of values as much as arms.”

The key to deconstructing this high-sounding rhetoric which actually seeks to enshrine realpolitik in morality (Blair’s stock in trade) actually lies in Howard’s response:

“Our two countries have stood together in defence of common values and universal truths and liberties, often at very great cost,” he said.

Precisely - Blair’s values talk begs the question of whether there is just one modernity. And it’s clear that “universal truths and liberties” actually means Western versions thereof. An actual struggle for democracy, as I’ve suggested Amartya Sen argues, would recognise that democracy is neither a gift to be given or a regime to be imposed by the West, but something whose true universality arises in the traditions of public rationality found everywhere in the world.

Blair shouldn’t be ashamed of defending our particularistic interests in the name of security. No amount of noble sounding rhetoric about universalism, values, and modernity will disguise that that’s what he actually bases his decisions on. If he does actually base his decision making on some utopian madness about “spreading freedom and democracy around the world”, rather than Britain’s security interests, he’s as bad as Bush if not worse. Leaders whose ideological dreaming involves war and the deaths of innocent are very dangerous. Let’s not forget Blair’s constant justifications of the Iraq War in terms of his own conscience rather than democratic accountability. We shouldn’t fall for Blair’s rhetoric.