Posted on 12/01/2001 10:00:18 AM PST by Pokey78
The little-noticed two-day visit to Washington of British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith may turn out to be a significant moment in the war against terrorism. Duncan Smith's election as party leader was announced only in September; he has never held cabinet office and he is not well known in most parts of Washington. His Conservative Party holds only 166 seats out of 659 in the House of Commons, and he and other Conservatives have been regarded with dripping contempt by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top staffers at No. 10 Downing Street.
Yet Duncan Smith was able to get meetings Thursday with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton. On Friday, he paid a call at the White House office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and President George W. Bush dropped in for a 45-minute conversation. Duncan Smith said administration officials struck him as "resolute," absolutely determined to continue the prosecution of the war against terrorism, and ready to discuss not just Afghanistan but Iraq and other countries.
The Duncan Smith visit was significant not for the war in Afghanistan but for what may come next. Tony Blair has been rock solid and steadfast in his support for our effort in Afghanistan; his only evident disappointment has been his inability to get more British soldiers in the country immediately. Duncan Smith has said that his Conservatives stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the government on the war, and has been consulted privately as opposition party leaders have been in past British wars.
But Blair seems not at all so enthusiastic about the prospect of bringing the war to Iraq, and many of his Labor Party MPs, plus the Foreign Office, are clearly against any attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein. Duncan Smith, in contrast, makes it no secret that he would support carrying the war to Iraq. In his one public appearance in Washington, at the American Enterprise Institute's New Atlantic Initiative, he said, "I certainly agree with President Bush when he says that there can be no further justification for the continuing Iraqi failing to abide by the Gulf War cease-fire obligations to let U.N. inspectors back into the country to monitor its weapons of mass destruction.
So Duncan Smith's reception by high administration officials operates as a kind of pressure on Blair to support the United States if we decide to take the war to Iraq. Blair surely does not like the prospect of loud dissenting voices and a significant number of dissenting votes from Labor MPs, which would follow such a course. He would have to battle his Foreign Office mandarins, who like many in the State Department and virtually every diplomat on continental Europe, want to see the United States bludgeon Israel into a retreat from defensible borders and want to see the Arab states left alone. Weighing on the other side is Blair's institutional need for support of the U.S. No one doubts the transparent sincerity of his outrage against the acts of terrorism and his determination to destroy al Qaeda and the Taliban for their evil deeds. But he also knows that a British prime minister gains international stature when he stands tall as America's closest and militarily most effective ally. Taller, in particular, than the leaders of the similar-size countries of continental Europe. Blair undoubtedly wishes to continue in that role. He would not welcome the distancing from Washington that opposition to an initiative in Iraq would bring, especially with the prospect of a Conservative Party leader, well connected in the Bush administration and ready to support strongly and articulately an American effort in Iraq.
There is no reason to think that the leaders of the Bush administration see Tony Blair as in any way a hostile or insincere supporter of the war on terrorism. They appreciate his efforts and expect that he will continue to provide strong support. But they obviously concluded it wouldn't hurt to give a warm welcome to Iain Duncan Smith, and that if that should make it a little easier for Blair to support a war in Iraq, well and good.
I would like to think that Bush views IDS as an idealogical soulmate, whom he will support as much as he can within overall U.S. foreign policy interests, which in this case are aligned with such a show of support. That would be my take on this, not the USN&WR realpolitik small-mindedness.
Leni
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