19
resolution was thwarted, the United States was not going to be deterred by the lack of explicit
authorization.
The second myth regarding the special relationship is that the UK has no choice but to offer the
US unconditional support when the superpower believes its security interests are at stake.
Michael Quinlan sets out the case for why London had to fall into line:
There is more and more ground for suspecting that for Mr Blair, facing extremely
difficult decisions, the real bottom line was not this or that justification for action
against Saddam but the combination of three judgements: first, that Mr Bush was
intent on war; second, that nothing Britain could do would ultimately deflect him;
third, that British national interest required that in the end that we go along. Put
another way, the question may have been not so much whether the arguments were
good enough to warrant the huge step of starting a war as whether they were bad
enough to warrant the huge step of breaking with the United States.
62
The contrast between Quinlan
’
s view of Britain
’
s role in the Iraq war and the argument set out
above is that it was in
‘
the national interest
’
to mobilise 46,000 members of the British armed
services only because of a prior belief in an Atlanticist identity. Had key ministers in the UK
government believed in internationalism, then at a minimum, it would have made its support for
the United States conditional upon a consensus in the Security Council as well as indicators of
significant support from other multilateral institutions. The argument then would have been
framed in terms of whether the case for war was persuasive enough to warrant
‘
the huge step
’
of breaking with our obligations to the international community.
Conclusion
New constellations of power and morality in world politics are pressurising states to re-think
their foreign policies. An instrumental approach is unreflective about how and why a state
defines its interests in a particular way. An enlightened approach shows how interests are
constituted by socially embedded ideas about who
‘
we
’
are, and which actors represent a
‘
threat
’
and which an
‘
opportunity
’
. A genuine commitment to liberal/social democratic
values requires not just constitutionalism
‘
at home
’
but a willingness to pursue these values
62
Michael Quinlan, quoted in Hugh Beach, ‘The concept of “preventive war”’, Contemporary Essays: The
Strategic and Combat Studies Unit 47 (2004), p. 69.
Convention