Also from Cairo's Al-Ahram
Blair's Waterloo?
Blair is only one stray bomb away from regime change himself, writes Alistair Alexander from London
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It was the "nightmare scenario" that Downing Street spin doctors had been muttering about for months, before quickly reassuring themselves that it would never come to that. With his diplomatic strategy in tatters, Tony Blair was forced last week to take Britain to war without the UN mandate he had promised and against the overwhelming opposition of his electorate.
Remarkably, however, Blair actually appeared to end the week in a stronger position than he started it. And as British forces plunge into a very hostile Iraq, the sheer pace of events in the military field has inevitably diverted attention from the political divisions at home. But Blair's palpable sense of relief at having survived by far the worst political crisis of his premiership might well be short-lived.
There is no doubt that at the beginning of last week, Blair was in desperate trouble. Over the previous seven days his authority appeared to be diminishing by the hour. Such was his vulnerability that when one of his ministers -- Clare Short -- called him "reckless" in an interview, he felt unable to sack her.
But Blair's nadir was -- in a cruel irony -- a devastating attack of friendly fire from Donald Rumsfeld, who casually remarked that there were contingency plans in place if Britain had to sit out the war. The comments sent Downing Street into apoplexy, as Labour Party critics seized on the comments as a possible exit strategy for the government.
By the time he met US President George W Bush in the Azores for a thinly veiled war summit on 16 March, Blair was contemplating the most spectacular foreign policy failure of any British Prime Minister since the Suez Crisis.
Having manifestly failed to persuade the Security Council that a further resolution wouldn't simply be a pretext for a pre-ordained attack, Blair's credibility appeared to be in ruins. A commons debate on Iraq on Tuesday last week was shaping up to be the prime minister's last stand.
And with 139 Labour MPs voting against their government, the epic 10-hour debate ended with the largest parliamentary rebellion in modern political history. However, it could have been a lot worse. Rebels were hoping their number would reach 160 MPs -- the point at which the government would need to rely on Conservative support to secure victory. Such a result would have almost certainly spelt the end for Blair.
But in the few days prior to the debate, the mood in the commons had begun shifting in the government's favour. As the prospects of a UN resolution diminished the government launched a series of vitriolic attacks on the French -- an ever-popular strategy in Westminster. French President Jacques Chirac had threatened to use an "unreasonable veto", claimed the government, by announcing that he would vote against a second resolution "under any circumstances". By doing so, it was argued, other wavering countries were dissuaded from supporting the resolution they would have otherwise backed. Never mind that Russia and China were both prepared to use their vetoes too. Or, indeed, that in America's list of coalition countries none of the six wavering countries were present. Somehow, however, this dubious argument carried weight with MPs anxious for a fig-leaf of justification.
Blair's position was further bolstered when, having formally declared the diplomatic strategy dead, there were fewer ministerial resignations than expected. The most high-profile exit was that of former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
Cook is a formidable performer in the Commons and delivered a forensic attack on the government's policy. "If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions", he said, "we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us."
But the loss of Cook was more than outweighed by the astonishing U-turn of the aforementioned Clare Short. Apparently persuaded by Blair that he was right on Iraq all along, Short cast aside her strongly-held principles to retain her place at the cabinet table as overseas development minister. "I thought this is walking away and it is cowardly," she sighed.
This volte-face has left the hapless Short in the unique position of being loathed by both Blair loyalists and the rebels -- but it was undeniably a bitter blow to the anti-war MPs.
The government resorted to extreme measures to keep its MPs on side. Female MPs were rung up by a tearful Cherie Blair, the prime minister's wife, begging them to support her husband.
Few, if any, Labour back-benchers share the prime minister's unshakable commitment to attacking Iraq. It is a policy that puts Blair as starkly at odds with his own party as it does with the country as a whole. But in the end, few Labour MPs could really bring themselves to contemplate a post-Blair Labour Party; it was he, after all, that got most of them elected.
Over-eager talk of a leadership challenge unsettled many back- benchers and, in many ways, this crisis has simply revealed Blair's dominance over his party. The party's two main leadership prospects -- Brown and Home Secretary David Blunkett -- have ruled themselves out by unambiguously backing the government's line. Robin Cook, while having leadership credentials, is not particularly popular with other MPs. Other leading rebels, such as Graham Allen and Chris Smith have previously had undistinguished ministerial careers.
So, to no small degree, Blair owes his survival to the conspicuous lack of credible alternatives to him.
Even so, Blair's reputation is severely damaged. Disturbingly for most Labour MPs -- not to mention the public -- Blair hasn't dragged Britain into war out of misguided pragmatism, but because he has strikingly similar views on foreign affairs to the extreme neo-conservatives in the White House.
Blair has used every ounce of his once-considerable political capital to go to war against Iraq. As a result, every setback in the campaign will more than likely escalate into a political crisis. And there are plenty of possibilities to choose from. A humanitarian disaster, an unsavoury post-Saddam Hussein government, a failure to find weapons of mass destruction or a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could all be a disaster for Blair.
Above all his survival depends on three factors: a quick campaign, an absolute minimum of civilian suffering and negligible British casualties. With Iraqi resistance clearly far stiffer than expected, logic dictates at least one of those factors will have to give.
In other words, Blair is only one stray bomb away from regime change himself.