Blair's Foreign Policy 1997 - 2007
- Created by: yazmintaylorx
- Created on: 06-05-18 09:06
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- Blair's Foreign Policy 1997-2007
- The Era of Liberal Intervention
- the rhetoric: Blair came to power in 1997 promising an 'ethical foreign policy'
- e.g. no British arms sales to govts. with poor human rights records
- Robin Cook was foreign secretary
- e.g. no British arms sales to govts. with poor human rights records
- the reality: Britin in 2007 was the 4th largest arms exporter
- UK sells arms to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Bahrain etc.
- Blair involved the UK in 5 conflicts
- the rhetoric: Blair came to power in 1997 promising an 'ethical foreign policy'
- War in former Yugoslavia 1992-1999
- spanning the 1990s (Major/Blair) the former Yugoslavia broke up in a bloody ethnic civil war
- the EU & NATO were passive as massacres of civilians took place in Bosnia carried out by neighbouring Serbs
- Serbs forces executed 7,000 Bosnian men & boys in the town of Srebrenica 1995
- as PM from 1997, Blair believed it was the duty of countries like the UK to intervene to stop such atrocities in the future
- 1999 War in Kosovo
- when war broke out in Kosovo in 1999 Blair wanted NATO to act more forcefully to stop genocide
- he believed in 'liberal interventionism'
- using military force to act for good in the world
- he pressured the US President Clinton to send US forces
- Clinton would only agree to use NATO forces to bomb Serbia
- not send in US ground forces
- Iraq 1998 - 2003
- since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 Iraq was under UN sanctions
- it was forced to allow UN weapons inspectors into the country to check on its weapons programmes
- when Iraq was accused of non-compliance US & British planes bombed Iraq Dec 1998
- 9/11
- in the wake of 9/11 Blair gave strong British support for President Bush's 'war on terror'
- British forces sent to Afghanistan in 2001 to defeat Al Qaeda & the Taliban
- April 2002 meeting at Crawford, Texas
- Bush told Blair that USA would invade Iraq. Blair gave British support for that action
- Iraq Legacy
- Blair is now widely perceived as having misled the country about the real reasons for the Iraq war
- the political debate is still on-going
- Blair's critics claimed he knew Bush was going to invade Iraq
- he agreed with Bush's aim of regime change & was simply using UN resolutions as a way of bringing Europe round
- his defenders argue he was genuinely convinced about the dangers of WMD & that he was correct in the analysis of the need to prevent the US becoming isolationist
- Terrorism
- 7th July 2005
- 4 British muslims carried out suicide attacks on the London Underground& a bus
- 52 were killed in the worst ever terrorist attack on UK
- 21st July 2005
- failed follow up attacks
- 7th July 2005
- The Era of Liberal Intervention
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