The International Community

They led. Did Bush follow their lead?

Google "International Community" and you get 8,640,000 pages. It must be a rather popular concept.

"Community" is a rather comfy word. "International" is a big word, expansive and inclusive, and we all like big ideas and we must be inclusive. A phrase that includes big things and warm comfy things is a simple seductive idea. Two of the more inclusive proponents of "International Community" were Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Both men, children of the sixties, liked the big rock concert, big demonstration, arm in arm process of governance. They preferred consensus and of course inclusion to help reinforce their ideas and beliefs. Blair and Clinton confirmed their ideas and the power of the "International Community" with the war on Kosovo.

Bill Richardson is so enthralled with the concept, that he and many others are calling on the "International Community" to act on Pakistan.

Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan are still unresolved, the IC is hardly in concurrence with Iran and now the call is going out for the "big chapatis", Pakistan. A read of a speech made by Tony Blair in 1999 should be made before we take a bite out of that loaf.

On 24 April 1999, Tony Blair made a speech that is hosted on A UK Government website: 'Prime Minister's speech: Doctrine of the International community at the Economic Club, Chicago' He had some interesting things to say in those warm inclusive days.

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...While we meet here in Chicago this evening, unspeakable things are happening in Europe. Awful crimes that we never thought we would see again have reappeared - ethnic cleansing. systematic rape, mass murder.

I want to speak to you this evening about events in Kosovo. But I want to put these events in a wider context - economic, political and security - because I do not believe Kosovo can be seen in isolation.

No one in the West who has seen what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that NATO's military action is justified. Bismarck famously said the Balkans were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian Grenadier. Anyone who has seen the tear stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty or contemplated the unknown fates of those left behind, knows that Bismarck was wrong.

This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values. We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed. We have learned twice before in this century that appeasement does not work. If we let an evil dictator range unchallenged, we will have to spill infinitely more blood and treasure to stop him later"...

..."We need to begin work now on what comes after our success in Kosovo. We will need a new Marshall plan for Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Serbia too if it turns to democracy. We need a new framework for the security of the whole of the Balkans. And we will need to assist the war crimes tribunal in its work to bring to justice those who have committed these appalling crimes.

This evening I want to step back and look at what is happening in Kosovo in a wider context"...

..."Twenty years ago we would not have been fighting in Kosovo. We would have turned our backs on it. The fact that we are engaged is the result of a wide range of changes - the end of the Cold War; changing technology; the spread of democracy. But it is bigger than that

I believe the world has changed in a more fundamental way. Globalisation has transformed our economies and our working practices. But globalisation is not just economic. It is also a political and security phenomenon.

We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist. By necessity we have to co-operate with each other across nation"...

..."We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not"...

..."national interest is to a significant extent governed by international collaboration and that we need a clear and coherent debate as to the direction this doctrine takes us in each field of international endeavour."...

..."Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men - Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic."...

..."The most pressing foreign policy problem we face is to identify the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other people's conflicts. Non -interference has long been considered an important principle of international order. And it is not one we would want to jettison too readily. One state should not feel it has the right to change the political system of another or forment subversion or seize pieces of territory to which it feels it should have some claim. But the principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter. When oppression produces massive flows of refugees which unsettle neighbouring countries then they can properly be described as "threats to international peace and security". When regimes are based on minority rule they lose legitimacy - look at South Africa."...

He forgot to mention Rhodesia, rather I mean Zimbabwe, of course. How could I forget?