[A-List] UK sub-imperialism: it's official!

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Blair under fire over adviser's call for 'imperialism'
By Paul Waugh Deputy Political Editor
The Independent, 28 March 2002

Senior Labour MPs reacted with fury last night after Tony Blair's key
foreign policy adviser called for "a new kind of imperialism" to enable
the UK to intervene abroad to combat global terror threats.

In a move that will further unnerve backbenchers worried about possible
military action against Iraq, Robert Cooper said that it was the task of
liberal democracies to "bring order" to the rest of the world.

Writing in a new pamphlet on the long-term implications of 11 September,
Mr Cooper, a senior Foreign Office diplomat attached to Downing Street,
said: "The need for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the 19th
century".

A diplomat appointed personally by Mr Blair to represent the UK at the
Bonn conference on Afghanistan's future last year, Mr Cooper's views on
global threats have heavily influenced the Prime Minister since the
terror attacks.

The mandarin has long argued that indifference to international crime
and terrorism is no longer an option for the West and is a firm believer
that the European Union should do more to effect change overseas.
However, Mr Cooper's provocative comments, made in a new pamphlet
published by the Foreign Policy Centre, triggered outrage among Labour
MPs last night.

Mr Blair faced further warnings against action on Iraq when Romano
Prodi, the European Commission President, said that "escalation of
conflict would have terrible consequences everywhere".

In Reordering the World, a pamphlet which has a foreword by Mr Blair, Mr
Cooper said that Osama bin Laden had proved the dangers of allowing
rogue states to continue unchecked.

"All the conditions for imperialism are there ... the weak still need
the strong and the strong still need an orderly world. A world in which
the efficient and well-governed export stability and liberty.

"Empire and imperialism are words that have become terms of abuse in the
post-modern world. Today, there are no colonial powers willing to take
on the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even the need, for
colonisation is as great as it ever was in the 19th century.

"What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world
of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its
outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order
and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle."

Mr Cooper said that if terrorists or criminals based in undemocratic
states posed a threat, the West had to act. "If they become too
dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine
a defensive imperialism," he said. He added that the EU could offer the
best form of the new imperialism. "The post-modern EU offers a vision of
co-operative empire. Like Rome, this commonwealth would provide its
citizens with some of its laws, some coins and the occasional road. That
perhaps is the vision," he said.

Tam Dalyell, the MP for Linlithgow who is leading the backbench
opposition on Iraq, said Mr Cooper's comments ran against the Labour
Party's long history of anti-colonialism.

"The Tsarina of Russia was better advised by Rasputin than the Prime
Minister is by this maniac. To claim that the need for colonialism may
be as great as in Victorian times is extraordinary," he said.

Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, said that it was clear
that Mr Cooper was attempting to offer some intellectual justification
for the US and UK bypassing the United Nations.

"The very idea of a 'liberal imperialism' is like an 'enlightened
slavery' - it just doesn't make any sense. The great tragedy of this
analysis is that it totally ignores the UN. It is thinking down the
barrel of a gun," Mr Simpson said.

The number of Labour MPs who have signed up to a Commons motion
objecting to an attack on Iraq rose yesterday to 121 after the
suggestion by the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, that Britain would not
need a special UN resolution for such an assault on the country.

Full article at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=279253

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx