[PEN-L:34255] Hard cop, soft cop

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Newsnight on BBC2 is usually rather penetrating, but its correspondent was
a bit baffled by the Bush Blair press conference. If you had the sound
turned off, and just went by the body language, he said, you would conclude
that Bush and Blair had just had a big row.

It might suit Blair to appear uncomfortable. Bush can appear belligerent.
He appears more reasoned. He evaded a question about whether Bush had
agreed to pursue a further resolution in the Security Council. Behind the
scenes he briefed UK correspondents that Bush had however agreed to try.

However the paradox is that the best way the US and the UK can get a
Security Council endorsement is by the USA making a big show of not wanting
or needing it. Then France will fall in line.

Meanwhile Blair has quietly been doing deals with France and Germany about
speeding up European integration, and will no doubt do everything he can to
get French acceptance for the war.

Blair's uncomfortable body language though may partly be genuine since he
puts his position on the line if the gamble does not pay off in a way that
Bush does not.

In addition to hard cop, soft cop, the other psychological trick is if you
want somebody to do something you give them an apparent choice. If the
Security Council agrees to a resolution, there will be war. If the Security
Council does not agree to a second resolution .... there will be war. The
agenda becomes focused on an apparent choice that flatters the people in
question about what they think but the choice is largely academic.

Ironical that one of the main points in the letter by Blair and seven other
European leaders pledging support to the USA is the claim that Europe and
the USA share some core values, starting with democracy.

It is a very managed form of democracy, considering that the populations of
all the countries, are not enthusiastic for this war. Yet war is inevitable.

Why is it inevitable? Because what happens politically is the result of the
balance of forces. There is an impersonal momentum only partly manifested
through individuals like Bush and Blair. It is about the requirements of
finance capital, as centred above all in the USA.

The USA headed by Bush, goaded by 9-11, must impose its own version of
order on the world and claim the right to supervise and intervene in all
states that might harbour any threat to it. And because Blair also analyses
that this is inevitable. But in order to avoid it splitting up into too
chaotic a multi-polar world, Blair or someone like him, has to accelerate
the process of self-interested imperialist consensus that is creating a new
liberal global empire, based on ostensible bourgeois democratic rights for
all individuals, and freedom for finance capital.

'6 weeks to war' headline the UK papers. The speculation now moves on to
whether the US is going to be competent to run an Iraq client state, and
whether the global economy will come apart at the seams, at the moment when
the US hegemon appears unstoppable. The contradiction between a unipolar
and a multi-polar world is still unresolved. What is certain is that Blair
will continue to finesse that contradiction.

Chris Burford

London