The first truth of American foreign policy

is that it is formulated to maximise

corporate profits and state power

The second truth is that it is perennially sold

to the public as a mission to spread freedom,

democracy and human rights

Journalists eagerly hailed Blair's "new dawn"

People went along with it, agreed with it

- they felt they had played a virtuous role

in promoting positive change, experiencing

their optimism as a healthy, life-affirming thing

They were doubtless relieved that they could leave it

to this new, more "ethical" group of politicians

to sort out the problems of the world

so that they could 'get on with their lives'

And yet these responses were crucial links

in a causal chain that has since resulted in

the deaths of perhaps one million Iraqi people

A 'Moral' Foreign Policy

The first truth of American foreign policy is that it is formulated to maximise corporate profits and state power.

The second truth is that it is perennially sold to the public as a mission to spread freedom, democracy and human rights.

The third truth is that the first two truths apply regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats hold power.

The first truth of British foreign policy is that it is also formulated to serve elite power.

The second truth is that it is rooted in unwavering support for US policy, including participation in attacks on defenceless Third World targets - the reason London, not Stockholm, has been subject to September 11-style suicide attacks.

The third truth is that this foreign policy is always sold in a way that echoes US claims of humanitarian intent, so lending a veneer of international legitimacy and support.

It is of course very much easier for a "coalition" to claim to be expressing "the will of the international community" than it is for a rogue superpower acting alone.

The fourth truth is that these truths apply regardless of whether Labour or Conservatives hold power.

Finally, because the collision between the reality and appearance of policy becomes increasingly obvious over time, the fifth truth is that a change of British government is always said to herald a change to a more moral foreign policy.

This transformed policy is always said to be driven by idealistic new minds acting out of revulsion at past 'mistakes' - the slate can thus be wiped clean and media gullibility rebooted to the default setting.

The British-American Massacre Company

As Tony Blair took office in 1997, his new foreign secretary, Robin Cook, promised a new, ethical approach:

"We will not permit the sale of arms to regimes that might use them for internal repression or international aggression."

This would be part of New Labour's determination to do nothing less than "put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy," Cook claimed. (Ibid)

Liberal cheerleaders queued up to celebrate the revolution. In the New Statesman in 1999, John Lloyd looked back on "one of the boldest initiatives taken by a major state to shift foreign policy on to new tracks".

The Guardian's Hugo Young wrote of Blair:

"the grandeur of his ambition shouldn't be underestimated. He wants to create a world none of us have known, where the laws of political gravity are overturned."

This in "the age when ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values'."

Even after claims of an ethical foreign policy were made ridiculous by Blair's wars of aggression, the myth was simply too important to be ditched. Following Robin Cook's death in August 2005, former culture secretary Chris Smith wrote in the Independent of Cook's foreign policy:

"It represented a brave attempt to cast our country's relations with the rest of the world in a moral light."

As the piles of corpses expanded in Iraq, Labour MP Denis MacShane wrote in the New Statesman:

"As foreign secretary, he [Cook] rescued British foreign policy from the dead waters of failed Tory cynicism."

Two years later, of course, much of the British public perceives Blair and his government as utterly discredited - and, by extension, the Labour party that allowed him to remain in place while he cut a bloody swathe through the Iraqi people.

Many in the corporate media are also only too aware that their credibility has been shredded by their earlier adulation of Blair, by their failure to challenge even the most obvious government deceptions ahead of the war, and by their cheerleading of the war before the catastrophe became undeniable.

It is not hard to understand why the political-media system has a shared interest in declaring a new, ethical beginning.

'Doughnut' Brown's Brave New World

In Gordon Brown's inaugural Downing Street speech, the new man claimed: "I have listened and I have learned from the British people."

Brown, it seems, will bring about "change" by sweeping away "the old politics," promising "a new spirit of public service to make our nation what it can be".

Perhaps this 'New' New Labour could be marketed as New Labour Plus.

Echoing John Lloyd in 1999, former government adviser, David Clark, wrote in the Guardian last week:

"Only the most implacable critics of the government could fail to appreciate the shift in foreign policy since Tony Blair left office three weeks ago. This was always going to be a difficult and controversial process."

On the BBC's Sunday AM programme, new British foreign secretary David Miliband, echoing Robin Cook, declared that the goal was for British foreign policy to be "a force for good in the world".

Asked if this meant Britain would distance itself from US policy, Miliband instantly reversed the claimed priorities, insisting that the alliance with the US was vital for Britain's "national interest".

In other words, Miliband is playing the traditional "double game" - the claimed emphasis will be on "doing good", while policy will be rooted in the muscular realpolitik of "national interest".

In 1937, anarchist writer Rudolf Rocker explained the meaning of the favoured patriotic term:

We speak of national interests, national capital, national spheres of interest, national honour, and national spirit

But we forget that behind all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for political power from the eyes of the world.

The same unavoidable clash between appearance and reality is repeated across the press.

An editorial in the Guardian observed that "in a fundamental way... the New Labour strategy that [Brown] helped create will not change".

The editors then necessarily muddied the issue, pointing to a "sense that something significant has shifted" and asserting that Brown's arrival marks a "renewal" and "the drama of a new cabinet with a changed agenda".

Senior Guardian journalists were quick to reinforce this vital aspect of propaganda.

The Guardian's political editor, Patrick Wintour, wrote of Brown's intention to "rebalance Mr Blair's foreign policy", with the introduction of "new faces and plans to heal old wounds" aimed towards "restoring trust in politics".

Exactly the same, of course, was declared of Robin Cook's rebalancing of unethical Tory policy - with all doubters dismissed as miserable cynics.

The title of a June 1997 article by Neil Ascherson in the Independent read:

"After 18 years of national egoism, the world has a chance to like us again."

Guardian assistant editor, Michael White, welcomed "a smiling Gordon Brown" and the "unexpected echoes of that other new beginning" in May 1997 when Blair strode towards Downing Street before wild throngs of Labour Party activists.

In truth there was nothing "unexpected" about claims of another "new beginning". Despite being up to his neck in the Iraq bloodbath, Brown has to claim to represent the fresh start, new direction and clean slate that he clearly is not.

An Independent editorial claimed Brown was "breaking with the Blair years". (Leader, 'Things can only get better???.'


By contrast, John Pilger was all but alone in noting the "tsunami of unction" that "engulfed the departure of Blair and the elevation of Brown".

Pilger put Blair's departure - treated by the media almost as a state occasion - into painfully accurate perspective: "those MPs who stood and gave him a standing ovation finally certified parliament as a place of minimal consequence to British democracy".

Historian Mark Curtis has commented:

"Brown has been four-square behind Blair on foreign policy, including, of course, Iraq, which he has financed as Chancellor and publicly defended when required."

Curtis also points to Brown's "total support and defence of big business" describing it as "quite extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented in the postwar years," adding:

"Virtually every speech for the last ten years has been a reassurance to business that Labour is on its side and a defence of 'free trade' and ensuring climates around the world favourable for British foreign investment.

" Along with ongoing commitments to low corporation taxes and cutting business regulation. Brown is the ultimate liberalisation theologist and every one of his policies has pushed in this direction."

This is not allowed to matter in the combined media-political attempt to wash the blood of Iraq from their hands. And what will be the result if they are allowed to succeed?

This was made clear enough last week by the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland who, as though appearing in some recurring bad dream, warned, yet again, of "a very real threat: Iran". He added:

"Nowhere is the Iranian peril assessed more closely than in Israel, which would, after all, be target number one for any Iranian bomb."

With the policy goals and the interests shaping them unchanged, with the "necessary illusions" of power unchanged, with the bottom-line of state-corporate greed unchanged, the lies and killing are certain to continue.

The novelist James Joyce commented on the endlessly repeating cycle of human tragedy: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

There is no choice - it is up to us as individuals to wake up. That's all there is. But what does this mean? It means we must not allow ourselves to yet again be deceived.

In the absence of serious investigation or evidence, we must not believe something merely on the grounds that it is pleasant and comforting.

We must not assume that the world really is under some benign 'new management'.

Instead we must take personal responsibility and work for real change rooted in genuine compassion for others.

Mass killing does not originate in great drama.

Ten years ago, when journalists were so eagerly hailing Blair's "new dawn", nothing very terrible happened.

People went along with it, agreed with it - they felt they had played a virtuous role in promoting positive change, experiencing their optimism as a healthy, life-affirming thing.

They were doubtless relieved that they could leave it to this new, more "ethical" group of politicians to sort out the problems of the world so that they could 'get on with their lives'.

And yet these responses were crucial links in a causal chain that has since resulted in the deaths of perhaps one million Iraqi people.

David Edwards & David Cromwell @ Media Lens via ZNet