Dr Owen Thomas, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations for the College of Social Sciences and International Studies, looks at Tony Blair’s motivation for war in 2003 and whether it meets he conditions set out in, Blair’s own Doctrine of the International Community.

This post first appeared in The Conversation.

Owen D. Thomas, University of Exeter

As Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry findings are published, we should resist what’s become the easy refrain: “Blair Lied. Thousands Died.”

If we actually want to learn from what happened, we should recognise that Tony Blair has been remarkably consistent in his view that the removal of the regime was necessary, whether or not Saddam Hussein actually possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Blair, it seems, genuinely believes that the war was in our best interests because it may have prevented an unlikely (but not impossible) catastrophe. This way of thinking has not gone away.

Ever since the inquiry began in 2009, Sir John Chilcot has said: “The inquiry is not a court of law and nobody is on trial. ” This provoked plenty of consternation, despite Sir John’s promise that the committee will “not shy away” from frank criticism.

One of the questions that we can expect the inquiry to resolve is whether the public was deceived about the factual basis for war. Were lies told? Was there an environment in Number 10 whereby public deception was seen as a necessary evil?

Important as these concerns are (and Piers Robinson has written about these questions here), they are secondary to another mystery: why did Blair sincerely believe that war was necessary in the first place, and that it was necessary to persuade a requisite amount of parliamentarians and the public to support intervention?

The story of Britain’s decision to go to war is about not just bad apples, but bad barrels. In other words, to understand what happened in 2002-3, we need to focus not just on what people did, but also why they did it.

The politics of catastrophe

Way back in April 1999, Blair gave a speech in Chicago called The Doctrine of the International Community, in which he set out five conditions under which it would be legitimate to intervene militarily.

The first condition for intervention would be: “Are we sure of our case?” Are we sure, in other words, that intervention will ultimately do more good than harm? War kills innocent people, and it is only the least-worst option when it saves more lives than it destroys.

That speech was given in the context of the Kosovo conflict, but the ideas also underpinned Blair’s rationalisation of the Iraq war. As the scholar Jason Ralph has argued, Blair sincerely believes that the war, which was presented as an act of collective security, was a continuation of the internationalist doctrine he laid out.

So did the Iraq War meet the conditions that Blair himself set out in 1999 – and specifically, was there a good reason to think that war would do more good than harm?

A true believer in Basra. EPA/Peter MacDiarmid

Blair certainly seems to think so. And to understand why, we only need to look at what he said to the inquiry in 2010.

The crucial thing after September 11 is that the calculus of risk changed … it is absolutely essential to realise this: if September 11 hadn’t happened, our assessment of the risk of allowing Saddam any possibility of him reconstituting his programmes would not have been the same … The point about [9/11] was that over 3,000 people had been killed on the streets of New York, an absolutely horrific event, but this is what really changed my perception of risk, the calculus of risk for me: if those people, inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have.

This is what some call the politics of catastrophe, a concern with the unknown and unanticipated. We now think about the future as a place where it is more certain that terrible things will happen, but we are uncertain about exactly what will happen, when it will happen and where.

Blair’s belief in the need and urgency for war was underpinned by three assumptions: that Iraq was at least capable of, and interested in, producing WMD; that Iraq was obstructing and deceiving the existing inspections and sanctions regime; and that if Iraq did produce WMD, these weapons could be acquired by terrorist organisations, who could use them to mount devastating attacks.

Blair’s assumptions effectively short-circuited the calculus of benefit versus harm. The number of soldiers and civilians who may lose their lives in a war can, plausibly, be calculated. But, for Blair, the number of lives that could be lost in a single terrorist attack was incalculable. While a future terrorist attack using WMD was unlikely, it could kill an unprecedented number of people.

How to think about security

It is because of this kind of thinking that Blair still believes that going to war was the right thing to do. As he said when giving evidence in 2010:

It’s a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take? The reason why it is so important … is because, today, we are going to be faced with exactly the same types of decisions.

Here Blair is quite right: we are facing the same decisions today. Should drones kill suspected terrorists pre-emptively because of what they may do in the future? Should we surveil individuals that exhibit radical views for the same reason?

This worldview transcends the intentions of individual decision-makers and the machinations of “bad apples”. It has become endemic in Western governments and societies; it persists on an unconscious level, and it cannot be pinned on “Teflon Tony” alone.

To grapple with it, we need to have a serious discussion about the meaning and value of security, and how we weigh the costs of war (let’s remember that there have been as many as 250,000 violent deaths since the invasion). We need a clear way of deciding what constitutes an urgent threat, and what constitutes an appropriate response.

Kindred spirits. EPA/Claudio Onorati

At least one member of the Chilcot committee will know all about Blair’s “Doctrine of the International Community”. On April 16 1999, now-Chilcot committee member Sir Lawrence Freedman sent a fax to Number 10 with some ideas for the Chicago speech – and it was he who suggested the five conditions.

Freedman recently published an essay titled with a very pertinent question: Can there be a liberal military strategy? The final lines may be telling. Freedman argues that:

It is best to acknowledge that force invariably carries … risks and that they cannot necessarily be avoided … at the very least it requires paying much more attention to the interaction between the military and political strands of strategy when deciding upon the use of military force and explaining its purpose to the public.

Perhaps this is the one of the most valuable lessons we can learn. Whether or not Blair and other senior figures within government actually misled the British public, and whether they did so deliberately or not, they genuinely believed in the need for action based on a particular political strategy of security. That strategy is what we now need to evaluate.

Owen D. Thomas, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Dr Sarah Cooper reflects on what her teenage self would have thought of Germany’s recent legislation change, in the rape laws.

Dr Cooper is a lecturer in College of Social Science and International Studies’ Politics department.

This post first appeared in The Conversation.

Sarah Cooper, University of Exeter

In July 2016, Germany changed its legislation on rape to clarify that “no means no”. That’s right … in July 2016. Until now, by virtue of Section 177 of the German Criminal Code, a guilty verdict in cases of sexual assault demanded, shockingly, signs of physical defence.

Such laws, unsurprisingly, have long had a pernicious effect on the experience of victims. To characterise the recent changes as timely is a ridiculous understatement.

Whether or not it is accompanied by a physical struggle, fighting back, or screaming at the top of one’s lungs, the use of the term “no” signifies a lack of consent to sexual activity. To disregard this simple word amounts to rape, plain and simple. The need to assert this statement in 2016 should be redundant or, at the very least, tiresomely obvious. But such a conversation was commonplace in Germany just a few short weeks ago, when a change to the country’s legal system finally introduced the “no means no” statute.

So what will the response be across Germany – from the criminal law and justice systems, and from German society itself? As a former law student, now a public policy academic, and always an engaged citizen, the congratulatory response in my mind towards this legal “breakthrough” soon shifted towards a scathing critique, accompanied by a strong air of cynicism.

As an undergraduate bogged down by heavy statute books, my adolescent self would have welcomed Germany’s recent changes to the black letter of the law. Former miscarriages of justice would undoubtedly have enraged my idealistic young mind, such as the recent shocking case of model and television personality Gina-Lisa Lohfink, who was fined after a court ruled she had falsely accused two men of rape. This was despite a video surfacing in which she can be heard saying the word “no” several times, and the decision has been appealed.

But is this new statute enough to rectify such ills? Should we have faith that the change in law will have any real impact on German society?

Ushered in with other changes catalysed by the Cologne attacks on New Year’s Eve 2015, when around 500 women filed complaints of sexual assault, it appears that the legal shift was motivated more by exceptional events than a gentle evolution of the law in line with global trends.

An unforeseen shock to the political system can lead to serious, and often hasty, change. Of crucial importance to its success is a cultural and social environment which welcomes the new approach. And it is here that the red flags appear.

German media response. Shutterstock

The United Nations has long promoted an appropriate standard for sexual assault legislation, yet Germany has continually ignored its demands for the removal of physical resistance as a necessary element of a guilty verdict. It is frightening to consider what the state of play might be once the level of public empathy for the events in Cologne dissipates. How strictly and enthusiastically will bureaucrats implement this law? Can German victims really now look forward to a paragon of criminal justice?

Victims turned away

In England and Wales in 2014, a damning HMIC report revealed that those claiming to have been sexually assaulted were less likely to be believed by the police than any other potential victim of alternative crimes. One explanation for this, according to criminology research, is a continued consideration of clothing worn, intoxication levels and previous sexual history when assessing the validity of the claim. These amount to a host of “rape myths” that are as prevalent across the police force as they are wider society.

If the institutional barriers to proving sexual assault proliferate across the UK, in which a requirement for bodily defence has long been disregarded, how can this be so easily removed in Germany? Running alongside my own academic analysis, therefore, is a strong air of cynicism from a concerned member of the public.

Certainly, in a global society in which flippant jokes are just one example of a flourishing rape culture, the need for a shift in perception appears vital for the protection of victims. That Germany’s statute book now boasts this standard is unequivocally a hopeful first step. But it must be acknowledged that the justice system may yet remain ingrained with an understanding that a lack of consent is demonstrated through physically fighting back. Although the publicly appetising “no means no” tag line garners much attention, a far more complicated culture looks set to constrain the impact of those vital words which have finally been voiced in parliament.

Sarah Cooper, Lecturer in Politics, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The recent attempted military coup in Turkey has had far reaching consequences for the country.

In this blog, Associate Research Fellow James Dutton looks at the coup’s potential impact on our oil and gas supplies.

James is based in Geography’s Energy Policy Group.

This post first appeared in The Conversation. 

Joseph Dutton, University of Exeter

The Turkish military’s attempted coup to topple president Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t last long. The government restored control the following day and soon declared a three-month state of emergency, with more than 60,000 people since arrested or placed under investigation.

This isn’t just Turkey’s problem. The country’s pivotal position in the transport of oil and gas gives it huge geopolitical significance. Straddling Europe and the Middle East and providing export routes from Central Asia to the rest of the world, Turkey is an important and growing energy transit hub.

Shipping in the Bosphorus straits between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea was halted in the immediate aftermath of the attempted coup because of security concerns, though it was soon reopened. Although oil and gas flows were broadly unaffected by the coup, the prospect of prolonged instability raises the spectre of disruption to their transit.

Two major oil pipelines pass through Turkey to the Ceyhan terminal on its Mediterranean coastline. One begins in Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan, before passing through Georgia. The other delivers oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq and has been affected by fighting with Islamic State and Kurdish insurgents, and disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdish government. When fully operational the two piplines have a combined capacity of 2.7m barrels per day, which is more than three times greater than the UK’s daily production.

The country’s location at the mouth of the Black Sea means it plays an equally key role in the seaborne oil trade. Around 3 per cent of the world’s oil and petroleum products pass through the Bosphorus from Russia, Ukraine and central Asia.

Turkey’s pipelines link Europe with Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East. US Energy Information Agency

Turkey is also an important transit state for the EU’s natural gas imports. The Blue Stream pipeline, which runs underneath the Black Sea from Russia, carried 14.7 billion m³ of gas in 2013 – equivalent to 9 per cent of the total Russian gas supplies to Europe that year. Blue Stream was built in the early 2000s in response to growing disruption of gas flows through Ukraine and Belarus. The recent conflict in Ukraine highlights how Turkey’s importance has grown in recent years.

Further into the future, the planned Southern Gas Corridor development would see gas from fields in Azerbaijan flowing through Turkey to the EU by 2018, while the planned Turkish Stream pipeline across the Black Sea would also circumvent Ukraine.

This refinery in Izmit, near Istanbul, processes crude oil delivered by tanker. ARTEM ARTEMENKO / shutterstock

Turkey’s key location for energy supplies and regional affairs means the EU has always considered it a strategic partner. The country’s accession process for membership started back in 2005. And this same strategic importance may be useful even today – some have suggested Europe’s timid response to Erdogan and his crackdown after the attempted coup is because of Turkey’s crucial role in supplying the EU with energy. Although European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Turkey was “not in a position to become a member” following the coup, the ongoing migrant crisis and concerns over energy supplies mean it will be difficult for the EU to take too strict a position.

As the EU seeks to become less dependent on Russian gas it will need to develop supplies from Central Asia through Turkey’s Southern Corridor, while also increasing its supply from global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) markets. At the same time, Russia will continue to reroute its gas exports away from Ukraine, instead increasing flows through Turkey and through the expanded Nordstream pipeline in Germany.

It is therefore highly unlikely that the strategic nature of EU-Turkey relations will change in the foreseeable future, even if Erdogan’s government places further restrictions on society. But, given further civil unrest or terrorism could increase political instability and threaten Turkey’s energy sector, Europe is right to be worried.

Joseph Dutton, Research Fellow, Energy Policy Group, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Dr Bridget Woodman,director MSc energy policy and a member of the Energy Policy Group  writes about the 11th hour U turn on the fate of Hinkley Point C.

This post originally appeared in The Conversation 

Bridget Woodman, University of Exeter

These are extraordinary times for energy policy in the UK. After years of resigned acceptance that the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station would be built no matter how much of a basketcase it was, the government has surprised everyone by calling a halt to the process until the autumn.

The proposed Hinkley Point C would have two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs), providing around 3GW of electricity or about seven per cent of the UK’s total usage. The construction would be paid for by French energy firm EDF and Chinese nuclear companies, but the expense of building it would be underpinned by long-term supply contracts with the UK government, as well as a series of other financial undertakings designed to reduce the financial risks for the developers.

Few people argue that Hinkley Point C makes sense. The project’s budget has grown from original estimates of £16 billion to £24.5 billion today. Even this might be an underestimate given the experience of cost overruns similar reactors under construction in Finland, France and China.

The long-term supply contracts – known as Contracts for Difference (CfDs) – are designed to guarantee a set income of £92.50 per MegaWatt hour of output, regardless of the actual price of electricity in the market. Since the contracts were agreed, the wholesale price of electricity has fallen, meaning that the estimated subsidy for the lifetime of the project has risen from £6.1 billion to £29.7 billion, a huge burden for UK electricity consumers.

France gets most of its energy from nuclear plants – managed by EDF. hal pand / shutterstock

And the CfD subsidy is complemented by a suite of other UK taxpayer subsidies and guarantees designed to mitigate investment risks for the French and Chinese investors and to guarantee costs for dealing with nuclear waste or paying compensation for nuclear accidents.

Putting all of these subsidies in place has required the UK government to essentially redesign the electricity market over the past few years in an effort to create a situation where investment in a new plant looked attractive. Pretty much every major policy design has been geared towards creating a perfect environment for Hinkley Point C. That’s why it’s such a surprise to see the government has now stepped back – a bit – from the brink.

The get-out clauses?

The contracts to put many of the subsidy structures are not yet signed – that was meant to happen today, as part of the official approval process – so the government could still pull out. Obviously that wouldn’t please the French and Chinese, but risking their short-term displeasure could avoid locking the UK into the extortionate project for decades to come. Once the contracts are signed the legal and financial ramifications are so high that the project will go ahead, whatever the evidence against it.

The UK has form on this, notably the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield, which began operation despite the case for it collapsing on every front. But without those contracts in place the project can still falter at the last hurdle.

The controversial Sellafield is due to close in 2018. Ashley Coates, CC BY-SA

So why the delay? There is all sorts of speculation going round: the new Theresa May administration is not ideologically linked to new nuclear plants in the way that Cameron’s administration was – and therefore has had an attack of common sense about the costs of the project. The government also has security concerns over allowing significant Chinese investment in the UK electricity system – in a post-Brexit world the government is worried about the level of overseas ownership of UK electricity assets – most are owned by European rather than British companies. Then there was the less than ringing endorsement of the EDF board (which reportedly voted only 10-7 in favour of going ahead, following a couple of high-profile resignations) which has rung alarm bells in both the UK and French governments.

The real reason behind the decision may emerge over the next few weeks as the government mulls over the pros and cons of the project. That will be fascinating. Equally fascinating, though, will be the debate that must take place at the same time about what an alternative might look like. What might the UK energy landscape look like without the project that has shaped it for so many years?

Energy policy is often seen as a bit of a backwater – little tweaks to existing approaches tend to be preferred to massive shifts in strategy. The latest decision has the potential to change that. Without Hinkley Point C, the potential to have a real and considered debate about the future shape of the electricity system has loomed into view. Now is the time to start considering the sorts of options being considered widely around the world, with measures to encourage more flexible, smaller-scale, renewable systems incorporating demand-side measures and new technologies such as storage. A system that is the absolute antithesis of what Hinkley Point C represents. Suddenly UK energy policy has become very exciting indeed.

Bridget Woodman, Course Director, MSc Energy Policy, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Professor Richard Toye and Dr Richard Jobson from College of Humanities’s Department of History;in this blog, they take a look at the splits and divisions which have plagued both the Conservative and the Labour parties.

This post first appeared in The Conversation. 

Richard Toye, University of Exeter and Richard Jobson, University of Exeter

Brexit has triggered an unprecedented scenario in British politics. Never before has a sitting prime minister been forced to resign because of a referendum defeat. Never before has a governing party in apparent meltdown been faced by an official opposition whose situation, if anything, seems worse.

But the two main parties have faced perilous and damaging situations before, and have a history of drawing back from the brink.

In the case of the Tories, the most profound crisis occurred in 1846, when the party split over the repeal of the Corn Laws instigated by its leader Sir Robert Peel. For more than 20 years, the party was kept out of office, save for brief intervals, until at last it saw an electoral revival under Benjamin Disraeli at the general election of 1874.

In 1903, the Conservatives again divided into Free Trade and protectionist camps. This time, there was no major exodus of MPs – although Winston Churchill, who joined the Liberals, was a notable exception. The electoral consequences were nonetheless calamitous, with a landslide defeat in 1906. In spite of a partial recovery four years later, there was no clear prospect of the Tories returning to office. It took a world war to bring about the eventual Conservative recovery – and, despite winning a huge victory at the polls in 1918, it was not until 1922 that the Tories had the confidence to rid themselves of their coalition partners, the Lloyd George Liberals.

That process itself provoked another split, but because it was driven by
personality rather than ideology the healing process was fairly quick and the party dominated for the remainder of the interwar years.

The recent divisions under John Major in the 1990s had more direct similarities to today’s situation. The atmosphere within the Tory party was wholly toxic and became a major factor in New Labour’s 1997 triumph. But it did not create a constitutional impasse of the kind that Britain now seems to face.

On his bike. Shutterstock

The divisions in the party over the EU today are ideological, so are potentially very damaging. On the other hand, there has been no formal split in the party – and if it can hold together it may live to fight another day.

The opposition position

For Labour, the first obvious historical point of comparison is the Ramsay MacDonald “betrayal” of 1931. On that occasion, a minority Labour government split over the question of cuts to unemployment benefit. MacDonald continued as prime minister of a cross-party “National Government” and then defeated his former Labour allies at the general election that followed.

It was a catastrophe for Labour. Yet although the party was reduced to around 50 seats in the Commons, it was still the largest organised body of opposition to the government of the day. Labour’s continued strength in working-class areas also made it almost inevitable that it would at some stage be called upon to form a government (although this would not occur until the very special circumstances of the post-war election in 1945).

The other key comparison is the split of 1981, when some MPs broke away to form the Social Democratic Party.

Labour in opposition today faces a much more confused situation, having lost votes to UKIP and also the SNP. And the MPs who have rebelled against Corbyn’s leadership clearly represent a majority within the parliamentary party, whereas the MPs who were expelled and went on to form the National Labour Organisation in 1931 and those who left to form the SDP in 1981 were in the minority.

Labour’s current problems are likely to be amplified by future disagreements over the rules governing the party’s leadership contests. After the adoption of the 2014 Collins Review it is not entirely clear whether an incumbent leader needs to meet the same nomination threshold as any challenger.

Significant changes in the nature of the party’s membership and its registered supporters make the outcome of any future leadership contest hard to predict. However, in the absence of a leader who can unify the party and make a broad-based electoral appeal, it is possible that the consequences for Labour will be worse than either of the previous splits, especially if there is a general election before the end of the year.

It seems that neither party is well placed to turn the current crisis into an opportunity, even though the Conservatives still have the advantage of a majority in the House of Commons.

However, the problems that both parties face should be seen as symbolic of a broader political crisis. On the one hand, this crisis reflects the fact that the electorate is seriously divided, albeit not on straightforward class lines. On the other hand, it reflects the fact that voters in both Leave and Remain camps lack faith in the capacity of politicians to deliver positive change or even to tell the truth. The vote for Brexit was a product of these divisions and of this crisis of trust, and it also looks set to be exacerbated by them.

Richard Toye, Professor of Modern History, University of Exeter and Richard Jobson, Associate Research Fellow, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.