Confronting tyranny

Abstract

Once Blair made it clear to his chief of staff that he wanted increasingly to make the Iraq ‘story’ about the nature of Saddam’s regime, he was committed to a corresponding dependence on moral arguments. Looking back, it is easy to see why such an approach would appeal to him. Knowingly or otherwise, he had used ancient just war concepts when constructing his Doctrine of the International Community in 1999, particularly the part that dealt with intervention. From Kosovo to Sierra Leone to Iraq, one of the strongest elements of his interventionist discourse was the need to protect the weak and vulnerable from oppression and death at the hands of tyrants.