ABSTRACT
Liberal states have always sympathized, or on occasion gone to the aid of, those
‘vanquished’ by illiberal regimes, especially in the last hundred years. Usually
that was with reluctance and after much soul-searching. In the nineteenth century
the leader of that century’s great liberal state, Lord Palmerston, was able to say
that ‘we have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies’2 and non-intervention
even against those states that were deeply abhorred by British liberal opinion
were (generally) left alone. But also in the last hundred years the ‘Victors’ have
increasingly been liberal states themselves. They have used war and its aftermath
as a means of spreading or confirming an ideology and practice that has become
increasingly self-consciously universal in aspiration and impact. This trend has
now arguably reached its highest, or ‘lowest’, point, depending on your view of
the actions taken in Iraq since 2003.
