ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 considers questions of morality and ‘regime change’. To begin with, it highlights Blair’s personal belief that the ‘international community’ had a responsibility to spread freedom and justice, faith in the utility of force as a tool for good and conviction of his own superior moral judgment. This both provided him with cognitive insulation in the face of public criticism and made him inflexible when presented with reasonable counter-arguments. Next, it talks about the underlying clash between Blair’s cosmopolitan vision of international morality and the pluralist principles underpinning international law. Ministers never confronted, let alone resolved, the fact that it was logically impossible to pursue regime change on moral grounds, legally. Finally, it considers in some detail how in practice this clash manifested through difficult debates about whether regime change was a legitimate policy goal, a legitimate consequence of legitimate policy goals or a US obsession with little relevance to the UK. It was not until early 2003 that the moral arguments for war really achieved any prominence in public debate, and by that point the government already lacked credibility. Ministers’ refusal to admit their commitment to regime change contributed to the political difficulties they faced.
