Betting big, winning small 
David Runciman on our risk-averse, high-stakes prime minister
Is Iraq Tony Blair’s Suez? The parallels are certainly hard to avoid, and Blair’s critics have not been slow to point them out. First, there is a strong suspicion that, like Suez, the whole Iraq escapade was the result of a private deal cooked up between the belligerents. The decision to send British and French troops to Egypt in 1956 was sealed during a secret meeting at Sèvres in France, where British, French and Israeli representatives agreed on a plan that would allow the Israelis to attack the Egyptians, and the British and French to intervene in order to separate them, reclaiming the canal in the process. The decision to send British and American troops to Iraq appears to have been sealed at a meeting between Blair and Bush at Crawford in Texas in April 2002. We cannot know for sure what was said, but it seems likely that an understanding was reached whereby Bush made it clear that he was going to disarm Saddam by force come what may, and Blair made it clear that, come what may, he would help him.
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David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge. He is the author of Political Hypocrisy and co-author of Representation, published by Polity Press.
Other articles by this contributor:
Diary · The Problem with English Football
Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers · Bush and the ‘Death Tax’
Invented Communities · post-nationalism
The Precautionary Principle · Taking a Chance on War
A Bear Armed with a Gun · The Widening Atlantic
The Cattle-Prod Election · The Point of the Polls
Why Not Eat an Eclair? · Why Vote?
The Garden, the Park and the Meadow · After the Nation State
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