Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
SIR CHRISTOPHER
MEYER KCMG
19 APRIL 2006
Q320 Chairman: Sir Christopher, thank
you for coming this afternoon. I apologise first of all for keeping
you waiting but we had a division which extended the period of
the previous session and we also had to conclude all the questions
we had. I also apologise in advance that I think we are about
to have another vote which will potentially mean that we will
have to break for 15 minutes and come back, but hopefully we can
at least begin before that vote and then take it from there. We
have a number of areas we would like to ask you about and I would
like to begin by taking you to your assessment of your time in
Washington, the relationship between the UK and the US and what
influence we have as a country on the United States.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Thank you,
Chairman, for inviting me to this session this afternoon. It is
a great pleasure to be here. I think that the United Kingdom can
have and does have quite significant influence over the conduct
of American foreign policy. If you look at the history, "special
relationship" as a term came into being some time in the
Second World War, and if you look at its "history" you
will see many ups and downs from the British point of view. The
ups tend to be at a time when we have been able to exercise really
quite significant influence over the making of American foreign
policy. If the issues are well chosen, if the case is made strongly,
this can be done. The world's only superpower can be significantly
influenced by countries and governments that are physically, if
you like, significantly inferior to the US.
Q321 Chairman: Peter Riddell's book
is called Hug Them Close, and he talks about every Prime
Minister except one, Edward Heath, having worked on a strategy
of having as close a relationship with the US as possible and
that every British Government since World War II had always operated
on that basis with that one exception. Do you think the relationship
is closer now than it has been in the past or would that be a
fair assessment, that all governments except the one have had
that close relationship?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
it has been a history since 1945, as I said, of quite considerable
ups and downs. These have had almost nothing to do with whichever
political party is in power in Washington or in London. They have
had everything to do with personalities and the issues of the
moment. For example, this may not be quite the answer to your
question, but John Major had a very close relationship with George
Bush senior and a rather distant relationship with Bill Clinton.
Q322 Chairman: There were reasons
for that, were there not?
Sir Christopher Meyer: There always
are reasons, Chairman.
Q323 Chairman: It was the Intelligence
Services checking files, if I remember correctly.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes, but
that actually was untrue. It was a bum rap, to be perfectly honest.
I happened to be in Downing Street as Press Secretary at the time
so I sort of knew what was going on, but it was believed on the
other side of the Atlantic and that was all that mattered really.
LBJ's memoirs and the tape recordings of his conversations, which
have been published as books, I think at one point show his antipathy
not only to Harold Wilson but also to Harold Wilson's pipe, which
was ironic because I believe that Harold Wilson did not usually
smoke a pipe and preferred a cigar, so there you go. It is much
more uneven, I think, than the mythology (is that the right word?)
of the relationship might have you believe.
Q324 Mr Horam: One point you make
in your book is that although we have a common language with the
United States we should not imagine for one moment that it is
a similar sort of country; in fact, it is remarkably different,
and you make a lot of the exceptionalism of the United States
and its sense of destiny and of its own values. How far has that
been apparent in its conduct of foreign policy under the Bush
administration?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
it has been very apparent and it is one of the ways in which you
can measure the differences between the two sides of the Atlantic.
For example, if you look historically at American foreign policy
you can very crudely speaking divide it into periods when the
so-called idealistsWoodrow Wilson, for examplegained
the ascendancy and when the realists, the pragmatists, gained
the ascendancy, which was most of the time. When I say "idealists"
I talk about either a foreign policy infused with a very high
degree of moralism or a foreign policy infused with a very high
degree of religiosity. The latter has, I think, been very much
apparent during the two administrations of George W Bush. That
is incredibly different from the European tradition of foreign
policy generally and the British tradition of foreign policy in
particular. When people talk about the new Conservative influence
on American foreign policy today or that of Christian evangelism/fundamentalism,
it is another way of saying that under George W Bush, at least
in his first administrationI would make a difference for
the second administrationthere has been a distilled form
of the idealist tradition of American foreign policy which has
been there since the foundation of the republic. It means that
the centre of gravity in American foreign policy since the foundation
of the republic has been far more towards idealism, messianism,
religiosity, whatever phrase you like to choose to include in
that.
Q325 Mr Horam: Is intervention included
in that?
Sir Christopher Meyer: It can
well be, yes. Monroe doctrine has got some relevance to this.
It is very different. It is not axiomatic, to put it mildly, therefore,
that in viewing the world as a whole the United Kingdom's views
and interests will automatically coincide with those of the United
States. Sometimes they will; sometimes they will not.
Q326 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: President
Bush came into office with great doubts about nation building,
but then, because of 9/11 and other events, he attacked Iraq because
of a perceived threat. Added to that he now seems to be developing
a doctrine of building democracy on the ground that democratic
states are not a threat to their neighbours. What is this new
Bush doctrine? What are the rules? What guide is it to future
decisions about whether to intervene or not and on what grounds
and where and when?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
it is a very rough and ready benchmark by which the detail of
American foreign policy can be assessed and judged. From the very
first time that I met George W Bush, and I am talking personally
now about the President, which was back in 1998 when he was Governor
of Texas, it was quite clear that as he was starting to think
about what he would do in the world if he were to run for President.
The notion of being a beacon, a progenitor of democracy around
the world was already becoming very attractive to him and that
developed when he became President. Although great play is made
of this in the most recent National Security Strategy published
a few weeks ago, I do not think there is novelty in it, and in
a sense, where Afghanistan and Iraq were concerned, the democratic
impulse for the President personally was almost as strong as his
reaction to the horror of 9/11. In fact, the one thing, if you
like, pumped up the other. Today, which is, if you like, the third
phase of Bush foreign policy, the first being up to 9/11, the
second being from 9/11 to roughly the end of the first administration,
the third being approximately the second administration, looks
to me like a foreign policy which is wrapped in the rhetoric of
spreading democracy around the world where possible with the execution
of this policy in the hands of Condoleeza Rice who is much more
of a throwback to the realist/pragmatic tradition of US foreign
policy.
Q327 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Do you think
that American power is now in decline and do you think there is
a risk that President Bush's real legacy will be a reluctance
on the part of a future American Government to do all this again?
In other words, although we supported the Americans,or
I did; I supported the Americans to keep them engaged in the worldactually
the failures in Iraq will have the opposite effect and there could
be a retreat into American isolationism, as, of course, has happened
several times in the past?
Sir Christopher Meyer: As far
as Iraq is concerned the game has yet to be fully played out and
it looks extremely depressing, it looks pretty negative, and it
may well be that the whole enterprise will end severely in tears.
That is what a betting man would say now. It is not necessarily
what will have happened five years from now, so the game is not
yet over and it may well be that the next American President,
towards the end of his or her Presidency, may be able to say,
looking back, "We went through a horrible period but in the
end the thing worked out reasonably well". I am not sure
that I believe that is what will happen but it could happen. The
lessons to be drawn from this episode by both the American people
and the American political class are not yet fully formed. You
say isolationism. I do not believe in any circumstances there
will be a relapse, as you put it, into isolationism because the
challenge in dealing with the United States is not the fear that
it will become isolationist. It is the degree to which it will
act unilaterally or not, unilaterally or with allies, be they
formal or informal. The United States is too much involved in
the world, in globalisation. In some ways it has created globalisation.
Whether we are talking economically, technologically or culturally
it is interwoven into the fabric of the world as a whole, so even
if you get up in Congress and say, "Let us cut these links
here and those links there", it cannot work. It cannot work
in a world where China holds the largest amount of American debt.
It simply cannot work in a world where American foreign direct
investment last time I looked was more focused in Europe than
in any other area of the world. It is not possible any longer
to be isolationist. I do not know exactly what military conclusion
they may draw from the episode in Iraq and in Afghanistan but
more generally there is no question of the United States being
able to shut the frontiers, bring down the shutters and become
autarchic once again, as I suppose they were in the 19th century.
Q328 Sir John Stanley: Sir Christopher,
Philippe Sands, who has just been giving evidence to us, on page
272 of his book says that on 31 January 2003 President Bush and
Prime Minister Blair had a two-hour meeting at the White House
accompanied by six close aides and advisers. For the record could
you tell us whether you were one of the aides and advisers present
at that meeting?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, I was
not. I was in an anteroom shooting the breeze with other members
of the British and American delegations.
Q329 Sir John Stanley: Thank you.
He goes on to say that the note of the meeting in the form of
a letter, and I quote, "confirms that the decision to go
to war had already been taken by President Bush". Could you
tell the committee, from where you were as our Ambassador in Washington,
at what point you believe Mr Blair made a firm commitment to be
with Mr Bush should Mr Bush decide to invade Iraq?
Sir Christopher Meyer: If I can
just give a bit of context as I saw it for the meeting on 31 January
2003, I had said to London first that I thought the atmosphere
had changed markedly towards war after the Iraqi declaration of
7 December in which they responded to the UN's request to make
a full declaration of their holdings of weapons of mass destruction,
because that declaration was considered to be, rightly or wrongly,
so mendacious that the Iraqis had run out of rope, if you like.
The next very important stage was two days before that meeting
of 31 January. On 29 January the President gave his State of the
Union speech and after that I remember thinking and so telling
London that I thought that if the President had given himself
any wiggle room for not going to war he had closed that off in
that speech. It was a very powerful, almost missionary statement
about it being America's destiny to deal with Saddam and it looked
pretty clear that this was going to be war. By the time that Tony
Blair came to the meeting on 31 January I was saying that, absent
a coup in Iraq or Saddam suddenly deciding to go off into exile
in some hospitable place like Minsk, the die was cast for war
and therefore the Prime Minister's main objective for that meeting
should be to ensure that in the coming war we went into battle,
if you like, in the best company possible, which is another way
of saying, "Let us get a second resolution".
Q330 Sir John Stanley: That does
not answer my question. Could I put it to you again? At what point
do you believe Mr Blair was firmly committed to going to war with
President Bush?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The way
I would put it would be like this. I think Tony Blair had made
a decision to support George Bush, however the cards fell, from
the Crawford Summit of April 2002. This is a distinction I make
in my book. This was not a decision in April 2002 at Crawford
to go to war on such-and-such a date. It was not an operational
decision, but Blair had decided that the right thing to do, given
his own view of Saddam Hussein, was to be with the President of
the United States whatever decision he chose to take. That was
a decision by Blair, I think, taken to try to ensure that he had
the maximum influence possible over the President. This is a very
important distinction because the criticism has been levelled
at both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair that from a very
early stage in 2002 they had decided, come what may, that they
were going to go to war against Saddam Hussein in the spring of
2003. I do not think that is true because the consequence of that
is that everything that then followed in 2002, including the efforts
of the United Nations, would have been simply a smokescreen for
a devious plan, if you like. I do not believe that to be true.
I do not believe the two leaders lied to their respective public
opinions. I do believe though that they were very doubtful that
Saddam would ever do the right thing and that probably it would
come to war, but we did not get to the moment of truth until early
2003.
Q331 Sir John Stanley: But you are
saying to the committee that, from the Crawford Summit onwards,
if President Bush had decided subsequently to go to war he had
been assured by Mr Blair that the British would be with him?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I cannot
say to you, Sir John, that those were the words used because,
as you will probably be aware, at Crawford the Prime Minister
and the President were locked together, without any advisers being
there, for quite a considerable period of time, and to the best
of my recollection advisers were there only for a discussion of
the Middle East because running in parallel to all this was an
intifada that seemed to be running out of control, so I do not
know exactly what transpired between President and Prime Minister,
but the speech that the Prime Minister made the next day at College
Station, which was one of the best speeches he made on Iraq, sounded
to me like a statement of very strong support for the President,
whatever he chose to do. Do not forget that, going back to 1998,
Blair had been making speeches long before George W Bush came
on the scene, recognising the threat that Saddam presented to
the world at large and saying, "We have to deal with this
man one way or another", so Blair was always a true believer
in dealing with Saddam "one way or another" long before
George W became President of the United States.
Q332 Mr Keetch: Just to continue
this if we can, Sir Christopher, you said that you did not believe
that the events of late 2002 in the UN were a smokescreen, but,
again going back to the memo that we have been told about on 31
January, it is also alleged in that memo that President Bush actually
set the date for the war as being 10 March 2003. Therefore, if
what had happened in 2002 was not a smokescreen, was the attempt
to get a second resolution and to persuade President Chirac to
agree to a second resolution a smokescreen, because if it was
the case that the March date had been set for the conflict, going
back to the UN in a sense was a pointless exercise?
Sir Christopher Meyer: You cannot
quite put it like that.
Q333 Mr Keetch: How can you put it?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The thing
is, when you are looking back with the benefit of hindsight it
does look like a straight linear progression which ends up with
war beginning on 20 March. It was not like that; at least, it
did not seem like that to me. Maybe I was too close to the action.
There seemed to be a lot of zigging and zagging, so from the period,
say, some time in October 2002 onwards until the time I left Washington
I heard all kinds of dates for contingency planning. For a long
time people were saying to us, "It is going to be"I
cannot remember the exact date"January the something-or-other
2003. That is the contingency date against which we are doing
our planning." That timing collapsed for a variety of reasons,
including that they could not get the Turks to agree to let one
of the American divisions transit Turkish territory. Then at the
beginning of 2003 I remember one time hearing mid February, then
late February, and I thought, "That is getting damn near
my birthday", and then March, and 10 March appears as a date
in that record of the meeting on 31 January, and then in the end
it was 20 March. The issue is not the fact that dates specifically
were being discussed that makes it seem that what followed was
just a smokescreen. The question I think has to be a different
one. If, against all odds, a majority of the members of the Security
Council were prepared to go for a second resolution, or a majority
were prepared to countenance war, say, in April or something like
that, it might have changed the game. In the event all the diplomatic
efforts to get members of the Security Council on board for a
second resolution foundered, for well-known reasons, so that eventuality
never happened. I do not think it is as clear-cut as you suggested
in your question.
Q334 Mr Keetch: Let me ask one other
question. Again, Philippe Sands suggested to us earlier this afternoon
that when the decision to go to war was taken during those early
months of 2003 the Prime Minister and the President no longer
believed that Saddam Hussein probably had a WMD programme and
no longer believed that he was therefore a threat to us. Did you
believe at that stage that he had a WMD programme and did you
think that the Prime Minister believed that?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Oh yes,
I do believe that the Prime Minister thought he had a WMD programme.
I believed that he had a WMD programme. I did so not on a hunch
but on the basis of intelligence that I was seeing at the time.
Of course, depending on whether we are talking about January or
February 2003, Blix by that time had got cracking on his inspections
and I think made two reports to the Security Council before war
intervened. I do not think I am breaking some state secret in
saying that in some of the locations where he looked for WMD he
was directed there by intelligence fed to him either by the Americans
or by us, and so this was being done not on the basis, "By
God, the stuff is not there", but, "We think it is there
and we think it is there", and then Blix did not find it.
What we did not know at the time was whether this because Blix
was using the intelligence slowly or poorly or not or whether
it was because the Iraqis had been tipped off and were moving
the stuff to another location. None of that was clear, so if that
is what Philippe Sands said to you beforehand I do not think I
would agree with that. I think there was a strong belief at the
time that there were weapons of mass destruction somewhere and
it was not until the Iraq Survey Group came back with its report
in September 2004 that you had a pretty definitive statement that
if there had been stuff around it was probably buried in the sand
somewhere, or might be in Syria, or even, conceivably, in Iran.
Q335 Chairman: Perhaps I can say
for the record that in my understanding of what Philippe Sands
said he was referring to nuclear weapons. I do not think he referred
to WMD, and your question referred to WMD.
Sir Christopher Meyer: There is
a big difference.
Chairman: I think we ought to get that
clear. He did not deal with chemical weapons.
Q336 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: He was talking
about nuclear weapons.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Can I make
a very brief postscript? On nukes, if I remember well, we were
not at all sure if there was any evidence around of something
actual in the pipeline, as it were, as is happening in Iran, but
it was biological and chemical weapons which were the focus of
attention.
Q337 Mr Pope: I want to be clear
about this point because you obviously had privileged access to
the Prime Minister in the spring of 2003, you had privileged access
to intelligence data. Do you think the Prime Minister deliberately
misled the House in his speech on 18 March?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Absolutely
not.
Q338 Mr Pope: It is very helpful
to have that on the record. I want to follow on from something
that Sir John said, and this was about British influence in the
run-up to the war. You suggested that Tony Blair effectively said
to President Bush at Crawford, "We will be with you, come
what may". "However the cards fall" was how you
characterised it. Do you think we made the most of our influence
and leverage from April 2002 onwards? Do you think that it was
a result of British influence that America sought a second resolution?
Sir Christopher Meyer: To answer
your second question first, the Americans were being pressed not
only by us but also by Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, the
Australian Prime Minister, Howard, and I think even by Berlusconi.
All of them said, "We need a second resolution", so
there was stuff coming in from all sides and these were the essential
allies for Bush when it was a question of going to war. The Americans
were never keen on a second resolution, for well-known reasons,
but I think they made a judgment that because their essential
allies for the operation wanted one then they would make the effort
and, although it was not clear at the press conference on 31 January
2003 that Bush was at all keen on pursuing it, actually the Americans
did put their shoulder to the wheel afterwards, and the irony
of it all was that, having finally put their shoulder to their
wheel, they got absolutely nowhere with anybody, even in their
own back yard in South America with the Chileans and the Mexicans.
I cannot remember what your first question was.
Q339 Mr Pope: Do you think war would
have been sooner if it had not been for Blair and the other allies,
such as Aznar and Howard?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not
think it would have been sooner. When the notion of January was
floating around in Washington, which was for most of the autumn
of 2002, I remember talking to somebody, whom I really do not
want to name, who was fairly senior in the White House, and I
think I had this conversation in October 2002, about this January
timing, and the answer I got was, "It is going to slip",
and the reason given then was Turkey. I think it is no secret
that when the Prime Minister came to Washington in January 2003
one of the things that he was keen to have was a delay in the
start to the war. At the time there was a February date floating
around in the air. In the end the February date slipped, not because
of Blair's advocacy or anybody else's, but because the American
forces simply were not ready, and I think 20 March became the
date because we had not got anywhere with the second resolution
and the guys were ready to go.
The Committee suspended from 4.25 pm to
4.39 pm for a division in the House
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