Does anyone know what’s really behind Blair’s obsession with war?

I WAS sceptical about Tony Blair when he first became leader of Britain’s Labour Party in July 1994. I felt he was no more than a “soap powder” politician. New Labour like “new improved Daz” or “new formula Omo” smacked of clever repackaging — slick advertising and spin-doctoring rather than real policy shifts or solid political competence.

However, Blair gradually grew on me. Within two years, he had completed the work of modernising the Labour Party. He made it electable. Blair and his team ran an incredible first election campaign and won a historic majority in the House of Commons.

In his first term, Blair, with considerable assistance from his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, showed Labour could govern responsibly and could govern well. They modernised much of the infrastructure of British Government and restructured much of the economy.

Blair was blessed with an incompetent Conservative opposition but he was also skilled in political management. He was returned to power again with a large majority in 2001 by a grateful, if less enthusiastic, British electorate.

However, more than anything else, it was the way he handled two issues in his first term which changed my view of Blair.

One was his stance on Kosovo, the other was his contribution to Northern Ireland.

In Kosovo, Blair was determined the international community should stand up to Milosevic. He consistently argued for, and supported, the NATO bombing campaign in 1999. He risked international humiliation for no significant political gain at home. Blair saw the Kosovo war as a moral imperative and thanks in no small part to his efforts, the Albanians in Kosovo were liberated from Milosevic's oppression. Milosevic was halted and was subsequently toppled in a popular revolution.

In Northern Ireland, Blair achieved the settlement which eluded all of his predecessors. He committed considerable time and personal resources to the region with little pay-off in terms of political popularity in mainland Britain. With the hand of history at his shoulder, he played a key role in the final stages of the all-party talks which crafted the Good Friday Agreement.

In his second term, Blair has also impressed me. Until recently, Blair enjoyed almost unanimous support within his party and almost unrivalled standing in the international community. However, all has changed utterly since September 2001. Since then, Blair has marshalled all the force of his office in the cause of disarming Iraq, by force if required and, it appears, without United Nations approval if necessary. This has left many of us wondering why he is gambling his very political survival on this issue.

Blair is now almost totally absorbed with the Iraq issue. He is involved in telephone and face-to-face diplomacy with the leaders of several countries each day. He is fighting opposition within his own party while simultaneously trying to build international support for the vote on a new UN resolution, scheduled for mid-March. At the same time, he is overseeing the largest British military deployment in over a decade and is also ensuring that Britain's home security is re-enforced against the threat of terrorist attack.

Many of us have been forced to think carefully about why Blair has been so strong in advocating for this war against Iraq. It is easy to be disparaging of George Bush and his John Wayne-like war rhetoric. Blair, however, commands more respect, especially in Ireland. Although many of us may disagree with his analysis and may be uncomfortable with the moral vocabulary he uses to make his case, few of us can doubt his sincerity on the issue. Bush is easy to dismiss Blair is not.

This is Blair's most vulnerable political moment and he knows it. "Duration, duration, duration" is now the key to this war and to the fortunes of the western political leaders who support it. This is certainly the case as far as Blair is concerned. A short war against Saddam with minimal casualties on both sides will mean that Blair may come out of the war relatively unscathed. A long or difficult war, with much loss of life, could bring his political career to a disastrous end.

Reading the British press over recent weeks, I have come across a number of commentators advancing different explanations for Blair's stance.

Some have suggest that maybe Blair is just bored: having proven he could overhaul the Labour Party, could lead it to electoral victory and then get re-elected, maybe he is now searching for a greater challenge on the international stage and is therefore indifferent to domestic unpopularity.

Some commentators argue that it may be all about Blair's search for a historical legacy. It has been suggested that Britain's adoption of the euro was the legacy Blair had hoped for. Now that the prospects for Britain joining the eurozone look slim maybe successfully countering "rogue regimes" like Saddam's is the legacy to which Blair aspires.

Some argue that it all comes down to the fact that Blair is convinced he's right on this issue. The British academic and constitutional expert Peter Hennessy published a superb book last year in which he studied all the British prime ministers since World War II. In this book, Hennessy points out "few politicians are hypocrites because the first people whom they persuade with their arguments are themselves." Maybe Blair has convinced himself that this is a just cause and that it is worth the political risks involved. That he sees it as a moral imperative for the world to take on and defeat the evil which Saddam Hussein represents.

Others contend that Blair has painted himself into a corner. A few weeks after he first became Prime Minister, Blair invited Margaret Thatched to Downing Street for a chat. Hennessy says that among the advice Thatcher gave to Blair was "always leave yourself a way out." Maybe, having stuck close to Bush's administration post-September 11, 2001, and having persuaded them to follow a United Nations approach on Iraq last September, Blair is now unable to withdraw from the strategy with credibility.

Still others have put it down to what could be called a "tale of two Tonys." Anthony Eden was British prime minister between 1955 and 1957. Eden was a good looking, highly intelligent man who had been a very successful foreign secretary. When Churchill finally retired in 1955, Eden initially proved a very popular prime minister.

However, when the Egyptian Nationalist leader, Nasser, occupied the Suez Canal, Eden became obsessive. He lied to parliament, subverted the will of the cabinet, alienated most of Britain's allies (including on that occasion the United States), completely disregarded British public opinion and got Britain into a war it didn't want. Physically overstretched and mentally exhausted, Eden resigned from office as a tragic figure in January 1957. Maybe, 46 years later, another Anthony Tony Blair is similarly overstretched and has become obsessive about Saddam.

I've been struck by the number of people over the last few weeks, most of them sceptical about war against Iraq, who have asked: "What is Tony Blair at? Does he know something that he is not telling us? What is Blair's motivation." I don't have an answer to these questions. Maybe Blair's right about the need for this war but I'm not convinced it is a risk worth taking.