How not to run international affairs

Abstract

Abstract This article explores three case-studies—the Munich crisis of 1938, the Suez crisis and war of 1956 and the Iraq war of 2003—as examples of ‘how not to run international affairs’. On the face of it, all three episodes were disasters. Irrespective of whether Munich was strategically correct, Neville Chamberlain's public presentation of the agreement was a clear miscalculation. Anthony Eden created an elaborate pretext for invading Egypt, which was nevertheless so see-through that it destroyed British credibility. Tony Blair appears to have persuaded himself into believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and basing his case for war upon this idea left him exposed when the weapons were shown not to exist. Whereas it is easy to say that these mistakes should not have been made, it is harder to suggest mechanisms that would prevent leaders falling prey to such delusions, when their immediate political interests appear to depend on them. The article concludes that in these three cases failure was over-determined; on the other hand, there are many everyday crises that foreign policy actors, who understand ‘how not to run international affairs’, succeed in preventing from turning into disasters.