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The UK in Iraq: a case study in policy failure?

The Chilcot report raises some important questions about why policies succeed and fail.

The Chilcot report raises some important questions about why policies succeed and fail. Daniel Thornton considers the report and raises questions about some of its judgements.

While much of the IfG’s research on policy implementation and policy challenges relates to domestic policy, many of the same issues arise in foreign policy, and four lessons can be drawn from Chilcot. Given the scale of the Chilcot report, and the fact that its conclusions are spread through the 2.6m word document rather than properly summarised, only a preliminary assessment can be provided here.

1. Be clear about the problem.

A lack of agreement and clarity about the problems which a policy aims to address makes implementation harder. While the formal statement of UK policy was that Saddam was a threat, and therefore the problem that policy was attempting to address, it is clear that other countries’ weapons of mass destruction were assessed to be a greater threat. The real problem that the UK was grappling with was US policy towards Iraq. After 9/11, Chilcot finds, “Mr Blair sought to influence US policy and prevent precipitate military action by the US.” But four months later, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service judged that in Washington, “military action was now seen as inevitable.” This makes Chilcot’s judgement that “the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted” look odd. The US was going to war, so peaceful options for disarmament were no longer available. A Cabinet Office paper of 19 July 2002 says, “Little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it.” The UK aimed to influence the US, and partly through this, to create the political framework.

Chilcot implies that the UK focussed on influencing the US as an end in itself. This is odd: the most important internal advice makes clear that the UK had specific objectives that it was trying to achieve by influencing the US, such as using the UN to encourage Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Chilcot also places great weight on the statement in Tony Blair’s note to President Bush that “I will be with you, whatever.” In fact, there were conditions, which are set out clearly in a variety of internal papers and records of discussions. Chlicot appears to have confused policy with its presentation. For example, the UK had one approach in Washington and another in Paris, where war planning was presented to President Chirac as a way of getting Saddam to accept the return of UN inspectors. That’s diplomacy: real intentions are likely to be found in internal documents rather than in discussions with foreign leaders. The Government had internal clarity about the problem it wanted to address, but this was not in line with public statements about policy (which focussed on Iraq as a threat). The policy was also ultimately beyond the UK’s capacity to achieve – the political framework did not succeed.

2. Think implementation from the outset.

Policy is too often made in isolation from those who will be responsible for implementation. In the case of Iraq, some of the key implementers of policy (and indeed experts on the region) were in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Ministry of Defence (MOD). At various points they highlighted the risks of joining a US-led invasion. For example, the lead FCO official on the Middle East notes that “in the medium term we may be left struggling with chronic instability in Iraq. Longer term, we risk a repeat of the Suez debacle…”. These concerns are partially reflected in the key Cabinet Office paper. However, they were not reflected in the discussions between the small group of ministers and officials that oversaw the policy, or in the private advice that was provided to the Prime Minister by his key advisers. The US was also the lead implementer of the policy, though the UK did stay as close as it could to the various arms of US policy-making. So the US was not only implementing the policy, but also pursuing its own policies, which made it difficult for the UK to achieve its objectives.

3. Enable effective challenge.

Chilcot provides numerous examples of where effective challenge to assessments and policy was not provided. The report explores the lack of opportunity that the Cabinet had to challenge policy as it developed. This is hard to argue with, although it is also the case that Chilcot has little regard to the pressure of the US’s timetable and the difficulties that this created for discussion and planning. He also implicitly criticises the Cabinet Secretary for failing to ensure collective agreement was engaged. This fails to recognise the realities of government – Cabinet Secretaries advise, and Prime Ministers decide. The report also explores how experts in the Defence Intelligence Staff did not have the opportunity to challenge intelligence, but this was not brought to the attention of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which had responsibility for assessing the intelligence. Chilcot finds it odd that UK policy was underpinned by an “ingrained belief” that Iraq had WMD and was prepared to use them. But given Saddam’s record of use and concealment of WMD, and the difficulties of collecting high-quality intelligence in Iraq, this judgement is questionable. Nevertheless, given that assessments about Iraq’s WMD turned out to be wrong, of course it would have been better to have these challenged.

4. Stay focused.

Long-term focus on a policy is necessary if it is to be successful. This must be particularly the case where state-building is the objective. All of the evidence (see for example, Francis Fukuyama) is that this takes a long time. Chilcot presents robust evidence in support of two conclusions which are relevant here: “Although the UK expected to be involved in Iraq for a lengthy period after the conflict, the Government was unprepared for the role in which the UK found itself from April 2003” and “between 2003 and 2009, the UK’s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.” Although Chilcot tends to be optimistic about the scope for detailed planning in the face of uncertainty, it is nonetheless hard to escape from the conclusion that the UK’s commitment to Iraq was insufficiently long-term. The Chilcot report points to some clear policy failures: while the UK was internally clear about the problem it was addressing, this did not correspond to public statements about the policy, and the policy was not ultimately successful; policy was detached from implementation and lacked challenge; and the UK was not sufficiently committed to the long term to achieve its objectives in Iraq.

Publisher
Institute for Government

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