Intro: The calamity of foreign-policy laid bare. A number of valuable lessons emerge from the Chilcot Report

THE BRITISH MILITARY spent six years fighting in Iraq; the official inquiry under Sir John Chilcot into how they ended up there has taken nearly seven years to complete. On July 6th, the Chilcot Report containing some 2.6m words was published. Its findings are devastating.

The report highlights that assessments of Iraq’s weapons ‘were presented with a certainty that was not justified’; post-invasion planning ‘wholly inadequate’. The foreign-policy blunder of the century, billed as a war of necessity, in fact was ‘not a last resort’. Chilcot points to several areas where peaceful means should have been pursued and had not been fully exhausted.

The report, which cost millions of pounds to produce over such a lengthy time period, holds many lessons over the invasion of Iraq: the dangers of impetuous decision-making; of failing to plan; and, of making optimistic assumptions and assertions.

Yet, there is also a perception and risk that the wrong lesson may also be learned. As Britain begins the Brexit process of disentangling itself from the rest of the European Union, there is the danger that Britain will turn inward. Not only will the report be read by many as evidence of a badly conceived mission in Iraq, one which was thinly planned and poorly executed, but proof also that Britain and its Western allies should hasten their retreat from the wider world. A knock against liberal values will be damaging.

The first lesson which may be taken from the Chilcot report is that prime ministers should beware commitments that catch up with them later. Tony Blair promised George W. Bush in July 2002 that British forces would join an American-led invasion, wholeheartedly believing the intelligence assessments presented by MI5 and MI6, Britain’s intelligence services, of the chemical and biological weapons programmes held by Saddam Hussein. That subsequently proved to be false. By the time Mr Blair was made to keep to that promise 8-months later, circumstances had changed. Dr Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, wanted more time; and the failure to get a second UN Security Council resolution cast doubt on the legality of action. Mr Blair found himself being propelled into war by the military deadline set by the White House.

The second lesson that emerges is the need for pragmatic realism and planning. A distinct lack of both infected every aspect of Britain’s Iraq-war decision-making. Defence plans were based on a best-case scenario in which foreign troops would be welcomed and embraced as liberators, and it was assumed that a pluralist democracy would replace the Ba’athist system. Nor was there much realism about what influence Britain’s military contribution would purchase from America.

Significant weight was placed on intelligence assessments that went unchallenged, and overly optimistic estimates of troop requirements led to a direct breakdown of order from which the occupation never recovered. A narrative in the report is given, when, in Basra, under-resourced British forces made a ‘humiliating’ agreement with a militia group in which detainees were released in return for a pledge by the militia not to target British forces.

The real danger now is that pessimism rules rather than realism. With the UK retracting from Europe under the Brexit vote, and bracing for turbulence at home, there is a concern that it might take a backseat in geopolitics. To counter that, others will argue that the next government must be active in NATO and by supporting its armed forces and foreign diplomats. As we have tragically seen in Syria, inaction can have dire consequences, too.  A key lesson of Iraq is not that military intervention in itself is wrong but, if that is going to happen, you had better get it right. To resolve instead that countries ripped apart must now be abandoned to their own fate is the bloody legacy left behind from the US-UK led invasion of Iraq.