John Kampfner: The Age of Western Intervention Is Over, Finally
John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship and author of Freedom For Sale and Blair's Wars.
With a rhetorical flourish, President Obama last week drew to a close an era of war. The President's speech on Afghanistan attracted attention, but not as much as it should have done, given its historical moment.
Twenty years ago this summer, Communism collapsed with the failed coup in Russia and the final lowering of the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin in December 1991. That ushered in, courtesy of Francis Fukuyama, the declaration of the "end of history" and the start of the hegemony of the single superpower: one ideology reinforced by values and, just in case anybody didn't quite get it, by military power too.
Even then it took some persuading closer to home. It was Tony Blair who bore down on Bill Clinton to intervene in Kosovo. The world had watched the massacre of Srebrenica, and other summary killings in the former Yugoslavia; it had turned a blind eye during the genocide in Rwanda.
A new philosophy, and a new industry, was born: liberal interventionism, the notion that the international community had an obligation to intervene in defence of human rights, irrespective of state sovereignty. That was taken one step further by Blair and George Bush with the idea that democracy could be "promoted" by force.
Iraq destroyed a noble idea...