This is one of those questions where ‘show me the money’ is the sensible approach…as is ‘by their fruits you shall know them’. You certainly won’t find out by reading the Chilcott Report, since there’s little evidence that it has made a blind bit of difference to the warmongering ‘attitude’ prevalent in Whitehall. However, when I look at ‘behaviour’…I see something clearly visible.
My assertion is that they have learned ‘how to get away with it better in future’. In other words there has been no change to the purpose, the goal, or the strategy, of UK Foreign Policy…merely a new set of tactics for doing exactly the same thing:
The purpose is to maintain the supremacy of the Washington Alliance…the hegemony of the Empire, if you will. Within this the goal is to prevent China becoming the dominant economic power, and to restrict the geopolitical influence of the other military superpower, Russia. I.E. It is vital for Washington & its allies to control the resources of the Middle East, restrict Moscow’s influence, and to block, or at least hamper, the trade routes being established by China - OBOR - the Silk Road.
The strategy for this is the same one that the US has employed for decades - the removal of governments that refuse to ‘kowtow’, or as Washington prefers to call them, ‘rogue regimes’. The modus operandi is ‘The ‘Evil Man’ - one I have described previously, particularly in this piece for Renegade:
https://renegadeinc.com/demonisation-vladimir-putin/
None of that has changed since Iraq. The lessons learned were not at the level of ‘purpose’, they were not embodied in ‘ethics’, they have not registered with ‘conscience’. The Western Alliance has learned this:
We can’t get away with it that way - we got caught - we must change our tactics.
I.E. We can’t get away with large scale troop deployment - it’s too expensive, it costs too many lives (OUR LIVES - WE CARE NOT A JOT FOR SYRIAN OR YEMENI LIVES)…
But more important than that:
Having got caught lying about Iraq, our populations will not swallow another land invasion…remember the Parliament & Congressional votes on Syria…
In other words, the tactics have HAD to change, they have changed…but that is ALL that has changed. In terms of ‘humanity’, our governments have learned nothing:
Finally, it was suggested by the guys at Media Lens that there is in fact a number six:
Promote the myth that 'we' are not involved at all, lament the US 'refusal' to 'intervene' or 'take action'…Those of you who’ve read the Guardian recently (I hope you’re bearing up under the strain)…will know that this is exactly the garbage they’ve been regurgitating on Syria.
What does all this mean? It means that the idea of an ‘international rules based order’ is an insult to the intelligence of an honest, thinking person…the concept of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ is a sick joke…and that if we are going to insult foreign governments by calling them ‘regimes’, we’d better stick that label on our own front door also - I didn’t vote for this…did you?
It means that ‘Foreign Policy’ needs to come out of the cupboard and be front and centre in British political debate. It needs to decide, as much as ANYTHING else…the outcome of the next general election.