Tony Blair wrote a review of his own book, “A Journey: My Political Life,” for the Sept. 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal. In it he quotes himself liberally. Here are segments that illuminate today’s events:
“ …. I believe we should be projecting strength and determination abroad, not weakness or uncertainty; I think now is the moment for more government reform, not less; and I am convinced we have a huge opportunity for engagement with the new emerging and emerged powers in the world, particularly China, if we approach that task with confidence, not fear.
“In short, we have become too apologetic, too feeble, too inhibited, too imbued with doubt and too lacking in mission. Our way of life, our values, the things that made us great, remain not simply as a testament to us as nations but as harbingers of human progress.
“They are not relics of a once powerful politics; they are the living spirit of the optimistic view of human history. All we need to do is to understand that they have to be reapplied to changing circumstances, not relinquished as redundant.”
ON THE financial crisis:
“First, ‘the market’ did not fail. One part of one sector did. The way sub-prime debt was securitized, spliced and diced and sold on with no real appreciation of underlying risk or value was wrong, irresponsible and immensely damaging. Some of the rewards, the huge payouts for shuffling around securities, the bonuses, are not just presentationally awful; they can’t be justified and, at worst, have
helped create a propensity to ‘do the deal’ for short-term gain whatever the long term merits, in a way that significantly contributed to the crisis. All this is correct and should be acted on.
“… Second, government also failed. Regulators failed. Politicians failed. Monetary policy failed. Debt became way too cheap.
“… Third, the failure was one of understanding. We didn’t spot it. … Furthermore — and this is vital for where we go now on regulation — it wasn’t that we were powerless to prevent it even if we had seen it coming; it wasn’t a failure of regulation in the sense that we lacked the power to intervene. Had regulators said to the leaders that a huge crisis was about to break, we wouldn’t have said: There’s nothing we can do about it until we get more regulation through. We would have acted. But they didn’t say that.
“Fourth, financial innovation is not bad per se. Actually, very often it is good: it increases li-quidity and boosts economic activity. The danger lies in innovation that has consequences we don’t understand, and effects which we therefore can’t track.
“Fifth, when a crisis occurs — and I suspect that may be true of any significant economic crisis today — its consequences are magnified beyond any comparison with days of old by the supremely interconnected and interdependent nature of the modern global economy.
“ … The role of government is to stabilize and then get out of the way as quickly as is economically sensible. Ultimately, the recovery will be led, not by governments, but by industry, business, and the creativity, ingenuity and enterprise of people.”
ON EUROPE AND and the U.S.: “… I find the indifference towards the decline of the trans-Atlantic relationship, on both sides of the ocean, a little shocking. There’s a feeling that it belongs to an era that has passed. This is to misunderstand the way the world is changing; or perhaps better put it is to look at the issue upside down.
“It is said: New powers are emerging, therefore we should seek deeper relationships with them and there is less need for the old relationship. Yet it is precisely because the relative power of Europe and America is changing as new powers come on the stage that it is sensible for the two to combine. Just as the European Union is necessary to increase the power of the individual nations, so the U.S. and the European Union should work together.”
TONY BLAIR was prime minister of Great Britain throughout all but the final year of the presidency of George W. Bush and was the firmest ally President Bush had following the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. While his personal his-tory of those years is doubtless kind to the decisions he and President Bush made, his first-hand account of those fateful years will always be a core part of the story of our time.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
