When Tony Blair retires - in, shall we say, May 2007 - the world's media will be full of instant assessments of his foreign-policy legacy. The prime minister seems to be anticipating this by making his own assessment in a series of speeches, starting with his Oxford lecture on Europe last month, and continuing with a sequence of three (no less) speeches on foreign policy, of which two have been delivered within the past fortnight, in London and Canberra. While these speeches end with an upbeat agenda for the future, they none the less have a strong retrospective, justificatory and occasionally even elegiac element - perhaps stronger than Tony Blair is himself aware of. Indeed, with only relatively small editorial changes, they could be delivered by a former prime minister at the World Economic Forum in Davos, or elsewhere on the elder-statesman lecture circuit, where he might share a platform with Bill Clinton, José María Aznar or John Major. Or, from 2009, George Bush.
Of course there is something absurd about such instant assessments - or, in this case, pre-assessments. At such moments, accomplished elder statesmen invariably quote Zhou Enlai's answer when he was asked for his view of the significance of the French revolution: "It's a little too soon to say." I would be grateful to any reader who can point me to a reliable first-hand source for this famous quotation, since I remain unconvinced that Zhou Enlai actually said it. No matter; the reason people keep quoting such remarks is that, even if the person they are ascribed to never spoke those words, we feel that someone should have, since they express a significant truth.
To make a considered, durable assessment of a historical achievement, you have to know the consequences, but those consequences (unintended ones as much as intended) may not be known for decades. And the larger the figure or event, the longer the timescale (1989 did change our view of 1789). None of which has ever stopped anyone making the attempt. For while some things (eg consequences) can only be seen properly from a distance, others (eg motives) you can often see more clearly from close to. Anyway, it's fun.
So let's play the guessing game. How will History - that old ventriloquist's dummy - judge Blair's legacy in foreign policy? When he goes, will he and his governments have left Britain with a better name in the world? My preliminary judgment is that he deserves to have and he should have, but I'm not sure that he will have - and this for one reason only: Iraq.
Take away Iraq, and I submit that the record of the Blair government in foreign policy would be overwhelmingly positive. Take away Iraq, and many of those who are deeply hostile to or cynical about British foreign policy would be more or less favourable to it. This includes many continental Europeans who, until the beginning of the Iraq war, were rather impressed by Blair's Britain. (In a recent Mori poll, 29% of Germans gave "foreign policy" as one of their reasons for taking an unfavourable view of Britain.) It includes many Muslims, not least British Muslims, who until 2003 would have credited Blair with a positive approach to multiculturalism, intervening to defend Albanian Muslims against Christian Serbs in Kosovo, and trying to secure a viable state for the Palestinians. It also includes Canadians, Australians and liberal Americans for whom Blair was something of a hero.
To be sure, with the attributed wisdom of Zhou Enlai, we should wait and see what happens in Iraq. But considering the state of that country today, three years on, the probability that Iraq could improve so dramatically that it persuades those hundreds of millions of alienated former Blair fans to change their minds about the invasion is in the region of 0.001%. Maybe those ex-fans are being unfair but, as the prime minister well knows, politics is unfair, being all about appearances and perceptions.
In the first of his three foreign-policy speeches, hosted by the Foreign Policy Centre and Reuters last week, he made a sophisticated and forward-looking argument about the roots of jihadist terrorism, and the ways to address them. For nuance and depth, it beat the latest version of the US national-security strategy hands down. But he had to insert his defence of Iraq.
As luck would have it, the person chairing the meeting, a Blair loyalist, gave the last question from the audience to the former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd. "With the greatest respect to your person and your office," Lord Hurd began - and one knew that a broadside must follow. He then delivered a brief, withering critique of the Iraq intervention, which, he said, had created terrorists that did not exist before. Visibly holed beneath the water line by this semantic Exocet, and listing heavily, the prime minister was unconvincing in his response. By trying to justify Iraq along the lines of his seminal Chicago speech on humanitarian intervention, by putting Iraq in a row with British participation in the interventions in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo, Blair does not strengthen the case for the Iraq war; he merely taints the case for the brave and justified interventions that preceded it.
But that's only part of the damage. Iraq overshadows the rest of British foreign policy. From the advocacy of humanitarian intervention to his G8 focus on climate change and Africa, from his support for economic reform in Europe to his broader agenda for responding to the challenge of globalisation, so much of what Blair says and tries to do in foreign policy is right and well said. You may object that, Clinton-style, delivery has limped behind soaring rhetoric, but that is a less fair criticism in foreign than in domestic policy. For to make a major difference abroad you have to move allies and larger international bodies, such as the EU, the G8, the WTO or the UN, and that's slow work. Yes, I wish he had taken on the Eurosceptic press and fought the Battle of Europe in Britain, but at least he has not spent all his time, as Margaret Thatcher did, trying to refight the Battle of Britain in Europe. When the dust has settled, I believe that Britain's position in Europe will be better than it was in 1997. And it would be in the world - were it not for Iraq.
The Foreign Office has just produced a second edition of its review of the UK's international priorities, an exercise first attempted three years ago. This is not only a lucid analysis of the world we're in but also a clear-headed and attractive account of Britain's role in it. In this document, as in many of Blair's speeches, I see the face of a country I can be proud of: more modern, more forward-looking, more internationalist, more caring than a decade ago. If only it were not for Iraq, obscuring that face like a black balaclava.