A Precautionary Approach to Foreign Policy? A Preliminary Analysis of Tony Blair's Speeches on Iraq

Abstract

This article examines the proposition put forward in a BBC documentary concerning ‘war on terror’ policies in recent decades that the British prime minister embraced the precautionary principle over his decision to go to war with Iraq. We argue that the conventional understandings of precaution that have been developed in the environmental arena do not translate well into the field of foreign policy. Our argument is buttressed by a content analysis of Tony Blair's speeches prior to the Iraq conflict of 2003. The analysis focuses on the ways the prime minister justified his decision to participate in the war in Iraq to the UK electorate. We conclude that, although understandings of precaution, particularly the ‘strong’ precautionary principle, do have problems when applied to this particular issue, and that the war was mainly based on a traditional ‘sound science’ foreign policy paradigm, the novel idea of using weaker forms of the precautionary principle in foreign policy is nevertheless intriguing, and warrants further research.