Blair: West Must Take Sides Against Growing Threat of Extremism
Local Editor
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair blamed extremism for failures of western intervention in the region, saying powerful nations must "take sides" and back "open-minded" groups, as he said during a speech in Bloomberg in London on Wednesday.
In a keynote speech on the state of politics in the Middle East on Wednesday, Blair urged the west to realize it must "take sides" to counter the extremism that lies at the root of all failures of western intervention.
Insisting that the west has to take sides, he described extremism as, "...exclusivist in nature..."
He warned that Western military intervention in the Middle East has so far failed due to the distorting impact of extremism that could yet engender global catastrophe.
He further said, "The important point for western opinion is that this is a struggle with two sides. So when we look at the Middle East and beyond it to Pakistan or Iran and elsewhere, it isn't just a vast unfathomable mess with no end in sight and no one worthy of our support. It is in fact a struggle in which our own strategic interests are intimately involved; where there are indeed people we should support and who, ironically, are probably in the majority if only that majority were mobilized, organized and helped.
Blair also said that there is now a desire across the west to steer clear at all costs following the bloody outcomes in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, but says extremism still represents the biggest threat to global security in the 21st century, saying it is holding back development across Africa and the Far East.
He added that, "What is absolutely necessary is that we first liberate ourselves from our own attitude. We have to take sides. We have to stop treating each country on the basis of whatever seems to make for the easiest life for us at any one time. We have to have an approach to the region that is coherent and sees it as a whole. And above all, we have to commit. We have to engage."
Blair defended the coup that overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammad Mursi last year.
He said that the protest that led to Mursi's ouster "...was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation. We should support the new government and help."
He also argued that, "on the fate of Egypt hangs the future of the region."
In a clear reference to Saudi Arabia, he said: "It is absurd to spend billions of dollars on security arrangements and on defence to protect ourselves against the consequences of an ideology that is being advocated in the formal and informal school systems and in civic institutions of the very countries with whom we have intimate security and defence relationships."
He claimed some of these countries wanted to break out of this ideology, but needed the west to make it a core part of the international dialogue in order to force the necessary change within their own societies.
Blair, Britain's prime minister between 1997 and 2007, is now Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the U.S. and Russia.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
