Step Forward, Tony Blair
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

LONDON — This past week, the case of Robert Mugabe versus the free world has moved onto a different level.
First the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the presidential election and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy. With this collapse of the last vestiges of democracy, the full horror of the campaign of torture, murder, and intimidation being waged by Mr. Mugabe’s Zanu P.F. party became clearer than ever before.
Belatedly, international opinion began to mobilize. The United Nations Security Council finally roused itself to issue a condemnation, however mealy-mouthed, of Zimbabwe’s travesty of an election. Not only the Bush administration, but both American presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, joined in the chorus calling for an end to the Mugabe regime — though they, like other Western leaders, stopped short of urging armed intervention, probably the only way to achieve their purpose.
Back in Zimbabwe, the Mugabe propaganda machine went into overdrive, portraying Britain, the former colonial power, and America, its alleged successor, as part of a vast conspiracy. The violence perpetrated by Mr. Mugabe’s thuggish “veterans” is being blamed on Western powers.
In Britain, meanwhile, the hand-wringing about what to do finally reached a kind of resolution yesterday. Queen Elizabeth II, acting on the advice of Her Majesty’s Government, formally stripped Robert Mugabe of the honorary knighthood he received in 1994.
To American eyes, this extraordinary gesture may look pointless. Why should a man so steeped in the blood of his people take any notice of the loss of a bauble such as this? This is the despot who has wrecked Zimbabwe’s economy, reducing a once prosperous country to famine and hyperinflation, who is damaging the entire region by his determination to cling to power at all costs.
Yet the fact that the Queen has added her prestige to the campaign against Mr. Mugabe will register — if not with the tyrant, then at least with his people. There is no other individual in the Western world who has demonstrated such concern for the welfare of Africa over more than 60 years.
If the Queen cannot be ignored by Mr. Mugabe, still less can Nelson Mandela. Now 90, the former South African president was on a visit to London yesterday and he, too, joined in the condemnation of Mr. Mugabe. This was in stark contrast to his successor, Thabo Mbecki, who has in effect endorsed and legitimized Mugabe’s reign of terror, though Mr. Mbecki’s heir apparent, Jacob Zuma, has been much more outspoken.
So what is to be done? Force is still an option, albeit a risky one. It is often forgotten that, before Tony Blair sent British forces to join America in Afghanistan and Iraq, he had already gone to war twice: not only in Kosovo in 1998, but the following year again, in the West African state of Sierra Leone, which had been ravaged by a decade of civil war.
The British intervention, though small in scale, helped to end the civil war by 2002. It stands to this day as a model of such operations, in contrast to other ill-fated African adventures by Europeans. It would not take much to overthrow Mr. Mugabe’s tottering regime — certainly nothing beyond the capacity of a multinational force acting under the aegis of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Of course, this is not going to happen any time soon: China is closely aligned with Mr. Mugabe and would certainly veto such a resolution. The United Nations is not ready to prevent the genocide by famine that will inevitably occur in Zimbabwe unless Mr. Mugabe is removed. Just as the United Nations has impotently watched many similar situations arise in Africa, from Rwanda to Congo, so it will continue to prevent effective action.
The plight of Zimbabwe makes the case for Mr. McCain’s putative league of democracies better than any number of speeches. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which already operates out of area, should be transformed into a world-wide democratic alliance. This new Global Treaty Organization — as we could call our League of Democracies, on the model of NATO — would act as the United Nation’s enforcer, where appropriate, but would also have the authority to act unilaterally.
The biggest danger is that South Africa, the dominant regional power, would be told by its leaders to see such an intervention as a neo-colonial act of aggression. To avert such a confrontation would require robust Western diplomacy, which has been in short supply lately.
There is one man who would be up to the job, though he already has his hands full in the Middle East. Step forward, Tony Blair.
Mr. Blair is still respected, even by his former opponents. I heard yesterday about the following exchange that took place a week or two ago when William Hague, former leader of the Conservative opposition, now the party’s spokesman on foreign affairs, paid his old foe a visit.
“So, how are you guys getting on?” asked Mr. Blair. Mr. Hague (a blunt Yorkshireman): “We’ve done a damn sight better since you cleared off!”
If he only gave up his Middle East role, which is going nowhere, Mr. Blair could lead such a League of Democracies and still find time to make money, write his memoirs and give time to his new Faith Foundation. Is anybody going to ask him? Not Robert Mugabe — that much is certain.
Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint.