RECENTLY, former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair gave a speech at the privately funded Ditchley Foundation which holds conferences on British-US relations. In this speech, he focused on how a Western strategy should deal with Russia and China in light of the Ukraine conflict.

However, his criticisms and prescriptions are muddied not only by the fact that his conscience should be stained with the worst human rights atrocities of the 21st century — but also by the fact that his elitist outlook is detached from the democratic pulse.

Blair’s actions led the world to ruin. He sent Britain’s soldiers to die in an illegal invasion which led to the deaths of millions of Iraqis. Even as the reverberations of this disaster still play out, Blair nevertheless finds it conscionable to offer another dose of his “statesmanship.”

Since leaving office, he has been showered with millions his services to imperialism . Cocooned by advisory jobs with multinational banks and raking in speaking fees of over £300,000 per appearance it is easy to see why his worldview is so far removed from the masses. Indeed, polls showed only a paltry 14 per cent of the British public support his knighthood.

At times Blair looks fraught these days. Perhaps it is the face of a man consumed with repressed remorse — though, considering the content of Blair’s speech, if there is any guilt, it hasn’t surfaced.

Aside from the bigoted overtones, where he contrasted a European war with ones that occur far away, in presumably more barbaric lands where people are less human, there was no reflection on the destruction of Ukraine’s democracy by the US since 2014.

There was no mention of the fact that Nato was actively sponsoring neonazis and there was no reflection on Iraq where the very UN members that carried out this atrocity were edging their way towards Moscow through Nato.

Blair then moved to the recommendation of propping up the Britain-US military alliance, with the US at the head, against China — which he believes threatens Western systems and is competing against the West aggressively.

First, why should any proud European submit to the US? Second, it’s not China sending a flotilla of warships through the English Channel. Where then, is this “China threat?”

For Western elites, China’s threat is through structures like the Belt and Road Initiative which will develop the world and therefore decrease the effectiveness of Western military hegemony.

For Western citizens, without real democracy, their living standards will continue to decrease. In the short term, Western capitalism competing with rising powers like China may resort to war as a source of distraction, profits, plunder and geopolitical domination.

However, this will spark more trouble at home, especially as competing ideologies from rising civilisations show that win-win co-operation through infrastructure development offers a better future for humanity.

Blair wants a united front against China to “protect Western democracies.” However, this has nothing to do with protecting democracy. The aforementioned united strategy against the Middle East, which Blair advocated for maintaining control of in his speech — “not for the oil,” he said — was distinctly undemocratic then as it is now. Likewise, the strategy against China will continue to be in the service of the small group that Blair serves.

Despite advocating an aggressive stance against China, Blair, mentioning a bipolar world order, did at least say that “China’s place as a superpower is natural and justified.”

Despite this concession, we must consider two things. First, the bipolar nature of Blair which was evident throughout his barefaced speech. What does the rise of the rest of the world and China mean for Blair when he continues down the line of asserting Western superiority through the barrel of a gun?

Second, China doesn’t want to be a unipolar or bipolar superpower in the conventional Western sense. Indeed, China doesn’t regard this as bringing about the optimum world order which is why China seeks a future of multipolarity, where other regions rise too.

Stuck in the elitist Western echo chamber, this basic conceptual difference is lost on Blair. For example, over the last decade, China has been heavily engaged in building infrastructure in the global South. It is this quest for global development that also leads to multipolarity.

In contrast, besides invasion, the West has maintained exploitative and structurally unequal economic relations with the Third World. Despite this, Blair opined that the global South “admires the Western system more than we realise.”

Being a European I am proud to say there are many good things about Western culture, its people and institutions. For example, through workers’ movements, the West has been at the vanguard of developing comprehensive welfare systems.

However, Blair is not representative of any Western “us” — he cashed out to “them” long ago. Furthermore, he has used Western technological superiority for immense harm. As such, when he calls for a “Western strategy” he does so not in the name of “us,” the Western democratic whole, but for “them” — a narrow transatlantic elite.