From the archives: On liberal wars

David Cameron’s speech to the United Nations yesterday was, among other things, a defence of liberal intervention. It reminded numerous observers of Tony Blair’s famous speech in Chicago in, the setting for the so-called Chicago Doctrine that guided his foreign policy thereafter. The Spectator said surprisingly little about Blair’s speech, perhaps because it wrote the following 5 days before the speech was made on 22 April 1999.

End this liberal war, The Spectator, 17 April 1999


We can now see how liberals start wars, and wage them. First, they notice on television that people are being ill-treated or murdered. The victims have to be European, for then President Clinton and Mr Blair can evoke Hitler and the fate of the Jews and imply that the generation of Mr Clinton and Mr Blair is more resolute than that of Neville Chamberlain. Then they check with their focus groups that they are expected to do something.