John Major interviewed by Charlie Rose after election defeat 1997

[Music] from our studios in London this is Charlie Rose John Major was Prime Minister Great Britain for seven years he succeeded Margaret Thatcher after a resignation in 1990 he led the Conservative Party to a surprise victory in 1992 earlier this year he left 10 Downing Street after a landslide win by the Labour Party in the May elections under his administration Britain saw victory in the Persian Gulf the signing of the Maastricht Treaty the opening of talks in Northern Ireland and economic growth he continues to serve his country as a Member of Parliament meanwhile speculations about his future plans remain plentiful and pleased to have him on this program on day four of our visit to London mr. prime minister I'm pleased to have you in our program nice to be here how goes life after 10 downing oh there's plenty of life after after being in Downing Street I was in the government successively I myself was personally in the government successively for 14 years 10 years in the cabinet and getting on to seven years in Downing Street so that's a fair old slice of your life so I remain in politics of course but there are plenty of things to do outside outside government have you given up the idea of being Prime Minister again oh I don't expect or wish to be Prime Minister again I think things move on been there done that got the t-shirt yes so I think it's time and I think it's time to move on there are other things to do there are many things that I've had to put aside during the 14 years of government I'm looking forward to enjoying those well president linton was interviewed on American television reason he said after eight years as president what might you do and might you run for the sender or something he said he didn't think he'd run for the Senate but perhaps the school board for the Board of Education well I think he's got the right sort of values that I think that's right when you've been Prime Minister or been president I think other jobs don't really other political jobs have a much much lesser appeal as a Member of Parliament serving my constituents and serving in the House of Commons that's a particular dimension but I think moving beyond that dimension back into government doesn't have very great attractions of mind let me talk about one of the things that was victory while you were Prime Minister the Gulf War and the victory over Saddam is saying at that time and look at the events today knowing that you are not being briefed every day knowing that you have a lot of other things to do and you're not keeping up with it minute by minute having said that what do you think is important for the nighted states and its primary Allied Great Britain to keep in mind as these negotiations take place well I think the first thing you need to keep in mind is that Saddam Hussein is a destabilizing force he's a very dangerous man he's a very irrational man and he's been manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and you need to keep a very firm eye on what he's doing so I personally believe the United States have been absolutely right absolutely right beyond a doubt to take a pretty tough line to say we must have the inspections we must have a strong United States contingent in the inspections key thing is to have the right people there but we must have those inspections and we must have access to back off and say well this is all getting too difficult we don't want to cause a fuss now and open up the possibility of these weapons of mass destruction continually to be manufactured would be very dangerous I recall in the Gulf how worried we were that he might have a delivery system for chemical or biological weapons so I think while that danger exists in that extraordinarily straw Denari area of potential turmoil in the Middle East I think there is not a shred of doubt in my mind the President Clinton Prime Minister Tony Blair and the others are right to take the tough line they've taken at what under what circumstances should they engage in the use of force well clearly they'd rather deal with it diplomatically and at the moment it looks as though with the with the intercession of Prima cough it looks as though there may be some form of diplomatic agreement that is undoubtedly the first prize but I don't think any sensible Western politician would set out criteria under which force would be used because to do so would be indicated to indicate in what circumstances force would not be used so I think it's necessary to leave that prospect in the background if all else fails and that is exactly is exactly what the Western Allies have done it's the right thing to do can their allies and those people in the Middle East who want to see some progress on issues of war and peace afford to have Saddam Hussein with the capacity to do deliver weapons of mass destruction including germ and biological warfare can they afford to have them with that potential I think it would be very dangerous if he were able to build up that potential no I'm no longer exactly certain what the latest intelligence is and I make that point entirely clear I'm not privy to what information would be available to the President and to the Prime Minister but that he was manufacturing those weapons I think he's beyond doubt and if he is manufacturing those weapons presumably without letting hindrance he would go on manufacturing them so I think it's necessary to take action now to indicate firstly the danger to the rest of the world and I think they've been alerted to him by what has happened over the last few weeks and secondly to make it perfectly clear to sadden the same and I think it is sad um Hussein rather than the Iraqi nation I think the clear distinction to be drawn there to make it perfectly clear to Saddam Hussein the United States Great Britain and the others are perfectly well aware of what he's doing they haven't forgotten what he might do with those weapons because we saw what he did in Kuwait in the early part of this decade and if necessary they're prepared to be as tough in future as they were in the past I hope that won't be necessary at the moment it looks a touch more promising but if necessary the use of force must be in the background should the Gulf War that you were significant party to and leadership of your country and what you contributed in the United States have continued longer than it did did we end that war early it couldn't have done and I would explain to you why it couldn't have done when the coalition was created by by President Bush in the early 90s we operated under international law and the international law we operated under was a United Nations resolution that resolution was what brought the coalition together that was the legal binding for it and that resolution was to get to the Iraqis out of Kuwait it was not a resolution that empowered the Allies to go into Baghdad and drag Saddam Hussein out by the feet now if we had done that firstly we would have acceded international law secondly we would have broken up the coalition thirdly a lot of American British and other troops would have been killed and fourthly you would very probably have United a large part of the Arab world against the coalition and because they were against the coalition by definition with Saddam Hussein would that would not in my judgment have been smart politics and the other point about it really is this the generals on the ground whom politicians ignore I think at their peril on these occasions as I recall it they were unanimous that they had completed the task that they were given and that it was necessary to call a halt to the war and that was the view that they had at the time it was the view President Bush took that I took and I think it's only with that marvelous ingredient of complete hindsight that people say go further but even then if the President had tried to go further he would not have been able to do so legally he would not have been able to keep the coalition together and that's really the key point suppose there is prima cough of brokered deal of some kind in which sanctions eventually might come off if Saddam behaves and does what he is supposed to do inspectors go back in there with no resistance from him and everybody in Security Council sort of signs off on this and there is no US or allied use of force and it would be a very different use of force this time because it's not gonna be the same coalition probably only the United States and Britain and perhaps Israel what's gonna happen do you think I mean how do you see this thing being playing out well from all we know halves Adam Hussein he will consistently push up against the limits of Tolerance he has in the past he is doing now and you could not be certain that he wouldn't do so again it isn't a question of saying that's what we'll do this is the end of it it isn't quite like that I'm afraid this is very possibly going to be an irritation that will occur at some stage again in the future but that doesn't mean that you can just say our heck what can we do it's a difficulty we may have to do it again let's let him get on with it you can't do that you can't do that and sometimes the only thing you can do is imperfect that it is right and of course what the British and the Americans the Americans and the British are doing at the moment may be seen by some to be imperfect that it is the best and only option in the world of real politics that the president has has he won though because he's had this ten to 15 days to since hide something that might have been wasn't otherwise he hasn't won I mean he's had a period of another ten or fifteen days with the world looking at him and I have no doubt that you rather enjoys that the guy's a megalomaniac but no he hasn't won once again the world has been able to focus on what's happening in Iraq and the potential wickedness have saddened the same the British and the Americans are perfectly clear about that wickedness I think their persuasive power has persuaded preme back off to think of very direct role so no he hasn't won he hasn't won he's once again woken up a large part of the world to the potential risk that and perhaps NATO's made us more vigilant in watching him closer there's always the danger as time moves on the vigilance slips no it hasn't slipped self-evidently it hasn't slipped because of the way the Americans and the British have been behaving would we all be better off if somebody in his own country or somebody from outside assassinated him my depends who is replaced by but if you mean is he a democratic leader with whom we would find it easy to do business and whose word we could trust the answer is no he's not democratic no we can't do business with him and no we can't trust him let me move to two big political issues here in in your country one is European monetary union the Labour Party seems to have adopted a position of let's wait and see you have strongly said in what I have read in the last couple months that whatever reservation you had your answer today would be no and let's not leave any hesitation about it we should not we should be more than Euroskeptic we should say no to a euro currency for a long do I get your policy righted well I think it's a slightly if I may say so it's slightly more complex and how it depends on the timescale you take for a long time I have followed a policy that people characterized as wait-and-see it was actually negotiate and decide that they called it wait-and-see and the Labour Party and others often criticized it in government now they have to look at the national interest they have decided to adopt exactly the policy that they managed to avoid publicly announcing in the past and which caused so much critizise the last Conservative government they have done that they have broadly stuck to the policy that I had the distinction that there is between the present labor government and the position I now take is that we are now within 14 months of the target date for the establishment of a single currency right across Europe we now have the economic information in front of us and upon the basis of the economic information in front of us I say it is not economically ready the economic information we have in front of us is a Britain in full economic growth and recovery now I'm certainly Britain but I was looking at the whole of Europe the idea is that the whole of Western Europe abolished the deutsche mark abolished the franc abolished the lira abolished the pound sterling and replace it with a new currency with the truly ghastly name of the euro yes now that is what is intended to happen to everybody who's able to join on the 1st of January 1999 now I don't think that Britain should join Britain shouldn't join for a range of reasons it's economically better place than most nations at the moment but I don't get to join because the European nations themselves have not reached the right state of economic convergence their economies are not performing compared ibly so it is in the end a difference in terms of where the economies are today yeah the economy has been a different stage of the cycle so you accept a strong currency for something that's less strong because of the difference in the economic let's take monetary policy for example if you have a single currency you have a single level of interest rates right the way across Europe the interest rates appropriate for Germany and not the interest rates appropriate for Italy so what will happen they'll pick something in the middle they'll have a level of interest rates that is appropriate neither for Italy nor for Germany in terms of growth in terms of supply-side efficiencies the economies are not performing remotely the same if anybody says to me that the economies of some of the southern European states are in a position to compete with Germany France and the United Kingdom with a fixed exchange rate then I would say they're not emphatically they're not and if they're locked together in the same exchange rate too soon I emphasize the point too soon then what will happen is the different economic performance will appear in the real economy and by that I mean the less well performing countries won't get a sell their goods they'll get very high levels of unemployment probably a La Crosse a large part of Europe now this I think is very damaging and if the Euro goes ahead on the 1st of January in 1999 it will go ahead because the politicians have made a political decision that it should go ahead not because the economic circumstances are right which is what we always said and what they argue the following as you know better than I do much better than I do I mean Ken Clark was here who's a strong adherent in this battle is not how 1999 he isn't but in terms of the idea an adherent of the principle right he is not he does not believe that Britain should go in in 1990 I agree with them and he said that but he does believe strongly in Europe and he believes that there is to be the benefits of being part of Europe far outweigh the disadvantages I think what you believe that too so it's only a matter of the monetary union that you are resistant I am a convinced European I am not convinced about economic and monetary union let me turn to Northern Ireland within the khatam considerations we have are you hopeful George Mitchell was here he says he's hopeful that they that they are making progress and he gives great credit to you for what you did as well as in a sense what Tony Blair has done well following you this is a bipartisan matter when I was Prime Minister I got very strong support from Tony Blair as leader of the Opposition and insofar as I can give support for the right policies I will continue to have Zi done the right thing so far I have no complaints about the way he's handled it so far and I'm going to Ireland in July and I think I've been I think I think we are making progress I suspect I've always been wary of making predictions about this but I suspect we may be moving towards the endgame now it will not be perfect it may take some time it may take a year maybe take two years it may not be perfect there may be people who will split off and not accept any deal that could be done but I think despite the difficulties despite the grumpy atmosphere that occasionally prevails and the sullenness that you sometimes see between the parties to the talks they're still there they are sitting together and I think we could be in the early stages of an endgame so I share the same be with George Mitchell and I'm not hugely optimistic it's going to happen very swiftly before days before May 1998 well it could there's no logical reason why couldn't happen if the participants in the talks decided to take their courage in their hands and say to their own target audiences this is the best we can get we should take it but that asks for a lot of courage from everybody sitting around that table from the Unionists from the Republican do you have any reason to believe that there is there is a feeling of fatigue with war and we're tired of violence and therefore we're willing to take that step I have always believed the the what will provide the thrust to bring this wretched dispute for so many years to a conclusion is the determination of the everyday people of Northern Ireland who are not politically engaged in a high-profile way the determination of those people that that their part of the United Kingdom should get an end to this but you never expect them to take a vote to change the constitutional relationship that will change it because of the majority of the Protestants I don't think that's going to happen I mean the majority of the Protestants are going to vote to remain within the United Kingdom but in the 90 in the mid-1990s I reached an agreement with the then Irish government called the framework document the framework document following on the Downing Street declaration in the early 1990s are the two key documents the framework documents set out a blueprint of what a settlement might look like it isn't perfect for anyone the unionists aren't gonna dance in the street neither are the Republicans but it provides a sufficiency if there is a will for peace I enter that preposition if if there is a will for peace and if the public pressure remains that could bring about a settlement now I'm hopeful that that can be done whether it will be done depends upon two things depends upon the skill of the negotiators and it also depends upon the courage of the participants because sitting back as an observer I can see exactly what I saw when I sat in Downing Street it will need courage amongst the people sitting around that table Republican and unionist alike to actually reach a deal there will be people who are willing to leave the table and threaten you if you stay I think that's very likely I think it's very likely and I think it's very likely in some cases that people might get threatened for the deal that they reached if they reached a deal I think that is possible that is why I say they need courage I think they need intellectual courage to realize that they've got to compromise nobody is going to get out of this exactly what they want nobody that's the other reality yet they come to you have to come to that reality that's always been the case and then the moment we embarked upon this in the early 90s that has always been the case so it's going to have to be compromised so the IRA and all of the Catholics in Northern Ireland they have to realize there will be no change in the constitutional form so that they'd become part well they had been saying viral occasionally and then they've moved away from it but they've said from time to time they accept the principle of consent the principle of consent means that people in Northern Ireland will determine their own constitutional future the jury of the people by majority rule that's the way your system works in the United States and ours in the United Kingdom the way it works in the Republic of Ireland the majority determined matters like this that's why I promised a referendum in whenever it was 1995 the present government inherited that policy they do do that probably and anybody who believes that we can produce out of this omelet a series of fresh eggs back in their shells with no difficulty and no compromise it just is not possible with compromise there is a possibility of the deal there's a book out called major a political life by Anthony Selden would you cooperate with him and he taught you in which he did interviews with you about your life tell me what you are proudest of in terms of your tenure you've served as a member of parliament you served in social number of lesser sub-cabinet levels you were Chancellor to checker and you were also foreign minister and then you were prime minister for six years what is it that you are most pleased about what achievement what success what accomplishment well I wish I could have finished the Irish negotiations but if we put that to one side I think the I have no doubt that the thing I'm most proud of is turning this country from the country prone to high inflation and all the economic and inefficient is an unemployment and followed that to a country that now has stable low inflation and a much higher level of our people in jobs much higher in fact than anywhere else in Europe I'm proud of that absolutely economic sea change that was brought at a considerable amount of pain and political unpopularity that it has changed our economic prospects not just for the short term but for the long term and what is it you regret the most well I regret that I wasn't able to finish the Irish negotiations I had hoped we would be able to do that we had made a lot of progress then we had setbacks I always thought they would be setbacks but if I had one wish it would have been to have successfully completed those negotiations and ended the bloodshed in Northern Ireland it is no more tolerable there than it would be if it was sorry or Sussex or London we should talk about bias but let me just there's a Hugo Young who you know wrote a piece for The New Yorker and is writing a piece about Europe he said the British economy is booming this was before the election in 1997 which you lost in a landslide the British economy is booming London is once again trendy and everyone thinks that Prime Minister John Major is a very nice man so why does it seem he is likely to lose which in fact you did why did you lose 18 years I think is the simple answer 18 years not a lighter story we had 18 years of successive government by one political party that is pretty unprecedented in the British the British system I think you've seen the same thing after eight or twelve years often in the United States system after 18 years there were no great problems there was no great inflationary difficulty I think people said well the country's in pretty good shape there's no risk but I tired with these boring old faces that we've had for the last part of the last 18 years let's try something new and fresh and of course there were other things about it as well but that was the biggest single ingredient but it is my understanding that the way politics work if your country is doing well and people think that they are in prosperity they want to retain the status quo it's that no matter how long they've had it why am I wrong about that well because you're talking of the length of time if it had been four years or eight as it was for President Clinton four years or eight years I think that would have been right I mean most people expected us to lose in in 92 they did they thought we'd lose in 1992 because we've been there 13 years well we won in 1992 we defied political gravity but I think the people say the reason you won in 99 on this program since I've been here is because you went out in the way you campaigned I mean Kent Clark and others have come here to this broadcast and say that you were out there why didn't that work four years later five years later well it was five years later yeah I mean I think it was five years later and it had been a very tough five years you see I think that there's you're quite right in saying the economy was in very good shape but in getting it into very good shape you upset a lot of people we cut public expenditure in areas where people cherish public expenditure we had to put taxes up when we didn't wish to put taxes up we had to take a whole series of deeply painful decisions that upset a lot of people right across the United Kingdom now they may have come right but the bruise is often remain I didn't expect to have to do that I didn't wish to do it about the recession forced it upon us and the only way to get the economy right was to take those tough decisions and we did it but we we didn't win much affection for those tough decisions people may have said the economy's right but after so long in government I think there was a disinclination to give us credit to the fact that we'd taken tough decisions and that we've got the economy right and I'm disappointed in that so you said I save you credit for the things you've done I understand things that cause pain well that's political life I'm afraid sometimes I again I mention Ken Clark but Casey is a member of your party and we have a tape of him on this broadcast which I want to show in just a moment how much were you damaged by division within your party it was material it was significant yes significant I think we would have lost the election I don't think the divisions alone lost as the election I think 18 years in power lost the election what the divisions did was turn an election defeat into a much bigger election defeat what's very striking is that labour had this huge majority in 1997 but they polled fewer votes than I polled then the Conservative Party polled in 1992 when we had a very tiny majority so there wasn't a great feeling for labour what the was was a feeling of change feeling of weariness with the Conservatives and I think a certain amount of frustration maybe even distaste with some of the divisions that they had seen in the party predominantly over this great issue of Europe roll tape here is what Ken Clarke remember Parliament said on this program earlier this week tell me what happened to your party we almost have a single party here in Britain today well it would be the party that yes we had that's partly because the Labour Party changed the Labour Party moved sharply to the right and Tony Blair occupied the ground which used to be occupied by what are called one nation conservatives the more moderate normally the governing wing of a Conservative Party in rhetoric and style he moved on to that santé ground position botrytis Center which is a wholly new political position for the Labour Party meanwhile the Conservative Party sort of fell apart before his eyes which I fell into internal dissent mainly divided over Europe exacerbated by the fall of Margaret Thatcher exacerbated by the humiliation of Black Wednesday we were driven out of the erm and so the final years of the last Parliament you had a governing party that just simply could not be led by John Major to start preparing to fight an election they wanted to fight each other under trial issues mainly turning on the European Union well I think Ken puts a little more sharply than I would but I think the substance of it is right we were taking the right policy decisions the economy was turning in the right direction but this issue of Europe ran so deep that it created feuds and difficulties on a scale we've never surprised you've never seen before only three times in the long history of British politics has there been a dispute like this once in 1840s with the Corn Laws once with tariff reform at the turn of the century and this time with Europe but the Europe dispute was made even worse because we now live in the era of mass communications every time someone was invited on the media it was someone who disagreed with the party not the majority of people who agreed with it so it was a very unattractive picture even for those people who saw the economy was going right education was improving and the other improvements that we brought about even though Margaret Thatcher lady Thatcher had been your political mentor even though she had singled you out early and led to your taking significant positions of power in her cabinet if she had done more would you have won in 90 so I I don't think we would have won in 1997 looking back in retrospect I would repeat what I actually said to Chris Patten the day after the election in 1992 it's going to be very difficult to do it a fifth time we got through a fourth time and nobody expected us to do to do it a fifth time was asking a very great deal and as it proved those words were very prescient indeed what we didn't anticipate was the savage savagery of the European debate there's a gut issue the European debate do you agree that the Blair government has in a sense assumed the center-right position as many people have said that basically there is a direct line between Thatcher and Blair through major no ID and they are Center right and they preempted that position in the same way that President Clinton has in a politics of America senator taken a center position I think where our elections are won I agree with part of what you said but I didn't agree with the conclusion you drew from it if you mean have the Labour Party realized that the Conservatives have won the intellectual argument and moves their political base onto our ground I do mean that they have done that but when you say Tony Blair follows Margaret Thatcher that is not that there is a link between the passes that she he's adopted the policies that she had and I had but we were both pushing those policies further he spent all his political life opposing those policies and he is not proposing to push them any further heaven alone but he's not trying to turn the back there's no nationalization he's not moving he's always nice stop I don't know what the government will do when they run out of my policies well they're gonna do is that with that I think they know what they're gonna do well that's where I'm going and to say that it's the same sort of policies as Margaret Thatcher as follows or John Major I'm just saying continue John Major I don't think I don't think the devolution policies or anything about dementia or John Major would and you and you very much object to them I think their folly I think their folly and I think there are other areas as well where promises have been made but we'll see whether those promises are actually kept we're in the early days of a government it's easy bit the difficult bit is when you've been round the course for a year or so and your own words on your own actions come back and then we will see whether the genuinely hasn't been a sea change in the labour party there might have been I don't know yet there might have been weather you know yet if there's a bit of sea change I know there's been in the labor board I'm you know I know there's been a sea change in what the government and ministers say I don't know whether there's been a sea change in the nature of the labor party itself when they run into difficulties I think they will revert to that isn't it I don't place they were before terribly I don't think they're going to go back to being the very left-wing party they want before I don't think they're going to do that but what are they gonna revert to I think they would move a little more center-left rather more of a status party I think they've got oratory on the center-right whether their policies are on center right or Center left yet remains to be tested I think you may see a party that knows what needs to be said they're extremely good of public relations and will pitch their oratory to the center-right but will they hack away at the welfare state no sign of doing it yet well those are hard choices well because they're the choices of the center-right and I'm not sure that they'll actually make those what would test for the Labour government what should we look for as a test as to whether you can set a single test I think it's a range of policies what actually happens when there's a pressure in the in the economy how will they actually relax how will they actually react when there's pressure for large inputs of money into certain areas of public services and it's potentially inflationary will they provide the money or will they not now there is a test that is a test they will face at some stage in this way they feel pressure from their normal constituents when they felt like finally find pressure from their normal constituents for public funding yes you have seen no evidence of that so far in terms of welfare issues but certainly in terms of rhetoric you've seen it I've seen it in terms of rhetoric I've seen it in terms of promises whether they will keep those promises I don't know they might they might and if they do they'll have a long reign is probably not necessarily that doesn't follow at all the Conservative Party many people said after 1945 was finished was back within six years you know after the big Valley over Bob Churchill yeah this was this is basically a conservative country that votes non conservative from time to time that's actually been do you think Samaras is basically a Republican country at the presidential level their votes but I'm not going to get into the divisions between Republican and Democrat in the United States that's certainly not from it has the Blair image been damaged and if so how much by the formula one issue well with great respect Tony Blair is a political opponent but he's also Prime Minister of the United Kingdom I'm not going to criticize Tony Blair abroad I'm not going to do I think that's a matter best for domestic politics do you agree then that there is a feeling in this country that Britain is full of confidence full of self-esteem the economy goes well there is a sense that London is a city that everybody wants to come to business is good the attitude is good this is a for the lack of a better word a happening place yeah I agree with all that and and the Labour Party of Charlie Lucky doing Harry's rule that from us with a new attitude a new government and labor coming in and new labor creating a new sense it was coming too good you don't suddenly change attitudes unless you change economic realities they didn't change the economic realities we change the economic realities so a lot of people back to work and have living standards rising and got our kids better educated they've inherited that and they're very fortunate with inheritance sometimes were lucky in politics they were lucky but we did so you're saying that if you like Britain today and if you like London today and if you feel good about it think what we did we should feel good about it London and the UK is in better economic shape at the moment then it has been for a very long time and it's a government follow sensible policies I think that's going to remain the case for some time because the fundamentals of the British economy are very strong we are very very competitive at the moment as an industrial nation the less competitive than we were as a the sterling exchange rate has has risen so much over the last few months but basically we're a pretty competitive pretty lean pretty fit nation just right now you had I would assume the great honor as leader of your country participate in a whole series of conferences especially the group of seven when you look around what you would have a pan and and late after you left or the most recent one where Yeltsin participated when you look at the world today and the process of globalization are you optimistic and what and if where you are not optimistic what worries you yes I'm overwhelmingly optimistic I think there are some worries but I'm generally optimistic what worries you second if I may I think in terms of globalization you're seeing some of the developing companies I use the term loosely and Brazil Indonesia developing countries China Brazil there are four or five countries that have one half of the world's labor force and only eight to ten percent of the world's production that's going to double that share of the world's production is going to double in the next 20 years now that is not only improving their living standards it's going to lift a lot of nations out of poverty a lot of the nations in the United Nations were in poverty at the moment are going to be lifted out by economic growth in the next 10 or 15 years it's a thoroughly good thing the world's market is getting bigger and bigger that's a thoroughly good thing across Latin America and across Central and Eastern Europe countries are industrializing that were in a dreadful state not all that many years ago there are some problems I suppose one would be worried about whether Japan is going to come out of his difficulties that's clearly a problem one would be worried about whether the euro if it goes ahead as I'm sure it will now go ahead is a success or if it's failure but United States is in prime economic health the United Kingdom is in very good economic health I I think if no economic cycle is permanent of course there are highs and lows but by and large I think the prospects ahead are on the bright side not on the dark side you worry about South Korea and North Korea South Kalimantan what I was worried about in two different reasons I mean the instability of North Korea is a real worry I heaven alone knows what is actually going on inside North Korea it's still a pretty closed it's still a pretty closed state pretty closed nation and potentially a very destabilizing and dangerous one and of course the South Korean economy has been a miracle over the past 20 years but a miracle that's run into difficulties so I think there's there is a reason to where there are points you can worry about you can worry about the danger of regional wars well I want to speak to that the one thing I didn't surprise I mean I might have thought that you might have said that your regret was that you were not able to do more in Bosnia notwithstanding the fact that that brave soldiers went there but we have presenting Britain and served as peacekeepers notwithstanding that why took so long and so much ethnic cleansing before they were able to stop the killing there well I'll tell you when Bosnia began and those age-old hatreds and rivalries burst forth I think from memory I was the first Western head of government to send troops there I remember coming back from a holiday I think it was in Portugal and sending troops there and when I did so I remember having a meeting with my generals and senior military officers in Downing Street and I said to them here's Bosnia here's ethnic cleansing what do we actually need to hold the warring parties apart how many troops do we need to put in there to do that and they suck their teeth a bit and came back with the answer of around 400,000 troops and how long would you have to keep them there I said perhaps indefinitely they said if you're going to do it by putting in troops and holding them apart Britain doesn't have 400,000 troops without the United States without the other members of NATO we couldn't have got remotely near that number even with them you couldn't have put in that number of troops and kept them there so what we did what British did was to put in troops we put them in to us for almost the whole piece we were there we had the largest troop contingent until pretty near the end when the United States did even proportionately we did I think when I left office in May we'd spent something like 13,000 million pounds sterling on supporting the creation and maintenance of peace in Bosnia but it is very difficult to say a great deal more could have been done without a much larger international effort and if that larger international effort had solely been military it might have stayed there for a very long time we've had troops in Cyprus for 29 years between north and south so it was necessary to deal with it politically and that in the end is what happened but with great respect for what those brave soldiers did and the decisions that you took the question still remains that when they began to use the bombing it seems that they began to get the attention of the parties necessary necessary to resolve in the diplomatic victory that took place at least it still holds in business I don't agree with that judgment I mean with respect I don't agree the threat fuel of ours if you look at the topography of the whole of Bosnia it isn't Iraq you've not got great flat lands but you can justifiably bomb the military advice that I got and others got as well was the bombing in Yugoslavia is a much more over former Yugoslavia and positives a much more haphazard thing you're never quite sure what you're exactly going to hit it didn't have the same potential force as it could have had in a much-appreciated there's different I understand the difference but why then did you get the result that you got finally Oh what kind of change then that I think they're ready to have so much atrocities in between oh I'm afraid partly it was it wasn't necessarily the milk of human kindness amongst the war it was with respect it was well I think it was partly war weariness I think it was the huge amount of diplomatic effort effort by that time there were very large troop contingents there I don't actually take the view that it was the degree of bombing that went on I just don't take that but that is exactly what Richard Holbrook says and I threatened to do that that made a difference with the parties in date Ida are you're coming to a particular point in Dayton rather than the general movement at the time of Dayton no doubt it had an effect that the belief that you could actually have bombed a settlement in Yugoslavia is defied by every military man that I have spoken to about this issue they didn't believe that now I'm a politician I'm not a military man I can't give you a military judgment of that but their military judgment was of that that wasn't a practical course at the time of the particular Dayton Accords where there was a huge amount of diplomatic pressure and people were beginning to misbehave then a whole series of things come together full weariness despair argument the threat of bombing all of those things to get not just one and you can't look back and in a sense say what might have happened but you can say if the same forces had been put it back war weirdness might have been different but could that have been achieved two years earlier because the Clinton administration did not take the leadership the president acknowledges that he did not that the position he campaigned on he came back to later after trying to try other things in the interim as you know but we were there all the time but am I wrong about that we were there all the time you weave in terms of Britain in Bosnia we were there in terms of Britain in trying to stop genocide and trying to stop people killing one another and that's what British troops did President Clinton very effectively campaigned against your friend President Bush in terms of saying we cannot stand by the way we have and then they stood by and then change the policy later my point I guess is that it seemed only when they changed the policy back to which they promised that things began to come together I think it was a combination of two things that brought it together I I don't accept the bombing point I think the physical presence of troops on the ground right made a difference that is certainly true it made a difference because it impeded the warring parties it said it protected the civilian population it prevented the movement of a certain amount of arms not all all of it and and guns there was the impounding of guns all those things began to come together together with the enormous amount of diplomatic effort and the diplomatic effort coming of course from the United States from Russia and from the other Western European countries as everything that you have learned about Bosnia since you left office since the end of the Dayton Accords either confirmed what you decisions you made at the time or caused you to have some question that if you known certain facts you might have a very different I think always in retrospect you can think of some things you would have done differently I mean I I can't give you a list of them now but I can't conceive of hardly any politician looking at Bosnia the huge uncertainties that existed in Bosnia who might not have taken a different judgment at some stage in that conflict I'll tell you what the great fear always was for me in Bosnia the great fear in Bosnia was twofold firstly that you one would not be able to stop the genocide but secondly that the conflict would spread down south towards Kosovo right and then it would not become a civil war within former Yugoslavia but a trans Balkan war original on what I could expect regional war and a much bigger sin bring it right on the border and bring in the Russians and bring in the everybody well conceivably I didn't think it would bring in the Russians but conceivably and it was that fear that made me put in troops very early and encourage other Western allies to do the same just one last point about their allies in the Gulf War came together in a very effective coalition building didn't seem to happened this time when the president had to face to them except for Britain in Bosnia it didn't seem to come together as well is that a fair appraisal except for the Bureau has Brett not quite right I mean the distinction between the two the two examples you cite one you had the rate of Kuwait by a foreign country you had a direct invasion of the sovereign territory of a country by another that is a much easier proposition in international law for the then president to bring together a coalition in the case of Bosnia you had within a former single country within former Yugoslavia you had a civil war where ancient hatreds had had burst forth in a quite remarkable way and where you had a three-cornered war at least and very difficult to see how it could be policed or how it could be dealt with and I suppose it is also possible in some cases that having expended amongst so many countries so much effort on the Gulf and cost and loss of life no mercifully not too great a loss of life in the Gulf people were wary about doing it a game and you were looking essentially at a civil war not at a cross-border war which is what you had in the Gulf so I think there were a range of things now Britain and France also I didn't mention France also but I think France had a very honourable role in putting in significant amounts of troops at a very early stage in volume in Bosnia and keeping a very high troop presence there throughout the conflict more so than the United States it I mean what did we do well it wasn't until the diplomatic clout of the United States came into force but that was near the think they did well I'm asking what we did I think they did I'm not here to criticize United States I don't wish to there are foremost allies but we're nor am i I mean the pointer to criticize it is to understand because you were a wire when the United States began to use its it's a diplomatic muscle and when the United States moved its troops in there was an undeniable leader amongst the nations there in Bosnia I rest my case that is undoubtedly I rest my case in that case with respect respect no no you haven't let me finish but you rest your case on the basis that the United States were taking no helpful action in advance of that now that I do not even know helpful but you just said when the United States began to show its leadership and bring its diplomatic into it then we ended up with a solution that's what you said and it seems to me but with great respect you're taking a part of the argument as I said a few moments ago and will repeat again when you move along a conflict like this right there isn't a single issue that suddenly changes it's a whole series of things that come together and all the other matters I referred to came together as well at that time let me come back all the other place I won't run through the list again but all those plants came through I'll take another thing everybody understood it let me go back to the Gulf one more time because is there some risk risk today for lots of reasons you look at the impasse in the Middle East Oslo process now that what gains there were that came together in the Gulf War coalition maybe maybe lost or faced the possibility of losing so that those countries who came together at that time in that effort and might have faced a certain kind of realignment in part produced by the fall of the Soviet Union so that they were no longer a surrogate for the Iraqis that we face the rule challenge in the Gulf because that coalition may have been frayed and unraveling in some Arab states who might been there for us and for the West might not be there next time out I think it would be the case if for example to go back to our earlier argument if we had actually gone ahead in 1992 and in 1991 and actually gone into Baghdad in the way you were asking me about earlier then I think you would have fractured the Western democracy Arab relationship to such a stage that as a future crisis you would not be able to cobble together a coalition I think that is true and that is why I think it was wise of the Western Allies to stop as they did even though many people with hindsight chose to criticize it at the moment it would clearly be desirable if there was more public support of the United States British position as far as Saddam Hussein is concerned I wish there were more support there ought to be in logic more support I suspect there's a good deal support in private not in public because of domestic the very therap consumers I said on this bright I think the executive it's in private the support is probably there but they don't really want to express that support too much in public unless it becomes necessary to do so now if the present problems in Iraq could go the way they look as though they are likely to go as we speak this afternoon and there is the return of inspectors then I think all is well it for a while at least if on the other hand if it did not go that way and if the United States and Britain were forced into a position where there was a genuine danger of the weapons of mass production proceeding without proper inspection then I think Britain in the United States would need to put a good deal more diplomatic effort on our former allies and upon the Security Council and upon the United Nations generally to make sure there was a bigger coalition to let's atom per se know that his behavior is just intolerable there's the last question I'm run over but I just asked there's in a sense it's important I'd like for you to sort of finish this for me it's important for those in a position of leadership in this world that's facing the change as we in them go towards the Millennium with the kind of regional regionalization taking place the kind of ethnic rivalries that taking place it's important for leadership to do what whether it's a so it's the single remaining superpower of the United States whether it's a great nation with a great tradition like Great Britain and other places to do what in facing the challenge of today well the old traditional borders are falling away the Warsaw Pact no longer exists NATO is moving gently and it is wise to go cautiously further across Europe there's more each economic intermingling if you really wish to know what will make our world the most and more secure place in the next 20 years the single thing that will do it I actually believed a single single thing that will do it will be the increasing and dramatic spread of free trade everywhere because once you have those that intermingling of trade you have a community of interest that militates against military conflict to give you an illustration of that for 700 years Western Europe thought continually against one another the intermingling of trade in Western Europe makes that inconceivable and yet the world is generally shrinking the intermingling of trade with other parts of the world is increasing day after day after day the more that increases the more there's a community of interest and one other thing that people tend not to remark upon and I hope you don't think it a flippant point to make today President Clinton or Prime Minister Tony Blair could pick up the phone and speak on first-name terms to 50 Heads of Government they know one another they're not distant countries with whom they disagree that are a long way away they're flesh-and-blood people whom they meet and who they do business with President Bush did a huge amount of telephone diplomacy I know President Clinton does the same that much greater capacity amongst Heads of Government to meet at international conferences and many people say are a waste of time to know one another to have a flesh-and-blood contact I think is very reassuring it removes many of the hatreds fears and uncertainties that offered triggered great disputes in the past so let us have that diplomacy continue even if at some stage we'll get boring conferences at which nothing happens let's have the growth of trade and the intermingling of interests and I think the more that progresses the more you will see a relative subsidence in military conflict I thank you for this hour we went to go 30 minutes we went an hour and and I thank you very much it's been 90 think from my audience and for me an opportunity to hear from someone who occupied center stage and how they reflect on both history and the president thank you very much thank you John thank you for joining us from London former Prime Minister John Major we'll see you tomorrow night [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gadaí

Views: 11,886

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Id: XpnDlJhX9vA

Length: 54min 40sec (3280 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020