UK to push democracy despite Iraq ‘mistakes’

Mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan should not deter Britain from exercising its moral duty to spread democracy, by military means where necessary, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Tuesday.

Miliband, who visits one-party China this month, also had pointed words for Beijing, saying its economic rise to power meant “we can no longer take the forward march of democracy for granted”. The speech, one of the biggest by Miliband since he was given the job when Prime Minister Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair last year, will be viewed as a sign Britain does not aim to retreat from Blair’s assertive foreign policy, which saw British troops dispatched five times in a decade. “There will be situations where the hard power of targeted sanctions, international criminal proceedings, security guarantees and military intervention will be necessary,” Miliband said in a draft of a speech released to the media before its delivery later on Tuesday in Oxford.

“In extreme cases, the failure of states to exercise their responsibility to protect their own civilians from genocide or ethnic cleansing warrant military intervention on humanitarian grounds,” he said.

Since taking power, Brown has scaled back Britain’s role on the ground in Iraq, a war that proved extremely unpopular in Britain. The government has, however, expanded a mission in Afghanistan despite little public enthusiasm. “I understand the doubts about Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deep concerns at the mistakes made. But my plea is not to let divisions over those conflicts obscure our national interest, never mind our moral impulse, in supporting movements for democracy,” Miliband said.

Brown brought 25 business leaders on a visit to China last month. British officials say he raised human rights and democracy issues with Chinese leaders, although in public he mostly spoke about trade and investment.

Miliband said economic success in China had made it a more open place, but the population was concerned about the future. “Arguably more people in China are freer today than they have been at any previous time in Chinese history,” he said. “But people inside China and outside are rightly concerned about the next stages in political development. President Hu’s speech to his party congress shows that democracy is an issue for China’s leaders as well as its people.”