Blair's Chicago speech (1999)

Résumé du document

The document we are going to analyze is a speech delivered by Tony Blair on April 24th 1999 at the Economic Club of Chicago.
Tony Blair had been elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for two years and had already undertaken several reforms, following the principles of the Third Way, which can be briefly defined as an ideology combining aspects of free market capitalism with egalitarian social aims.

Widely known to be a modernizer, Tony Blair, at the head of the Labor Party since 1994, had undertaken profound transformations of the party and had changed its name into ‘New Labor'. As a consequence, the party won the general elections of 1997, with a landslide victory against the Conservative Party.

Blair's famous Chicago speech can be considered as one of the most important in his career as Prime Minister. We can underline that it was the first time a British Prime Minister in office went to Chicago, thus we can point out the historical importance of the event.

First of all, we must take into consideration the context of the Kosovo's war in which this speech was pronounced. Indeed, NATO had just launched a bombing campaign against Kosovo and Serbia one month before. As Tony Blair played a passionate and prominent part in the Kosovo crisis he aimed at convincing the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, to send ground troops. That is why, he insists, all along his speech, on the special link existing between Chicago and, by extent, the United States with Great Britain.

Extraits

[...] The post- Cold War world became smaller due to increased connectivity and an interdependency, which was caused by a revolution in information technology. The process of globalization gave a new impetus to the neoliberal economic order. According to Blair, the countries should co-operate to fight the dark side of globalization. Nowadays, the problems such as financial crisis, violation of the human right, conflicts, etc have consequences worldwide. That is why he advocates the creation of new rules to solve the problem of our new world. [...]

[...] Institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund became powerful advisors to the new countries since they gave them loans for their transitions to capitalism. Politically, the notion of liberal democracy emerged as the best way to organise political life. Eventually, the world has become increasingly interdependent in a number of ways. According to Blair, changes in communications, the international economic system, the rapid spread of new ideas prevent nations from retreating into isolation and imply a necessary co-operation. [...]

[...] His rhetoric is complex, efficient, and persuasive. Every word has to count. First, he uses the lexical field of emotions with “tear stained faces”, “heart rending tales” and the vocabulary of violence “awful crimes”, “ethnic cleansing”, “mass murder” order to touch his audience and convince people that a military intervention is obvious and necessary. Then, his sentences are clear and asserted. He uses many modals as “have to express the obligation or the necessity of NATO's action. This is a proof of his determination and firmness. [...]

[...] That is why he pleads for transparency. He explains the five guiding principles of NATO's action, its concrete enforcement and the plans for the future of the region. Nevertheless, Tony Blair optimism seems to be excessive. Indeed, the bombing air campaign obviously caused the death of innocents and was badly perceived by the civilian population. Moreover, NATO had underestimated the resistance of Milosevic and the bombing campaign lasted 78 days instead of the 3 days initially predicted/foreseen. Milosevic even intensified his campaign of ethnic cleansing against Albanians. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, Tony Blair insists on the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist systems in Eastern Europe had profound consequences for world politics. For example, he uses the expressions wide range of changes”, world has changed in a more fundamental are now in a new world”. Then, it seems worth mentioning some of these major changes. First of all, the end of the Cold War meant the end of confrontations. The ideological dispute over whether the socialist system would beat the capitalist system was not an issue any more. The decades of East-West military confrontation appeared to give way to East-West cooperation. [...]