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Former PM’s call for clearer strategic approach comes with warning to dictators that they must ‘change or be changed’ Tony Blair has warned the west that it urgently needs a wider plan to respond to the Arab spring, including a warning to autocratic leaders across the Middle East “to change or be changed”. His call for a clearer strategic approach comes in a new foreword to the paperback edition of his bestselling autobiography, A Journey. The former prime minister also praises Europe, and by implication David Cameron, for showing leadership in Libya, saying it would have been inconceivable to leave Muammar Gaddafi in power. He said that if America and Europe had done nothing, “Gaddafi would have retaken the country and suppressed the revolt with extraordinary vehemence. Many would have died.” If he had been left in power while the west was willing to see Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, deposed, “the damage to the west’s reputation, credibility and stature would have been not just massive but potentially irreparable. That’s what I mean by saying inaction is also a decision.” Blair does not call for immediate military intervention across the region, saying instead that “where there is the possibility of evolutionary change, we should encourage and support it. This is the case in the Gulf states.” He hails the way in which “Europe and America came together over Libya and, though it is difficult and though the way things will turn out is uncertain, it showed leadership; and amongst the criticism, there was also – in the region – relief that leadership was shown”. The former premier did a round of interviews on Thursday morning in which he made clear his support for military action in Libya, which he said seemed to be “succeeding”. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “My view is that it is preferable to act, because the implications of things going wrong in this region are so strong.” He added: “I think that the construct of what the west and allies – including Arab countries – are doing is right. We have got to judge that according to the circumstances, but I think at the moment it looks like it is succeeding.” The fate of Egypt would be crucial to the outcome of the Arab spring,” he said. He said it would not be easy but “on balance” he was optimistic. He insisted he had been right to make overtures to the Gaddafi regime when prime minister. “I think we were right to welcome what he did then and we’re right to condemn and go after him for what he’s doing now,” he told the BBC. “I think when he gave up his nuclear and his chemical weapons programmes, this was a huge thing for us. He stopped sponsoring terrorism, he started actually co-operating. It was a big change and frankly, had the internal policies been the same, had he gone through the same process of change that his for policy went through it would have been beneficial for him.” On Syria, Blair said the west had to consider the consequences for the region of bringing down a regime such as that of Bashar al-Assad. “It’s not always easy to make absolutely logical distinctions. I mean, why are we treating Syria differently than Libya? The answer is because there isn’t the same consent to deal with the Assad regime in Syria. “There is some hope still, I think diminishing, that he could offer a reform programme of change in Syria and most of all, and this is what’s difficult when you’re sitting in a position of leadership – if you remove that regime what follows? What do you get? Do you get an orderly transition to democracy or do you get chaos, instability, with massive ramifications, in this case, for Israel, Palestine, for the peace process there.” While praising European and US efforts in Libya in his new foreword, Blair also calls for an elected European president who would have a mandate for far-reaching reforms including collaborating on taxes. In an interview in the Times he says such an office would give Europe “strong, collective leadership and direction”. But he accepts that the idea has “no chance of being accepted at the present time”. In his book, Blair acknowledges that the west cannot intervene across the Middle East and claims some leaders are “already embarking on a path of steady change. We should help them keep to it and support it. None of this means we do not criticise strongly the use of violence against unarmed civilians. Or that if that violence continues, we do not reserve the right then to move to outright opposition to the status quo, as has happened in Libya. “But it is more sensible to do so in circumstances where the regime has excluded a path to evolutionary change. Then it is clear: the people have no choice. But if there is a process that can lead to change with stability, we should back that policy.” He adds: “My point is simple: we need to have an active policy, be players and not spectators sitting in the stands, applauding or condemning as we watch.” He says that the lesson for autocratic regimes the world over is to change – or be changed. Largely in line with the policy laid out at the G8 summit of most industrialised nations in Deauville last month, he says: “We should stand ready to help with aid, debt relief and the muscle of the international financial institutions, but we should also be quietly insistent that such help won’t succeed unless proper rules and order are put in place.” Blair, still the special envoy of the quartet in the Middle East, admits the Arab spring is going to make it harder to secure a Palestinian peace deal since Israel is less certain about the nature of the threat it faces. The stability and predictability of Israel’s neighbours, he says, has been replaced by instability and unpredictability. “For similar reasons, but with an opposite conclusion, the Palestinian leadership find it hard to go into negotiation with an Israeli partner they don’t trust, to make difficult compromises which will be tough to sell, in circumstances where they don’t know the regional context into which such compromises will be played.” Blair also warns more broadly that the world has not yet adjusted to the emergence of China as a global economic giant, saying “engagement with geopolitics of the 21st-century will be unlike anything the modern world has seen. Our children in the west will be a generation growing up in a situation where virtually every fixed point of reference that my and my parents’ generation knew has changed or is changing”. He claims energy security will become as serious an issue for the nation states as defence. Blair says: “Currently China consumes around 10% of worldwide demand for oil. If its GDP per head carries on rising – and follows the path of similar increases in living standards in South Korea and Taiwan, say – the world output will need to double, and China’s share of demand will rise from 10% to 50%.” He also questions the way in which the EU leaders have led the debate about its future, saying “there has been an obsession about institutional integration in itself rather than a debate about what we want to do as Europe, where the institutions should be at the service of the policy, rather than the policy at the service of institutions”. Tony Blair Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Patrick Wintour Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk