Tony Blair Accepts TWI Scholar-Statesman Award, Challenges West to Confront Extremism 'Head On'

(Washington) -- Former British prime minister and current Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair accepted The Washington Institute's prestigious Scholar-Statesman Award Tuesday night in New York, delivering a powerful statement that called on Western democracies to commit the resources to a long-term effort to confront extremism "head on" and defeat the narrative of grievance, threat, and radicalism. "I don't believe that this threat can be benignly managed out of existence," Mr. Blair said. "We think [that] if we sympathize with the narrative -- that essentially this extremism has risen as a result partly of our actions -- [then] we help the modernizers to be more persuasive. We don't. We indulge it, and we weaken them."

The strategy for defeating extremism, Mr. Blair argued, begins with recognizing that Western democracies have been "outspent, outmaneuvered, and outstrategized," and that building an alliance "across the divides of culture and civilization" is crucial. "At stake in this challenge," he stated, "are the values of the civilized world."

Mr. Blair accepted the award at a gala dinner that also paid tribute to The Washington Institute's past president and current chairman Howard P. Berkowitz, a managing director of BlackRock, Inc., and a former national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League. More than 500 well-wishers filled the Plaza Hotel ballroom to celebrate the honorees.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Blair -- who currently serves as special representative to the Middle East for the Quartet (United Nations, United States, the European Union, and Russia) -- argued that high-level diplomacy will never succeed without progress in the "bottom-up" process of Palestinian institution building. "A state is not just about borders," he said. "It's about governance. It's about institutional capacity. It's about security and the rule of law."

Some of Mr. Blair's strongest remarks were reserved for the challenge posed by Iran. Arguing that Western nations make a huge mistake when they don't take seriously the extremist ideas advocated by Iranian leaders -- which are at the core of the international demand that Iran not develop a nuclear-weapons capability -- he issued this challenge: "We should make it crystal clear to Iran -- acquiring a nuclear weapon is unacceptable not just to America, but to the civilized world. And if people say, 'Why should India or France have a nuclear bomb but not Iran?', I say, go and read the speech [Iran's president made] to the United Nations just days ago here in New York and tell me that is someone you want with a nuclear bomb."

The Scholar-Statesman Award was established in 2007 to recognize outstanding leaders who exemplify the idea that sound scholarship and a discerning knowledge of history are essential to the advancement of peace and security in the Middle East. Previous recipients include President Bill Clinton, Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and eminent historian Bernard Lewis.