Exactly a decade ago, Tony Blair sat in No.10 Downing Street as British prime minister ready to launch his part of the invasion of Iraq.
Minster Lovell is easily the most beautiful village in England. Just a short drive from Oxford, trees flank the road as you head down a brief slope to the River Windrush. Across an ancient stone bridge lies the Old Swan Inn.
From there, if you wander up the single street past the slate-roofed houses, you'll come first to St Kenelm's Church and then the ruined manor house.
It's the perfect place to sit under a willow tree on a summer's afternoon, sipping champagne and eating strawberries as you listen to the bubbling water. Or possibly a brisk walk in winter, watching your breath turn to frost and hang in the air, until you return to a crackling fire and warmth of the pub.
Britain's former foreign minister Jack Straw lives in a cottage along the cobbled street. It's a bucolic place from which to observe the world - the sort of spot where the value of quiet reflection becomes readily apparent.
Far too often we get caught up in absolutes; definitive answers provided by a white paper or the latest grand plan to solve all our problems. It's only sometime later, after these have been unveiled, that we realise the ''road maps to the future'' are irrelevant: the answers lie elsewhere.
Exactly a decade ago, Tony Blair sat in No.10 Downing Street as British prime minister ready to launch his part of the invasion of Iraq. Blair seems now to have been gripped by a messianic belief in his own infallibility and the need to confront Saddam Hussein. The result was a debacle.
When the armoured vehicles crushed the barbed wire of the border beneath their tracks and rolled over any opposition into Baghdad, Blair must have thought he had done the right thing. Sadly, his comprehension of history was no greater than that of a stick thrown into the water.
As the tide rose and the twig edged towards the crest, it cried out in excitement. ''Look, I've made the water move,'' it yelled. Politicians often share the stick's delusion, but instead of being in control of what was happening (or attempting to understand the real forces shaping history) politicians such as Blair now fade into the shadows, their legacy compromised. Their failure should act as a warning to the present.
And yet, the bright young things in their sharp suits are still chattering away. Because Australia has a seat on the United Nations Security Council they think we should ''do'' something to stop Iran getting the bomb. They have, apparently, only a glancing acquaintance with reality.
It may be that, confused by the one-letter difference between Iraq and Iran, these people think the lessons of previous failure somehow don't apply. Or perhaps they have missed what is happening in the Middle East. They certainly don't appear to understand what happens when you use military force. As many inhabit well-funded think tanks, such as the Lowy Institute (which claims expertise in international relations), they really should make the effort to keep up with what has been happening over the past decade.
The Iraq War has demonstrated the changing nature of armed conflict. Surgical air strikes can be plotted carefully on a map with the consequent destruction calibrated precisely. But what can't be measured is what will happen next or what the political effect will be.
That's why, if you want to work out how Israeli jets might be able to fly along the Turkish-Syrian border before flying over Iraq to strike the bomb-hardened sites where Iran is almost certainly attempting to put nuclear weapons together, you can probably do so. It's interesting, as an exercise, to understand the mechanics of such a strike to see if it is possible. But if anyone pretends to tell you what will happen after the bombs fall, it's probably wisest to laugh in their face. Derision is the only possible reaction to such hubris.
Take the release of the Stuxnet computer virus. America thought it could control the worm designed to attack Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities and it has. It has apparently been extremely successful in setting back Tehran's ambitions to develop a bomb and, coincidentally, demonstrates the advantage of such an attack over air power. But it set a precedent, that computer war is OK.
That's why the Chinese military is seemingly infiltrating worms into American computer hardware, although not attacking it. This makes it difficult for Washington to pretend it has clean hands while complaining about Beijing.
The face of conflict is changing. Network warfare in times of peace is just the new reality. Power relationships are also changing and kinetic warfare is no longer the only way of enforcing your will. The US emerged from the Cold War as the only superpower. It will face an enormous challenge to retain that position.
That is why it's worth going back and looking at the view from Minster Lovell. Once Britain was a superpower. It ruled Persia and helped to place the last shah in power. Unfortunately that didn't turn out well. Neither did many other interventions. Perhaps that's why, when he was foreign minister, Straw visited Tehran five times desperately attempting to reconcile its nuclear ambitions with Blair's demand the Iranians didn't seek to develop a bomb.
To lend weight to his argument, Blair might have seized the moment to announce Britain was relinquishing its Trident submarine nuclear deterrent. He didn't.
Now Straw is warning that force is no longer an option. We need to reconcile ourselves to Tehran's ambitions, and ensure Iran sees it has more to gain from participating within the international order. Australian diplomacy should be working to this end.
The closest village to Straw's home isn't off the beaten track. It's actually flourishing. That's because Brize Norton is now the Royal Air Force's transport hub. It's the ''sole point of embarkation'' for troops flying to the Middle East. It's also the airbase to which the bodies are brought back. It's time to deal with reality. As Straw says: ''War is not an option.''
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.
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