Recently released documents reveal that the Foreign Office cautioned against British military intervention to remove the former Zimbabwean president, the long-serving leader, in 2004, advising it was not considered a "viable option".
Internal documents from the then Prime Minister's government indicate officials considered options on how best to handle the "remarkably robust" 80-year-old dictator, who declined to leave office as the country descended into violence and economic chaos.
Faced with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party winning a 2005 election, and a year after the UK participated in a US-led coalition to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, No 10 asked the Foreign Office in July 2004 to produce potential courses of action.
Officials agreed that the UK's policy of isolating Mugabe and building an international consensus for change was not working, having failed to secure support from key African nations, notably the then South African president, the South African leader.
Options outlined in the documents included:
"Our experience shows from Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia that changing a government and/or its bad policies is almost impossible from the outside."
The diplomatic assessment rejected military action as not a "realistic option," adding that "The only nation for leading such a armed intervention is the UK. No one else (even the US) would be willing to do so".
It cautioned that military involvement would cause significant losses and have "serious consequences" for UK nationals in Zimbabwe.
"Barring a major humanitarian and political disaster – resulting in massive violence, large-scale refugee flows, and regional instability – we judge that no nation in Africa would support any efforts to remove Mugabe forcibly."
The paper adds: "Nor do we judge that any other European, Commonwealth or western partner (including the US) would sanction or join military intervention. And there would be no legal grounds for doing so, without an approving Security Council Resolution, which we would fail to obtain."
Blair's foreign policy adviser, Laurie Lee, warned him that Zimbabwe "will be a significant obstacle" to his plan to use the UK's presidency of the G8 to make 2005 "the year of Africa". The adviser stated that as military action had been discounted, "we probably have to accept that we must adopt a long-term strategy" and re-open talks with Mugabe.
Blair appeared to agree, noting: "We must devise a way of exposing the lies and malpractice of Mugabe and Zanu-PF ahead of this election and then afterwards, we could try to re-engage on the basis of a clear understanding."
The departing ambassador, in his final diplomatic dispatch, had recommended cautious renewed contact with Mugabe, though he understood the Prime Minister "might shudder at the thought given all that Mugabe has uttered and perpetrated".
Robert Mugabe was ultimately removed in a 2017 coup, at the age of 93. Earlier assertions that in the early 2000s Blair had tried to pressurise Thabo Mbeki into joining a military coalition to overthrow Mugabe were strongly denied by the ex-British leader.
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