One of the worst gaffes of my political career was a thwarted attempt to kiss Benazir Bhutto. We had attended a meeting together and, although we had met just a few times, she had greeted me warmly as an old friend. So when it came to saying goodbye I went to kiss her on both cheeks, as I would with most colleagues of the opposite sex. She almost screamed and slipped free, making it clear that such physical proximity was wholly inappropriate.

If my cultural insensitivity has any excuse, it is that she was so evidently at ease in the West. She was my age and we all knew of her when she became president of the Oxford Union. Photographs confirm that in those days she left her head uncovered.

I liked her. After she had been prime minister of Pakistan she had the authority of those who have held high office and mixed as an equal with other world leaders. She had presence and dignity but was approachable and modest. I was stunned by how pro-western she was. Despite the many occasions when America ignored expert advice and made disastrous policy errors in Iraq, she was reluctant to condemn. Terror was a threat to Pakistan and to us all, so we had to stick together.

An Al-Qaeda spokesman has claimed responsibility for her murder, describing her as a “precious American asset”. Whether or not the claim is genuine, the description of Bhutto seems apt. She was, from the West’s point of view, that unusual thing: a pro-American Pakistani democratic politician with a chance of gaining power. The United States and its allies urged her to return, brokered a deal between her and President Pervez Musharraf (despite the potential damage to her credibility) and wished for her electoral success.

Q&A: the murder of Benazir Bhutto

Times South Asia Correspondent asks who had most to gain from killing the Pakistan People's Party leader

Multimedia

• Video: Bhutto assassinated

• Bhutto: the background, legacy and life

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

Background

• Pakistan in chaos as Benazir Bhutto assassinated

• Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Main suspects

• Obituary: Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

• Can democracy survive Bhutto killing?

With so much riding on her, how was she left so exposed to assassination? Fingers have been pointed at Musharraf for, at a minimum, not protecting her better. But how did the Americans, or for that matter the British, allow her to return to Pakistan without a proper security team? After she was so nearly killed on the day of her homecoming, no lessons were learnt. The video footage of her last moments shows that the crowd was allowed to surge around her vehicle. The media were given access to her without their equipment being scanned.

Pakistan may be in turmoil now, but western foreign policy lies in tatters too. The extremists have been handed a propaganda coup and the Americans have no candidate left in the Pakistani elections, which may still be held just over a week from now. True, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s party may do well, perhaps better than if she were alive, but she was the party and her successor is unlikely to have her mass appeal and may have different policies.

Maybe western policy rested too much hope on Bhutto. She had left office during her second term as prime minister, accused of corruption. Her democratic credentials were therefore tarnished even before the recent pact with Musharraf. If the Americans had grown impatient with the Pakistani president’s failure to control terror at home or the export of fighters to the Taliban in Afghanistan, what hope was there that Bhutto would do better?

Had she won office, there is no certainty that she would have been a success. Her two administrations were fairly chaotic. She deserves huge credit for being the first woman leader of a Muslim country, but it seems unlikely that her authority over Pakistan’s armed forces could have exceeded that of the general in his prime. She argued that the restoration of democracy to Pakistan would deprive the extremists of legitimacy, but you would not want to bet too much on such wishful thinking.

America looks incompetent. It undermined its own plan by allowing Bhutto to be so easily killed and the plan was, in any case, half-baked.

Across the region, the policy of America and its allies looks muddled. In Iraq the American surge of troops into Baghdad has produced tangible improvements in security, but meanwhile Britain is hastening to withdraw from the south, leaving behind a messy situation.

In Afghanistan, the territory from which Al-Qaeda launched the September 11 attacks, the Nato alliance has fallen apart. While America and Britain are battling the Taliban, Germany and other European allies stand on the side-lines, apparently unconvinced that the war can be won. Gordon Brown told parliament earlier this month that we do not negotiate with the Taliban. Of course we do. It is a broad spectrum of forces and we engage with those that we hope to turn to support the Afghan government, as the American ambassador to Kabul confirmed last week.

The United States continues to denounce Iran for its moves towards acquiring nuclear weapons. What America can do about it, given the political capital that it has expended on Iraq, is unclear. But it is evident that the United States took no action while Pakistan built the first Muslim nuclear bomb. The father of that weapons programme, Dr A Q Khan, passed atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. His activities over many years must have been well known to the authorities or supported by them. Yet only five years after Musharraf came to power was Khan exposed. Then he was promptly pardoned. According to a report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Khan’s proliferation network remains in being.

It is naive to expect from the democracies a moral foreign policy or even absolute consistency. But glaring double standards supply easy propaganda to our enemies and make it much harder for the allies to win support from their electorates.

To his credit Tony Blair went on explaining his belligerent foreign policy in the teeth of mounting public opposition. Brown is happy to appear with the troops but uses the language of soft options. He speaks of the need to rebuild Afghanistan rather than the necessity of defeating the Taliban in battle and he has left the Iraqis to defend themselves. Those lines may make his life easier, but they fail to explain to the British public why the government thinks it worthwhile to expose our armed forces to great danger.

In Downing Street we have a new prime minister, one who steered clear of difficult foreign policy issues throughout the previous decade. In the White House George W Bush is discredited by the woeful blunders committed by Donald Rumsfeld. As Bhutto’s murder signals increased danger, on neither side of the Atlantic can we have much confidence in the foreign policy judgment of our elected leaders.

Even so, in the wake of Bhutto’s death, let me be unfashionable and praise politicians. She was a woman of extraordinary courage. She achieved huge success early in life. Later she settled into a relatively quiet existence with her young family and could have expected to live for many years. She put it all on the line by returning to Pakistan. The danger was fully apparent to her, all the more so after the bombs that massacred her supporters and so nearly killed her in October.

Her father was hanged, one brother was killed in a shootout and another died in murky circumstances, possibly poisoned. The Bhutto family had sacrificed enough. Some will say that ambition persuaded her to return. Perhaps it was more a sense of duty, or an anxiety to redeem herself following the allegations of corruption. Whatever it was, she was brave to campaign every day, knowing that any moment could be her last.

Other political dynasties have also paid an enormous price, such as the Kennedy family in America and the Gandhis in India. Margaret Thatcher nearly lost her life for resisting the IRA and Norman Tebbit’s wife Margaret was crippled in that attack on the Conservative party in Brighton. Blair could at any time have been an assassin’s target – indeed, could be still, given his role in Middle East peace-making.

As we enter 2008, the global political outlook is gloomy. But Bhutto’s death reminds us that there are men and women ready to stand for election and even lay down their lives. That gives me a kind of hope.

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