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JULES EVANS, LONDON
THE END OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP?
It looks like one of the most controversial issues of the future British general election will be the UK’s relationship with the US.
For many British people, one of the most frustrating aspects of Tony Blair’s reign at Number 10 Downing Street has been his apparently knee-jerk support for US policies, whether it be his immediate support of US belligerence towards Saddam Hussein, or its more recent belligerence towards Iran over its nuclear programme. ‘Bush’s poodle’ was a popular epithet for describing him.
Blair, for his part, has always defended his shoulder-to-shoulder policy with the US. Firstly, we owe it to the US to stand by them, because they came to our aid in World War II, when Britain was fighting Germany on its own (during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), and subsequently helped bail Europe out with the Marshall Plan. And, in Blair’s own reign, the US reluctantly agreed to support Blair’s war against Milosevic in 1997, despite it being so remote from US interests. What kind of ally would the UK be if we persuaded the US to help us in our military offences, and then refused to help them in theirs?
Secondly, Blair worried that the US, without allies, could veer into a deeply destructive isolationism and unilateralism. Thus, he supported the US in its belligerence towards Iraq in an attempt to keep it within the framework of the UN and other post-WWII institutions.
That gamble notably failed, as the UN security council refused to support military action, so the military action took place without a UN mandate (as the war against Serbia did).
And in fact, the war in Iraq has gone so badly, that it became obvious to everyone that the US, with or without the UK, would have to pursue a more multilateral policy with regards to issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
So Blair seems to have got it wrong. He over-estimated the danger of the US turning into some kind of rampaging rogue state. There is a powerful force in domestic US politics which is in favour of more careful, multilateral foreign policy. He under-estimated this domestic force, and he over-estimated his own power over US foreign policy.
There is a growing feeling in the UK that, in so doing, he traded away Britain’s own national interests for nothing. What are we getting from this special relationship? Are we really getting any influence over US politics, for all the lives that British soldiers are giving? At the G8 Summit, we saw Bush call our prime minister over –“Yo, Blair”. Tony Blair then tried to get Bush to discuss international trade policy, which Blair had promised his people he would try to improve to make fairer to African nations. Bush barely listened, complaining instead that he was tired and wanted to go home. Such is the influence Blair wields.
Those vying to succeed Blair are already distinguishing themselves from his poodle policy. Earlier this month, David Cameron, the popular leader of the Conservative Party, made a speech criticizing Blair’s “slavish” policy towards the US. He said: “We have never, until recently, been uncritical allies of America . . . I worry that we have recently lost the art. I fear that if we continue as at present we may combine the maximum of exposure with the minimum of real influence over decisions. The sooner we rediscover the right balance the better for Britain and our alliance”.
His shadow education minister, the celebrity journalist Boris Johnson, went further, saying “Americans should stop treating this country like a vassal state, whose citizens can be whisked off for trial - without any evidence as to their crime - in the territory of the imperial power”. Johnson was criticizing a highly controversial extradition treaty which the UK signed with the US, which allows the US to whisk off British citizens to America, to be held in chains and cages while awaiting trial. The US, meanwhile, declined to ratify the treaty so we can’t do the same to American citizens.
The extradition of three UK bankers to the US earlier this year provoked a wave of public anger in Britain, with a motion even being put forward in the House of Lords that the US no longer be seen as a reliable legal environment to which one can safely extradite prisoners.
The Labour government has also, since Mr Cameron’s speech, moved to flex its puny muscles against US foreign policy. Lord Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor in the UK government, made a speech in the days following Cameron’s speech, in which he blasted Guantanamo Bay as a “shocking affront to the principles of democracy”, and called for the offshore prison to be closed.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who will likely succeed Blair as prime minister in the next 12 months, has yet to set out his stall on foreign policy, but it is likely to be less instinctively Atlanticist. Brown, even more than Blair, is a development wonk rather than a security wonk. His emphasis will be on reforming trade and fighting global warming – two issues where the US is not an ally, but an obstacle.
Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.
September 22, 2006
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