The idea that Britain is somehow going against its own interests in
being too close to the US has been heard before, but here it is again in
Niall Ferguson's
article
in
The Spectator (registration required). I'm still not convinced.
The people who believe in the special relationship are 'a select number
of professional elites' : military men, those in the intelligence services,
city chaps who work for 'the bulge bracket Wall Street firms', some
academics 'especially (ahem) those recently lured away from Oxford and
Cambridge by their more generously endowed Ivy League competitors', summarized
as those 'flying on flatbeds across the Atlantic'. Well, I'm none of those
things, more a beneficiary of European economic integration and interested
in French culture and politics.
In contrast to '1917, when it seemed that Britain could not defeat Germany
without American financial and military support', ' by the time of the
second world war, it was a great deal less self-evident ... that the salvation
of the British empire lay in the hands of the United States. On the contrary,
Franklin Roosevelt made the break-up of our empire an explicit object of
American policy...' Bizarrely, US intervention is seen as more welcome
in 1917 than in 1941, when Britain's survival was at stake. Churchill was
right to sleep soundly on the night after Pearl Harbour.
Anyway, we don't want our empire back, do we ? Ferguson speaks of the
US in some instances being in competition against the waning British empire
(as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But, in the 1980s large Saudi defence contracts
went to the UK, as a sort of proxy for the US. As for Egypt, this is where
the argument gets really hard to follow. Presumably, he is talking about
the US block on British (and French and Israeli) actions over Suez, but
equally Eden, who saw Nasser as another Hitler, could be seen as a forerunner
of Bush and his attitude toward Saddam Hussein.
The interests of Britain (and Europe) surely converge in terms of values.
I won't say democracy or freedom, but pluralism, or to put it more bluntly,
belief in a system where people are not imprisoned or tortured or killed
for their beliefs. This surely is more important than the distinction between
Christian America and secular Europe that Ferguson dwells on. In more material
terms, Europe (and Japan etc) have an interest as much as the US
in not seeing the Middle East (and its oil) controlled by a ruthless dictator.
Of course, we could just allow the US to defend the values and interests
of the West. France and Spain do not suffer much from their positions.
But then one is reminded irresistibly of Orwell, in his essay on Kipling,
contrasting someone who 'at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility
are like' with 'a permanent and pensioned oppostion' whose 'quality of
thought deteriorates accordingly' and 'the one-eyed pacifism of the English..."making
mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep".'
In any case, Britain's foreign policy, apart from Iraq, has remained
aligned with that of the other major European countries. Mr Blair's address
to Congress in July 2003,('a masterpiece of flattery that was ...nauseating
to me') also contained these words : 'Iran and Syria, who give succour
to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realise that the world will
no longer countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be offered
them if they resile completely from this malice, but that if they do,
that hand will be there for them and their people;the whole of region
helped toward democracy.
And to symbolise it all, the creation of an independent, viable and
democratic Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel. '
Aside from the developments with Libya, Britain has stayed within the
position of the EU-3, along with France and Germany, on Iran, despite occasional
attempts by writers in The Guardian to suggest that Blair has detached
into a position of demanding 'regime-change'.
Staying on the subject of Iran, BBC WS reported that LibDem leader Charles
Kennedy has demanded that Tony Blair give a pledge at the next election
that there should be no attack on Iran. I don't think any British Prime
Minister could or should give any such assurance, not that I think there
is much likelihood that there will be any attack involving the UK, or the
US for that matter. Much more likely are Israeli air-strikes, with incalculable
consequences, we are told.
Vladimir Putin said that Russia would ditch the Bushehr project should
Iran breach any IAEA agreements (Reuters). It is not clear where Russia
stands on the key issue of uranium enrichment. Iran cannot be forced to
abandon this, but they might negotiate it, if the US (for example) showed
sufficient respect for their sovereignty and dignity.
Update (27 Sep) Still in The Spectator, the career of
Andrew Gilligan (diplomatic
and defence editor) is clearly flourishing post-Hutton. Funnily
enough, Mr Blair yesterday again refused to apologize for removing Saddam
Hussein.
Meanwhile, in the New Statesman there is an interview, or rather
a John Kampfner opinion piece interspersed with an interview
with Jack Straw (free when I accessed it).
