Britain Debates New ‘Post-American’ Foreign Policy
As British Prime Minister David Cameron makes his first official visit to Washington, Britons are furiously debating Britain’s role in the world. It is an issue that has preoccupied the country’s elites since the British Empire irreversibly unraveled after the end of World War II. But the latest iteration of the debate is calling into question the very cornerstone of British foreign policy for more than 60 years, namely the Anglo-American “special relationship.”
The term “special relationship” was first coined by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during his “Iron Curtain speech” in March 1946. The term describes the unusually close political, military, diplomatic, cultural, and historical ties between the United States and Britain. Although both allies maintain close relationships with other countries, the level of bilateral cooperation in military operations planning, nuclear weapons technology, and intelligence gathering and sharing is unparalleled in modern history.
The United States and Britain have both benefited handsomely from the relationship. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, Britain has been an invaluable bridge between the United States and Europe, and Washington has long valued London’s role in mediating relations between the two continents. At the same time, Britain has secured not only military protection, but also the ability to exert an influence in international affairs far beyond its fading status as an imperial power.
But now a growing number of voices, primarily among the anti-American British left, are calling for Britain to reassess its close relationship with the United States. Many are still fuming over former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Others are wondering what Britain is actually gaining from the relationship at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama is perceived to have already downgraded it to the level of a “special partnership.”
Many left-wingers want to carve out a new role for Britain as a post-modern pacifist “soft-power” great power. Former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband, for example, has tried to recast Britain as a “global thought leader.” Others say Britain should become a “global hub” in the fight against climate change. A British think tank recently sponsored a conference titled “Rethinking the UK’s International Ambitions and Choices.” The conference was tasked with “assessing the UK’s international priorities and the policy choices it faces in matching its ambitions, interests and resources, providing the context in which the UK government can make informed decisions about its international policies and resource investments.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, in his first major speech since taking office in May, recently outlined his government’s long-term vision for Britain’s role in the world. He promised a sweeping overhaul of British foreign policy aimed at expanding the country’s “global reach and influence” to every inhabited continent.
Speaking at the Foreign Office in London, Hague said that if Britain wants to maintain its influence in a changing world, it will have to move beyond its special relationship with the United States and forge new strategic alliances around the globe.
In the speech, Hague said: “Our new government’s vision for foreign affairs is this: A distinctive British foreign policy that is active in Europe and across the world; that builds up British engagement in the parts of the globe where opportunities as well as threats increasingly lie; that is at ease within a networked world and harnesses the full potential of our cultural links, and that promotes our national interest while recognizing that this cannot be narrowly or selfishly defined.”
To really understand where Britain is heading, you should read an essay by Daniel Greenfield on his blog, SULTAN KNISH, “British is the New Un-British, Islam is the New British.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/07/british-is-new-un-british-islam-is-new.html
Formerly Great Britain is going down the toilet of leftist, multiculturalist, politically correct insanity. Not a day goes by that you don’t read about some bizarre incident which illustrates how Britain is sinking like the Titanic, betrayed by her political, intellectual, & cultural elites.
What is happening in Britain should serve as a warning to Americans.
“But now a growing number of voices, primarily among the anti-American British left, are calling for Britain to reassess its close relationship with the United States. Many are still fuming over former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Others are wondering what Britain is actually gaining from the relationship at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama is perceived to have already downgraded it to the level of a “special partnership.”
What I’m wondering is why the United States never seems to want to “reassess” its relationship with the rest of the world? Why is it that we have a fetish for going into wars in a “multinational” way? For example, after we were attacked on 9/11, why were we so concerned about obtaining our allies’ approval for invading Afghanistan? Why did we really care what anybody thought about the invasion? We had the resources and the manpower to invade the country on our own. We should have done that, killed (not captured, killed) as many al Qaeda and Taliban as we could find, install a government friendly to the United States, AND THEN LEFT THE COUNTRY.
We could have done all of that on our own, without the “approval” from anyone, be it our allies or the United Nations. It would have sent a message to our enemies that this was our fight and our punitive expedition to punish and crush the people responsible for 9/11. We should have thrown ALL of our resources into the fight, installed an interim Afghan government (probably consisting of the members of the Northern Alliance, the people who helped us during the invasion), and then left, leaving the Afghans to figure out what they wanted to do with their own country. If they wanted to live in the 15th Century, swell. It’s not our problem. If the wanted to treat their own women like cattle, not really our problem. If they even wanted to bring back the Taliban after we decimated their ranks, bringing back their horrific form of governing, that’s their choice. AS LONG AS THEY DIDN’T ALLOW AL QAEDA TO COME BACK AND TRAIN TO ATTACK THE UNITED STATES, who cares who runs Afghanistan or how it’s run?
Allies only matter if you go down that horrible road called “nation building.” Then you’re really screwed, simply because you are now making a generational commitment to the country you’ve just invaded. Then you’re going to need all the help you can get because the costs are going to skyrocket over the coming years. And with these “alliances” always comes having the added pain of having to do everything in a “multinational” way, getting everybody’s approval to do just about everything. In that type of environment, nothing gets done (just look at the United Nations if you don’t believe me).
Had we just treated Afghanistan as our own fight, crushed the enemy, and then left, it would have sent a more potent message to that part of the world than staying in that country and just looking like another western occupying force.
Libertyship46 for President!!!! A couple of years ago, I read a comment by an American writing under the non-de-plume Curtis Le May. His policy was “rinse-and-rinse again”. You bombed them till they stopped doing whatever they were doing and bombed them again if they restarted. If only he had been president!
Well, part of the reason why we got them into the war with us is because of NATO. It states that an attack on one member nation is an attack on all member nations. When we were attacked on 9/11 and 3000 people were murdered, we went into Afghanistan because that’s where the attacks were planned and thats where UBL was hiding alon with the rest of Al-Qaida. We went into Iraq because we had reason to believe Saddam Hussein was in possession or developement of nuclear weapons and was supporting the terrorist group. Now, Iran is obviously doing what we thought Iraq was doing in 2003, so why we aren’t in Iran already is really baffling to me. Especially considering we have troops on both sides of Iran that could be used to stop Iran (the supporter and instigator of terrorism.)
Unless he’s speaking in code words, this is a non-issue. Since when does the U.S. interfere in Great Britain’s relationshisps with India, Brazil, or China? Maybe in recent decades they didn’t see any need to put more effort into international diplomacy and now they do, but the article doesn’t explain the reason for the change or why the change has anything to do with us.
You’ve got to remember that although it’s a “special relationship”, it’s still very much an unequal relationship, and that’s what most Brits resent (heck, anyone would). For every one hard-fought diplomatic favour, or stance on an issue proposed by the UK, the UK is automatically expected to agree, without question, to a whole truck-load of self-serving US-led initiatives. On top of that this agreement is almost universally taken for granted in the US – particularly in Washington, apart from in the odd joint press conference where the usual eye rolling lip service is made to it. Or indeed, in news articles on this issue, where the usual surprised, sometimes condescending American response is “How dare they, after all we’ve done for them!”.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-American, nor a liberal, nor anti-special relationship. On the contrary, with so much shared history, shared values and common enemies, I agree with this article that ties should be strengthened…just more balanced ties.
In any case, with Barry in charge, can you blame us wanting distance?
Uh, interesting article. But aren’t you forgetting the great strides in rapprochement with the UK that Obama has made since attaining office? I don’t think this chilling is a one-sided affair.
With this twit as the American President I think the Western World has to seriously evaluate its ties with what has become an unreliable and untrustworthy ally. With someone more interested in optics and politics than survival it’s is a receipt for disaster and a disaster for anyone that relies on this America.
My son lives in and is an Australian citizen and works in the Financial Industry. His comment to me the other day was you can’t believe the number of Americans that are investing here. They seem to be buying anything they can get their hands on to even out the risk they see at home. I wonder if the O Ring won’t be forced to implement the tried and true socialist tatic of restricting foreign investment to stem the out flow of cash? Money really does talk, with its feet.
Britain couldn`t `foreign policy` itself out of a stick of cotton candy. They still drive on the wrong side of the road…
My politics are to the right of the centre, here in Canada, and frankly a lessening of dependence on the US is a good idea.
If you check the blog, and columns of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the international business editor of the Telegraph, you will find calls for an expanded sterling zone based upon free trade between the most powerful members of the British Commonwealth.
For, remember, part of the reason why the world is in the mess it’s in, is because of the selling of sub-prime mortgage backed securities around the globe which are worth much less than what they were sold for.
So, keep that in mind.
As for the examples of Great Britain playing a larger role in the EU, it is up
against this: The EU can be reformed to the same extent as the UN. In other words, not at all.
Down with the Special Relationship
When I lived in Washington DC I tried for many months to find the famous ‘Special Relationship’ which I had heard so much about back home. It was not there. I could find nobody, including our then Ambassador, who admitted its existence.
What was more, I noticed that my country was pretty unloved in the American capital, despite the increasingly shabby and embarrassing Winston Churchill and/or Margaret Thatcher cults common among a certain type of American.
In fact I was later able to witness, at very close quarters, the complete diplomatic defeat of Britain in Washington by the tiny Irish Embassy. Bear in mind here that the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue is a relic of Imperial grandeur, both magnificent and huge. The Ambassador’s residence, a fine piece of Lutyens in a sort of semi-country-house style, is a rather melancholy reminder that we were once great. The nearby Embassy buildings, though architecturally frightful, are large and suggest (correctly) that Britain maintains a very large staff here, much of it devoted to military and intelligence cooperation, or attempts at cooperation.
Yet, during 1994 and 1995, this whole apparatus knew less about the White House and its intentions than the Irish, and was quite unable to win a diplomatic battle over what amounted to American recognition of the Provisional IRA as a negotiating partner.
I was once phoned up by a White House official who had become aware that I was writing uncomplimentary articles about this. She wanted to brief me into softening my views. But she wrecked the whole thing by comparing Bill Clinton’s intervention on the side of Gerry Adams with his involvement in Yugoslavia.
‘So’, I said to her ‘You regard Britain, your wartime ally, a sovereign democracy with a thousand years of history, the origin of your own constitution, as the equivalent of Serbia?’
She went very quiet. Because in fact that is exactly how the White House then regarded Britain, and I should think is pretty much as the White House regards us now.
This was nothing new. There’s a very good scene in Ian Curteis’s excellent Falklands Play (still yet to be broadcast on BBC1 or BBC2), during which Margaret Thatcher goes intercontinental when Al Haig suggests that the US ought to be even-handed between Britain and Argentina.
And it’s been clear for ages that, in its desire to have a ‘single phone number’ when dealing with what some Americans refer to as ‘Yerp’, the US State Department has been anxious to cram Britain into a European Superstate. In fact it’s often been suggested that the CIA has been involved in various backstairs pro-EU campaigns in the past. I’ve never been quite sure how the various neo-conservative admirers of the USA, Eurosceptics to a man, cope with Washington’s strong pro-Brussels policies. I expect they just ignore them.
Now, I love the USA as much as many and more than most. I’m glad it’s there. If we can’t be top nation any more (and we can’t), I’m glad it’s the USA that has taken over the position. But I won’t get sentimental about it. They don’t. The American national anthem is an anti-British song about the Royal Navy’s bombardment of Baltimore, in which the presence of British soldiers on American soil is referred to as ‘their foul footsteps’ pollution’. At the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia (to whose foyer I was once admitted) stands a statue of Nathan Hale, America’s first spy, hanged by…us, the British. American schoolbook history is full of dubious stuff about British oppression of the Colonists, and many Americans believe the sort of tripe encapsulated in Mel Gibson’s appalling film ‘The Patriot”, in which British officers are portrayed as being more or less like the Nazis. Meanwhile the cruel and intolerant treatment of the very large numbers of pro-British loyalists left in the USA after the revolutionary war is forgotten. Canada, where they mostly fled, is their memorial.
More recently, it was our ally the USA which ended British naval supremacy (and in effect put a stop to our Asian Empire) with the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. This was in truth the moment at which the British Empire was finished, though we had to go through several defeats before we believed it. And of course there was the desperate indebtedness of Britain to the USA after the Second World War, which enabled Washington to demand the dismantling of the Empire in return for aid.
Not to mention Suez, where the US Sixth Fleet actively harassed British warships on their way to Egypt, and President Eisenhower threatened us with bankruptcy if we didn’t withdraw.
Well, that’s all right. Why should it be otherwise? America’s accession to the topmost rank could only have come at our expense. America’s interests are different from ours. Nations don’t have eternal friendships, as Palmerston long ago pointed out.
But in that case isn’t it time we stopped the pretence, which survives only in London, that we are somehow specially close to the Americans? Mightn’t we actually get more out of them, and have a more healthy relationship, if we rather more frequently told them we were not doing as they wished?
France, through stroppiness and refusal to cooperate with the USA, has probably received just as much military help and support from Washington as we have, if not more, and its nuclear forces are more independent than ours.
Now here’s an opportunity to declare independence, as we might put it. The miserable behaviour of the British government, in ordering the suppression of a British court judgement on the allegations that Binyam Mohamed, is deeply embarrassing to anyone who believes either in truth or in national sovereignty. Our judges cannot say what they wish, apparently, because of a fear that we will then be denied US intelligence cooperation.
Then let it be so. I am sure that no American judge would be silenced by British government threats of this kind, even if they had any substance to them. The case of Mr Mohamed isn’t even the point. The point is, do we run our affairs or not? And if the answer is that we cannot run them without annoying the Americans, then let us annoy the Americans. What good has our slavish following of US policy in Iraq or Afghanistan actually done us, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan? I am told that relations between the two militaries are now poorer than they were before, which isn’t much of an achievement. If this is what being special involves, I would rather not be special any more.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/02/down-with-the-special-relationship.html
Special relationship? America’s still itching to bash us in the snoot
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1286128/Special-relationship-Americas-itching-bash-Britain-snoot.html
I have spent the last nine years defending the US to my mostly anti-American compatriots here in London. I won’t be bothering to do that much longer. Not only is the US racing towards the precipice of bankruptcy at breakneck speed, its citizens seem to be very content with their vast social programs and their very much compromised ‘capitalist’ system of government/business. I was happy to see David Cameron take the role of equal when he met Barack Obama- not because Britain is as powerful as the US, but because playing obedient puppy to the last two presidents has gotten British Prime Ministers nothing but insults, disdain and vastly reduced poll ratings.
I am happy to see Britain distance itself from the US, which is increasingly irrelevent round the world and definitely not a trustworthy ally.
Its about time the UK decoupled itself from the anti British, anti Western Democracy, antisemitic,anti White, RACIST, Debt Ridden, soon to be THIRD World, pathetically self apologetic, Dictator and Theocratic Dictator KOW TOWING, soon to be Non Nuclear, RACIST Black and MOHAMMEDAN led extreme SOCIALIST REGIME of the USA.
There are far more important, dynamic, self respecting and powerful countries in the World now China, India and the emerging Iran to name but a few to continue to align ourselves with the fast declining RACIST, Mohammedan, erstwhile Financial Empire building and soon to be bankrupt, fast FAILING “has beens” of the USA.
Nation states use each other, they always have and they always will. Ally today, adversary tomorrow.
If I was an American I wouldn’t be that impressed by Britain these days. In real terms the U.K. is still in decline in relation to its competitors. The fact that 324 soldiers have died in Afghanistan shows that we are paying a very high price for being a “junior partner” and getting very little respect for it. There is a perception that Britain was useful to Bush but Obama is not interested. That is a salutary lesson for the left!
The relationship between Britain and the U.S experienced a positive blip from WW2-end of the Cold War but is now returning to the default setting which is friendly but a bit more distanced. On the other hand personal and business relations remain very strong. Most Americans do probably see us as part of “yerp” but we ordinary folk just don’t see ourselves that way!
Well, its all very interesing. But allow me to question the historical meaning of the so called “special relationship”.
Take a look at this short documentary called the special relatinoship is for traitors: http://larouchepac.com/node/14915
It condenses quite well all of the historical facts that allow to challenge
a fond meaning to the British-USA relationship.
Frame it however you want. The fact is we were always there for “allies”, but when we need them, its weasel out time.
No need to get tetchy, old boy, just because your own day in the sun is setting rapidly. Comfort yourself with the fact that whereas the British left a legacy throughout their colonies of good governance, fair play and excellent ball sports, America will leave a legacy of Hamburger joints, Coke signs and very large holes in the ground.
as an american i have to agree with you.
go to former british colonies, and your traditions
permeate the place. what does america have to show
for itself in other countries? mcdonalds, tobacco
and armaments.