Opinion: The future of the special relationship
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I’ve never quite been able to disprove Lyndon LaRouche’s theory that the United Kingdom is the real hereditary enemy of the United States, so maybe I’m not the best person to track the supposed decline of the trans-Atlantic very special relationship. My first tip came during our ed board meeting with Conservative leader David Cameron, in the following exchange, which you have no doubt already read in our Primary Source:
David Cameron: I think one way — which we’ve suggested as an opposition party which I don’t think the government has fully taken up — is to involve Iraq’s neighbors in an international contact group. What we have had are these things called neighbor conferences, but we’d like to see a, you know, official permanent secretariat. Marjorie Miller: But how would you get the U.S. to sign onto that? We’re the ones who have resisted that. David Cameron: Well, I, I’m a huge believer in the Atlantic relationship. It runs through my DNA and the DNA of my party. But where we have um, disagreements, you know, things where you think things should be done differently, we should, you know, be straight and talk about it. And this is an area where we think the ideas in the Baker-Hamilton report need to be implemented. There needs to be a political solution, not just a military solution. Marjorie Miller: How would you be more effective than Tony Blair at influencing the U.S. on policy like that? David Cameron: Huh, I think, um, I think Tony Blair was right in emphasizing the importance of the Atlantic relationship like that. I think it is the most important relationship for Britain; it would be if I was Prime Minister. But I think it needs to be a relationship where we speak frankly, and where when we have things we think really need to be done, we talk about them. And I think there was a danger with Tony Blair where sometimes some of these points really weren’t raised enough. Marjorie Miller: So he didn’t stand up enough to Bush? David Cameron: Huh, I, you know, I don’t want to go off the record, ha ha. You know I think the special relationship... We are the junior partner, we’ll always be the junior partner. But it should be a relationship based on frankness, based on solidity rather than being too slavish about it. That’s what I’ve said in the past, that’s what... I’ve always thought Britain should be the U.S.’s best friend rather than the newest friend. The newest friend tells you things you want to hear; the best friend tells you things you need to hear.
Was this just posturing by a green-friendly, pro-NHS, government-can-be-your-friend Tory who’s under pressure to draw even the most minor distinction between his own positions and Labor’s? That’s what I thought, but this New York Review of Books story by Jonathan Freedland gave me the impression that current Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown was also drawing a bright line between himself and the White House (which would ironically undermine any plan by Cameron to make himself stand out, but also support the idea that there’s a shift toward independence across the pond). Here’s Freedland describing Brown’s meeting with President Bush at Camp David this summer:
Gone were the chinos, first names, and chummy informality of the Bush– Blair summits. At Brown’s request, prime minister and president wore suits and addressed each other formally. Brown wanted to convey that the relationship from now on would be strictly business. Brown’s inability to make smalltalk underlined that he did not want to be Bush’s buddy and that the ‘special relationship’ would be between Britain and the US rather than between Number Ten and the White House. As one of Brown’s allies remarked later: ‘It was fascinating to watch Gordon turn his pathologies into assets.’[3] Brown gave notice as well that he planned to continue the ongoing ‘drawdown’ of British troops from Iraq. Accordingly, September saw the British withdraw 550 men from Basra city, so that Britain’s entire presence in Iraq is now confined to Basra airport. More deeply, Brown conveyed an entirely different understanding of what he didn’t call the war on terror. Central to it is proving to world Muslim opinion that the West offers more hope than violent Islamism.[4] Hence Brown’s journey from Camp David to the United Nations, where he argued strongly for a blue-helmeted force in Darfur, armed with a muscular mandate, and for action on the Millennium Development Goals. Brown reckons that if the West is seen to be combating AIDS, poverty, and mass slaughter in Africa then the jihadists’ denunciations of the decadent imperialist powers will fall on increasingly deaf ears in the Muslim world.
Exhibit A in the case for Brown’s moving away from Bush (other than the force reduction in Iraq, of course, which I still think was just done to give Prince Harry an excuse for chickening out of his scheduled deployment) is the widely discussed comment that the Uniteds Kingdom and States would no longer be ‘joined at the hip,’ which was made by Foreign Office minister George Mark Malloch Brown — a man who really needs to be called by his full title(s), The Rt Hon. Lord George Mark Malloch Brown, Baron Malloch-Brown, KCMG, PC.
But on closer inspection, Malloch Brown’s comments refer more to his own hopes, and to Labor’s desparation to separate itself from the legacy of Tony Blair:
‘It is very unlikely that the Brown-Bush relationship is going to go through the baptism of fire and therefore be joined together at the hip like the Blair-Bush relationship was,’ he was reported as saying. ‘That was a relationship born of being war leaders together. ‘There was an emotional intensity of being war leaders with much of the world against them. That is enough to put you on your knees and get you praying together.’ He went on to speak of forging new links with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as with leaders in India and China. ‘You need to build coalitions that are lateral, which go beyond the bilateral blinkers of the normal partners,’ he added. ‘My hope is that foreign policy will become much more impartial.’
The NYROB‘s thesis also seems to put a lot of weight onto the following passage from a pre-Camp David OpEd Gordon Brown published in the Washington Post:
Foundations, trusts, civil society and civic organizations -- links and exchanges between schools, universities, museums, institutes, churches, trade unions, sports clubs, societies -- were all engaged. Those in newspapers, journals, cultural institutions, the arts and literature sought to expose the difference between moderation and violent extremism. So now, as then, the way ahead is to support all communities in developing a strong identity resistant to violent extremists trying to recruit vulnerable young people. We must undercut the terrorists’ so-called ‘single narrative’ and defeat their ideas. At home and abroad we must back mainstream and moderate voices and reformers, emphasizing the shared values that exist across faiths and communities. We must expose the contrast between great objectives to tackle global poverty and honor human dignity, and the evils of terrorists who would bomb and maim people irrespective of faith, indifferent to the very existence of human life.
This itself hardly a defiant declaration of independence, and it comes in the context of a yawnfest of historical proportions celebrating the great depth and passion of the Special Relationship.
My conclusion: No change in the special relationship. Sorry I doubted you, perfidious Albion. Send us your pounds. Hell, send us your Loonies!