skunk
Jun 8, 2007, 03:10 PM
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/matthew_norman/article2631308.eceMatthew Norman: The special relationship is a sad joke
In return for destroying himself by joining the Iraq invasion, Mr Blair has received less than nothing
Published: 08 June 2007
To the last, he sustains the fantasy with a crazed fortitude verging on the heroic. Admittedly, Tony Blair has downgraded his bullishness day by day, his early week certainty gradually giving way to cautious optimism that he will, by the end of the G8 summit, have persuaded George Bush to make a meaningful commitment to reduce US carbon emissions. Yet still, at the eleventh hour and 59th minute of his period in office, with the removal vans literally outside No 10, he continues chirpily to insist that he has real leverage with the President of the United States.
That Mr Bush has no intention of making such a commitment, and that the entire world understands this, is irrelevant. After all, Mr Blair understands it better than anyone, because however delusional we may think him, he is neither an imbecile nor an amnesiac. He knows that the US refusal to enter a binding agreement without China is a de facto veto on specific targets to cut emissions, since China is no more prepared to subdue its economic growth than America.
The conceit that the Big Oil front man gives a toss about climate change isn't worth bothering with. Nor will Mr Blair have forgotten the results of all previous efforts to cajole Mr Bush into doing the right thing, most notably regarding a more even-handed approach to the Palestinians. In return for destroying himself by joining the invasion of Iraq, Mr Blair has received less than nothing. He couldn't even dissuade the President from imposing damaging steel tariffs on the EU.
Yet the charade that the British PM has serious influence in Washington must be sustained in the interest of the "special relationship", even now, when the salient points of this phantasmal entity's history have become so familiar that they feel like old, and rather tedious, friends.
Even before Churchill coined the phrase in 1946, the US had struck a hard bargain in return for lend-lease, and sent battleships to Cape Town to collect British gold in part settlement of the debt. This brutal, almost Mafiosi expression of power set the tone for all that followed. As Andrew Marr recounted in his BBC2 series, when the summary withdrawal of American aid propelled Britain towards post-war bankruptcy, Attlee sent Milton Friedman to Washington to beg an interest-free loan of $8bn. All the US gave him was $4bn, with interest. We made the last repayment only late last year.
So it went on. While Germany and Japan paid for their aggression with booming economies, Britain, economically ravaged by two world wars, had no choice but to yield sovereignty, allowing US air bases on its soil and nuclear submarines in its waters, becoming a kind of client kingdom in return for sporadic and costly US economic assistance.
The first attempt at major independent military action ended the moment Eisenhower expressed his understandable fury over Suez. When the next came, Reagan remained studiedly neutral in public over the Falklands. In between, the absolute reliance on US support to keep sterling from collapsing prevented Harold Wilson condemning the Vietnam war, to the dismay of naïve colleagues who affected not to appreciate what an epic achievement it was to avoid sending British troops.
As the senior State Department adviser, Kendall Myers, pointed out a few months ago, there never was a special relationship ("or at least not one we noticed"), and the myth has now completed its mutation into a sad joke. Soon after Britain signed a wilfully unequal extradition treaty that saw us handing over the NatWest Three without a shred of prima facie evidence of any crime, the Pentagon contemptuously disdained the inquests into the friendly fire killing of Lance-Corporal Matty Hull, threatening to prosecute papers that published transcripts of the cockpit recordings it had to hand over.
So much for the potted history of the "special relationship", but what of its future? With opinion polls capturing the British public's fatigue at the obeisance (64 per cent believe our future lies more with Europe, according to Populus, and an almost identical number want Anglo-American ties loosened), it seems expedient for Gordon Brown to waste no time easing Downing Street out from "right up the White House's arse", to borrow the navigational instruction to Christopher Meyer when he became Ambassador in Washington.
Obviously this needn't involve re-enacting the Love Actually scene where Hugh Grant tells the President to bugger off, pleasing as that would be, let alone the subplot of A Very British Coup, in which leftie PM Harry Perkins peremptorily tells the Americans to remove their air bases and finds alternative funding from the Kremlin.
All it means is publicly acknowledging the realpolitik that Britain, far from close to bankruptcy any more, has nothing to gain from ingratiation, because the Americans have never given us a carrot for it, and they never will; and that national self-interest demands not supplication but the sort of candour and independence that may begin the arduous process of rebuilding Britain's reputation.
Brown could easily send out a message within weeks of taking office. He could repeal that extradition treaty, and request the return of the Nat West Three pending hard evidence that they committed anything that constitutes a crime in Britain. He could pop into the Larry King studio en route to the Oval Office, and spell out the danger inherent in America failing to cut oil use in the vague hope that some miraculous technological advances arrives, like some hydrogen-based deus ex machina, to make everything all right. He could even ask the Americans to reverse their desecration of Grosvenor Square, where the concrete ramps, steel railings and Portakabins stretch ever further from the embassy building to paint a depressing, hideous portrait of arrogant colonial might.
He'll do no such thing, of course. The idea is almost as fantastical as the special relationship itself because, apart from his innate caution, Gordon is at least as fervent an Atlantacist as Mr Blair, and seems no less convinced that Britain's play-acting at being a major power depends as much on subservience to Washington as the permanent seat on the UN Security Council and the shamefully profligate decision to upgrade Trident.
So it won't be long before he's standing beneath the imperial eagle at one of those twin lectern White House press conferences, intoning: "Mr President, I'm sure you know how deeply we value the special relationship between our great nations." And when Mr Bush reciprocates the sentiment, his valiant fight to suppress the scornful Frat Boy smirk will be all the carefully nuanced commentary this outmoded ritual strictly demands.Sad but true.
In return for destroying himself by joining the Iraq invasion, Mr Blair has received less than nothing
Published: 08 June 2007
To the last, he sustains the fantasy with a crazed fortitude verging on the heroic. Admittedly, Tony Blair has downgraded his bullishness day by day, his early week certainty gradually giving way to cautious optimism that he will, by the end of the G8 summit, have persuaded George Bush to make a meaningful commitment to reduce US carbon emissions. Yet still, at the eleventh hour and 59th minute of his period in office, with the removal vans literally outside No 10, he continues chirpily to insist that he has real leverage with the President of the United States.
That Mr Bush has no intention of making such a commitment, and that the entire world understands this, is irrelevant. After all, Mr Blair understands it better than anyone, because however delusional we may think him, he is neither an imbecile nor an amnesiac. He knows that the US refusal to enter a binding agreement without China is a de facto veto on specific targets to cut emissions, since China is no more prepared to subdue its economic growth than America.
The conceit that the Big Oil front man gives a toss about climate change isn't worth bothering with. Nor will Mr Blair have forgotten the results of all previous efforts to cajole Mr Bush into doing the right thing, most notably regarding a more even-handed approach to the Palestinians. In return for destroying himself by joining the invasion of Iraq, Mr Blair has received less than nothing. He couldn't even dissuade the President from imposing damaging steel tariffs on the EU.
Yet the charade that the British PM has serious influence in Washington must be sustained in the interest of the "special relationship", even now, when the salient points of this phantasmal entity's history have become so familiar that they feel like old, and rather tedious, friends.
Even before Churchill coined the phrase in 1946, the US had struck a hard bargain in return for lend-lease, and sent battleships to Cape Town to collect British gold in part settlement of the debt. This brutal, almost Mafiosi expression of power set the tone for all that followed. As Andrew Marr recounted in his BBC2 series, when the summary withdrawal of American aid propelled Britain towards post-war bankruptcy, Attlee sent Milton Friedman to Washington to beg an interest-free loan of $8bn. All the US gave him was $4bn, with interest. We made the last repayment only late last year.
So it went on. While Germany and Japan paid for their aggression with booming economies, Britain, economically ravaged by two world wars, had no choice but to yield sovereignty, allowing US air bases on its soil and nuclear submarines in its waters, becoming a kind of client kingdom in return for sporadic and costly US economic assistance.
The first attempt at major independent military action ended the moment Eisenhower expressed his understandable fury over Suez. When the next came, Reagan remained studiedly neutral in public over the Falklands. In between, the absolute reliance on US support to keep sterling from collapsing prevented Harold Wilson condemning the Vietnam war, to the dismay of naïve colleagues who affected not to appreciate what an epic achievement it was to avoid sending British troops.
As the senior State Department adviser, Kendall Myers, pointed out a few months ago, there never was a special relationship ("or at least not one we noticed"), and the myth has now completed its mutation into a sad joke. Soon after Britain signed a wilfully unequal extradition treaty that saw us handing over the NatWest Three without a shred of prima facie evidence of any crime, the Pentagon contemptuously disdained the inquests into the friendly fire killing of Lance-Corporal Matty Hull, threatening to prosecute papers that published transcripts of the cockpit recordings it had to hand over.
So much for the potted history of the "special relationship", but what of its future? With opinion polls capturing the British public's fatigue at the obeisance (64 per cent believe our future lies more with Europe, according to Populus, and an almost identical number want Anglo-American ties loosened), it seems expedient for Gordon Brown to waste no time easing Downing Street out from "right up the White House's arse", to borrow the navigational instruction to Christopher Meyer when he became Ambassador in Washington.
Obviously this needn't involve re-enacting the Love Actually scene where Hugh Grant tells the President to bugger off, pleasing as that would be, let alone the subplot of A Very British Coup, in which leftie PM Harry Perkins peremptorily tells the Americans to remove their air bases and finds alternative funding from the Kremlin.
All it means is publicly acknowledging the realpolitik that Britain, far from close to bankruptcy any more, has nothing to gain from ingratiation, because the Americans have never given us a carrot for it, and they never will; and that national self-interest demands not supplication but the sort of candour and independence that may begin the arduous process of rebuilding Britain's reputation.
Brown could easily send out a message within weeks of taking office. He could repeal that extradition treaty, and request the return of the Nat West Three pending hard evidence that they committed anything that constitutes a crime in Britain. He could pop into the Larry King studio en route to the Oval Office, and spell out the danger inherent in America failing to cut oil use in the vague hope that some miraculous technological advances arrives, like some hydrogen-based deus ex machina, to make everything all right. He could even ask the Americans to reverse their desecration of Grosvenor Square, where the concrete ramps, steel railings and Portakabins stretch ever further from the embassy building to paint a depressing, hideous portrait of arrogant colonial might.
He'll do no such thing, of course. The idea is almost as fantastical as the special relationship itself because, apart from his innate caution, Gordon is at least as fervent an Atlantacist as Mr Blair, and seems no less convinced that Britain's play-acting at being a major power depends as much on subservience to Washington as the permanent seat on the UN Security Council and the shamefully profligate decision to upgrade Trident.
So it won't be long before he's standing beneath the imperial eagle at one of those twin lectern White House press conferences, intoning: "Mr President, I'm sure you know how deeply we value the special relationship between our great nations." And when Mr Bush reciprocates the sentiment, his valiant fight to suppress the scornful Frat Boy smirk will be all the carefully nuanced commentary this outmoded ritual strictly demands.Sad but true.
