Clearly, the United States and England did not start out on a good note. Between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, we were shooting at each other, and I am sure more than a few vituperatives were hurled back and forth in the process. But as the decades swirled by, the common language, culture and ancestry brought our nations back together. Two alliances during the major world wars, joint causes over several conflicts (like Korea, notwithstanding a momentary glitch over a conflict over the Suez Canal in 1956, and later… maybe, Afghanistan) cemented what appeared to be unbreakable ties. Until now.
If crisis is a measure of the reliability of friendship, then a combination of al Qaeda-inspired conflict (and a couple of failing efforts thereafter), a collapsed global economy and an environmental disaster of unprecedented man-made proportions might just have forced a transition from UK-US lockstep friendship to a clear parting of the ways… that isn’t horrible, but it sure isn’t buddy-buddy anymore. The latest rift appears to have been a growing part of Europe’s attempts to aggregate economic power to neutralize the apparent hegemony of the American financial empire with a countervailing force – the European Union (and we know that France and Germany are having serious second thoughts about that, as their relative superior financial status is being dragged down by weakness in other euro economies like Greece and Spain).
But England isolated herself from the collapse of the euro by maintaining its own, and now equally underperforming, currency, the pound sterling. The U.K.’s growing rift with the United States is more than a dissatisfaction with her football (read: “soccer”) team’s abysmal performance in their recent World Cup appearance. With a new Conservative Party government replacing the Blair-Brown Labour Party governments that preceded, newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron seems hell-bent on undoing the perceived lackey status of London’s relationship with Washington on many levels. The June 26th Washington Post: “In supporting President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair created the perception that his country was America's ‘poodle.’ The ongoing British inquiry into the Iraq war has kept the perception alive, making it harder for Blair's successors to fully embrace American policy, even when they have wanted to.” Cameron’s new policy on Afghanistan – announced in the wake of a change in senior theater commanders and a growing belief that the war in that region is unwinnable – will withdraw all British forces (the second largest behind the U.S.) from Afghanistan within five years.
But the most recent rift has come in the Obama administration’s justifiable slam on British Petroleum’s massive ignorant and negligent destruction of the environment and the accompanying economies reliant on Gulf resources through its failed and massively leaking Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. That the Americans have pressured BP to cease dividends and establish a massive $20 billion escrow to begin to cover the damage has threatened the rather large contingent of U.K. pensioners who have relied on BP dividends and appreciation for the retirement.
The Post provides this typical British reaction: “In a recent column in the Daily Mail, Amanda Platell, a former aide to now British Foreign Secretary William Hague, wrote that ‘the way Tony Hayward has been vilified is a joke,’ referring to the BP chief executive who infamously noted that no one wanted the spill to end sooner than he did because he ‘want[ed his] life back.’… ‘If you don't recognize the special relationship is special to you, and if you don't know loyalty goes both ways and you've never had a better friend than Britain, then send our 10,000 troops home from Helmand immediately,’ Platell wrote, referring to a region of southern Afghanistan where British and American forces are fighting the Taliban.” Funny that notwithstanding al Qaeda attacks in London, the Afghan war effort seems to be perceived as simply an “American” conflict.
A black President is seen as lacking the connective tissue found between former U.S. Presidents and England: “The British press has also written that Obama has a special antipathy toward the country because his paternal grandfather was mistreated by British troops during Kenya's fight for independence. Then along came the oil spill… The polling firm YouGov reported earlier this month that 64 percent of the British people believe Obama's handling of the BP spill has weakened the countries' relationship. The poll was conducted as Hayward faced scolding questions on Capitol Hill.” The Post. But wait folks, there’s more.
Brits blame Wall Street, notwithstanding the clear complicity of U.K-based financial institutions (through which flowed 70% of major European deal traffic), for the global financial collapse. And the Obama administration’s attempt to balance its alliances globally has been met with cold resistance from the U.K. body politic: “But Obama, too, came into office with a foreign policy philosophy that sought to treat all countries equally under a shared set of international ‘rights and responsibilities.’ The approach has left not only the British among U.S. allies feeling less special than they once did… Earlier this year, the House of Commons’ foreign affairs committee issued a report concluding that the special relationship has lost its relevance.” < /SPAN>The Post.
In the G-20 talks in Toronto, the rift grows wider: the Brits want to contract and impose austerity measures to reduce debt; U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner thinks austerity could derail a nascent recovery and is pressing for more government spending, seeking a middle ground. “We have to find the right balance, and that balance is going to differ across countries. But I think you're going to see a strong commitment again by these major economies to do what is necessary to make sure that we are supporting recovery and getting that balance right,” Geithner said to the gathered world leaders on June 26th.
The British PM’s “on-the-side” meeting with President Obama at the sequential G-20/G-8 meetings may have produced some platitudes about U.S.-U.K. relations, but without the slightest doubt, these two nations no longer have remotely the same global alignment that most Americans have assumed. When PM Cameron makes his first official visit to the United States, currently slated for July 20th, it will be most interesting to see how he addresses that relationship to his own people and the British press. I suspect “warm and fuzzy” is no longer in the cards, replaced by serious pragmatism and a rougher alliance that we have had with England for a very long time.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment