A British Prime Minister once claimed: “We take the same view in the United States and Britain that our first duty to freedom is to defend our own, and our second duty is to try somehow to enlarge the frontiers of freedom so that other nations might have the right to choose it.” That Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher, referring to the importance of the transatlantic alliance.
After 11th September 2001, the United States and Britain found the opportunity to rebuild the strength of the Anglo-American alliance once again. Tony Blair has attempted to pursue that path, yet in favouring EU-policy on a number of occasions, it is clear that Washington now feels snubbed writes James McConalogue.
In October, the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, Nile Gardiner, declared in The European Journal just how fundamental the US-UK special relationship is for British Conservatives. Dr. Gardiner cited the modern European predicament of extreme anti-American views in Europe where, apart from Britain, only Spain displays a more negative perception of the US. This needs to be countered in order to defend the US-UK alliance. Most European relationships being created to the detriment of the Anglo-American relationship, particularly since a developed EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) would force an effective end to that Anglo-American ‘special relationship’.
For Nile Gardiner, it is the Conservative Party which should properly defend the alliance, with a foreign policy vision based on the view that Britain, in alliance with America, is a major global player, with significant military and diplomatic clout that eclipses that of any other European country: in other words, a self-confident international power whose vision extends far beyond the narrow confines of the European Union. Accordingly, Gardiner holds that the Conservative Party’s role is ‘in cementing the transatlantic relationship’, not to follow the fashionable leftist anti-Americanism within the public culture, nor resign itself to simplistic anti-war positions on Iraq, global terror and the Israeli operations in Lebanon. Although the Conservative Party, its ideas and MPs, have tended to either say nothing on foreign policy or create utter confusion among policymakers in Washington, it has also become a major force in Britain which can cement the alliance (if it so chooses).
The Blairite rationale in foreign policy continues to be overwhelmingly European. On 13 November, Tony Blair gave his annual speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, in which he typically clarifies his foreign policy framework. In spite of all the subsequent media and public reflection on the speech, in which Blair declared that we must now have a ‘whole Middle East strategy’, there were no real surprises. To paraphrase, the Prime Minister simply asked for a global intervention in the Middle East, led within the framework of the American alliance, in addition to attempting to work with its European neighbours.
Blair seemed to prioritise the Anglo-American alliance in order to justify his further policies: to allow Iraq to soon self-determine its own governance, reforming Iran to initiate international nuclear obligations and start with the Israel-Palestinian conflict in order to resolve the warring Middle Eastern hysteria. Blair’s vision was clear on the importance of the Anglo-American alliance in basing a future foreign policy in Iraq: ‘Post 9/11, there were no half-hearted allies of America. There were allies and others. We were allies then and that’s how we should stay; and the test of any alliance, I’m afraid, is not when it’s easy but when it’s tough.’ To my knowledge, that pretty much reflected the New Labour foreign policy since it came to power in 1997. That all seemed fairly straightforward and offered a reasonable defence of New Labour policy in the Middle East. Yet, it all seemed overwhelmingly European.
The transatlantic alliance seemed to be upheld but it did not declare the balance the Labour government would make if it had to choose between the European alliance and the Anglo-American relationship. It seems quite clear that Blair will continue to sit on the fence.
His clear downfall in describing the modern world predicament is in labelling Euroscepticism as ‘foolish’ and then to suggest that the preference of alliances in Europe as being of equal or more value to the transatlantic relationship. Of course, it is the EU’s homogenous economic policy and encroaching bureaucratic politics that makes the Euro-alliance such a pitiful and fatigued one when stood up next to the transatlantic alliance. Yet it is still certain that Blair may not be aware that Washington has been snubbed when Europe has been favoured.
The worse-case scenario, that Blair has lost any influence over the US and the EU, is now very clear. Daniel Dombey of the Financial Times published an analysis at the end of the year on Blair’s lack of influence in Europe and beyond. Blair has no positive influence on Turkish membership of the EU or in EU financing of Abbas’ Palestine and, following a damning report from leading British think-tank (Chatham House), neither does Blair have any influence on US strategy in the Middle East. Mr. Dombey was polite in his observations that Blair’s view now carries very little weight in either the US or the EU: While the intractable nature of many of the region’s [Middle East] difficulties has disappointed the hopes of many statesmen before him, the gulf between the prime minister’s ambitions and his accomplishments are particularly striking.
If Blair does choose to preserve the special transatlantic relationship, he might do well to promote it well above any common market association within Europe. Regardless of whether Blair chooses this path, the Conservatives should set out to guide Britain through a clear path, defending the Anglo-American alliance.
By James McConalogue