Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Wed 10 Nov 2004 With Bush back, Blair begins the distancing FRASER NELSON
ON THE eve of the American presidential election, Tony Blair was preparing himself for a President John F Kerry. His briefing from the Foreign Office pointed to a defeat for the Republicans - which, his officials said, was probably a good thing. The Prime Minister listened to arguments about how he would work with Mr Kerry to remould a fresh US-Europe alliance, and win his own election easier without George W Bush as a political backdrop. Mr Bush, they argued, had become a liability. When the president breezed back into the White House, hearts sank across the British government. This is why, in spite of the bond between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, who meet tomorrow, the Atlantic alliance is crumbling behind the scenes. On the surface, the reverse seems true. For the last three years, we’ve seen nothing but unstinting British support for America. Deploying the Black Watch to central Iraq is an extraordinary act of solidarity. And for the last few weeks, Mr Bush has toured America boasting of his closeness with Mr Blair - shamelessly using him as a campaign tool, to prove that he does have friends in the world in spite of what nasty John Kerry says. "I was speaking to Prime Minister Blair only this morning," went one typical remark in Ohio. In Florida, he glowingly compared Mr Blair to Churchill. Every time he was accused of bullying unilateralism, Mr Bush said: "Tell that to my friend Tony." This all adds up to an almighty favour that the leader of the world’s last superpower owes to the householder of 10 Downing Street. But, to Mr Blair’s dismay, the White House has been frustratingly reluctant to pay out such credit. The war on terror was never a quid pro quo. Mr Blair instinctively sided with the US: the words "shoulder to shoulder" came from his lips only hours after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - British support was emphatic, and unconditional. When the Pentagon offered Britain an opt-out on the eve of war, saying American troops could take Iraq alone, Mr Blair refused. With the kind of clarity which often evades him in domestic affairs, he wanted to join a battle of right versus wrong. But he had credit to spend - and the Foreign Office decided that Mr Blair should use leverage with the White House to demand progress on the Middle East peace process, which Britain lacks the clout to pursue. And this would become the new British foreign policy. Rather than using its own diplomatic muscle, London would use its influence to steer the hand of a giant. It would become America’s First Friend. Three years on, there’s not much to show for this policy. The last time Mr Blair visited Mr Bush, the US president broke with decades of precedent by saying it was understandable for Israel to keep its illegal West Bank settlements. When Britain protested against US steel tariffs slapped on our exports, or President Bush’s decision to tear up the Kyoto climate-change treaty, the White House turned a deaf ear. While Mr Blair is philosophical, the Foreign Office is furious. The Bush administration is all give and no take, it argues - there’s no point building up "credit" with a White House which doesn’t pay out. The despair has spread to the Ministry of Defence. Four months ago Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, wrote to the Pentagon threatening to stop buying American goods unless Britain was allowed to share secrets in US military technology. The US refused - and, last month, Britain placed its biggest-ever military-truck order with a German rather than an American supplier. This was a taste of a far larger, and fundamental, defence decision which has profound implications. Britain is signing up to the Galileo project - a scheme run by the European Commission to ring the world with navigation satellites. Its sole purpose is to rival the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system, owned and run by the Pentagon. Anyone can use the Americans’ GPS, which today helps Londoners find the nearest taxi from their mobile phones, or helps Scottish truck drivers navigate without maps. But its military potential is the stake at the heart of NATO. The Iraq war proved that missiles and trucks can also use GPS - but this is too much for the French, Germans and Belgians to swallow. Jacques Chirac, president of France, says using GPS makes Europeans a "vassal" of America. Today, as armies around the world prepare for a digital revolution, they must also make their decision: which satellite platform to use? When China signed up to Galileo, it took shape as an un-American, almost anti-American, alliance. Time was when diplomacy decided strategic alliances between nations. Today, it’s technology - and the lack of co-operation between Whitehall and the US government has meant that Britain will throw in its lot with the Europeans. ALL this makes the Pentagon determined to share no military secrets with Britain: it fears - understandably - that such information will leak to its enemies. It sees NATO being replaced by a space-satellite alliance which runs from London to Beijing. Intelligence-sharing, long the bedrock of the UK-American alliance, may well be next. This happens because the American government contrasts what Mr Blair says with what his government is doing. It pays more attention to the deeds than to the words. And what when Mr Blair goes? Imagine a summit with Prime Minister Gordon Brown next to Mr Bush in the White House rose garden - it’s a difficult mental image to conjure. Even the Tories have started taking swipes at the US. So, no matter how much personal gratitude Mr Bush owes Mr Blair, their governments are moving away from each other: the next prime minister, from whichever party, will want to be far more critical towards Washington. Diplomatically, Britain and America stand united. Modern world history has been the story of dictators rising and English-speaking people uniting to defeat them. In each case, the only foreign ground permanently occupied is the graves of our fallen. But militarily, Britain is siding with Europe - having been reluctantly forced into this choice by the onset of a digital age. The remote-controlled armies of the future are too expensive for Britain to stand independently between the two. Mr Blair emphatically denies this in public, but is too clever a politician not to see what’s going on. With a decline in UK-US relations inevitable, he can afford to open up the distance he needs before election time. He has worked out by now that Britain can only ask for what the White House will deliver anyway: namely the Middle East peace process and helping AIDS-stricken Africa. If Mr Blair is lucky, Mr Bush - keen to be seen to have friends overseas - may drop his name into any popular policy which emerges. But the dreams of forcing Mr Bush’s hand have been shattered by years of experience. So once he comes back from Washington, Mr Blair may as well start actively to disagree with the American president, with next year’s general election in mind. He will start to make political distance. We can prepare ourselves for manufactured splits over the Kyoto treaty, which Mr Bush could not sign if he wanted to because the US Senate is implacably opposed to it. Perhaps, as a friend, Mr Bush will offer advance forgiveness for Mr Blair’s pre-election posturing - and profuse thanks for British troops in the Sunni Triangle. But the Black Watch’s service marks the end of an era unlikely to outlast Mr Blair.This article: http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=1296192004 Fraser Nelson: http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=230
ON THE eve of the American presidential election, Tony Blair was preparing himself for a President John F Kerry. His briefing from the Foreign Office pointed to a defeat for the Republicans - which, his officials said, was probably a good thing. The Prime Minister listened to arguments about how he would work with Mr Kerry to remould a fresh US-Europe alliance, and win his own election easier without George W Bush as a political backdrop. Mr Bush, they argued, had become a liability. When the president breezed back into the White House, hearts sank across the British government. This is why, in spite of the bond between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, who meet tomorrow, the Atlantic alliance is crumbling behind the scenes. On the surface, the reverse seems true. For the last three years, we’ve seen nothing but unstinting British support for America. Deploying the Black Watch to central Iraq is an extraordinary act of solidarity. And for the last few weeks, Mr Bush has toured America boasting of his closeness with Mr Blair - shamelessly using him as a campaign tool, to prove that he does have friends in the world in spite of what nasty John Kerry says. "I was speaking to Prime Minister Blair only this morning," went one typical remark in Ohio. In Florida, he glowingly compared Mr Blair to Churchill. Every time he was accused of bullying unilateralism, Mr Bush said: "Tell that to my friend Tony." This all adds up to an almighty favour that the leader of the world’s last superpower owes to the householder of 10 Downing Street. But, to Mr Blair’s dismay, the White House has been frustratingly reluctant to pay out such credit. The war on terror was never a quid pro quo. Mr Blair instinctively sided with the US: the words "shoulder to shoulder" came from his lips only hours after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - British support was emphatic, and unconditional. When the Pentagon offered Britain an opt-out on the eve of war, saying American troops could take Iraq alone, Mr Blair refused. With the kind of clarity which often evades him in domestic affairs, he wanted to join a battle of right versus wrong. But he had credit to spend - and the Foreign Office decided that Mr Blair should use leverage with the White House to demand progress on the Middle East peace process, which Britain lacks the clout to pursue. And this would become the new British foreign policy. Rather than using its own diplomatic muscle, London would use its influence to steer the hand of a giant. It would become America’s First Friend. Three years on, there’s not much to show for this policy. The last time Mr Blair visited Mr Bush, the US president broke with decades of precedent by saying it was understandable for Israel to keep its illegal West Bank settlements. When Britain protested against US steel tariffs slapped on our exports, or President Bush’s decision to tear up the Kyoto climate-change treaty, the White House turned a deaf ear. While Mr Blair is philosophical, the Foreign Office is furious. The Bush administration is all give and no take, it argues - there’s no point building up "credit" with a White House which doesn’t pay out. The despair has spread to the Ministry of Defence. Four months ago Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, wrote to the Pentagon threatening to stop buying American goods unless Britain was allowed to share secrets in US military technology. The US refused - and, last month, Britain placed its biggest-ever military-truck order with a German rather than an American supplier. This was a taste of a far larger, and fundamental, defence decision which has profound implications. Britain is signing up to the Galileo project - a scheme run by the European Commission to ring the world with navigation satellites. Its sole purpose is to rival the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system, owned and run by the Pentagon. Anyone can use the Americans’ GPS, which today helps Londoners find the nearest taxi from their mobile phones, or helps Scottish truck drivers navigate without maps. But its military potential is the stake at the heart of NATO. The Iraq war proved that missiles and trucks can also use GPS - but this is too much for the French, Germans and Belgians to swallow. Jacques Chirac, president of France, says using GPS makes Europeans a "vassal" of America. Today, as armies around the world prepare for a digital revolution, they must also make their decision: which satellite platform to use? When China signed up to Galileo, it took shape as an un-American, almost anti-American, alliance. Time was when diplomacy decided strategic alliances between nations. Today, it’s technology - and the lack of co-operation between Whitehall and the US government has meant that Britain will throw in its lot with the Europeans. ALL this makes the Pentagon determined to share no military secrets with Britain: it fears - understandably - that such information will leak to its enemies. It sees NATO being replaced by a space-satellite alliance which runs from London to Beijing. Intelligence-sharing, long the bedrock of the UK-American alliance, may well be next. This happens because the American government contrasts what Mr Blair says with what his government is doing. It pays more attention to the deeds than to the words. And what when Mr Blair goes? Imagine a summit with Prime Minister Gordon Brown next to Mr Bush in the White House rose garden - it’s a difficult mental image to conjure. Even the Tories have started taking swipes at the US. So, no matter how much personal gratitude Mr Bush owes Mr Blair, their governments are moving away from each other: the next prime minister, from whichever party, will want to be far more critical towards Washington. Diplomatically, Britain and America stand united. Modern world history has been the story of dictators rising and English-speaking people uniting to defeat them. In each case, the only foreign ground permanently occupied is the graves of our fallen. But militarily, Britain is siding with Europe - having been reluctantly forced into this choice by the onset of a digital age. The remote-controlled armies of the future are too expensive for Britain to stand independently between the two. Mr Blair emphatically denies this in public, but is too clever a politician not to see what’s going on. With a decline in UK-US relations inevitable, he can afford to open up the distance he needs before election time. He has worked out by now that Britain can only ask for what the White House will deliver anyway: namely the Middle East peace process and helping AIDS-stricken Africa. If Mr Blair is lucky, Mr Bush - keen to be seen to have friends overseas - may drop his name into any popular policy which emerges. But the dreams of forcing Mr Bush’s hand have been shattered by years of experience. So once he comes back from Washington, Mr Blair may as well start actively to disagree with the American president, with next year’s general election in mind. He will start to make political distance. We can prepare ourselves for manufactured splits over the Kyoto treaty, which Mr Bush could not sign if he wanted to because the US Senate is implacably opposed to it. Perhaps, as a friend, Mr Bush will offer advance forgiveness for Mr Blair’s pre-election posturing - and profuse thanks for British troops in the Sunni Triangle. But the Black Watch’s service marks the end of an era unlikely to outlast Mr Blair.This article: http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=1296192004 Fraser Nelson: http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=230
