The latest Afghan debacle has perhaps once again shown how an over dependence on US fire power alone is one thing. When combined with an over reliance on changeable political commitment and changeable political will it is a very unstable base for a relationship, special or otherwise.
The origins of the Afghan disaster pre date the Donald J Trump Presidency, dating back to the point when the US (and her Allies led by Tony Blair, effectively a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq) decided to invade Iraq leaving the non nation building mission in Afghanistan unfinished and the Afghan people at the start of a slippery slope to the Taliban being back in charge. All the rest as they say is history.
Despite the impression given by the Anglo Brit Atlanticist elite, the USA’s oldest ally is actually France, not the UK, they backed (for their own reasons the USA in its struggle with the Brits. The Westminster elite from time to time display's an almost desperate desire to retain a publicly perceptible closeness to US interests something that is barely concealed beneath the ever so thin veneer of so called 'special relationship '.
This special relationship is worth exploring as it explains many of the decisions (and the consequences of decisions) taken over the last 60 years and much hangs on it for good or for ill post Suez and post BREXIT. This relationship in its current form largely exists in as a direct result of the British defeat at Suez and it’s consequences. Thwarted by the USA, the Franco-British-Israeli alliance of convenience broke up with a degree of bitterness - which fed the historic French distrust of perfidious Albion.
After a brief sulk - the Brits and the French then made two very different decisions, the French decided to pursue and independent foreign policy (and an independent nuclear deterrent), if from time to time French and US interests were the same, all well and good, if not then tough - French interests would always prevail even if they put France at odds with the USA. So ever since the French are from time to time sometimes standing with the USA, and sometimes not.
This side of La Manche, the Brits made a very different decision, British and US interests it was decided would remain forever intrinsically linked - where the US went so would the Brits regardless. This was despite (in not because) of the threat of economic dislocation used by the US to effectively engineer the removal of Anthony Eden. The USA had far financial leverage with the Brits and made good use of it, All the rest is spin.
In the late 1960's Harold Wilson, publicly (and privately) refused to commit Brit military assets to the on-going war in Vietnam. This reality was that this decision was carefully cleared in advance by Wilson with Washington (who cut the PM some slack) and was taken purely and simply for domestic political reasons rather than being a matter of high moral principal. All the rest is spin.
When Edward Heath was PM, and President Nixon was in the White House, Anglo-US relations cooled significantly - it was during this period that the UK entered the EEC - such perhaps was the PM’s rumoured indifference to the special relationship that drove this change, along with political expediency and economic necessity. He was the only PM not to actively pursue the White House lawn photo with the incumbent President, every other PM has sought their moment in the media spotlight in Washington DC.
The post war so-called special relationship was originally founded from combination of desperation, expediency, misunderstanding, and post war debt management. At the heart of the relationship there lies a fundamental misunderstanding of US history and society which remains to this day.
It's based from the start on a simple but fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of America. In the 19th and 20th centuries the Brit elite imagined that the Americans were basically trans Atlantic English people ( Personified as 'Brother Jonathan' so beloved by 19th century Brit cartoonists especially in Punch magazine ).
While this may have been partially true to a degree in Mid to late 18th century but with the opening up of the frontier to settlement (something the Brits had resisted when running their colonies in the New World) after the American revolution there was a resultant surge of European immigrants seeking a better life in the USA.
They were joined by Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, Russians, Swedes, Mexicans, Irish and many others who flooded into America. The retention of the American form of English as a language of communication had little to do with trans Atlantic kinship with England and more to do with simple practicality and the influence of the US elite, although German was briefly in the running apparently.
The Brits, were at the end of the 19th century genuinely alarmed at US hostility towards Britain during the border dispute with Venezuela. The Brits had forgotten or perhaps failed to grasp that support from Britain for the Confederacy during the civil war, with military supplies, the supply and construction of blockade runners and naval vessels was freshly and angrily remembered by the generations of US politicians that held power from the civil war until the start of the 20th century and many Americans.
The USA buoyed up by manifest destiny within the continent, and the Monrow doctrine - a policy of preventing external inference in both north and South America set out from the 1890's onwards to thwart, undermine and destroy the British Empire - and by and large they succeeded - partially as a result of the First and Second World wars and partially because that was the real price (aside from the hard cash, gold reserves, financial bonds and the sell off cheaply of UK assets within America) to pay for lead lease.
Despite the best efforts of Brit leaders to persuade people within the UK to the contrary the USA's oldest ally is actually France. The French supported the insurgent United States against their former imperial overlords. The USA is the end result of a vast melting pot of peoples from across and around the globe - a number of whom had little love for Britain.
Labour in power in 1945 perhaps hoped that by withdrawing from India - they might yet retain the potentially mineral rich in perial territories in Africa. This would help pay off the war debt and lessen the financial consequences of the loss of India. Attlee (and Churchill) hoped that post war that the special wartime relationship would continue - the Americans who were keen to see ‘Empire’ disappear had other ideas.
Winston Churchill back in as PM in 1951, hoped to rekindle the special relationship - once again - despite the public pronouncements - once again the Americans had different ideas. It is interesting to note that Eisenhower as incumbent President elect was annoyed by the Brits obsession with ‘the special relationship’ and their imperial inheritance. As blind to the truth as Churchill was about geopolitical realities post war, he did recognise that actually that many US republicans actually distrusted the Brits more than they distrusted the US Democrats.
Foster Dulles privately thought that the ‘Brits’ were something of a menace, ‘a rapidly declining power’ whose ‘clumsy and inept’ behaviour actually encouraged nationalists like Mosaddeq, and caused tensions that the communists might make use of. His staff observed that the new Secretary of State felt that ‘you simply could not count in the British to carry on in any responsible way’ and ‘he had no admiration or them’ and he dismissed Eden (then foreign secretary) as a dandy.
Any illusions that the Anglo-Brits had about preserving and exploiting their African colonies to pay off their wartime debt to the USA disappeared pretty rapidly after Suez. Barely four years after The Suez debacle the Winds of Change speech (delivered by MacMillan to the Parliament of South Africa (in Cape Town) on February 3rd 1960 effectively called down the curtain on the Empire in Africa.
Somewhat ironically this was the second time that the Winds of Change speech had been delivered, it was first delivered in Accra, in Ghana on January 10th 1960 but no one noticed. The hasty withdrawal from Africa that followed was a direct consequence of economic and political impotence following Suez and the threat of the financial rug being pulled out from under by the USA.
This side of the pond, the Anglo Brit elite over the last 50 years despite generating a lot of rhetoric to the contrary have consistently wound down the UK defence establishment to the point where it as shrunk to insignificance and moved the UK from potentially useful Ally to potential liability.
The Conservatives have spun the illusion that they are good for defence - the reality is quite different - elected in 1979 with a manifesto pledge to retain 90 surface vessels in the Royal Navy. The surface fleet was down to 46 surface vessels by April 1982 - with both aircraft carriers sold to India and Australia - before any replacement had even been fitted out.
The over reliance on US defence equipment, some of dubious worth in some cases has become self fulfilling as the aerospace and armaments industrial sector had been run down and weakened to the point of destruction. The production of 2 aircraft carriers (which will have no aircraft for the foreseeable future) save what the US sells them) is merely a blatant example of chronically poor decision making coming home to roost.
The consequences of 5 or 6 defence reviews (since the late 1950's) rather than cutting ones cloth to match realities have merely run the defence sector into the ground and cutting the armed forces to the very edge of impotence. The thousands of jobs in Westland in Yeovil and aerospace in Bristol (and many dependent jobs in the extended supply chain) were openly sacrificed in plain sight not by stealth along with the coal and steel jobs in Wales and elsewhere.
The UK has moved from being the old reliable unsinkable aircraft carrier and potentially useful ally to a modern day version of Austria-Hungary - overblown with pomp and circumstance, politically unstable, unreliable and ill-equipped - all in less than 25 years. The decline - economic and strategic - is no doubt perceived as quite shocking in most of Europe's chancelleries, Washington DC and elsewhere, but, perhaps with quiet glee if not anticipation in the Kremlin.
As Abraham Lincoln once said of the armies of the republic, the bottom is out of the tubb. Defence cuts have followed defence cuts, and the military power of these islands has been diminished rapidly. The UK's last 6 sea harriers were literally retrieved from storage to bomb Ghadafis Libya. Over Christmas and the New Year (two yeas ago) all the Royal Navy's 15 surface ships were in home ports - something that had probably not happened since the days of King Alfred.
The Anglo-Brit elite, currently ruling over the majority of the inhabitants of these islands, have always lived on the edge of Europe’s wet and windy Atlantic coast, will have next to little influence with the EU having burned any bridges with the EU and also having irritated the US elite by ceasing to be their boy inside the EU tent. Blair and Bush's much trumpeted New World Order, envisaged somewhat triumphantly when the USSR disintegrated has crumbled rather rapidly into the sands of a New World Disorder particularly in Iraq and more recently in Afghanistan.
Despite the tabloid and broadsheet headlines / delusions Empire 2.0 is actually not going to coming riding to the rescue. That ship rather than sailing away was quietly scuttled or abandoned in the early 1970's when the UK joined the then EEC - leaving potential commonwealth partners to sink or swim. The Anglo-Brit elite may well find itself even more dependent on the so called special relationship with the US largely because they have not got anyone else to turn too.
What will not happen, as far as I can perceive it, is an honest reassessment of the so-called special relationship in the wake of the Afghan and Iraqi debacle(s) - this will not happen. It never happened after Suez, or when Empire ended in the mid to late 1960’s, nor did it happen when the Cold War ended, and based on past observations it’s not going to happen now the delusion is too embedded within the UK state. Global Britain is simply more of a delusion than a reality.
