By Malcolm Rifkind
Sunday, March 4, 2007
The British have been puzzled about Tony Blair for some time. Americans, particularly the one who lives in the White House, must be beginning to share the same feelings.
Recently the prime minister announced the first major reduction of British troops in Iraq. He chose to do so at precisely the same time that President Bush, his close friend, is trying to convince Congress and the American people of the wisdom of a substantial increase in the U.S. troop commitment to the same country.
Not surprisingly, this has been a gift to Democrats and other critics of the president, and has made a difficult task all the more complicated. What happened to the idea of a friend in need?
The prime minister has, characteristically, tried to minimize the damage. He pointed out that Basra, where the British are based, is quite different than Baghdad. There are no Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflicts, as the region is overwhelmingly Shiite. Al-Qaeda and other international jihadists have made little impact. The bulk of British troops will, in any event, remain at least for another year.
These claims are justified but they conceal as much as they reveal. Basra and the south of Iraq is a serious mess despite the impressive and professional work of British forces over the past three years. The writ of the Iraqi government is weak. The reason there is little sectarian conflict is that most of the Sunni minority have been driven out through ethnic cleansing. The militias in Basra are all-powerful. The two main ones may both be Shiite but they spend most of the time battling each other for power in the region. They have regularly attacked British forces to show their prowess and because of their hostility to the presence of foreign troops. Blair himself told Parliament that British troops would not be leaving Basra in the condition in which they would like.
It is the timing of Blair's announcement of the British withdrawal that is most revealing. He could have delayed it for weeks if his interest had been to help the president. But his own domestic weakness dictated this timetable. As his prime ministership draws to a less-than-illustrious end, he has had to find a way to reassure the British public that his Iraq adventure will indeed end, too. There is now a widespread belief in the United Kingdom that Iraq has been the worst disaster in British foreign policy since 1956, when Britain and France invaded Egypt with Israeli help after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. British voters of all parties tend to agree that the prime minister must shoulder the blame for insisting on British support for the invasion of Iraq.
But in British eyes, the problem is far wider than the merits of the Iraq war. Much of the criticism that Blair has faced has been for the apparent unconditional support he has given Bush. That is not because of any serious anti-Americanism. The British are, traditionally, among the most pro-American groups in the world. They expect their prime ministers to be close to the U.S. president, and that has rarely been controversial.
Blair is, however, accused of being different than his predecessors, from both the Labor and Conservative parties, in appearing to support the White House through hell or high water. There is considerable truth in this charge. Winston Churchill often disagreed with Franklin D. Roosevelt over Soviet Union policy. Harold Wilson declined to send British troops to Vietnam despite Lyndon B. Johnson's repeated requests. John Major and Bill Clinton had severe disagreements over Bosnia.
Even Margaret Thatcher, who was close to Ronald Reagan, did not hesitate to say so publicly when she thought that U.S. policy was unwise. This happened when the United States invaded Grenada without informing Queen Elizabeth II, who happens to be Grenada's head of state. It also occurred when the United States put pressure on Britain not to trade with the Soviets over a proposed gas pipeline in the 1980s. Thatcher, politely but firmly, told Reagan that she would decide with whom Britain would trade.
Blair, in contrast, has been viewed as so loyal to the White House that he is regularly lampooned in the media as Bush's poodle. The charge may be unfair, but it has done him severe political damage in his own Labor Party and with the public.
Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to Washington, has said that Blair has rarely used his relationship with Bush to press for substantial changes in U.S. policy. This was not just true on Iraq. When the president unexpectedly indicated that the United States was willing to support changes in Israel's frontiers to include some of the settlements on the West Bank, Blair announced his own support for the proposal without any discussion in the House of Commons or with Britain's partners in the European Union.
Bringing some of our troops back home has been one of the few welcome statements that he has been able to make on Iraq since the invasion almost four years ago. If it appeared to be at odds with U.S. policy, that will not have done him any harm. Blair will soon be a figure of the past, as he has promised to step down as prime minister by June at the latest. His successor is almost certain to be Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer or finance minister, who has been the second-most-powerful member of the government for the past 10 years.
Brown is well disposed to the United States, but most of his close friends have been in the Federal Reserve Bank, the Finance Department and other economic institutions. Alan Greenspan has been an admirer, as have other important Americans.
Brown has had little involvement or interest in foreign affairs and has made little contribution to these highly charged debates over the past 10 years. That has partly been because he was content to submerge himself in financial and economic policy. However, it reflects the deal he made with Blair when the latter became leader of the Labor Party in 1994. Brown had expected to become leader, but when it became clear that Blair had far more support, Brown offered to stand down if he was recognized as the number two in the land.
The result has made him as powerful in relation to Blair as Vice President Cheney has been to Bush. He has been very quiet on Iraq, in part because foreign policy was not his brief but also because he was highly sensitive to the unpopularity of the government's policy with his Labor colleagues.
If Brown becomes prime minister, he will have no intention of clashing with Bush or of pursuing an anti-American foreign policy. But there is little doubt that he will neither wish, nor be able, to replicate the umbilical link that appears to exist been Bush and Blair.
Brown is considerably brighter than Blair but he does not begin to have Blair's political skills or his ability to win the enthusiasm or affection of those who are not his natural allies. He has little charm, can be abrasive and demands total loyalty. To describe him as a cross between Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld might be appropriate, though it would probably offend all three of them.
Brown admires the United States and likes Americans. But his political survival in Britain will require him to have a correct rather than a warm relationship with Bush. Britain, under him, will continue to draw down its forces in Iraq while giving diplomatic support to Washington even if the president continues to fight on. This may not seem logical, but it will meet the political imperative. It will suit both the president and the new prime minister to stand shoulder to shoulder even if the body language is cool and the empathy less obvious than it has been in recent times.
The same will apply if the opposition Conservative Party, under new leader David Cameron, comes to power in the next general election. It is not due for two to three years. By that time, the United States will have a new president and Iraq will either be improving or have already collapsed into a vicious civil war. Whatever the controversies of the past, both a Brown and a Cameron government would recognize the need to rebuild stability and good governance in Iraq, and would recognize the need for American leadership in that endeavor.
The Conservatives, who originally supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, have been distancing themselves from Blair since it emerged that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and as Iraq has slid into anarchy. (Some Conservatives, myself included, opposed the war from the beginning.) But the Conservatives, unlike some elements of the Labor Party, have no history of anti-Americanism and will want to work closely with either a Republican or Democratic administration. They already have close links with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and will be wishing to develop them with other presidential candidates. A handshake, however, with the current incumbent of the White House is, I'm afraid, no longer seen as an automatic vote-winner back home.
It would be wrong to ignore the fact that the Iraq war and the unilateral, Manichaean foreign policy of the Bush presidency has had a profound impact on British opinion. I represent Kensington and Chelsea in the House of Commons. They are the two wealthiest districts in the United Kingdom. Most of their residents are high-earners. Overwhelmingly they vote Conservative. By a margin of about 3 to 1, these instinctive pro-Americans have been highly critical of U.S. foreign policy over the past five years.
That mood is far from irreversible. The basic empathy with the United States remains. There is little evidence of British public opinion turning to the European Union as an alternative to the United States in its affections.
Many years ago, Churchill remarked that you can always rely on the United States to do the right thing -- after it has tried every other option. There is much hope, and some evidence, that that is where we may now be heading.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a former foreign secretary and a former defense secretary of the United Kingdom. He is member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea.
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