Obama's right. There is no special relationship... and the sooner we realise that the better
By Stephen Glover Last updated at 2:00 AM on 12th January 2011 President Barack Obama will have caused more than a few palpitations in Whitehall by suggesting that France, not Britain, is the United States’ most important ally. ‘We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy and the French people,’ he told the French President on Monday. Not America’s best buddy? The best brains in the Foreign Office will be trying to persuade themselves Mr Obama did not really mean it. They will say he was only trying to be nice to Mr Sarkozy during the French President’s visit to Washington. But what if he really meant what he said? During visits to the U.S. by Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Mr Obama has had every opportunity to say Britain was America’s strongest ally, but did not take it. Indeed, he seemed to go out of his way to snub Mr Brown by refusing to meet him. There are other bits of evidence that Mr Obama does not cherish the ‘special relationship’ so dear to the hearts of policymakers in Whitehall. As soon as he entered the Oval Office, he removed the bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to George W. Bush by the British government. During Britain’s stand-off with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the Obama administration has been at best neutral, at worst pro-Argentine. And throughout the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, the American President was keen to emphasise the British provenance of BP, the chief perpetrator, and to make it pay. Despite what the Foreign Office Johnnies may argue to themselves, there is enough evidence to suggest that Britain is not greatly valued by Mr Obama. And although there might be personal reasons for this — the American President claims his grandfather was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya — I would suggest his standpoint is shared by more American politicians than we might care to admit. For most of the time we are regarded with indifference: an ally at once so loyal, dependable and uncritical that we can be taken for granted. The special relationship, about which our politicians obsess, is scarcely ever mentioned even by Britain’s friends in the U.S. If France is more important than Britain to Washington, might this be because French policymakers have robustly pursued a line independent of the U.S. and the British have not? After the Suez debacle of 1956 — when America pulled the plug on the militarily successful Anglo-French invasion of Egypt — the two European countries responded in diametrically different ways. While Britain grew ever closer to America, relying on American technology to produce its supposedly independent nuclear deterrent, France increasingly went its own separate way. It developed its own nuclear arsenal — admittedly never proven — called the force de frappe, because it did not believe it could always rely on America to defend it from the Soviet threat. In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s so-called ‘integrated command structure’, which meant that French soldiers were no longer subject to NATO (which often meant American) control, and senior French military personnel left NATO’s headquarters. France became a full member of the organisation again only in 2009. France opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, whereas Britain, under the direction of the fervently pro-American Tony Blair, committed 40,000 servicemen, even though President Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had made it perfectly clear that they could happily do without them. The French might have been denigrated as ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ in the U.S., but who remembers that now? In Afghanistan, France has committed only 3,850 troops and suffered 52 deaths, whereas Britain has 10,000 troops there (second only to America) and has lost 349 soldiers. Yet Britain’s greater sacrifice in blood and money does not prevent the American President from thinking France the more important ally. We could, and should, get jolly upset about this disgraceful lack of gratitude — and then stop and think. We should not be in Afghanistan to please the Americans, though I fear we largely are. (Remember how, after the attack on the World Trade Centre, Tony Blair wildly asserted: ‘We are all Americans now.’) We should be there to defend our national self-interest. And maybe the French government has a beadier eye on its national interest than we do. Maybe it is sceptical about NATO’s ability to defeat the Taliban and so offers the bare minimum of troops. Almost certainly it does not feel it necessary to prove its importance to America in the way the British Government does. Most of us learn when we are young that the child who attaches himself unreservedly to the strongest boy in the class ends up being taken for granted by him, even treated with contempt. The boy who stands apart, and judges case by case whether or not to side with the class bully, generally earns more respect from the bully and the rest of the class. Look how desperately craven our leaders have become. When Gordon Brown was snubbed by President Obama in September 2009, he really was like a small boy who had been excluded by the class leader, and his advisers virtually pleaded for a ‘face-to-face’ with the American President. After five rebuffs, a hasty meeting was finally arranged. When he became Prime Minister, David Cameron lost little time in jumping on a plane to pay court to the American President. He was so keen to abase himself that he claimed that ‘Britain was the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting against Hitler’. America did not declare war on Germany until December 1941. Tony Blair was the most eager to bend the knee. According to the former British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, during talks before the Iraq War Mr Blair was so awestruck by the power of President Bush that he underestimated the leverage he had over him. I can’t imagine President de Gaulle demeaning his country. Or Winston Churchill. Or Margaret Thatcher. Pro-American though she undoubtedly was, she was perfectly capable of criticising her friend Ronald Reagan, as she did in 1983 after America had invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada without bothering to notice that the Queen was its head of state. America is the world’s sole superpower, and for much of the past century it has been a force for good in the world. To be a close ally of such a country is both sensible and necessary, as France has understood. To be an overdependent, sometimes fawning friend is neither sensible nor necessary. Will our attitude of subservience ever change? Our military and intelligence services are locked in with their counterparts in the United States. Our political leaders have mortgaged much of our independence. The only way to free ourselves is by seeing ourselves as the Americans see us. That is why we should welcome President Obama’s statement, graceless and ungrateful though it was. This country is only one among several important friends his country has, and should stop seeing itself as an appendage of the United States. FROM 'SPECIAL' TO FRACTIOUS, HOW THE ROOTS OF FRICTION BETWEEN BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE U.S. GO BACK TO THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE While the apparent froideur of Barack Obama towards the British may stem from his Kenyan family's history during colonial rule it could be argued that the fractious past between France, Britain and the U.S. has resonances dating back to the War of Independence. One of the catalysts for this would have been the 1759 Battle of Quebec when General James Wolfe took the fight to the French in what would prove pivotal to ousting France from North America. Although he was mortally wounded in the fighting, victory that day meant that within five years Britain had taken control of nearly all of France's colonies. However the French continued to try and maintain an influence in the region by secretly supplying the nascent independence movement with arms and expertise. Americans, furious with the notion of taxation without representation, were desperate to rid themselves of British rule. One the most famous incidents was the 1773 tax revolt known as the Boston Tea Party. Around 200 colonists, furious that the English crown was demanding payment of duties on cargoes of tea in three British ships, stormed the vessels in Boston harbour and threw the boxes of tea overboard. The Tea Party reference has come to the fore once again with the grassroots political movement in the U.S. which fielded numerous candidates in recent elections, indicating the still-powerful allure of America's independence from her European allies. Following the French Revolution of 1789, Washington recognised the new government but remained neutral. However, in Europe, years of conflict eventually saw the U.S. become an ally of France and fight the British in the Napoleonic Wars. The wars ended with Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. The entente between the republics of France and the increasingly-important U.S. was symbolised with the gallic gift of the Statue of Liberty in 1884 in recognition of the friendship established during the American Revolution. World War I saw Britain, France and America eventually fighting on the same side - the U.S. joined the bloody conflict in 1917 one year before it ended. In World War II France was quickly over-run by the German army. The Free French led by General De Gaulle sought sanctuary and support in London while a fascist Vichy regime led by Marshall Petain ruled in southern France. Relations reached a nadir between Britain and France after Winston Churchill ordered the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, a port on the North African coast. This was to stop the ships falling into German hands despite guarantees by the French that it would not. The resulting loss of life, more than 1,000 men, has led French historians to refer to the 1940 attack as their Pearl Harbour. In 2003 France's relations with the U.S. deteriorated after it opposed the decision to invade Iraq. Britain led by Tony Blair, on the other hand, controversially took a different view and supported the move. France was pilloried as 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' in the U.S. and the New York Post ran the headline 'Axis of Weasel'. In contrast, George Bush went so far as to tell Congress that the U.S. had 'no truer friend' than Great Britain. But that was then and now France is once more in the warm embrace of the U.S. Nicolas Sarkozy - who has been unabashed in declaring his love for America - has signalled a warmer relationship with the U.S., competing with the 'special relationship' enjoyed by the UK. The phrase was originally coined more than 60 years ago by Churchill, and it reflected a bond which was especially strong between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Obama now turning on the charm with France may be an indication that the tides of influence are once more changing. Just last year, the UK's Commons Foreign Affairs committee said it was wrong to speak of 'the special relationship' with the U.S., as the superpower was fostering other alliances. The committee said the phrase 'the special relationship' did not reflect the 'modern' Anglo-American relationship. For Obama his apparent coldness towards Britain may stem from his paternal grandfather being jailed. According to his Kenyan family, Hussein Onyango Obama was arrested and jailed for two years after working as a cook for a British army officer after World War II. They say he was tortured for information on the Kenyan independence movement. Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife and the woman Mr Obama is said to refer to as 'Granny Sarah', told reporters: 'The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed.' In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Mr Obama refers briefly to the imprisonment but states that his grandfather was 'found innocent' and held for 'more than six months'. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1346315/Obamas-right-There-special-relationship-Britain.html -- Mario Huet Libertarian Alliance Forum List Administrator ********************************************** Words cannot picture her; but all men know That solemn sketch the pure sad artist wrought ********************************************** James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night ------------------------------------ Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] NB - The Libertarian Alliance does not necessarily approve of the above message. Yahoo! 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