Anglo-American Joint Strategy Board Announced

President Obama has announced the formation of an Anglo-American Joint Strategy Board, cementing what he referred to as "the essential relationship" between the two powers. The details, such as they are, are provided below in a White House press release. Among other measures, the White House also announced that Britian and the Us would work more closely together to support their armed forces and veterans in various ways, including linking them ever more deeply into community life. Postgraduate student exchange programmes also receive a boost as do links between the British Voluntary Service Overseas organisation and the US Peace Corps.

It may not be 'special' but the relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon powers remains deep and enduring. This is not because of sentiment, though that does play a peripheral role. It is because Anglo-American elites share an understanding and definition of the world, and its 'problems' and issues, which tends to align them on the really biq questions of world politics: resistance to western power, rising Chinese influence, uprisings in the Arab world.

President Obama's Visit to the UK, May 2011

25 May 2011

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

___________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FACT SHEET: The U.S.-UK Joint Strategy Board


The United States and the United Kingdom today are announcing the creation of a Joint Strategy Board. The Board will help enable a more guided, coordinated approach to analyze the “over the horizon” challenges we may face in the future and also how today’s challenges are likely to shape our future choices. It is designed to better integrate long-term thinking and planning into the day-to-day work of our governments and our bilateral relationship, as we contemplate how significant evolutions in the global economic and security environment will require shifts in our shared strategic approach.


The Joint Strategy Board, co-chaired by the U.S. National Security Staff and the U.K. National Security Secretariat, will include representatives from the Departments of State and Defense, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Joint Intelligence Organization. It will report to the U.S. and U.K. National Security Advisors, Thomas E. Donilon and Sir Peter Ricketts.


The Joint Strategy Board will meet quarterly alternating between sites in the United States and United Kingdom. The U.S. and U.K. National Security Advisors will review the status of the Board after one year and decide whether to renew its mandate.

Wikileaks, Blood Ties, and the Special Relationship: "America is the essential power"

It was inevitable that Julian Assange's wikileaks would give unwelcome publicity to the enduring and unequal relationship between Britain and the United States. The Guardian newspaper, under the headline "Tories promised to run a 'pro-American regime'" has exposed the Coalition government of Cameron and Clegg once again. While during the election campaign both leaders were proclaiming their "independence" of the United States, and criticising New Labour's "slavishness" towards the US, Cameron's foreign policy and national security team were paying homage to their imperial overlord. They promised a thoroughly "pro-American regime", if elected.

Like a puppy in desperate need of demonstrations of approval and affection from his master, Cameron's team - William Hague, Liam Fox, now heading the FCO and MoD, respectively - reassured the Americans they would be loyal and subservient. In future war-fighting, Liam Fox suggested the advantages of improved levels of "interoperability". Future Anglo-American wars - already being considered when Britain was/is in the depths of an economic and financial crisis? One hopes for more on this from wikileaks.

Told by an American representative that the US wanted a "pro-American regime" in Britain in the interests of the US and, of course, the world, William Hague reassured him of his loyalty by invoking blood ties: his sister is American. He also spends his holidays there. America, he said, is the "'other country to turn to'", the "essential" relationship, for people like him - "Thatcher's children". He could not vouch for anyone else, however, perhaps a nod towards those lacking kith and kin or ties of blood with the American 'cousin'. Was this also a hint of questioning of President Barack Obama's loyalties too? After all, he has, according to one cable, no "natural" ties to Britain. He's not an Anglo-Saxon, in other words....

Ahead of his first visit as PM to Washington, DC, last July, David Cameron, you may recall, admonished the press for "obsessing" about the special relationship, looking for every little sign that things were looking up or going sour. Now it turns out that the removal by president-elect Obama of a bust of Churchill's from the Oval office appeared to cause "paranoia" in both New Labour's and Cameron's circle that the special relationship was in peril.

Luckily, American officials provided reassurance that Britain was safe and special: it provides "unparalleled" help in achieving American foreign policy objectives and national interests. The same official thought it would be quite a wheeze to "keep HMG off balance about its current standing with us" as it might make London "more willing to respond favourably when pressed for assistance..." But British support was too important to play with.

"The UK's commitment of resources - financial, military, diplomatic - in support of US global priorities remains unparalleled". Britain is able and willing to fight wars in faraway lands alongside the United States and try to marshal others' support as well. This makes Britain almost indispensable to the US. So, the "essential" nation to Britain appears indispensable to the US too. Together, the Anglo-Americans keep going the global system.

None of this will be especially surprising to anyone remotely familiar with British foreign policy. What is interesting is the thoroughly subservient tone and character brought out by the wikileaks cables and the complete confidence that the special relationship remains central to the UK. This was as true of New Labour, Hague acknowledges in one secret cable, as it is of the Tories.

Of the New Labour government's national security strategy, Hague notes that his own party fully supported it although it required greater depth and detail. This suggests that talk of the death of the special relationship earlier in 2010 was, indeed, premature.

Other wikileak revelations concerning Anglo-American relations offer evidence of the enduring alliance between the two countries: evading laws to permit the US to keep cluster bombs on UK territory; protecting US interests in the Iraq inquiry, and trying to block the return of the people of Diego Garcia to their homeland, several decades after Britain evicted them to make for a US military base in the Indian Ocean.

The racial-colonial attitude at the heart of the relationship - pointed out above and in previous blog posts on this site - is further underlined in regard to Diego Garcia: their people are referred to as "Man Fridays" in the wikileaks cables. Man Friday was 'discovered' by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe on 'his' desert island, and civilised by him after a suitable period of tutelage.

President Dwight Eisenhower got it right in the 1950s when he referred to Britain as "my right arm". He was referring to Tory PM, Anthony Eden, in the wake of the Suez disaster. During the Korean War, PM Clement Attlee declared Britain would stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans; the Union Jack would follow the Stars and Stripes. After Basra and in Helmand, despite all the muttering about British military failures, Blighty remains America's indispensable ally.

And the Tories remain as much committed to delivering a "pro-American regime" in Britain as did New Labour.

“What Soviet Threat?” What If Attlee’s Radicalism Had Prevailed?

“What Soviet Threat?” What If Attlee’s Radicalism Had Prevailed?

Although British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee (1945-51), is properly known as a Cold Warrior no less gung-ho than his Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, or the American president, Harry Truman, less well known is Attlee’s rejection of the salience of the Soviet ‘threat’ and promotion of a policy of closing British bases in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Had he prevailed, Clement Attlee may have changed the the role of Britain in the postwar world, prevented the Americans from relying on Britain’s support in numerous foreign wars, and thrust a relatively disarmed, more prosperous Britain into a leading role in a European superstate.

But, of course, Attlee did not get his way and we all know where that led: the 'special relationship' with the United States that lasts till today, a position of subservience in defence of a particular interpretation of British interests as world-wide and requiring very high levels of military spending and an ability and willingness to ‘punch above its weight’ in world affairs. This not only caused Britain (under Attlee) to follow America’s intervention in Korea (1950-53), but also to Harold Wilson’s support short of war (i.e., ground troops) to President Lyndon Johnson’s war on Vietnam, and to Tony Blair’s unflinching backing for George W. Bush’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

What precisely did Attlee do that was, on the face of it, so radical? And how did the British military and foreign policy establishments react?

It seems that Clement Attlee (rather naively, according to Churchill’s more ‘realistic’ foreign secretary, Anthony Eden who, it must be recalled, was later to attack Nasser’s Egypt for the temerity to desire control of Egypt’s Suez Canal) took seriously the idea of the United Nations as an international organisation for peace. Attlee thought that rather than holding on to a series of expensive naval and military bases in the Mediterranean Sea and in Egypt, and thereby constitute to Soviet eyes a military threat to the communist superpower, Britain ought to internationalise the defence of the route to India and the east, as well as come to an understanding with the Soviet Union. To Attlee, what looked like defence of British interests to his colleagues in the Foreign Office looked like aggressive preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union to Stalin. This remarkable insight, because of its novelty among the political establishment, earned Attlee opprobrium from the Admiral Cunningham, the First Sea Lord: “What an ass!” retorted Cunningham.

Yet, for a time, Attlee was undaunted. “Where’s the [global] danger now?” he asked: “there was no one to fight.” In almost panto-fashion, Cold Warrior, Ernest Bevin invoked the Soviet Threat – positions vacated by Britain would fall under Soviet control and, one by one, the dominoes would fall. Yet, the Joint Intelligence Committee estimated that the Soviets were unlikely to risk a major war for at least 5 years, given the devastation visited upon that country by Nazi bombardment. But Bevin was undeterred: “It would be Munich over again, only on a world scale, with Greece, Turkey and Persia as the first victims in place of Czechoslovakia. If I am right about Russian ideology, Russia would certainly fill the gap we leave empty whatever her promises…” Attlee refused to budge.

Then, quite suddenly, Attlee changed his mind. Why? The Chiefs of Staff, under Lord Montgomery of Alamein, threatened en masse to resign should Attlee persist in opposing their desire to hold Britain’s positions in the Middle East. And that is pretty much the last the world was to hear of Attlee’s foreign policy radicalism.

What if he had prevailed? Would Britain have withdrawn from its military commitments across the Middle East, Asia and the Far East? Could it have then done without American financial support and built an even stronger welfare state? Would it have seen the ‘loss’ of Korea as just one more domino or, more likely, refused military support for American intervention in Korea? Britain would probably have been unlikely thereafter to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs, perhaps, including helping overthrow the Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1952, invading Egypt with the French and Israelis in 1956 or, perhaps, in putting down the communist-nationalist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s.

Of course, we will never know, though Attlee was still committed to defending the British Empire: but the question is still worth pondering.

Anglo-American Relations: The Special Relationship Marches On

Even as British leaders, and the media, proclaim the imminent death of the 'special relationship' with the United States, they cannot seem to help backing America's line in world affairs. Last week, when Prime Minister David Cameron was in Turkey, he rather 'boldly' (for a British leader), criticised Israeli policies in Gaza. He stated, rather obviously, that Gaza resembled a prison camp.

A day or two later, in India, Cameron found himself criticising the Pakistan authorities for supporting and exporting terrorism - again, claims controversial only because made by a British leader of a staunch ally/patron of the United States.

The previous week, of course, David Cameron, had been visiting President Obama in Washington, DC. Prior to that, Cameron had asked everyone to not obsess about the special relationship. During the election campaign, he had criticised New Labour's Gordon Brown of "slavish" dependence on the United States. In turn, Obama has been, it is said, somewhat 'cold' towards Britain (and Europe), and rather warmer towards India and China, emerging powers rather than waning ones.

Interesting how Cameron's criticisms of Israel and of Pakistan echo almost identical comments made by Obama, Clinton and other high officials in Washington, DC. And interesting too that Cameron seeks a 'special relationship' with India at precisely the moment that the United States elevates that country on its own global agenda.

Millionaires Control British Foreign Policy

Does it matter that the new Conservative-Liberal government is dominated by millionaires, including premier David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg? The Sunday Times counted 18 millionaires in the "austerity cabinet" (ST, 23.5.10).

Does it matter that the foreign and national security policy of this Con-Dem administration is in the hands of a group predominantly educated at exclusive public schools and Oxbridge, with previous careers in the City of London and big business? The Sunday Times calls them the "New Establishment...a new elite... pulling the strings in Britain".

Does it matter that the New 'Labour' administration of Gordon Brown also featured several millionaires, businessmen, and had cosied up to the City since the mid-1990s, and fetishised the 'market' to such a degree that it brought the 'market' itself into disrepute?

And, does it matter that New Labour's leadership race is set to be dominated by those, almost to a 'man', drawn from backgrounds far from the 'soul' of the labour movement?

Of course, USBlog believes that background matters, to a degree: social origins are important in so many ways but tend to get discounted as a key factor in political attitudes, behaviour and ideas. Years ago, American political scientist, Thomas Dye, showed that social background determined how large Americans thought a 'quarter' (25 cent coin) was, let alone how strongly it determined life expectancy, level of education and income, general welfare, and world-view.

Ironically, it was a man called (Ralph) Miliband who made this argument most cogently when David (Miliband) was still wearing short trousers, and Ed was yet to be born. In his classic study, The State in Capitalist Society (1969), Miliband argued that British (and Western) political systems were dominated by big business and their supporters who also determined the character of the 'national' interest in such a way that it enshrined the interest of big business into its very heart. Consequently, political philosophies and arguments could not be brooked that failed to take into account their impact on 'business confidence' and the 'markets', international or national.

Analysing the rest of the state, Miliband argued that the civil service, military, judiciary, BBC, among others, were led by (mainly) men drawn from the same elitist social backgrounds as the political elite, further reinforcing the 'conservative' character of the British state, and acting as a brake on radical political agendas.

Labour governments in the postwar era were structurally constrained by the character of the British state as well as the generalised power of big business over economic affairs and policy, not to mention 'popular' culture and thinking. But Miliband also emphasised that the Labour party was no vehicle for revolutionary transformation but a symptom of the development of capitalist industrialism, seeking concessions from big business and some measure of social protection for workers. In the main, Labour governments managed capitalism rather than damaging or undermining it.

Furthermore, Labour leaders were hardly revolutionary, even in the nationalising phase of 1945-50: Clement Attlee was educated at Haileybury College, an elite public school established by the East India Company to train its servants for service in the empire. Attlee's foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, who had headed the massive Transport and General Workers' Union since the 1920s, was authentically working class, of course, and offers an excellent example of how such individuals rise to the top of the greasy pole of British politics. He was deeply anti-communist and, like the majority of his party, an imperialist. Where the likes of Churchill openly declared Britain superior to all other races and nations and therefore justified in exploiting and dominating the colonies, Bevin et al wanted to 'develop' the 'backward' countries for the 'betterment' of their peoples. The old imperial ties and connections were maintained, despite (or because of) 'de-colonisation', along with Britain's large, but diminishing, global role.

While the benefits of a welfare state, inaugurated in 1945-50, are undoubted, it remained the case that at a fundamental level, the Labour project was at heart an ameliorative one of reforming capitalism and offering workers social protection from 1930s-style economic crises and deprivations. It did not fundamentally challenge 'market supremacy' in economic policy and the distribution of income and wealth.

Hence, we now have a situation where the government and opposition are dominated by rich and exclusively educated individuals, market-oriented in 'philosophy', and unrepresentative of the broad mass of British people. They claim to champion 'new politics' but are mired in the British aristocracy and the mindsets of the City of London. Like its American counterpart, British politics now features just one ideology - focused on free market economics and regular elections between parties that manage capitalism. There is a Centre, a Right but no Left in British politics.

Background matters: the outlooks at the heart of government today are more congenial to the City than ever; even the opposition is drawn from diluted versions of the same. Those backgrounds will shield the government from the social impact of the savage cuts in public spending that are to come and allow them all the more to enshrine market philosophy as the sole criterion of value.

Those backgrounds - focused so much around globalised finance and global markets as the basis of British national interests - will also strongly determine the character of Britain's foreign and national security policies. Global flows and networks, as the Ministry of Defence noted, under the previous government, are fundamental to the British state, and any threats to those flows are the object of Anglo-American power.

And the promised Tory-Liberal diminuition of Britain's "slavish devotion" to the United States, (amid recent talk of building a new special relationship with India and greater attention to China), seems to have disappeared with several other election promises. The Obama administration, refocusing on India and China itself, will be very pleased with the 'new politics' in Britain.

Cameron's Foreign Policy: Neoconservatism in Disguise?

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal coalition government’s foreign and national security policy team may be inexperienced, but their ideological record is not unclear: the team is made up of a mixture that may prove quite lethal in terms of overseas interventions behind a ‘renewed’ and ‘re-balanced’ ‘special relationship’ with the United States.

David Cameron has denied being a ‘neo-conservative’ in foreign policy terms; he claims to be a ‘liberal-conservative’. Interestingly, this was well before he’d ever dreamed of a coalition with one he once described as the best joke he’d ever heard (Nick Clegg). On those grounds, Cameron had supported the Iraq War and, in 2010, restated his commitment to that course of action. He had also, showing poor judgement, wrongly criticised Russian “aggression” against Georgia in 2008, calling for robust US/NATO responses. Nick Clegg (and his party), on the other hand, opposed the Iraq War (while in opposition and with no inkling that it would ever get into 10 Downing Street), is a convinced ‘liberal interventionist’ who believes that Britain should stay the course in Afghanistan and be ready to intervene again in future similar situations. Both had previously condemned Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s “slavish” devotion to the United States, with Clegg accused by Brown (somewhat gratuitously during the second election debate) of ‘anti-Americanism’.

Since then, of course, Clegg has dropped the scrapping of the Trident nuclear missile system from the core policies of his party, the price of coalition government; Cameron has received ‘warm’ endorsement and a personal invitation to visit Washington, DC, from President Obama, and (last week) dispatched William Hague to pay homage to his American counter-part, Hillary Clinton.

Cameron outlined his interventionist plans at a speech at the influential think tank, Chatham House, back in January 2010. There is nothing original in his national security ‘strategy’s’ goals: he wants Britain to intervene before potential threats become actual threats: “we need to do much better at stopping wars from ever starting and that means really focussing on the causes of conflicts and then joining all that together to make sure that DfiD and the Foreign Office deliver a really tight, tied-up, progressive approach.” I think he may want “joined-up” government that is tough on conflict and the causes of conflict – sounds familiar. Cameron promises to restore “trust” in national security strategy and provide a “guarantee against dodgy dossiers” on the road to opening a wider front against terrorists, pandemics, energy crises, water stoppages, and cyber-attacks.

In 2006, Cameron told an audience at the British-American Project that 9-11 style attacks represented a kind of “terrorism [that] cannot be appeased – it has to be defeated”, and called for increasing the size of the security services. He wanted to take elements that were best in the British neo-conservative approach (i.e., what Cameron attributes to Tony Blair’s approach) – appreciation of the scale of the terrorist threat, the centrality of “the leadership of the United States, supported by Britain… to the struggle”, the correctness of “extending freedom…[as] an essential objective of Western foreign policy”, and commitment to the use of military force, including “pre-emptive force” and for “humanitarian purposes”.

As a liberal, Cameron supports “spreading freedom and democracy,” but as a conservative he remains sceptical of “grand schemes to remake the world”. Cameron’s is a call for ‘realism’ in light of what’s happened since 2003 in Iraq and Afghanistan: greater multilateralism, exploring military and non-military options, including winning “hearts and minds”, development aid, public diplomacy and strategic communications.

At the same time as calling for multilateralism, Cameron argued that the United Nations may not always be the best vehicle for decisive international intervention; “So we may need to fashion alliances which can act faster than the machinery of formal international institutions.” This sounds suspiciously like ‘coalitions of the willing’ assembled ahead of the Iraq war.

In the struggle to defend “civilisation”, Cameron told the British-American Project that Britain would be “moral”, that its foreign policy (quoting Victorian era prime minister, WE Gladstone), “should always be inspired by a love of freedom”, and that its methods match the morality of its goals.

This may not be full-blooded neo-conservatism, hubristic before the chastening experience of Iraq. It may not be full-blooded conservatism, eschewing grand schemes and ideas on a global scale. Cameron’s views, which are now central to his coalition government, merely serve to remind us that the post-9-11 Anglo-American story was not a neo-con hijacking: it was the fusion of several tendencies that had previously been in tactical disagreement – liberal interventionism combining Gladstonian and Wilsonian morality, with a wounded (American) conservative nationalism, in a language and terminology so skilfully developed by groups of neo-cons previously known as ‘the Crazies’.

That post-9-11 fusion was institutionalised in the US by the passing of power from Republican George W. Bush to the Democratic Obama; and now in Britain by its passing from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s New Labour to the Conservative-Liberal Cameron.

Anglo-American Relations: If 9-11 had happened to the UK, would Bush have backed Blair?

A really interesting question that has a bearing on the character of the 'special relationship': had '9-11' (which I guess would have been dubbed '11-9' by us or else required elaborate translation for American audiences) happened on British soil and involving just as many casualties, how would the United States have reacted to it? I am not talking about the immediate outpouring of shock and sympathy but what followed - a declaration by the US of a 'global war on terror', the war in Afghanistan and, later, and more controversially, war on Iraq. Would President George W. Bush have backed to the hilt whatever course of action Prime Minister Tony Blair decided upon?

That question was put to me by a 6th form student at a meeting I addressed recently. What a great question to ask - it blew me away! It had never occurred to me to ask it; nor had I ever heard it asked by any academic expert or journalist, let alone a politician. So much for the political apathy of British youth - they are interested in the world around them and do ask questions when given a chance. I just wish that that student's question - her name is Caitlin - had been put to the three party leaders during the second election debate, a 'debate' which failed to address any issues pertaining to Anglo-American relations.

Back to that great question, which has me scratching my head. My immediate response was that the US would NOT have backed Britain to the same extent that Britain backed the United States. Why? Because an attack on Britain, a middle-ranking power, would have been seen as a 'regional' question and not a global one (by the US). Attack America and you attack the world's 'regional' power - the lone superpower, the planet's policeman, and its financial centre. That 'demands' a massive retaliatory response. Attack Britain, and the world order gets a bloody nose but the world order does not go into a tailspin. And the lone superpower would probably play a restraining role so as not to exacerbate the situation.

That was my immediate response. But I did tell Caitlin that I would probably have a better answer a few hours later. But all I could do was think up further arguments to back my initial response. When had Britain been militarily engaged before and what had been the US response? Well, there was the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands back in 1982: President Ronald Reagan had had to choose between two US allies and decided to back Britain with intelligence and logistical support but did not commit military support (but was not asked to either). That did not change my initial response to the Big Question.

Then there was the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt - the Suez 'incident'/crisis - in 1956, when the US forced the aggressors to back down. That also suggested that US support after a British '9-11' would not be automatic. (But id did remind me that the US is happy to take its opportunities to increase its own influence in world affairs when they present themselves).

And then there was WWII - the US did not enter until the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 - over two years after was was declared. That also backed up my initial response (the US sold arms and equipment to the UK, provided aid too, but also moved swiftly into British overseas markets across the world, especially in Latin America: again, 'natural' opportunism of the type most states would engage in).

But a doubt kept nagging away centring on one thought: that the first response of Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice, to the 9-11 attacks was to ask how the US could use the event to assert American power? And that Tony Blair's liberal interventionism - displayed in the Bosnia/Kosovo conflicts, Sierra Leone, support of greater US interventions and attacks on Iraq and the Sudan in the 1990s- would have been highly persuasive in Washington, DC, given the strength of voices such as Vice President Dick Cheney's, among others, not to mention the neo-cons so close to Bush. The 9-11 attacks gave a clarity of vision to US policymakers as well as their Democratic political opponents because they furnished the world's superpower with a clear and present danger, a plausible enemy, a 'global' threat, with which to replace the Soviet 'threat'.

Would US policymakers have permitted such a political opportunity to pass? Or would they have reacted in the way they actually did after 9-11? There is still the matter that robust US responses to an attack on British soil would need 'selling' to the American public. And also that, as Britain was the victim, it would have to be seen to be calling the shots, as it were, as to what to do and how to go about it. But I cannot imagine that Blair, viewing the US as a 'force for good in the world', would not have urged America to flex its muscles, declare Anglo-America's moral superiority in a world of failing states and terrorist safe havens, and commit to a generations-long war on terror. And Blair's religiosity - there is 'good' and 'evil' in the world and the latter must be vanquished - would have played well in the White House.

Then I got to thinking about the Truman doctrine (1947) when the US president used Britain's inability to intervene in Greece to counter the Soviet 'threat' to declare that America was ready to support and defend 'free peoples' everywhere against 'armed minorities' and communist aggression.

It could well be, then, that had 9-11 been 11-9, the United States would have 'backed' Britain but with a view to re-legitimising and reasserting US global dominance. Maybe history would have turned out pretty much as it did after 9-11 but taking a slightly more circuitous route?

But I am still scratching my head. What a great question!

Anglo-American Relations: Is Clegg the British Obama?

In a recent visit to the University of Manchester, Louis Sussman, the US ambassador to Britain, noted that the 'special relationship' was alive and well. Anglo-American relations, he implied, were as strong as ever, dismissing recently-expressed doubts - in documents ranging from a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee report to a Ministry of Defence paper, not to mention statements by Tory and Liberal Democrat leaders - about America's commitment to an alliance that's over 60 years old.

Yet, as USBlog has noted, there appear to be increasingly-loud objections among British politicians to the Anglo-American alliance (see several posts below). Tonight's UK election debate, focusing on foreign policy, offers an opportunity for all three party leaders - Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg - to state clearly their own positions on this central relationship, the very foundation stone of Britain's post-1945 role in the world.

The clamour around Nick Clegg is now intense. Some hail him as "Britain's Obama", the real "change" candidate who will inaugurate a sea-change in British foreign policy. They point to the fact that the Lib-Dems, like Obama, opposed the Iraq War, which was fully supported by Tony Blair's government and the Tory opposition (indeed, David Cameron has stated that, despite the lack of WMD found in Iraq after the invasion, and the profound levels of deception that were used to justify aggression, that he would do exactly the same again). They point to the fact that Clegg is a relative "outsider" offering a fresh approach - a new politics of hope - just as Obama did. And some point out Clegg's mixed parentage (half-Russian father, Dutch mother) and cosmopolitan outlook - (a bit) like Obama's own background.

But is Clegg the British Obama? And if so, is this a good thing? After all, Obama's record on national security and foreign policy matters has disappointed large swathes of his supporters: the Guantanmo Bay detention camp remains open, Obama is appealing a district court decision to extend US constitutional protections to detainees at the Bagram air base detention camp, Israel continues to build illegal settlements and bomb and destroy Palestinian territories at will, and the war in Afghanistan continues to intensify under an illegitimate regime elected by a minority of the people, violating the constitution written with American endorsement.

Obama famously opposed the Iraq War: but on what grounds? That it was illegal? No? That it was wrong to attack a country that constituted no threat to the US? No. He claimed in Autumn 2002 that a war against Iraq was a "dumb war" with no strategic rationale. And as the war/occupation descended into crisis, he argued that it brought American power and liberal interventionism into disrepute. That is, the 'dumb' war in Iraq was discrediting American interventionism in general and rasing the spectre of the Vietnam 'syndrome' - a general fear of large-scale, long-term military commitments - not a good thing for the world's policeman. Obama was and is no pacifist. He's a firm believer in America's right to intervene within or beyond international law and the United Nations should America see fit. America remains the 'indispensable nation' which sees further and better than others.

Nick Clegg defines himself as a liberal interventionist. The Iraq War, he told a leading British foreign policy think tank (Chatham House) in 2008, undermined the general principle of liberal interventionism - the right of US, British and other western countries to send armies and other forces abroad to put a stop to whatever they deem unacceptable (usually in countries unfriendly to western interests). This viewpoint inevitably leads Clegg - and Cameron and Brown, however much they claim to be distancing themselves from the United States - back into the arms of the Americans. Without US support, Britain would find it almost impossible to commit military forces abroad. This was the case in the Falklands War of 1982, for example.

If Clegg is Britain's Obama, at least in foreign policy terms, we should be worried.

The only other problem is that both Cameron and Brown have near-identical beliefs to Clegg's. Three parties, one view: democracy in the twenty-first century!