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.

Anglo-French Union, Again?

An Anglo-French military treaty, due to be signed today, has been greeted with dismay in some quarters while indicating to others that the Anglo-American 'special relationship' may well be slipping away. Is this a turning point? I'm not sure. If it is, is it an unalloyed advance? Is Britain less likely to try and police the world, just behind the American behemoth, if the French are close to hand, whispering restraint in Britain's ear? Would an Ango-French military alliance have opposed the Iraq War or would it have forced France to support it (or would the matter have split apart such a union)?

The historical precedents are there to consider: in June 1940, when France was on the verge of signing an armistice with Nazi Germany, Britain offered to France the prospect of an Anglo-French Union - one nation with a common currency, passports, and the like. But the French cabinet rejected it, much to PM Winston Churchill's relief (he hadn't been too keen in the first place), and the French headed to a kind of European union headed by Adolf Hitler, against which many Frenchmen and women fought valiantly, a valuable aid to Anglo-American efforts. Britain, of course, went on to forge an Anglo-American alliance that holds to this day.

In 1956, the-then French prime minister, Guy Mollet, proposed a union of France and Britain as they cunningly manoeuvered in the Suez 'crisis'. Egypt's President Nasser, you will recall, had had the temerity to take control of the Suez Canal, which was on his sovereign territory, much to the chagrin of Britain and France - who still entertained ideas about gunboat diplomacy to 'sort out' such people and put them in their place. Clearly, their ideas about de-colonisation did not fundamentally impoverish their imperial mentalities.

Prime Minister Anthony Eden, perhaps sensing that the Suez adventure was about to go awry, declined the French offer. He also wanted to ensure that Britain, whose ambitions remained global in scope, would not get too tied down in Europe. France, which was very keen to unify Europe as a way of controlling Germany, then signed the Treaty of Rome and, a decade or so later, withdrew from NATO's military command structure (which it re-entered only last year). France then blocked Britain's attempts to enter the European Community for almost twenty years, declaring the Anglo-Saxons to be bent on global domination, especially in the Vietnam War era, when said Anglo-Saxons were fighting a war in a former French colony.

Is a post-Iraq War, post-Blair-Brown, Britain ready to embrace Europe, tame its global mentality, eschew further American adventures, and stop punching above its weight in world affairs? Will PM David Cameron, current leader of Churchill's party, sign the death warrant of British imperial mentalities?

The severe financial crisis, which is driving the current phase of national security policy suggests that this is no permanent retreat from imperial thinking, merely a practical, pragmatic response to a crisis.

American power continues to align with every cultural, imperial and ethno-racial instinct of Cameron's party, never mind the political influence of Tory Euro-sceptics. But times are hard. You have to 'make do' with what you can.

Even within these parameters, however, there remains the notion of a certain degree of freedom within an Anglo-French alliance - room for manoeuvre, should a tempting offer from across the Atlantic come Britain's way. The other point is that the new treaty is being sold as an opportunity for joint Anglo-French military intervention in Africa, where they share 'common interests'.

Their forms might change, but imperial mentalities do not die easily.