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Pastimes : Rarely is the question asked: "is our children learning" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Sladek who wrote (1833)	1/15/2004 7:17:07 PM
From: John Sladek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2171

15Jan04-William Pfaff-The end of Bush and Blair's friendship? William Pfaff TMSI/IHT Thursday, January 15, 2004 Bush and Blair PARIS The Hutton Inquiry report on the death of the British scientist David Kelly, dealing with Downing Street's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is scheduled to be released later this month. As the date approaches, the infatuation of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain with President George W. Bush seems to be waning. One cannot call the Blair-Bush relationship a love affair, because love affairs are reciprocal, and on George's side this affair seems to have been a heartless flirtation. Tony was useful while he was useful; and now, as the Hank Snow song has it, George has moved on. For Tony it was the real thing. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, his instructions to his government have been to stick tight to the United States in support of everything it does. This was justified politically as a measure of strategic realism: The United States is the superpower. As Winston Churchill said, Britain - if it has to choose - must choose the seas, not the European Continent. Blair's commitment, nourished by speeches to the U.S. Congress and by weekends at Camp David, first began to falter on practical matters. Now, according to The Daily Mirror, "the diplomatic temperature is in the deep freeze." The latest blow suffered by Blair was self-inflicted, but had to do with the prime minister's total support for Bush on the weapons issue. It came when Blair, during his New Year's visit to his troops in Iraq, told them that U.S. forces looking for weapons had found laboratories "irrefutably proving" that weapons of mass destruction had existed. An unscrupulous but enterprising journalist quoted the statement to L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, without sourcing it, and Bremer called it ridiculous - "a red herring" probably invented by someone "who wanted to undermine the coalition." A fundamental problem has been that Washington never kept Blair's government in the picture. U.S. policy was driven by highly unpredictable domestic political developments, and by parochial interests not readily comprehensible outside Washington. This put the British in the position of following without knowing where they were going. Blair also has had to take account of the annoyance of his military and political people in Iraq with American tactics in the guerrilla war. The choice in December of still more massive shock-and-awe attacks on neighborhoods or tribal areas suspected of being the source of attacks reflected what the British military consider a naïve notion that shows of force - and they were shows preceded by warnings - can intimidate a nationalist insurgence. Experience suggests the opposite. The British military is better at counterinsurgency, much more attentive to civilian interests and more apprehensive about the long-term consequences of what they do. Some British military sources also complain that they are not kept properly informed on U.S. intelligence concerning guerrilla plans and movements potentially affecting the security of British forces. This is generally attributed to the total self-absorption of the U.S. coalition authorities and the American military. Americans are reproached for ignoring the interests and needs of the British in Iraq except when they want something from them - and then they take for granted total cooperation. The most important recent development in the relationship, however, is not a result of indifference. The Foreign Office and Downing Street have recognized that the Bush administration is exploiting Britain's position in Europe in a way that is destructive of Britain's interests. They believe that Washington deliberately announced that Germany and France would get no reconstruction contracts in Iraq - a perfectly gratuitous announcement, since no one was so foolish as to think they would - on the eve of the EU summit meeting in Brussels in December so as to envenom relations between Britain and the French and Germans. This, London officials assume, was meant to undermine British cooperation in a common European security policy - seen in Washington as a threat to the United States. The neoconservative camp in Washington has decided that Britain can be used to undermine the European Union, now known as "Superpower Europe," according to a recent anti-European Union "Wake up America!" issue of the once-liberal New Republic magazine. The Europeans' common security policy is currently so feeble that this might be called pre-emptive paranoia. But whatever it is, it puts Tony Blair on the spot. It is one thing to choose the sea rather than the Continent when survival is at stake. But to choose the neoconservatives over Europe risks the ridiculous. Tribune Media Services International Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune iht.com