British leaders reflect on US-UK relationship

On the breezy deck of an aircraft carrier surrounded by cheering  troops, then-President George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished” to the terrorism-fearing world seven years ago. 

The United States could stand proud after freeing Iraq from dictator Saddam Hussein, Bush said. And America’s international war partners — mainly British Prime Minister Tony Blair — in the Iraq invasion could breathe easier that their support of the U.S. was successful.

Seven years later, 4,693 military personnel have died in Iraq, 4,375 of them American. The death toll among civilians remains upward of 100,000. Casualties in Afghanistan are 1,618 since 2001, including 978 American personnel. Civilian casualties there are estimated in the tens of thousands.

And in a British inquiry in London, Blair – known as “Bliar” to the protesting crowd – and other foreign diplomats are being grilled about whether they acted criminally in throwing their hat into the ring with the U.S.

Britain questions its decision to go to war, whether troops were properly prepared, how the conflict was conducted and what plan existed to deploy. The United Kingdom has seen 179 bodies return from a conflict that many believe to be illegal.

University of Alabama junior Alan Blinder spent last summer at Oxford University in the U.K., listening to the mounting debate about Britain’s role in mideast and Afghan conflicts.  A journalism student, his curiosity got the best of him. On an afternoon when he was free from classes at Oxford, he emailed several former British politicians.

His cheek was rewarded: They emailed back. Blinder interviewed eight diplomats in person, from Douglas Hurd to David Owen, over three weeks. The interviews lasted up to 90 minutes and were conducted at various locations in London, including the Palace of Westminster. Here is his report.

By Alan Blinder

LONDON, United Kingdom — Douglas Hurd — the former British foreign secretary — was lost, wandering the halls of the Palace of Westminster.

“After all of these years, this building is still confusing," Hurd said in search of a meeting room. "It’s a lot like the Anglo-American relationship sometimes.”

Few dispute that America’s best friend is the United Kingdom. For about 200 years, neither country has had a more consistent ally. Even the language differences are easily ignored.

Americans like the British. A 2006 poll revealed that more than three-quarters of Americans believed Britain was an ally in the so-called war on terror (the British dispute the term). Canada placed second with a favorable rating of less than half.

But in Britain in the same year, 65 percent of Britons felt their country’s future was with Europe more than America. In the same poll, only 44 percent said America was a force for good.

Eight prominent British leaders — seven Conservatives and one independent — agreed to talk about the Anglo-American relationship. Nearly a dozen Labour politicians, past and present, declined invitations to participate.

Among the eight, five served as foreign secretary, three ran the defense ministry, two were the chancellor of the Exchequer — Britain’s equivalent of treasury secretary — one was party leader in the House of Commons and another led NATO from 1984-1988.

"The single biggest failure … since Suez"

Nine years ago, when Islamic extremists turned airliners into weapons, then-President George W. Bush nodded to then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair during an address to Congress.

“America has no truer friend than Great Britain," Bush said. “Once again, we are joined together in a great cause.

“Thank you for coming, friend.”

That was when the trouble began, said Geoffrey Howe, who served as chancellor of the Exchequer, deputy prime minister and foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher.

Blair "was emotionally locked to whatever came out of Washington. He got carried away,” after that night, Howe said.

Malcolm Rifkind, a defense secretary and foreign secretary for part of the 1990s, agreed.

Blair “seemed to assume that unless he could totally support the American president, he would damage the British relationship with the United States," Rifkind said. "That was naive and immature.”

But Hurd, who served under two prime ministers as foreign secretary, said Blair’s mind was more to blame than his intentions.

“The intellectual process was defective,” Hurd said. An intellectual process with disastrous consequences, particularly in Iraq, some allege.

“It is the single biggest failure of British foreign policy since the Suez Crisis. It’s even worse than Vietnam,” Rifkind said.

Tom King, Britain’s defense secretary during the first Gulf War in 1990-1991, said the run-up to the Iraq invasion was flawed more for political strategy and less for intelligence failures.

For a while, King said, the United Nations used the carrot-and-stick approach with Saddam Hussein.

"I became concerned when people started talking about ‘regime change,’ because that meant there was no carrot anymore for Saddam Hussein,” he said. 

Rifkind said regime change was insufficient justification for force.

"There was a very nasty regime," he said. "But we normally don’t go to war with countries just because they have nasty regimes."

Bush deaf, not evil

Rifkind, like others in Britain, doesn’t fault Bush as “an evil man or a bad man,” but as a president who didn’t listen to a full spectrum of advice. King, who also worked with former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, thinks former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wielded “disproportionate influence.”

Hurd ran Britain’s foreign office in the 1990s, working with former President George H.W. Bush, who came to power with significant experience in international affairs, and former President Bill Clinton, who didn’t. He agrees with Rifkind.

“Plenty of people come to the top without direct experience in foreign policy,” he said. “If they lack that experience, then they need to have the gift of choosing good people and listening to their experience. 

"Bush’s difficulty was in not listening to people like Powell."

At the time, Powell argued that more planning for post-invasion Iraq was essential, and some Brits said that view was ignored. David Owen, the foreign secretary in the late 1970s, said Iraq’s post-war recovery was "totally and utterly mismanaged."

"We totally failed to understand that winning the conventional war was the easy part," Rifkind said. The problem with U.S. planning for Iraq was that no exit strategy was mapped out, he added.

But Owen argues that had Iraq been better managed from the beginning, the coalition could have been victorious.

"Could Iraq have been a success? It could have been," Owen said.

Howe, who worked with the first President Bush, said his son, George W., disappointed his father.

"He just had an extraordinarily superficial approach to everything," Howe said. "It seemed as if he had almost forgotten the elementary components of political leadership. It was a great tragedy for his father."

Owen, a neurologist by training, said he thinks Bush suffers from adult attention deficit disorder.

He has never met Bush, but said he wonders if a link exists between the former president’s early years of heavy drinking and later difficulty delivering speeches, which he called "a language defect."

The superficial approach that Howe described triggered other problems. Hurd thinks the invasion created — not just worsened — turmoil in Iraq.

"We let terrorism into Iraq," Hurd said. "There was no serious terrorism in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, except his own brand of it."

America, the "Great Satan," aids Iran

Rifkind said the U.S. weakened its position with Iran because of Hussein’s toppling.

"The biggest beneficiary of the Iraq War was Iran," Rifkind said. "Iran couldn’t believe its good fortune that a country that had been its traditional enemy had been destroyed thanks to the United States. The ‘Great Satan’ did it for them."

King said Iraq worsened Afghanistan.

"The tragedy of Iraq is that it has made Afghanistan much more difficult," King said. "If we hadn’t had the distraction of Iraq at the time we did, things would be different."

Britain’s history in Afghanistan dates back to the 1800s. Nigel Lawson, a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1980s, said "history shows that you don’t get anywhere by invading Afghanistan."

Lawson said he worries about the consequences on neighboring Pakistan, a nuclear power.

"The main effect of going into Afghanistan has been for the al-Qaeda there to flee to Pakistan," Lawson said. "So now we have a problem in Pakistan. And a destabilized Pakistan is much more dangerous than a destabilized Afghanistan." 

Owen wonders if Afghanistan will become for the U.S. what it was for the Soviet Union after its invasion in the 1980s.

"There’s nothing like a defeat for eroding an empire," Owen said.

He said Americans must be prepared not to win in the classical sense.

"You simply don’t defeat these people," Owen said. "All that will happen is they’ll go away to their villages, hide their guns, and live to have another fight. They are not interested in the issue, but who paid them to fight."

Having spent time in Afghanistan personally and professionally, Owen said he believes the fighting mentality is ingrained.

"For them, shooting each other is like other people shooting wild game," he opined, citing repeated military interventions and ethnic tensions in Afghanistan. "It’s part of their life."

Michael Howard, a former Conservative Party leader, said Afghanistan requires more boots on the ground than only the U.S. and Britain can provide.

"I think the other allies are being extraordinarily feeble in the extent to which they are participating. They’re not carrying their share of the burden," Howard said.

Howard said Europe has an obligation because of shared values.

“The threat we are trying to combat in Afghanistan is not just a threat to the United States or the United Kingdom. It’s a threat to the whole Western world,” Howard said.

But, Peter Carrington, a former NATO chief and foreign secretary, said, “Nobody in Europe spends any money on defense. They are quite incapable of doing anything,” he said.

A long-standing relationship

The relationship between the U.S. and Britain has been significant since World War II. Hurd cautioned that the relationship, while fitting and natural, can’t be taken for granted. It is a mistake, he said, to assume it would be permanent.

“It has to be justified and earned in every generation. The United States isn’t going to maintain a relationship on a special basis for purely sentimental reasons,” he said.

Despite the complications of recent years, the British continue to look to the U.S. for leadership. They do it, Rifkind said, because America is a beacon.

“America was, is and will remain for a long time to come the main champion of Western values,” he said.

Carrington agreed. At the end of his interview, he looked at his visitors.

“You know, we really do like you all,” he said.

This report comes from a journalist in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad. A version of this story first appeared in the The Crimson White, the University of Alabama student newspaper.