Why Blair has got George W so wrong
The Times - 4 Jan 2001
By Irwin Stelzer
Tony Blair lost two big bets recently, and the British people will have to pay up. First, he gambled that Al Gore would be the next US President, which would mean another American Administration supportive of his ambitions to turn Britain towards Europe and, if necessary, away from America. Blair lost, and the British people, whose preference for America over France, Germany and the rest of the EU is clear, will have to pay the bill. Then the Prime Minister gambled that George W. Bush is as dumb, or as lazy, or as pliable, or all three, as the British media say he is. After all, the President-elect has shown no interest in the "Third Way" gabfests that so engaged the attention of Bill Clinton. And his interests run to baseball and cowboy boots - every bit as lowbrow as Ronald Reagan's, that other President whom Britain's leftish metropolitan elite found so unappealing.
On the off-chance that the American people should install this dunce in the White House, a congratulatory telephone call, a courtesy call on the new President, exposing him to the unquestioned Blair charm, and all would be well. That bet, too, has been lost: Bush, who managed to earn a graduate degree from Harvard while Gore failed to complete two different graduate programmes, is moving with intelligence, vigour and purpose in directions that put him on a collision course with Blairite policies, and that threaten the "special relationship". Blair is now up against it: he can no longer hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes, as events in recent days prove.
Start with a warning shot across the bow from the Senate's most powerful foreign policy player, Jesse Helms. As with Bush, so with Helms: the British media love to portray him as a dumb country boy, with no knowledge of the world outside his native South. Fortunately for Britain, your Ambassador in America, Sir Christopher Meyer, knows better, and has taken pains to court Helms and to keep open lines of communication with his staff. So it probably came as no surprise to Sir Christopher, although it clearly rocked No 10, when Helms delivered a public warning that British participation in the anti-Nato European army would be taken by America as a sign that the French had at last found in Britain the ally they needed to begin the process of reducing American influence in Europe.
Blair has already been told clearly that if his new European army - for that is what it is, no matter what the Prime Minister calls it - intends to rely on US Intelligence, he had better think again. In fact, if he has any intention of sharing intelligence with the French, who American intelligence officers believe passed such information on to Milosevic during the Kosovo intervention, I am assured by intelligence types in Washington that Britain will find itself out of the loop for the first time since the Second World War.
To add to Blair's woes, Bush has nominated Donald Rumsfeld to be his Secretary of Defence, specifically rejecting his old friend Tom Ridge, the Pennsylvania Governor, because of the latter's lack of enthusiasm for the national missile defence system (NMD) that Bush has promised to deploy at the earliest feasible date. Rumsfeld is a long-time proponent of a missile shield to protect America and any who would shelter from missile attacks from "rogue Governments" such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, or from a newly hostile Russia.
To put that shield in place, America will need to upgrade radar equipment at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. That means Blair will have to say "yes" or "no" - "maybe" or "later" won't do. The French, of course, are violently opposed to the plan, as are many other European nations which Blair has been so assiduously courting, some of which are eager to curry favour and contracts with the likes of President Saddam Hussein and Iran's ayatollahs. Bush aims to make Blair choose, and if the Prime Minister thinks he can fob off the allegedly not-so-bright new President and his formidable team of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, with talk of a bridge between America and Europe, he had better think again. America wants an ally, not a bridge.
There is worse. Gordon Brown's chief economic adviser, Ed Balls, and Larry Lindsey, who was in charge of economic policy for George Bush Sr, are old buddies, having been at Harvard together. Recently Lindsey, a colleague of mine at a Washington think-tank, upset Balls by making it clear that the Bush team regards the EU as protectionist. The EU was regarded as not worth fussing with over trade issues because of its refusal to comply with the World Trade Organisation and drop the banana-import scheme that discriminates against US companies, its barriers to the importation of American beef on spurious health grounds, and its import restrictions on American TV programmes, films and other audiovisual products. Equally important, Robert Zoellick, with whom I have served on a corporate advisory board and who will play an important part in formulating the Bush team's trade policy, is unhappy with the EU's refusal to include services among the products covered by WTO rules.
So there is growing support among trade experts with access to the Bush camp for a move to ignore Britain, and to push instead for bilateral deals with Latin America and with Pacific area countries. After all, Britain has ceded authority over trade matters to the EU, and from America's point of view that means dealing with the French whose enthusiasm for free trade, to put it mildly, leaves something to be desired. In the Clinton era, Blair could make a phone call and wheedle favours such as an exemption for the British cashmere products from America's trade-retaliation hit list. Those days are gone: Bush's team is well aware of new Labour's preference for Gore, and, more importantly, of the Prime Minister's continuing effort to prove that he is a good European.
Another item on the list of Britain's woes is the nomination of Paul O'Neill to be Secretary of the Treasury. O'Neill, coming as he does from the industrial sector, is a long-time advocate of a weaker dollar. If he prevails, Britain will find it more difficult to sell its wares in America. He is also very sceptical about the global warming scare, and is likely to be a voice in the Administration that holds out against Europe's refusal to allow trading of pollution permits that would efficiently cut the cost of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. Britain is going to have to choose between the anti-market, anti-permit-trading position of its European friends, or the pro-market position of the Bush Administration.
Finally, there is the contradiction at the heart of the Blair and Bush approaches to foreign policy. The Prime Minister, in his famous speech in Chicago, argued that the democracies have an obligation to intervene wherever in the world bad things are happening. Clinton agrees. But the Clintons are now packing their things to move to their new house in Washington, and the Bushes are preparing to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And George W. Bush has one test for intervention: is a vital American interest involved? To which Colin Powell adds, can we accomplish the mission quickly, and get out? No hanging around for "nation building", and no use of combat troops for humanitarian chores. If Blair is looking for an ally to support his not-unworthy vision of the role of democracies, he should start looking elsewhere. And stop thinking that he can count on American resources to realise his benign vision, while reducing the combat readiness of his own forces.
Some years ago, the then British Ambassador to the US, Robin Renwick, quoted a Foreign Office paper on relations between your country and mine: "If we go about our business in the right way, we can help steer this great unwieldy barge, the United States of America, into the right harbour." As any streetwise American would tell Blair now: "Fuggedaboutit." We have an able new captain on the bridge of our ship of state, an experienced crew, an aversion to "Third Way" bilge, and a clear sense of the direction in which we want to travel in the world. We hope the British people will join us. But right now, we fear that they, or at least their Prime Minister, would rather sail under the flag of those not exactly friendly to us. We mourn our loss, as you should yours.