THE seismic shift in British attitudes to the European Union inevitably draws our relationship with the United States into focus too. There are two reasons for continuing to hug America close. One is the belief, that Tony Blair shares, that European and British politics is downstream of Washington, so the best way to influence events is to keep as close as possible to whoever is president.

Second we are so dependent on the Americans for our strategic defence capability that we have no alternative but to stay close. It is widely believed that we cannot fire cruise missiles or use our nuclear weapons or even operate our ballistic missile submarines without US permission. Both claims need to be re-evaluated.

On the first, any cost-benefit examination of the “special relationship” exposes how one-sided it has always been. In 1982, the State Department declined to support Britain over the Falklands until President Reagan intervened, and successive US governments turned a blind eye to IRA fundraising. As a counter to the blind adherence to the US line over Afghanistan and Iraq, it is claimed that Mr Blair persuaded the US to return to the UN for a second resolution over Iraq, but that was only because American troop formations were not yet ready.

As for the second claim, do we need access to US technical military sophistication and strategic thinking? The problem here is that Britain’s dependence can only intensify as the US funnels mega sums into reinforcing its military dominance. The choice is between accepting that subservience indefinitely or paying a short-term, albeit significant, price to secure greater independence. The long-term balance of advantage strongly favours the latter.

The aim of US foreign and military policy is to preserve and strengthen unilateral American hegemony, while the aim of British foreign policy must be a stronger role for the United Nations in support of multilateralism and the rule of international law. Those goals clearly do not coincide, as we have recently seen most starkly over Iraq. Where they differ our bottom line must be British interests, not Washington interests. That requires that we keep open the option of supporting

UN or EU operations even if it conflicts with American goals, and therefore slowly but systematically develop a more independent technological base.





WE SHOULD insist on significantly greater reciprocity. Despite Britain providing valued international support for the US in Iraq, the enormous contracts for rebuilding the economy have gone overwhelmingly to American companies, notably Halliburton. British territory is currently used exclusively for US purposes, whether at Fairford for the B52s or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, but without any obvious quid pro quo. British intelligence data, primarily from GCHQ at Cheltenham, is made fully available to the US communications intelligence agencies, but with limited traffic the other way. The CIA often sits on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, but MI6 does not sit on its top intelligence body. The Fylingdales radar station in Yorkshire remains an integral outpost of the Star Wars early warning system, and may well be upgraded to US specifications with little or no benefit to the UK. Most recently, Britain has agreed, shamefully, to extradite Britons to the US without even prima-facie evidence of guilt, yet the US refuses to extradite their citizens on that basis.

While negotiating the European constitution, Britain repeatedly, and rightly, asserted “red lines”. We should do the same in negotiating with the US over foreign and defence policy. We should be prepared to criticise the US more openly. That includes recent occasions when the US reneged on the Kyoto protocol, boycotted the International Criminal Court, refused to sign a nuclear test ban treaty, withdrew from the international bioweapons treaty and broke its promise at the Doha World Trade Organisation meeting to provide cheap drugs to counter epidemics in developing countries.

And we should determine the earliest point at which UK troops can be safely withdrawn from Iraq, not tamely accept US pressure to stay on to help to provide cover for the US occupation.





The author served as a Labour minister, 1997-2003

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