Tony Blair has felt unable to pick up his US Congressional Gold Medal of
Honour for four years partly because the ceremony would reinforce the
prejudices of those convinced he was “some sort of poodle”, says Sir David
Manning, Britain’s Ambassador in Washington.
The Prime Minister’s 1,351-day delay in collecting the medal from President
Bush has long been a source of puzzlement in both Washington and London.
Downing Street insists that it is still being designed.
But as Mr Blair prepares to leave office, Sir David told The Times in a rare
interview that the Prime Minister “always had inhibitions” about being
handed a medal that was awarded shortly after the invasion of Iraq at his
triumphant address to both houses of Congress in July 2003.
Sir David — who was Downing Street’s chief foreign policy adviser in the
run-up to the invasion — seeks to tackle perceptions about Britain’s
relationship with America and that between the two leaders, whose place in
history is likely to be defined by the Iraq war.
“For those who are convinced that the Prime Minister is . . . some sort of
poodle, it does not matter what he does,” says Sir David, who will finish
his four-year stint as Ambassador this autumn. “You reach the point where if
he had collected the medal, people would say that proves their point. But
it’s a much better — a much more complicated relationship — it’s a two-way
street.”
Speaking from his Lutyens-designed residence in Washington, he says the
relationship between the two countries has not “become more unequal” in
recent years, because since the Second World War, America has been the
world’s pre-eminent power” while Britain has had to learn to “operate as a
medium-sized power”.
But he accepts that anti-American sentiments have been fuelled by events that
serve to undermine the sense of shared values between Europe and the US. Sir
David says when he arrived in Washington, “my impression was that the
politics was still very much the politics of 9/11”.
But that changed with November’s midterm elections when the Democrats were
swept back into power on Capitol Hill. “What we have now is a very different
Congress and a very different political debate — not everything is about
national security and Iraq. Of course in 2008, Iraq will be a central issue
but politics is back in America after being anaesthetised for a four or
five-year period.
“I think that is healthy and a good thing that will play into perceptions of
the US overseas. The debate they are going to have will be much more
recognisable to European public opinion.” He is troubled by the rise of
anti-American attitudes, saying it “would just be folly to turn away from
the US” and try to tackle global challenges alone.
“It does scare me and I hope that it will correct itself the further we get
away from post-9/11 politics and the co-operative multilateral relationship
reasserts itself.” Such comments might be interpreted as suggesting that
Britain’s ability to wield influence in Washington has been hobbled. That
perception appeared to have been confirmed earlier this year by Kendall
Myers, a US State department official, who described the relationship with
Britain as utterly one-sided where Mr Blair’s views are routinely ignored.
But Sir David insists that the Prime Minister, because of Britain’s long-term
interests, would “have had to work closely with whoever was in power” — as
he did with President Clinton. Indeed, the Ambassador says there have been
many occasions when Britain has made plain its differences with the Bush
Administration. He cites America’s detention of terror suspects at
Guantanamo Bay and its scepticism about scientific evidence for climate
change, as well as Mr Blair’s commitment to a Middle East peace settlement
and his multilateralist view of the world.
“What is crucial in the relationship is that when we take different positions
it does not affect overall co-operation,” he says. “There has been a subtler
process of engagement across a range of issues — how do you handle
proliferation, particularly that of Iran? How do you handle climate change?
“These are not necessarily easy issues in this country but, by having the
debate I have no doubt we have influenced them.” He suggests that what
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, is now doing with the latest
Middle East peace initiative involving Arab countries “is very much what we
would be urging them to do”, while there has also been a “slight shift” in
Mr Bush’s attitude on climate change “where we have had influence”.
The “cartoon-like interpretation of Bush in some quarters” clearly irritates
Sir David, who says the image of the President as a unilateralist who
ignores other countries is based primarily on the experience of Iraq. This,
he says, ignores more recent efforts by the Administration to work closely
with the UN and Europe, as well as China and Russia, on tackling nuclear
threats posed by North Korea and Iran.
A small, bespectacled and softly spoken man, Sir David is held in huge esteem
within Washington where — both as Mr Blair’s foreign policy adviser and as
ambassador — he is probably the best-informed witness of the two leaders’
relationship.
For critics of the Prime Minister, this appeared to be summed up by last
year’s embarrassing “Yo, Blair” moment at the G8 summit when neither of them
realised a microphone had been left on as the President appeared to dismiss
out of hand Mr Blair’s offers of help on the Lebanon crisis.
Sir David rejects such interpretations, saying: “The President has own joky
way with people . . . he is naturally ebullient. I think it was like a Texan
saying ‘Howdy’.”
So what is it really like when they meet in private? “It’s frank, very plain,”
he says. “Both of them know what they want to emphasise and where they want
the conversation to go. They have become comfortable about dealing with the
difficult things as well as the easy things.”
If people could have seen him in those meetings, “I don’t think they would
have found him to be a hand-wringing supplicant,” says Sir David. “The Prime
Minister is listened to — but it’s not like pulling the handle of a fruit
machine. That is not how foreign policy works.” Can the relationship between
American President and British Prime Minister ever be the same again? “Not
initially,” he replies. “Personalities take time to get to know each other.
No one can have the same relationship that Tony Blair has had with the
President but I think there will continue to be an extremely close
relationship.” He says the challenges facing both countries in dealing with
terrorism and the consequences of globalisation “do not change because the
people in office change — there will not be some dramatic shift”.
But there is a sense that, even in the instances cited by Sir David as
examples of where Mr Blair has exercised influence, the results have been
intangible. On the Middle East peace process, he does little to conceal his
personal frustration that ten years after he left the post of British
Ambassador to Israel, “we are still trying to make progress”.
Mr Bush once promised to devote as much time and effort to this peace process
as Mr Blair had to that in Northern Ireland. “What happened,” says Sir
David, “was that the Administration lost faith in Arafat. We did not get the
follow-through.”
When Arafat died, “there was a new opportunity . . . but things are never
straightforward,” he adds wistfully.
It was a similar story in the build-up to the Iraq war when the Prime Minister
persuaded Mr Bush to exhaust the diplomatic options in the UN until “the
bitter end”. He “did have an effect”, says Sir David, even if “alas, the UN
route failed and we didn’t achieve our goals”.
Mr Blair’s medal, awarded by Congress for his support for American foreign
policy, has become an unfortunate symbol — a heavy burden around his neck.
Sir David says that Mr Blair has always been reluctant to accept any award
while still in office and predicts that he will receive the medal “when he
is a private citizen”. That day is looming and it has come earlier than it
might have done were it not for the closeness of his relationship with Mr
Bush.
Tony Blair, 2007 “The relationship with America is what opens lots of
doors everywhere”
Bush, 2003 “America is fortunate to call this country [UK] our closest
friend in the world”
Bush, 2001 “We have no greater friend than Mexico”
Bush, 2002 “We have got no better friends than Canada”
US State Department official Kendall Myers, 2006 “There never really
has been a special relationship or at least not one we’ve noticed… We
typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, ‘There are the Brits
coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let’s park them’.”
US President Ronald Reagan on Margaret Thatcher “The best man in
England”
Thatcher on Reagan “The second most important man in my life”
Probable origin of the phrase, Winston Churchill 1946 “The fraternal
association of the English-speaking peoples. . . means a special
relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United
States.”
