Dog Days

writes for The Scotsman. Earlier this month, the select Foreign Affairs Committee from the British House of Commons paid its annual courtesy call on official Washington. Its visits are usually festivals of bonhomie, filled with sherry toasts to the transatlantic relationship and florid tributes to the eternal Anglo-American alliance. While those were in abundance as usual this year, a new, strange anxiety lurked behind the public pronouncements of mutual admiration. This anxiety revealed itself at a breakfast briefing with British reporters in a swish Washington hotel, when one historically pro-American Tory member of Parliament rose to ask a less-than-genial question about the special relationship: "What do we get out of it?" No one quite knew what to say to this unwelcome piece of breakfast realpolitik.Tony Blair, of course, has faithfully played the part of George W. Bush's best friend. This was a risk that always seemed courageous and foolhardy in equal measure. Sitting in the coalition of the willing's second seat carried the possibility of severe and uncontrollable political damage by tethering the prime minister to Bush and his runaway vehicle, the Iraq war. But Blair could have at least expected a greater measure of kindness and sensitivity from Washington in return for his unflinching support. Instead, he has reaped the cruelty of the Bush administration. Blair has been on the receiving end of a steady stream of small insults and slights from Washington--on policies ranging from global warming to defense contracts. Bush has delivered Blair's enemies heaps of evidence to suggest that he is something far worse than Bush's poodle: He is the American president's whipped cur. In the course of his administration, Bush has come perilously close to accomplishing the impossible: alienating Britain, forcing even its most reliably pro-American voices to question just how "special" the vaunted relationship is. In the summer of 2002, Scooter Libby, then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, huddled with British officials to discuss the course of the war on terrorism. As Sunday Telegraph Executive Editor Con Coughlin conjures the scene in his new book, American Ally, Libby cavalierly mocked Blair's qualms: "Oh dear, we'd better not do that, or we might upset the prime minister." In fact, on a range of issues, the Americans have upset the British, politely listening to their concerns and then, more often than not, simply ignoring them. A British offer to send 6,000 troops into the caves of Tora Bora to hunt for Osama bin Laden was rejected in November 2001. British proposals for postwar Iraq were, according to a senior Foreign Office official quoted by Coughlin, "dumped ... in the dustbin." The initial round of primary reconstruction contracts went exclusively to U.S. firms; British companies had to complain before they were allowed a bigger piece of the action. Moreover, despite Bush's stated commitment to free trade, he imposed tariffs on European steel imports for over 20 months. And, ignoring repeated British pleas, the administration refused to engage on global warming or to make a priority of the Middle East road map. Individually, these slights might be unfortunate; collectively, they look worse than careless. British patience is wearing thin as ongoing disputes with the United States coalesce to leave the British feeling like unwanted guests at a dinner party they thought they were co-hosting. Two current confrontations in particular are exercising British Parliamentarians. Earlier this month, Boris Johnson, a Tory front-bench spokesman, decried what he termed the "grotesque imbalance" in the extradition arrangements between the United States and the United Kingdom. Though the British Parliament approved a new treaty between the two countries three years ago, Congress has yet to reciprocate. Consequently, while British citizens can be put on a fast track to extradition to the United States, no such reciprocity exists for American suspects wanted for trial in British courts. British officials have held some 30 meetings in Washington on the subject, to no discernible effect. (According to British officials, the Irish-American lobby has scuppered the deal, worried that suspected IRA members might be shipped back to the United Kingdom.) Such is the discontent at Westminster that no fewer than 145 members of Parliament have called for a halt to extraditing suspects across the Atlantic until the United States ratifies the new treaty. The message is that agreements must work in more than one direction. Last week, the irritation--"frustration" is the diplomatic term--came to a head. The issue this time was defense--and, more specifically, sharing toys. Britain is currently slated to buy 150 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) planes, the world's most expensive aircraft, to replace its aging Harrier fleet. But the Bush administration is reluctant to grant Britain a waiver from America's International Traffic in Arms Regulations statute, which limits the overseas transfer of sensitive U.S. military know-how. Because of this, the British could be denied the technology and software updates that their long-term JSF operations require. This time, however, the poodle bit back. On March 14, Lord Peter Drayson, minister for defense procurement, went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to deliver an unusually forceful message. If the United States did not live up to its defense promises, Britain would cancel its JSF investment and look elsewhere for solutions to its long-term aviation needs. "I fully understand that there are excellent reasons, of course, to protect American defense technology," Drayson admitted. "However, as a key ally standing shoulder to shoulder, we do expect you to understand how sensitive these technology transfer issues are to us." Liam Fox, the Conservatives' defense spokesman and arguably the most ardent Atlanticist in Parliament, finds it "incomprehensible" that "the integrity of the United Kingdom be questioned in this way" when British squaddies are serving alongside American GIs in Mesopotamia and the Hindu Kush. The U.S. position is, essentially: tough. Despite Blair raising the issue with Bush on at least three occasions, the White House has yet to persuade Representative Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee (and an implacable opponent of technology transfers) to cut the Brits some slack. Hyde worries that passing technology to the British could mean they would leak it to China, Russia, or, worse, France. And the JSF fight goes beyond the technology transfer. British officials were appalled to discover that the Pentagon had unilaterally canceled a previously agreed plan by which an Anglo-American consortium, headed by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, would build an alternative engine for the JSF. "We expect to be consulted on major issues, and we do not feel we have been on this decision," Drayson told reporters after his appearance on the Hill. Some Americans, at least, are getting the message: "[I]t's going to cost us in our relations with the British, " John McCain noted at a subsequent Senate hearing. The storied political commentator Hugh Grant spoke for many Britons when, playing the part of the prime minister in Richard Curtis's Love Actually, he turned on the visiting American president: "I love that word `relationship.' Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship. A relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm, Britain." OK, so Billy Bob Thornton played the president, but the speech is one that the real president of the United States would do well to pay attention to. Dogs, be they poodles or bulldogs, are loyal, but they need some love, too.

By alex massie