It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.
By Tom Arms
It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.
Britain needs it. Europe needs it. And, although they are less keen to admit that they need help from any quarter, the US needs it to become the cornerstone of a new Transatlantic Alliance.
For years the UK shared the “Special Relationship” tag with France and Germany. In fact, after Brexit, Britain probably slipped into third place in Washington’s relationship arrangements.
But French President Emmanuel Macron has politically castrated himself with the recent political elections and the dull and dreary German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fails to inspire either the Germans or the wider world community
Britain may no longer be an EU power, but Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory gives him latitude at home and kudos abroad.
He is helped by a foreign secretary who has the potential to go down in history as one of the best in modern times. David Lammy wasted no time in stamping his image on British foreign policy. Almost before Sir Keir had finished his acceptance speech, Lammy was on the plane for Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv. This week he was at the prime minister’s elbow for the NATO summit in Washington where Sir Keir was the only NATO leader awarded a tete a tete with President Joe Biden.
Lammy also has extensive American connections. The new foreign secretary has worked, studied and lived in the US. He has family in America and his father is buried in Texas.
But what if Donald Trump returns to the White House? A prospect which appears increasingly likely as Joe Biden ages with every passing day. Lammy is on record as labelling Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath” and a “profound threat to international order” as well as a racist and a fascist.
But both Sir Keir and Lammy have said that the transAtlantic relationship remains the “bedrock” of British foreign policy. And in a recent speech at the conservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, Lammy said that Trump’s comments on European security had been “misunderstood.” He has also gone out of his way recently to meet senior Trump foreign policy advisers.
Unfortunately, Trump’s negative policy towards Europe is based on good, sound politics. It is a reflection of a growing US isolationism which in turn is a reaction to series of foreign policy reversals. That feeling of being hard done by the rest of the world (especially its European allies) will continue regardless of whomever win the November election.
To allay European fears, much was made of this week’s decision to base a fresh batch of American intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany. But you need to read the fine print. The missiles are not being offered on a permanent basis as they were in the 1970s and 1980s. No, they are a stopgap measure until the European members of NATO can manufacture and deploy their own intermediate-range systems.
So, the 75th NATO birthday celebrations in Washington, were also the scene for the signing of a letter of intent by Germany, France, Italy and Poland to develop their own long-range missiles which will be called the European Long-Range Approach. In addition, the European members of NATO have all agreed to commit 20 percent of their growing defence budgets to manufacturing new weapons. European NATO sees the writing on the wall and is acting accordingly.
But none of these European moves will replace America’s strategic nuclear umbrella. Neither would the nuclear arsenals of France and Britain. In fact, Britain’s nuclear deterrent is totally reliant on US technology. And that reliance is part of the special relationship which may keep America committed to Europe even if Trump withdraws the US from NATO.
Americans may not feel particularly warm towards other Europeans. But with the British they share a common language, legal system, intelligence links, and alliances through two world wars, investments, educational links and a long, long history. On top of that, Donald Trump, has to protect his Scottish golf course. Britain will almost certainly continue to nestle under the American nuclear umbrella, partly because of the existing nuclear links and partly because of history.
Britain, for its part, may not want European workers or to have to share sovereignty with Brussels. But it recognizes that it is in its interest to belong to a common European defence alliance. And that offering its nuclear weapons and other military hardware to the EU could lead to other as yet unspecified benefits.
If a Trumpian America withdrew from NATO, or reduced its commitment, then Britain could become the link that keeps Europe nestling under the American nuclear umbrella. America would have an alliance with Britain. Britain would have an alliance with America. If Europe was attacked then Britain would be treaty-bound to come to its defense. If Britain was attacked then America would be treaty-bound to come to the defense of Britain, and, by association, Europe.
It is not as good as the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But it is better than the nothing about which too many are talking.
World Review
Patriots for Europe is a political oxymoron designed to confuse the public about its true intentions. It stands alongside other political oxymorons such as The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, aka North Korea, which is neither democratic, a republic or run for the benefit of the North Korean people.
Patriots for Europe is a new political grouping in the European Parliament. And the political reality is that none of the national political parties that belong to this group feel the least patriotic leanings towards the European concept.
In fact, they are all Euro-skeptics whose main mission in life is to undermine the concept of a united Europe and drag their countries back to the 19th century when Europe was a patchwork of feuding nationalistic states.
The intellectual driving force behind Patriots for Europe is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. His Fidesz Party was booted out of the center-right European People’s Party in 2022 for being too right-wing and has been politically homeless ever since.
Soon after the announcement of the results for the recent European Parliament elections—a victory for the far-right—Orban flew to Vienna to launch Patriots for Europe alongside Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and former Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl. Their stated manifesto was: weaken the EU, focus on European cultural identity, introduce stronger anti-immigration measures and oppose the EU’s climate change policy which aims to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050.
The core trio quickly attracted far-right groups from across the EU. By the end of this week it had grown to 84 seats drawn from 12 member states. This places it in third place behind the center-right European People’s Party (176 seats) and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (139 seats). There are a total of 720 seats in the European Parliament.
Conspicuous by its absence from the new party is Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Deutschland). Recent Nazi-related scandals have put the far-right Germans beyond the pale even for the likes of Viktor Orban.
A catch was France’s National Rally (RN). It achieved a major victory in the European Parliamentary elections with 30 of France’s 79 MEPs. National Rally then went on to place a disappointing—and surprising—third in French parliamentary elections.
RN’s Jordan Bardella had expected to be French Prime Minister. He has had to settle for the job of President of Patriots for Europe. He secures the job as leader of the national party with the largest number of MEPs in the new political group. He will be using the parliamentary building at Strasbourg as a platform from which to attack France’s left and center in preparation for the French presidential elections in 2027.
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“I am a reformist principilist”, declares Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly-elected president.
But what is a “reformist principilist”? According to Pezeshkian it is someone who is loyal to the principles of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but wants to liberalize/reform the principles of that revolution.
That means, for a start, swearing allegiance to Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khameini, which he did throughout his campaign. In fact, in his victory speech Pezeshkian praised the “guidance” of Khameini which he described as a major factor in his electoral success.
Khameini, for his part, made a rare post-election speech in which he acknowledged that some Iranians dislike his regime. He then added: “We listen to them and we know what they are saying.”
The question is: What is Khameini hearing and what will he allow Pezeshkian to do about it?
The new president campaigned on a pledge to rein in the morality police who had been arresting women who refused to wear head scarves. He also wanted to improve relations with the West and resume talks on Iran’s nuclear development.
The headscarves issue is likely to be a win for the protesters. The government is unlikely to make a song and dance about it, but they will probably inform the morality police to turn a blind eye to the absence of scarves.
An Iranian initiative to resume talks on nuclear development may also be on the cards. This is because, according to US intelligence, the Iranians have recently slowed down their race to develop nuclear weapons. Thus there is more scope for talks on time limits and associated issues.
Wider issues with the West are more problematic. Iran has locked itself into the position of third wheel in an anti-Western alliance with China and Russia. It would be difficult to extricate itself—even if it wanted to.
At a recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, acting president Mohammed Mokhbar delivered a “personal message” from Ayatollah Khameini to Vladimir Putin assuring him that Iran’s relations with Moscow are “deep and unchangeable” and would remain strong regardless of who won the election. He added that the Iranian-Russian axis had changed “the power equations in the world.”
Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis are another major source of friction. At the moment, US-backed Israel is fighting a shadow war with Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. But Iran’s support for Hezbollah provides Tehran with a political and military reach that spreads in an arc all the way across the Middle East and insures its position as regional super power. No Iranian leader is likely to relinquish that power willingly.
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Kazakhstan was briefly in the headlines this month. It deserves more attention.
The reason for its appearance in the spotlight was a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the Kazakh capital of Astana.
The reason that it deserves more attention is manifold. A good starting point is its relations with Russia. It was part of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before that. Russia’s main space facilities are at Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. About 15 percent of the population are ethnic Russians.
Russia controls the main pipelines through which Kazakh oil and travel to world markets. Moscow is heavily invested in Kazakhstan’s important mineral-based industries, especially the increasingly significant uranium deposits. Kazakhstan is the world’s 11th largest producer of oil and gas and is also rich in bauxite, copper, gold, iron ore and coal.
The Kazakh-Russian border is 4,500 miles long, which makes it second only to the US-Canadian border. Trade between the two countries reached $27 billion in 2023. On top of all the above, the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, owes his job to Russian intervention in 2022.
But the icing on the cake is that Russia’s ally “without limits”—China—is the second biggest investor in the world’s largest landlocked country and their annual trade last year topped Russia’s at $37 billion.
Besides all these links between Kazakhstan and its two giant neighbors, President Tokayev is trying to improve relations with the West. He has remained neutral on the issue of Ukraine and maintained oil production at record high levels to try and keep down world energy prices.
Tokayev’s scorecard, however, is a bit iffy on the issue of preventing the export of military equipment to Russia. Kazakhstan regularly allows dual-use equipment to make its way to the Russian forces in Ukraine. For its part, Western governments are prepared to turn a blind eye to Kazakhstan’s sanctions busting. They know that Tokayev is walking a diplomatic tightrope, and that a slip in their direction could result in Russian intervention which the West could little if anything about.
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and the author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
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