Picture this. You’ve just finished a massive fight for your life. You are bruised battered bloody and even though your enemy lies dead, you realize that you’ve lost as well. The doctor says we have to amputate, all that will be left is your head. But now you face not one but two new enemies, and even though one says he’s a friend and even helps you out, he’s hitting on your wife. That’s what happened to the UK.
Everything that the Victorians worked for was lost after the great wars and instead of fights among siblings, dividing up the globe based on horse races across continents, the world was being cut up between mushy headed intellectuals and callous hearted businessmen. Here is one way of seeing World War II: The UK was essentially invaded by the USA and conscripted into continuing the fight against German conquested Europe, while the Communists battered from the other side.
The British were never the same again. Forced to import ignorant bodies from it’s colonies then losing control of the sources of it’s riches, England’s intellectual and material wealth dwindled. Thanks to the cold war and momentum from colonial “agreements” Britain was kept running long enough to cut some sweet deals with some Arabs who wanted some planes.
But as the cold war wound down and the iron curtain parted to reveal a failed social and economic experiment, the UK hoped to retire gracefully to be known as that quaint but “cool” country with a millenium dome and a financial district.
Then 9/11 happened and the shit that was beginning to sediment at the bottom got all stirred up again, leaving a very bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
I was at a lecture where the main point emerged that the UK slid into the Iraq war (not kicking and screaming but with a stiff English upper lip) politely following what it accepted as the global hegemon.
The USA certainly gives the impression that there’s a John Rambo in every yellow cab who can take out whole army divisions single handedly. And if one of the Rambos got a booboo well there was always nuclear Armageddon as an option. Being able to speak English was a disadvantage for the…er…English as they swallowed the American tales hook line and sinker.
When the USA started stringing together a record of publicized defeats when facing backward insurgencies in South east Asia, Somalia and Central America and some how allowed Saudi citizens to fly passenger jets into their skyscrapers, the French and the rest of the world threw their hands up with a universal “I knew it” “let’s get back to surrendering to every streetpainter who can muster a few thugs”. Fighting futuristic wars and being capable of apocalypse is all well and good but good old fighting is too hard for an empire in love with it’s own propoganda. The UK really wanted to stay relevant and in the good graces of the nudificent emperor. So they followed along.
The second Iraq war was a wake up call for the UK: The US doesn’t know how to fight; it has awesome flashing lights and buff guys with cigarettes but those are movie effects and actors. The UK is now fleeing, as carefully as it can to it’s real friends, the ones it used to fight with for many centuries.
The relationship with it’s former rescuer/occupier has grown tense, Washington refuses to say the magic words (special relationship) and it’s adventures have been politically hurtful to the UK and it’s leaders. The advantages dwindle as well as BAE is not spared from prosecution nor is BP protected from Argentina.
British foreign policy is therefore: Protect itself from Russia via NATO; regain and retain independence from the American arsenal; strengthen ties with Europe to the point of formal joint force operations and get to the stage where the military can act efficiently in local, regional and foreign theatres.
With even Eurosceptics resigned to the seemingly inevitability of a strengthened Lisbon treaty, the UK will have to get used to its new body and ensure that it keeps it’s head in future conflicts.
