LONDON, 19 August 2003 — I am always intrigued by the indignation voiced by Europhobes when any trans-EU initiative is announced. Up goes the cry that our (British) national sovereignty is being given away to perfidious Europeans. Never, they say, can this latest treachery be countenanced.
Yet the same people who rise up in anger at even the most sensible rearrangement remain ominously silent when a far greater threat to the British nation state rears its head. I refer, of course, to the US and its at times pernicious “special” relationship with the UK.
Our national chauvinists tell us that a common European defense and security policy is beyond the pale. A common foreign policy is painted as almost treasonable, and unworkable anyway. A common currency removes the last vestiges of our ability to run our economy. What nonsense.
What does NATO stand for if it is not a common defense and security policy? Does not the EU already try — Iraq apart — to coordinate the foreign policy of its members toward an effective relationship with the world to the benefit of Europe’s citizens? Is not a common currency, of itself, a logical progression from the trade arrangements within the common European market?
The unspoken issue is that the EU, by definition, excludes the US. That worries the latter and its acolytes within our own country. There is a fear that a possibly protectionist and interventionist Europe is counter to American interests. Therefore, Europe must be kept as a loose trading market and no more. There are those who wish a special designation for the UK — as a “bridge” between a European trading bloc and the US. Unfortunately for them, many in Europe see this as a one-way bridge for American influence and advantage, with the UK cast as a Trojan horse.
As these arguments rage abroad, few at home comment on developments in the Anglo-American relationship. Militarily, we grow ever closer to the US. Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon has acknowledged that we are to be to the US armed forces what the sepoys were to the British Indian Army.
Increasingly, our armaments are American-made and American-controlled. Senior officers, frustrated by procurement problems in Europe, demand the Americanization of military “kit”. American pressure is brought to bear against new European military equipment, in favor of weapons procurement from American companies, as the British government sinks deeper into dependency on the US.
Meanwhile, Home Secretary David Blunkett allows a one-way extradition process to be imposed in favor of the Americans, at their demand and without the standards of evidence required hitherto. British subjects languish in Guantanamo Bay, without recourse to due process and the jurisprudential standards demanded by international law. Helplessly, the British government wrings its hands as Bush contemptuously turns its arguments away.
Diplomatically, the gains of many decades have been frittered away by our blind obedience to the American administration’s wars. Huge numbers of people view the British prime minister as Bush’s poodle, and see Britain as no more than the errand boy for the American neoconservatives. What price British influence in the world if Albion has no influence with its American godfather?
For that is the case. We have next to no influence with the US administration. If we did, we would surely have demanded some quid pro quo for our loyal support to America in its military adventives. Perhaps some flexibility would have been forthcoming on the Kyoto protocol or on America’s development of nuclear weapons. Not a chance. We continue to cravenly support all things American-inspired, whether missile defense or a distorting World Trade Organization. In return, the prime minister receives plaudits from Congress delivered in a manner reminiscent of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. As America’s love affair with Tony Blair blossoms, the world — and the UK’s place within it — becomes less stable.
What an ignominious way we have begun the 21st century — as a satrapy of the new American world order. Old friends despair as old rivals mock this once-proud nation. No longer is it able to hold its head up as a free-thinking, sovereign state.
— Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defense minister.
