State of the cousins: what the British elections mean for the U.S.

AMERICANS are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941--and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation. There was even government-to-government agreement for much of the time on the desirability of Britain's joining the European Union to frustrate any tendency the latter might show toward anti-Americanism. By and large this mix of policies worked well.

It is now threatened, however, by three developments: the rise of anti- Americanism in British politics, a growing anti-Americanism in continental Europe, and the EU's moves toward a common foreign policy. It is the first of these that is the main topic of this article.

Traditional anti-Americanism in Britain has been of two kinds: a left-wing political anti-Americanism rooted in anticapitalism, and a right-wing hostility based on the decline of British power and the resentment at being displaced by the U.S. Neither was politically important; both were easily contained. But a much more dangerous, complicated, and surprising situation developed in the recent election campaign: Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq war midwifed the birth of a powerful anti-Americanism of the center-Left.

I write somewhat perilously, for two reasons. First, it is now two days before the May 5 election, so the outcome is unknown; and second, it irks Americans to hear criticism of Blair on the topic of the war. Unfortunately, however, Blair did make a series of mistakes in presenting the case for war. He justified it almost entirely by reference to Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He neglected justifications drawn from specifically British national interests. He claimed without qualification that the war was legal under international law. And at times he implied that he had obtained concessions from President Bush--such as seeking a second U.N. resolution and putting pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians--in return for Britain's willingness to take part in the invasion.

Since then, of course, the WMD stockpiles were found not to exist (or to be elsewhere). Leaks of the attorney general's advice on the war's legality show that it was full of qualifications and caveats. The second U.N. resolution got nowhere. And Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority, whatever their other merits, hardly amount to a specifically British interest. So the retrospective impression of Blair's justifications is as follows: He manipulated Britain into signing up for an illegal American war that had nothing to do with his own country's interests and on grounds that turned out to be false.

This impression grew more powerful in the course of the campaign, as a cascade of official leaks from Whitehall drenched the front pages. One top-secret document recording a meeting between the prime minister and his senior national security advisers showed the foreign secretary conceding that the case for war was "thin" and that Saddam Hussein had a lesser WMD capability than Libya and others; an intelligence head, "C," reporting that in Washington the policy was driving the intelligence; and Blair himself suggesting that the British people might be persuaded to accept a "regime change" that his own senior law officers were telling him was unlawful.

It is hardly surprising if many Brits resent what seems to be a policy of deceiving the British people in order to truckle to the Yanks. That impression is false. And it could be countered by a firm statement of the full case for liberating Iraq in the language of British patriotism. As a progressive internationalist, however, Blair finds it difficult to make that case because it would mean, inter alia, attacking the idea that international law and the International Criminal Court should usher in a new age of global legal governance. Blair believes in that. Patriotic language, meanwhile, sits uneasily in his mouth because he thinks Britain's nationalism is an obstacle to its modernizing, European destiny. As a result he denounces attacks on his Iraq policy as staining his personal honor--which, at this point, simply invites a horselaugh.

An anti-American atmosphere thus suffused the campaign. But how will it influence post-election politics? The strongest anti-war (and, not coincidentally, the most pro-EU) party is the Liberal Democrat party headed by Charles Kennedy. The Lib-Dems opposed the war from the start and stand to benefit substantially from the current anti-war and anti-American mood. As a third party, they have no chance of becoming the government--and only a very slender chance of replacing the Tories as the second-largest party. If they make major gains, however, they could then become an anti-American "pole" in British politics dragging center-Left opinion in their direction. And in a "hung parliament" they would choose the governing party and prime minister.

The Tories remain the most reliable pro-American party, despite Karl Rove's snubbing of them because of their attacks on Bush's ally and personal friend, Tony Blair. Those attacks (niggling criticisms, rather) were indeed a mistake. They gave the impression that the Tories were soft on a war they had supported. In the course of the campaign, however, Tory leader Michael Howard dispelled such fears with an impressive argument that the Iraq war was justifiable even if Saddam Hussein lacked WMDs and that he would have supported it in those circumstances. If the Tories were to astonish the world by winning, there would be a few moments of regret and embarrassment in the White House--but Anglo-American cooperation would resume immediately afterwards, and it would be all the stronger because the Tories would resist further absorption into a common EU foreign and defense policy (always assuming that Condoleezza Rice did not bully them into going along with it).

Labour is a more complicated matter. The majority of its new members will likely be thoroughly hostile to Blair, passionately pro-European, and barely disguised in their anti-Americanism. If Blair gets a respectable majority, he will want to remain prime minister against the wishes of his party. He will thus be strongly tempted to appease his hostile followers by adopting policies that are not anti- American per se but that have anti-American implications. He can do so with reasonable consistency by pushing strongly for the ratification of the European constitution, shifting military resources from NATO to the EU defense structure, and embracing a common European foreign policy with few or no qualifications. Over time that would force Britain to choose between Europe and America--something Blair has said he would never do--and Labour with or without Blair would undoubtedly choose Europe. It might therefore be better for the U.S., and for Blair's own historical reputation, if he did not remain prime minister.

Finance minister Gordon Brown would succeed him in almost any foreseeable circumstances. Almost all commentators, myself included, have written in the past that Brown is a dour Old Labour stalwart who would likely drift back toward more interventionist and left-wing policies at home and abroad. On the principle of Ockham's razor, that remains the simplest and therefore best prediction. But there are aspects of Brown's political personality that point in other and more interesting directions. He is a devout Christian, a son of the Manse, who had his infant daughter baptized shortly before her early death.

He is thought to be more skeptical of Europe than Blair--in part because his main economic achievement, granting independence to the Bank of England, would be negated if Britain joined the euro, and in part because he is unimpressed by the EU's economic performance. He and his main adviser, new MP Ed Balls, are admirers of the flexibility, variety, and innovation not only of the U.S. economy but also of American welfare provision. (Brown visits the U.S. annually.) All these tendencies converge in Brown's interest in giving religious and other community groups a role in welfare policy. Sound familiar?

British Tories would respond that all these virtues will inevitably fall victim to Brown's control-freakery. He has forced British universities, for instance, to bring in quotas that limit places for children from independent schools in order to reach the "right" social outcome. So much for variety, experimentation, and flexibility. For the U.S., however, a new, confident Brown might be a better ally against anti-Americanism than a weakened Blair.

The stakes are certainly high. Anti-Americanism in continental Europe is no longer a vulgar mob passion; it is the new religion of the social-democratic political elites. Among the EU governments that embrace it are France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Spain. Italy is likely to join them next year when, if current polls are any guide, the pro-American Silvio Berlusconi will be replaced as prime minister by the Europhiliac Romano Prodi. If Britain were to join this anti-American coalition of the unwilling, it would remove all doubt that the EU had become an ideological competitor and rival to the U.S. in world politics. And if the European constitution with its common foreign policy were to be ratified, it would fix that anti-Americanism as a permanent element in Europe's new political identity.

In the long term, we probably need a major public-diplomacy campaign to counter these trends. As the Australian Peter Coleman, author of The Liberal Conspiracy, said in London recently: "I used to think we needed another Congress of Cultural Freedom aimed at the Islamic world. I now realize that it is at least as urgent to establish one aimed at Europe for the second time." In the short term, maybe the U.S. will have to choose between Gordon Brown discreetly backed by Michael Howard over and against Tony Blair pressed hard by Charles Kennedy.

At least that's how it looked before the election.