Archive for September, 2013

The US and UK: More Equal Than We Thought.

Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

Unfortunately the response to the horror of gassed children foaming at the mouth and dying on camera has revealed a fissure between politicians and people which might prove to be a pivotal revolution in the development of public policy. All across Europe and the United States polls show a very substantial majority of the public against military action against Syria. This is not because ordinary people do not care; it is the opposite. It is because they do care. They care about killing and they do not see how killing more will help.

So far only the British Parliament has shown itself sensitive to public opinion and withheld support for military action. Far from revealing Britain as weak, it has shown her much stronger than even a surprised President Putin supposed. The impact on the US has been to unhinge its foreign policy from the post 9/11 certainty that Britain would always be there. This suddenly stripped the US of its moral authority and made its threat of military action look like naked aggression. For though it always had the muscle, Britain’s greater moral authority, stemming from its record in ending slavery well before America and without bloodshed, standing alone against the Nazis while America hesitated, refusing to join in Viet Nam, its record on overseas aid, human rights and climate change, leavened the image of the imperial bully. This unhappy image, which to be fair Obama has been at pains to erase, is where the neo-con dynasty of Reagan and two Bushes has led the one nation on earth that seeks more than any other to be respected and loved.

Now in Washington there is a scramble to find a new legitimacy for action and a new moral authority through hearings, briefings and a coming vote in Congress. Yet none of this would have been necessary nor would have happened if a week ago Parliament had voted yes. This has demonstrated something that most doubted; in the Special Relationship while America wields the power, Britain holds the licence to use it.

Over the last week we have seen that in Britain, with its archaic and idiosyncratic constitutional arrangements, democracy is responsive to the will of the people. It will be very interesting to see whether in America, with its far more advanced democratic machine, reaching down to the election of every trivial local official, the legislature too is willing to listen. Or whether, in the end, it will do as the Executive and the Military demand.

Of one thing there is a certainty. There may be a multitude of valid moral reasons (although this blog does not think so) for responding with force to this unexpected and in many ways baffling chemical outrage, but saving the face of the United States, which finds itself ensnared its its own foolish red lines, is not one of them.