Anglo-French Union, again?

An Anglo-French military treaty, due to be signed today, has been greeted with dismay in some quarters while indicating to others that the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ may well be slipping away. Is this a turning point? I’m not sure. If it is, is it an unalloyed advance? Is Britain less likely to try and police the world, just behind the American behemoth, if the French are close to hand, whispering restraint in Britain’s ear? Would an Ango-French military alliance have opposed the Iraq War or would it have forced France to support it (or would the matter have split apart such a union)

If 9-11 had happened in the UK, would Bush have backed Blair?

A really interesting question that has a bearing on the character of the ‘special relationship’: had ‘9-11′ (which I guess would have been dubbed ’11-9’ by us or else required elaborate translation for American audiences) happened on British soil and involving just as many casualties, how would the United States have reacted to it? I am not talking about the immediate outpouring of shock and sympathy but what followed – a declaration by the US of a ‘global war on terror’, the war in Afghanistan and, later, and more controversially, war on Iraq. Would President George W. Bush have backed to the hilt whatever course of action Prime Minister Tony Blair decided upon

Neo-Cons, having declared history’s end, try to reclaim the past

Having declared that History ended around 1989, it seems that some neo-conservatives are keen also to reclaim aspects of History as ‘their’ achievement. In particular, it was claimed by a prominent scholar that the Marshall Plan, among other postwar US foreign policies, was a “quintessentially neo-conservative” policy. This was at a recent (excellent) conference of the BISA US Foreign Policy Group at Leeds University

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Michael Gove: Proud of the British Empire

Michael Gove, Britain’s school’s secretary, recently asked pro-British empire historians, Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson, to recast the history curriculum to provide a “narrative” centred around Britain’s imperial glories in the context of the global domination of the West over the past 500 years. As Seumas Milne argues in his excellent column in The Guardian (10 June, 2010), this merely revives the imperial project that became popular among Anglo-American elites after 1989, and found enthusiastic support from New Labour

A Mormon foreign policy would be good for America and great for the world, But it won’t happen…

As the world prepares to face another US presidential election, thoughts turn to the likely foreign and national security policies of America’s first ‘Mormon’ White House under Mitt Romney. Widely derided as either weird or a cult, a foreign policy true to Mormon beliefs would likely see radical shifts – a massive rollback of American military forces from Afghanistan, reduction of the threatening attitude to Iran, a reversal of blanket support and aid to Israel, and slashed military spending. America would ‘come home’ and experience a real peace dividend that so patently failed to materialise after the end of the Cold War. But there’s a difference between authentic Mormon beliefs and ex-Bishop Willard Mitt Romney, the Church of Latter Day Saints’ establishment and, it must be noted, the majority of American Mormons. So ‘Americanised’ are Romney, the LDS establishment, and lay Mormons that a Romney White House would differ little in practice from previous administrations – including JFK’s ‘Roman Catholic’ and Obama’s ‘African-American’ ones. And that is testimony to the almost overweening assimilating powers of the American Way of Life – the subordination, or hollowing out, of any beliefs beliefs that challenge free enterprise, limited government, American exceptionalism, and US proactive global leadership

Trump may seem crazy, but he is not (always) mad

To many, President Trump seems to be a king of chaos - even more so following the US assassination of Iran's General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad at the beginning of the year. Inderjeet Parmar writes that despite this view, there is frequently more to the Trump administration's actions than normally meets the eye. Chaos and madness even if only projected have their uses, he writes, but also can have real world consequences

Despite Trump’s election, a groundswell for radical change in the US remains

Last week Professor Randolph Persaud penned a response to Professor Inderjeet Parmar’s op-ed which had argued that this year will be an even better one for politics compared to 2016. Professor Parmar argues that we have should have reason to be optimistic going into Trump’s presidency; the groundswell for radical change in the US is still very powerful just as the ideology and institutions of the free market have seen their authority diminish in recent years

Lifted lines and lacks vision: Cameron’s Guildhall speech on Britain’s global role

It is said by many informed commentators that David Cameron’s recent speech on Britain’s global role was partly lifted from one delivered by former PM Gordon Brown and also lacked “vision”. USBlog contends that is an impoverished and superficial conclusion from Cameron’s speech

Wikileaks, blood ties, and the special relationship: "America is the essential power"

It was inevitable that Julian Assange’s wikileaks would give unwelcome publicity to the enduring and unequal relationship between Britain and the United States. The Guardian newspaper, under the headline “Tories promised to run a ‘pro-American regime'” has exposed the Coalition government of Cameron and Clegg once again. While during the election campaign both leaders were proclaiming their “independence” of the United States, and criticising New Labour’s “slavishness” towards the US, Cameron’s foreign policy and national security team were paying homage to their imperial overlord. They promised a thoroughly “pro-American regime”, if elected

We can build a better world after Covid-19 by dragging the state back into public services

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered the way that many of us live. Looking to the future, Inderjeet Parmar and Atul Bhardwaj write that there need not be an automatic return to neo-liberal normalcy or US hegemony after the virus has worked its way through world politics