Anglo-American relations

DC Confidential: The Controversial Memoirs of Britain's Ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and the Iraq War by Christopher Meyer; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; pages 301, 20.

MEMOIRS of British diplomats, are generally, of two kinds. One is stolid and reticent with a calculated occasional disclosure of substance. The other is the calculatedly indiscreet memoir, especially about the writer's romantic escapades, which tells a lot but stops short of telling what the reader really wants to know. Two notable examples of the latter are the memoirs of Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, later Lord Innerchapel, Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the United States, and, far more so Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart's classic Memoirs of a British Agent. He was in Moscow in 1918.

All memoirs resemble female attire in their uneasy compromise between the desire to reveal and the necessity to conceal. Sir Christopher Meyer's memoirs resemble a particular attire - the bikini. What is revealed is interesting; what is concealed is vital. He was Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003, on the eve of the attack on Iraq. It must be read with Bob Woodward's two books (Bush at War and Plan of Attack) and the memoirs of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) during that period, which the Foreign Office has been examining under a microscope. They are entitled The Cost of War: Iraq and the Paradox of Power. If all goes well, they will be published by William Heinemann. Sir Jeremy also served as Representative to Iraq during the coalition authority period.

Meyer was Chief Spokesman for Prime Minister John Major and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and enjoyed it hugely. He is now Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

This is a well-written and most entertaining diplomatic memoir. But, that is only one part of the story. His reflections on the press, on diplomacy, and on Anglo-American relations are very relevant to the Indian situation. Indian politicians are spoilt brats ready, even in the age of tape-recorders, with lies about "misquotation" or "quotation out of the context". None of them would be able to survive in the United Kingdom or the U.S. with their rude replies or dishonest prevarications.

Meyer writes: "As the government spokesman, I came to realise that the power of government to control and shape the flow of information is overwhelming and potentially dangerous. `Spinning' - briefing the press to put the government in the best possible light - is the second oldest profession. The notion that objectivity and accuracy would be better served if government were able to transmit its policies directly to the voters, unmediated by journalism, is specious and self-serving. There is no policy without politics and no politics without bias and distortion... . Politicians would do themselves a favour if they were less sensitive to what is written about them and less eager to ingratiate themselves with editors and proprietors."

It is a pity Meyer did not publish in his book a paper he wrote at Harvard entitled "Hacks and Pin-striped Appeasers: How to sell Foreign Policy to the Press". The rules governing press parties which accompany the Prime Minister during a trip abroad are different there. "Unless you warned them well in advance, a travelling press party would cause merry hell if you cut them out of a major event. They were, after all, paying for the privilege of travelling with the Prime Minister." (Emphasis added throughout.)

The author demolishes the myth about the irrelevance of Ambassadors today. Modern communications do not make Ambassadors dispensable but empower them with "instruments of enormous influence". They can use them "to make their contribution to policy debate in London in real time. They can help shape policy rather than being its mere recipients and mouthpieces".

A new factor has intruded, the Prime Minister's Office. Its personnel not only undermine the Foreign Office but also the Ambassador if he is too successful. The Prime Minister's men want a monopoly on influence and, as Meyer found more than once, would readily stoop low to acquire that.

BUT it is the core of the memoirs that are of greater relevance to Indians - Anglo-U.S. relations. Indian neocons have been frantically wooing the U.S., reminding it tirelessly that the Indians are its "natural allies" in an alliance forged in heaven. The game was begun in 1948 by that apostle of non-alignment Jawaharlal Nehru who asked the military attach in the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C., one Col. B.M. Kaul - who won high honours in the 1962 war thanks to Nehru's patronage - to contact the U.S. government and virtually offer an alliance. He was rebuffed. Nehru thought nothing of going behind the back of Ambassador Asaf Ali, a close personal friend. Can India aspire to or expect a closer rapport or a more rewarding relationship than that enjoyed by the U.K. in its "special relationship" with the U.S.?

Meyer's experience is instructive. "At the right moment there is no substitute for being as tough and direct in negotiation as the Americans are invariably with us. Americans have a striking ability to compartmentalise their sincere affection for Britain from their single-minded pursuit of national interest... . Britain's inability in 2001-2 to block tariffs on imports of British steel into the U.S., to secure a U.K./U.S. transatlantic air services agreement with fully reciprocal benefits, and bring to a conclusion prolonged negotiations to liberalise the export to the U.K. of U.S. defence equipment - all this was at least in part the result of a failure in London at the highest level to have a clear vision of the national interest and to negotiate accordingly."

Meyer records: "When ambassador in Washington, I would not allow the phrase `special relationship' inside the embassy. I was worried that my staff would approach their work with a set of delusions: that Britain's relations with U.S. were different in kind from those with any other country; that the Americans would therefore grant us special benefits, unavailable to other nations; and that, as a result, developing a relationship with the U.S. of advantage to Britain would require less effort than with other governments. I wanted our diplomats to take nothing for granted."

LOOK at the balance sheet. The U.K. has invested billions in an American military aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter, which 10 years or so hence will be the backbone of Britain's Air Force and Navy. Britain and the U.S. have been for years each other's largest foreign investor. Almost half of all American investment in the European Union (E.U.) was to be found in Britain. British investment in the U.S. - more than Germany's or Japan's - generated around a million American jobs.

Thanks however to immigration in the past century, young Americans have a different image of Britain. Meyer asked his staff to think of the U.S. as a foreign country. Britain can wield greater clout than it has. It is the world's fourth-largest economy, a nuclear power, one of the P-5 (permanent five) of the United Nations Security Council and "one of the handful of nations capable of projecting serious military power beyond its borders".

Americans have not been great admirers of Britain as Dean Acheson's famous and silly remark showed: "Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role," he said on December 6, 1972. In April 1950, he disparaged the concept of "special relationship" and asked the Brits to seek instead "leadership" of Europe (Ann Orde's The Eclipse of Great Britain: The U.S. and British Imperial Decline, 1895 - 1956; vide also Coral Bell's Chatham House essay "The Debatable Alliance"). One man foresaw the decline of Europe and sought a modus vivendi with Stalin. But Winston Churchill was overruled by his Cabinet. The prime dissenter, Anthony Eden, lived to lament in 1954: "They [the U.S.] like to give orders."

Tony Blair has diminished his country. Meyer's apologia reflects loyalty, not judgment. Sample this: "Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside President Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to Blair the Poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power." In fairness, Samuel Azubuike arrives at a broadly similar conclusion in his essay "The `Poodle Theory' and the Anglo-American `Special Relationship'" (International Studies; Volume 42, No.2 (2005): Sage; pages 123-139; an able essay.)

There is an enduring diplomatic fault-line in Europe, which the U.K. has not been able to reckon with fully - the Anglo-French balance of power which France has sought to tilt in its favour by establishing an entente with Germany while the U.K. tries to achieve the same result by establishing its leadership in the garb of a three-power directorate. In September 2001, Prime Minister Tony Blair met Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France, in quick succession, before descending on President George W. Bush at the White House. "This was what Tony Blair liked doing. He was on a high. This was a moment when Blair must have thought that a Franco-German-British directorate of Europe, with Britain in the lead, was a real possibility. Robin Cook, as Foreign Secretary, had been the first back in 1997 to articulate the notion of a three-power European directorate. In late 2002 Jack Straw began to talk about Britain as Europe's leader in the fight against terrorism. Hubris was in the air. Nemesis would in due course follow." A perfect comment.

SINCE the U.S. looks askance at the feeblest attempt at building a European force, will it rejoice if India begins to wield, independently of the U.S., clout in Asia militarily? "In October 1999 I had sent a strong warning to No.10 that Blair's initiative to strengthen European defence capabilities, launched with France, risked being seen in Washington as a French trap to break up NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] and detach Europe from America. In reality Blair wanted the opposite to reinforce NATO by strengthening the military capacity of its European members. But the initiative had been poorly presented to the Americans by London. It had been appropriated by the Europhile enthusiasts of the Foreign Office, who were careless of American sensitivities. This was pretty dumb, given the U.K.'s dependence on America for defence equipment and contracts. From then on I found it an uphill struggle to place our initiative in the context which Blair had intended."

The author rejects charges of mendacity against Bush and Blair and puts a spin on disclosures in British press which suggest precisely that. "I did not see the notorious Downing Street memorandum recording a meeting between Blair and close advisers on 23 July, 2002, until it was leaked to the British press in 2005. The meeting seems to have focused on a report from the then head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington. As recorded in the memorandum, Dearlove appears to have concluded that war was now inevitable. He referred to the facts and intelligence being `fixed' around the policy. I do not know what he meant by this." Lesser mortals faced no such problem, Sir Christopher.

Read this with Richard A. Clarke's book (Against All Enemies) and Woodward's two books.

Meyer's account itself fortifies the impression that Bush was set on war on Iraq immediately after 9/11, with Blair's full support, and both governments "sexed up" intelligence and deceived their peoples. Chapter 22 on war must be compulsory reading. It is based on unpublished diplomatic papers. Remember the author was not opposed to "regime change"; only to the procedures and the timing. Americans and Brits could have sovereign states for supper so long as they dressed for dinner and showed proper table manners. Bush adroitly deployed the frenzy over 9/11 and invasion of Afghanistan to facilitate and buttress the invasion of Iraq.

America's prime objective is to make West Asia safe for its oil supplies and for Israel. "The `neocon' hawks, like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle saw Iraq as the anvil on which a realignment of forces in the Middle East favourable to the United States and Israel would be struck. The new Iraq, they argued, would inject stable democracy into a region of autocrats and tyrants. It would offer a haven for U.S. military bases. It would reduce dependence on the Saudis and their oil. Saudi Arabia had for long been a close ally; but across the administration the fear that dared not speak its name was the kingdom's long-term stability. It was unclear who would succeed the ageing rulers of the royal family.... It was the Hour of the Hawks. Their Middle East vision had been gestating for years in the strategic closet. After 9/11 it burst into the open with all the force of something which had been long oppressed."

This is repeated a few pages later. "By the summer break, U.S. policy had settled on a number of positions; the path to peace in Palestine lay through the liberation of Baghdad; the United States would not actively promote negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Authority [the Palestinian government] until its institutions were reformed and democratised, including by the replacement of Chairman Yasser Arafat; and Bush would for all practical purposes give Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, a free hand in how he dealt with the intifada in the West Bank and Gaza."

Palestine's cause lies in ruins with none to lament it.

Reticence on some aspects of the diplomacy of the times is balanced by Meyer's revelations of his romantic escapades and use of four-letter words. He recalls that in September 2005 "a trusted American friend and government official, who, after paying a recent visit [to Iraq], returned to tell the White House "we're ...ed".