A Not-So-Special Relationship

last updated 8 January 2015

The Americans have finally admitted it: Tony Blair really is George Bush's "poodle," said Kirsty Walker in the London Daily Mail. State Department analyst Kendall Myers gave an entire speech on the subject last week in Washington. He said he actually felt "a little ashamed" at the way the U.S. president treated the British prime minister, particularly at the G-8 summit last summer, when Bush summoned his ally with a peremptory, "Yo, Blair." Myers, who is also a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, said the "special relationship" that Winston Churchill proclaimed existed between Britain and America was entirely one-sided. "We typically ignore them and take no notice," Myers admitted. "It is a sad business." The State Department quickly tried to disown Myers' remarks, saying he was speaking for himself, not for the U.S. government.

Yet the charge rings all too true, said Mark Tran in the London Guardian. Despite Blair's constant "prodding and cajoling," the Bush administration has not budged on the two issues most important to Britain. It won't address the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and it won't take any action to stop global warming. So Blair got nothing but personal humiliation for his unswerving support of the Iraq war. But what can he do? The U.S. and U.K. militaries rely on each other in key ways. The U.S. keeps so much military hardware on our territory that the island functions as "America's biggest aircraft carrier." And Britain relies entirely on the U.S. for nuclear weapons.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown