Tony Blair's
decision to step down as British Prime Minister on June 27 marks
the end of an era in U.S.-British relations. Blair's
extraordinarily close alliance with President George W. Bush defied
all expectations and has been a major
force on the world stage since the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001. Blair's successor will almost certainly be the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, an uncharismatic, somber
figure who is unlikely to set the world alight. The Special
Relationship will continue under Brown, but it will be a low-key
affair with a greater emphasis on behind-the-scenes negotiations
than high profile public displays of unity. While Blair was loved
by an adoring American public, Brown will struggle even for name
recognition across the Atlantic.
Blair
leaves behind a strong British stamp on the world stage, with his
country playing a major role in Afghanistan and Iraq and
enjoying the fruits of economic growth domestically. But he also
leaves a Britain that is far weaker militarily, seriously
overstretched by its overseas commitments, and highly vulnerable at
home to Islamic terrorism. Blair's Britain is a nation whose
sovereignty has been further eroded within the European Union and
whose ability to shape its own destiny is threatened by the rise of
an EU Common Foreign and Security Policy and a European
Security and Defence Policy.
Blair and the
Anglo-American Alliance
Tony Blair's main
strength as Prime Minister has been his eloquent and passionate
leadership in confronting global terrorism. He deserves credit for
his central role in the global war on terrorism and for having the
courage to act on his convictions in going to war in Iraq in the
face of tremendous opposition within his own party and from other
European governments. His steadfast support for the United States
in the four years since 2001 and his key role in building the
international coalition of the willing demonstrated principled
leadership as well as vision. While Blair's approval rating in
Britain barely scrapes 30 percent, 70 percent of Americans regard
him favorably.[1]
Under Blair's
leadership, over 45,000 British military personnel participated in
the liberation of Iraq, by any measure a huge contribution for a
nation of Britain's size. More than 7,000 British troops are still
based in southern Iraq, and 148 British soldiers have sacrificed
their lives in the country. More than 5,000 British troops are
engaged in military operations against the Taliban in southern
Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), and a further 1,500 are due to be deployed
this summer.
Unfortunately,
Blair could do little to stem the tide of anti-Americanism among
the British public, which became increasingly disillusioned with
his support for U.S. foreign policy. This trend threatens the
future of the Special Relationship.
In a September
2006 Financial Times/Harris poll, a staggering 33 percent of
Britons surveyed described the United States as "the greatest
threat to global security." Just 21 percent of British respondents
named Iran, and 10 percent, North Korea.[2] Nearly 70 percent of Britons
questioned in a November 2006 Guardian/ICMpoll agreed that
U.S. policy had made the world "less safe" since 2001.[3] And
just 9 percent of British respondents in a March 2007 YouGov poll
agreed with the proposition that "Britain should continue to base
its foreign policy on its close relationship with the United
States."[4]
Under Blair, the
British government failed to demonstrate to the British public that
the Anglo-American alliance brings Britain tangible benefits and
operates as a two-way street. The rise of anti-Americanism is not a
temporary phenomenon but a dangerous long-term trend that will have
far-reaching implications for both the Special Relationship and
America's ability to project power on the world stage.
Blair's Economic
Legacy
The Blair
government successfully built upon the foundations laid by the
Thatcher reforms of the 1980s, and economic growth in Britain has
consistently outpaced that of the Eurozone countries for the past
10 years. The British economy has grown by 28 percent since Blair
took power in 1997 (a compound rate of 2.8 percent).[5] The
U.K. is ranked as the sixth freest economy in the world by the
Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal's Index of
Economic Freedom, just behind the United States.[6]
According to Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) figures, Britain now enjoys higher
per-capita GDP than Germany, France, or Italy. Britain's per-capita
GDP had been 46 percent lower than West Germany's and 41 percent
lower than France's in 1977. Oxford Economic Forecasting predicts
that by the year 2030, Britain will overtake Germany as Europe's
largest economy.[7] Within the G-8, Britain is now second to
the United States in terms of national income per head.[8]
Employment in the U.K. has risen by 15 percent (3.5 million people)
since 1993, and unemployment has fallen from 10.5 percent to 5
percent.[9] Britain's working population expanded by
450,000 (1.6 percent) between 2005 and 2006, partly fueled by
immigration from Eastern Europe.[10]
According to the
OECD, the U.K. is the world's top destination for foreign direct
investment (FDI), a designation it took from the United States in
2006. FDI flows into Britain rose from $56.3 billion in 2004 to
$164.5 billion in 2006.[11] Investment is pouring into the U.K. from
the Far East-London alone has attracted 15 percent of Chinese
investment into Europe since 2002.[12]
Nonetheless, there
are storm clouds gathering on the horizon for the British economy,
largely due to an increase in government regulation and spending
and stealth taxation. While Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon
Brown has been careful not to undo the major reforms of earlier
Conservative governments, he has been steadily increasing the level
of government intervention in the economy, which will have damaging
long-term implications for the U.K. and may well come to haunt him
when he becomes Prime Minister. British government spending as a
proportion of GDP has risen by 8 percentage points since 2000, from
37.5 percent to 45.6 percent, just below that of Germany's 46.1
percent and the Eurozone average of 47.3 percent.[13] In addition,
Britain continues to suffer from low productivity. Output per hour
is 15 percent higher in the United States and 19 percent higher in
France.[14]
Gordon Brown and the
Future of U.S.-U.K. Relations
Gordon Brown is
unlikely to fundamentally transform the nature of the
Anglo-American alliance when he enters Downing Street. He will,
however, adjust its tempo and alter the dynamics that drive it.
Brown, with a large base of support on the left of the Labour Party
and whose ties to Washington are mainly to Democrats, is unlikely
to emulate the close friendship that Blair has developed with
President Bush. Nor is he likely to win the kind of adoration from
the American public that the Prime Minister gained after 9/11.
There will certainly be no repeat of the extraordinarily successful
Bush/Blair partnership that has defined the U.S.-U.K. relationship
since 9/11.
Brown's approach
will be less sentimental than Blair's, based on a sharper-edged
analysis of what he defines as the British national interest. This
will lead to greater confrontation with Washington over issues such
as international development assistance, poverty reduction, trade,
and global warming. Brown has called for "a modern Marshall Plan
for the developing world-a new deal between the richest countries
and the poorest countries."[15] The centerpiece of his
proposal is a doubling of development aid from Western nations,
combined with a complete write-off of multilateral and bilateral
debt owed by the world's poorest countries. Brown has proposed the
creation of an International Finance Facility, to be funded by
borrowing on the capital markets, and has called for developed
countries to contribute at least 0.7 percent of their GDP to
foreign aid.
Brown is less
likely than Blair to spearhead international efforts in the war on
terrorism and will be under pressure to bring home British troops
fighting in Iraq. His views on some of the biggest issues of the
day, such as the Iranian nuclear program, are unknown, and it is
uncertain whether Brown will back Washington's hawkish line toward
rogue states such as Iran and Syria. If the United States were to
use military force against Iran's nuclear facilities, there would
be no guarantee that a Brown-led British government would provide
military, strategic, or political support.
Blair's Place in
History
Tony Blair will be
remembered as a staunch ally of the United States who stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with the American people in the dark days
following the 2001 attacks. He understood the value of the
Anglo-American Special Relationship and enhanced Britain's standing
on the world stage as a result.
Blair did not,
however, ensure that Britain's defense spending kept pace with its
growing military commitments and oversaw the gutting of some of
Britain's most famous regiments.[16] British defense spending
has fallen from 4.4 percent of GDP in 1987/88 to 2.2 percent in
2005/06, the lowest level since 1930.[17] The Union Jack may be
flying from Basra to Kabul, but British military capacity has been
sharply curtailed under the Blair government, and it would be
impossible today for Britain to fight a war on the scale of the
1982 Falklands conflict on its own.
Further, Blair
turned a blind eye to the rise of Islamic extremism inside Britain
itself, and the mirage of domestic tranquility was shattered by the
July 7, 2005, London bombings that claimed 52 lives. Today Britain
is a hornet's nest of Islamic militants, with 400 to 600 al-Qaeda
terrorist suspects in the U.K., some of whom have been trained in
camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[18]
Tony Blair will
rightly be regarded by historians as one of the most important and
controversial British leaders of the post-war generation. However,
he should not be viewed as on a par with either Winston Churchill
or Margaret Thatcher, both of whom fundamentally altered the course
of history and played major roles in defeating two of the most
dangerous ideologies of modern times: fascism and communism.
Through her leadership, Lady Thatcher sparked a worldwide political
and economic revolution that has influenced policy from Santiago to
Beijing. It is highly unlikely that "Blairism" will ever enter
general parlance.
Unlike Blair,
Churchill and Thatcher both had a crystal clear understanding of
the British national interest and the need to defend the
sovereignty of the British nation. Blair, with his support for the
European Constitution, the European Security and Defence Policy,
and the European Convention on Human Rights, compromised both. His
key foreign policy failing as a British leader was his misguided
belief that Britain can be both America's closest ally and part of
a politically and economically integrated Europe. Roughly half of
British laws now originate in Brussels, a shocking state of affairs
that must be reversed. It will be up to future British governments
to ensure that Britain regains its position as a fully sovereign
nation, and the long-term future of the Special Relationship will
depend upon it.
Nile
Gardiner, Ph.D., is Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center
for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.