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Home » 2009 » September » 4 » Lockerbie bomber: Megrahi's release has strained the special relationship
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Lockerbie bomber: Megrahi's release has strained the special relationship

There is no mistaking the rage in America, across the board, at the release of the Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, and at the apparent duplicity of Gordon Brown and his kinsmen north of the border. Americans dislike more than anything else duplicity among friends (though it is not always absent in Washington). We should remember Suez, 1956.

For the last time when the mood within the "special relationship" was as frigid, one has to look back to 1973. It was the year of Nixon/Kissinger, and of Ted Heath. A few years previously, Brezhnev's tanks had crushed Czechoslovakia and out of fear of the Soviet Bear, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon's very influential National Security Adviser, launched a programme to stiffen Nato. At issue were generational factors; namely the thought that the "great generation", bonded by the Second World War and the creation of the alliance, was inevitably being removed by time and needed a surrogate. Called the "Year of Europe", it was, as Kissinger admits, the least of his successes.

France's President Pompidou, successor to de Gaulle, retorted that "for a Frenchman, surely every year was the Year of Europe". In West Germany, the socialist chancellor Willy Brandt was playing his own game of Ostpolitik with Moscow. But the toughest opposition came from Tory prime minister Ted Heath. Before Mr Brown, there was no pricklier incumbent ever to inhabit No 10, or more blinkered, and Heath didn't really like Americans, and certainly didn't try to understand them – not a charge that could be levelled at Mr Brown, who does like them and appears to understand them.

Heath's priority was to cement Britain's relations with Europe. Of course he succeeded; but little else counted. As Kissinger saw it: "Heath preferred a leading position in Europe to an honoured advisory role in Washington, and he did not consider the two functions compatible." More recently, Tony Blair attempted both, but the results now seem pretty ephemeral.

Nixon was infuriated by the conundrum posed by the "New Europeans". "When I speak to Europe, I don't know whom I'm speaking to," he complained of the new set-up. Kissinger added his voice: "We seem to be talking to those who can't negotiate, and those who can negotiate won't talk to us!" It all threatened to make a nonsense of the special relationship.

Under Heath, dialogue between London and Washington became progressively frostier. It is instructive to compare the tone of the now-published telephone conversations between Kissinger and the Soviet and British ambassadors in Washington at the time. With the former, Anatoly Dobrynin, although he represented the potential foe, Kissinger could be jocular and familiar; with Lord Cromer, the Brit, the language would be highly formal, devoid of any suggestion of intimacy. (Cromer, a charming man, was a somewhat lofty oligarch, described by a distinguished contemporary as "the stupidest boy at Eton"; though that was not necessarily an obstacle to ambassadorial preferment.)

By the time of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war, in October 1973, relations had become seriously cool. Kissinger, now appointed Secretary of State, was infuriated by Britain's sitting on the fence, and hesitating to support a US vote at the UN for a ceasefire. Matters worsened when, at the height of the crisis, the Heath government vetoed the use of British landings, or airspace, to US flights that were resupplying Israel's battered armed forces. In the event, the bulk of US supply flights had to be funnelled through Portugal's Azores.

After the war was over, Kissinger complained to his good friend Lord Home (then foreign secretary) that the Soviet Union had been left freer to use Nato airspace than the US – given that much of the Russians' airlift, to their Arab clients, had overflown allied airspace without challenge.

Relations between Nixon (now under serious threat of impeachment because of the Watergate scandal) and Heath had reached a nadir. At one point, Nixon and Kissinger were resorting to language close to the threats once made by John Foster Dulles, of "agonising reappraisals".

There was still worse to come. In October 1973, the Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a swingeing cut in oil supplies to the West. America, with only 5 per cent of its energy requirements dependent on the Middle East, suffered to a moderate degree. But the British economy was savagely hit, resulting in a crisis that would help bring down the Heath government the following year. There was a wide sense of bitterness that an alienated Nixon regime had not done enough to help protect their British ally's vital interests.

In the maintenance – and sometimes salvaging – of the special relationship, ambassadors matter. Perhaps the most successful duo in recent memory were the two Davids, at the time of Macmillan and Kennedy; David Bruce in London and David Ormsby-Gore in Washington, a personal friend of JFK's, who had a significant input during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Least imposing was the appointment of Peter Jay in 1977; a questionable piece of socialist nepotism in that Jay was PM Callaghan's son-in-law. Through their own much-publicised "special relationships", the Jays afforded entertainment to Georgetown's chattering classes, plus material for Nora Ephron's best-selling novel Heartburn – but little else. (His Excellency Jay was the only one of the last dozen ambassadors not to receive a knighthood; Margaret Jay was given a peerage and the job of renovating the Lords – with deplorable consequences.)

Another more recent Labour appointee to cause heartburn in Washington was Sir Christopher Meyer (1997-2003), whose memoir, DC Confidential, was deemed to be highly indiscreet and self-serving. At the other end of the spectrum came Sir Nicholas Henderson (1979-82), brought out of retirement by Margaret Thatcher. With nothing to lose by being up-front, "Nico" was an inspired choice at a time of crisis with the IRA threat, and then the Falklands. He and his wife, Mary, were unrivalled experts in wooing the Reagan regime.

I was working in Washington at the time of the Reagan inauguration. It was then widely assumed that the new team, with its very Californian orientations, would demote the special relationship. On the contrary; under Thatcher and Reagan, fuelled by Henderson, a new and closer entente emerged, which conjointly was to presage the fall of communism.

The current ambassador in Washington, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, seems to enjoy good relations with his prime minister, but will need to use all the skills he can muster to mend transatlantic relations.

It may be the sign of a romantic, but I still believe in the mystique of the special relationship. Pragmatically it received a boost at the time of the Falklands when the naval commander of the task force, Admiral Sandy Woodward, declared to me that in no way could the risky operation have succeeded without US commitment. This was founded upon long years of joint Nato experience, of speaking the same language, not only philologically but in terms of military-speak.

The same applies today. We remain the US's closest and most reliable military ally. There are excellent relations at various levels between the two sets of armed forces. But all of this depends upon our ability to remain, militarily, seated at the top table. As it is, under Gordon Brown's reprehensible management of MoD priorities for the Services, both in manpower and resources, we are in graver danger than ever before of losing that seat. We clearly cannot go on punching under-weight.

After Megrahi, can the special relationship be restored? We romantics, and optimists, believe that it can; it happened, after all, following 1973. But almost certainly it will not happen under this disastrous and terminally sick government. One can only hope that David Cameron can pull something out of the locker, to build upon that great residue of respect for British institutions, and enterprise, that continues to exist in the United States.

Alistair Horne's 'Kissinger's Year: 1973' is published this month by Orion, at £20.

Category: U.S. | Views: 696 | Added by: magictr | Tags: Lockerbie | Rating: 0.0/0
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