[A-List] Britain/US split

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Whatever the rhetoric, the relationship between Blair and Schröder is
far from irreparable. Schröder is featured as a contributing author to
the current Policy Network website and, in any case, has proved himself
in the past to be a shrewd chameleon, saying whatever it takes to get
elected and then moving swiftly on. A Stoiber victory would present some
capital to Blair in allowing him to head off the eurosceptics, but the
punk Thatcherites are already firmly on the margins while Owen and chums
can't really let loose until Blair and Brown agree (or the latter
acquiesces) to a referendum. So for now Blair has command and is using
it to shore up his big tent, hence his frantic activity. It's
interesting to see this level of analysis appearing in the pages of the
New Labour-supporting FT. Clearly, much of British journalism is being
employed, one way or another, in the service of the UK-EU agenda.


Philip Stephens: Blair's balancing act
By Philip Stephens
Financial Times: September 13 2002

This is not the time to ask Tony Blair hard questions about Europe. The
prime minister is quietly celebrating a success for British diplomacy on
the other side of the Atlantic. Looking across the Channel he sees
mostly faint-hearts. What price now, some wonder, that long-promised
pledge to cement Britain's place in Europe.

George W. Bush seems as determined as ever to confront Saddam Hussein.
But at Camp David last weekend Mr Blair won the argument that the United
Nations should have at least a first shot. An optimist would say that by
taking the debate about Iraq on to international terrain, Mr Blair has
blunted the sword of Washington's let's-go-to-war-whatever brigade.
After listening to Mr Bush at the UN on Thursday, I am not sure for how
long.

At home, Mr Blair deployed his political skills (he really is one of the
best in the business) to quieten domestic critics at the Trades Union
Congress. He will seek to pull off the same feat with his own MPs when
parliament returns to debate Iraq later in the month. Next on the agenda
with Mr Bush is an intensification of the effort to persuade the US
administration to re-engage in the Middle East peace process. All in
all, Mr Blair has had a good week.

That does not quite fit the picture drawn in Paris, Brussels or Berlin.
Mr Blair's European colleagues lack his moral certainty. Somehow, it is
not universally self-evident that regime change in Baghdad is an urgent
imperative. These leaders worry when Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
president, says that war against Iraq will inflame Islamic extremism in
his country. Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the wrong hands - now, that
really would be a clear and present danger. Ending the bloodshed between
Israel and the Palestinians seems to most continental Europeans a more
pressing first step towards regional stability than war against Iraq.

True, Jacques Chirac, with whom Mr Blair has always had a curiously
cordial relationship, has made an astute tactical shift. If the US
intends to remove the Iraqi regime come what may, the French president
wants to keep his options open. Mr Chirac is watching Moscow. Gaullism
occasionally has to strike a deal with pragmatism.

Gerhard Schröder, another leader whom Mr Blair used to claim as a
close chum, is a different matter. These days the relationship between
the two men is politely described as icy. Fighting for his political
life before this month's election, Mr Schröder has said that come what
may Germany will stand aside from a war to remove Mr Hussein.

That stance has done the German chancellor nothing but good in the
opinion polls. But it attracts the charge from Downing Street that Mr
Schröder's pacifism is the cheapest kind of opportunism. Shame. The
chancellor might reply that it is hardly a crime for a politician to
keep in touch with the mood of voters - even, God forbid, during an
election campaign.

Why, anyway, they ask in Berlin, is Mr Blair so keen to go to war?
Surely there are limits to what he will do to ingratiate himself with Mr
Bush? Or is it simply that he has returned to the default setting of all
British prime ministers? When trouble looms, keep on side with the
Americans.

Mr Blair's transatlantic diplomacy invites bigger questions, though,
than how to repair the spat with Germany should Mr Schröder win on
September 22. Odd though it may seem, there is a view in London that the
government's medium-term interests would be better served by Mr
Schröder's re-election than by that of the more Atlanticist Edmund
Stoiber, his centre-right opponent. Iraq apart, Mr Stoiber might upset
Mr Blair's European plans by proving a more reliable ally to the French.

What plans? Sure, Mr Blair is a committed European, as much so as any
postwar prime minister save Edward Heath in the early 1970s. But how
much of that genuine instinct survives the magnetism of the single
superpower?

Plenty, Mr Blair retorts. Only this week, in that same speech to trades
unionists, he said that it would be a "vast error" for Britain to turn
its back on Europe. For Britain to find itself marginalised on its own
continent would "betray a total misunderstanding of the concept of
national interest in the 21st century". The test of that, of course, is
whether Britain joins the euro. So yes, Mr Blair said, he did want
Britain to be part of this pivotal enterprise if the economic conditions
were met.

Here the public and the private Mr Blair are as one. Not so long ago
some visitors to Downing Street sought to test his resolve against what
some have called the pro-European case for delaying a decision. Of
course, Mr Blair's guests suggested, Britain could not sit indefinitely
outside the European Union's central economic project. But for the
moment, the EU was leaderless and rudderless. Fears that Britain would
be shut out of the big decisions had proved groundless. The costs in
terms of lost political influence of keeping sterling for another two or
three years were minimal. The risks of losing an early referendum to
take Britain in were immense. Why not wait three or four years?

The prime minister responded with one of those words that newspapers
often replace with asterisks to avoid offending readers. Disarray in
Europe, his argument ran, strengthened rather than weakened the case for
Britain to move quickly to the centre of influence. This was a rare
chance for Britain to seize the moment.

I think that Mr Blair is as sincere in that intention as he is in the
conviction that it is Britain's duty to steer the US away from
unilateralism. The unavoidable question, though, is whether both will
soon collide with reality.

Mr Blair, I fear, underestimates the contempt of many of Mr Bush's
advisers for the very concept of multilateralism. I once asked one of
these hawks what he made of the prime minister's belief that the west
could build a new international order on the ruins of the World Trade
Center. The official did not try too hard to conceal his scorn. The
administration would pursue US interests; if Britain wanted to come
along for the ride, fine.

As for Europe, much depends on what now happens over Iraq at the UN. Mr
Chirac will have to choose. Mr Blair's relationship with Mr Schröder
is not irreparable, and, ultimately, Europe cannot build its own foreign
policy without Britain. But Mr Blair's intentions towards the euro, like
his efforts to shape US foreign policy, are easier to state than to
achieve. Knowing where you want to be is not the same as getting there.