Daily Archive

Reuters:

New Foreign Secretary David Miliband, seeking to squash speculation that London may distance itself from Washington over Iraq , has insisted the U.S. is still Britain’s number one ally.

…Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said in a speech in Washington that while Britain stood beside the United States in fighting terrorism, isolationism did not work in an interdependent world.

Separately, we’ve already seen Mr Alexander’s world view. His notions of state/global relationships in the 20th century were indeed fascinating.

Then Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown followed up in a weekend interview by saying that Britain had to nurture a wider range of allies and predicting London and Washington would no longer be “joined at the hip”…

Lord Malloch-Brown is another issue. His pompously presented argument — “…It was a car-crash of an interview, the words of a UN mandarin who has no conception of what it means to be a minister of the Crown.… — is that it is time for Britain to develop other multilateral relationships:

…”My hope is that foreign policy will become much more impartial. We have a whole set of emerging countries. There will be lots of exciting things to do with Sarkozy and Merkel and other European leaders as well as strengthening our transatlantic relations.

“There is this global hub where there is the opportunity to connect Britain to a new way of doing things, when you think again about the partnerships to get things done - how you bring in an India or a China, how you can bring in civil society, Oxfam and Save The Children.”…

He makes no obvious allowance for the possibility that if Britain happily frees its “hip” from Washington, someone else might well move in to fill that role which Britain abandoned. (Indeed, there is no evidence it has even crossed his obviously fertile mind.) What happens, for example, if after an interregnum Mr Sarkozy turns out to be exceptionally close to the next U.S. president?  Where does that leave Britain?  Stunningly close to Oxfam?

“Impartiality” is a curious term, too.  Evidently, he sees Britain as another version of the UN.  Yet does not Britain have “partial” interests of its own?

Above all, while more pointed most of his commentary is not dissimilar to Mr Alexander’s.  Yet where’s the substance?  For Britain already has decent multi-lateral relationships with . . . well, nearly everyone, including such non-state actors. 

Check that.  Except Harare.  And neither does Washington.  Evidently, both Mr Alexander and Lord Malloch-Brown believe that reaching out to U.S.-ignored “emerging” Zimbabwe is a key to the global future?:

…Some worry that Lord Malloch Brown, who is 53, will dominate the 42-year-old David Miliband, but he said: “It’s fine for me to be, for the first time in my life, the older figure, the wise eminence behind the young Foreign Secretary.”…

Yes, it does seem clear who believes himself well-positioned to be pulling the strings.  Yet one can also only imagine Lord Malloch-Brown’s publicly uttered disgust if a 53 year old U.S. Deputy Secretary of State gave such a response to a question about his position when it comes to his superior, a 42 year old Secretary of State.  We would be hearing all manner of blistering attacks on ”hidden powers” and, ummm, ”poodles”.

Mr Miliband is undoubtedly right. (…”Like Brown, Miliband is very pro-American,” said Patrick Dunleavy, professor of political science and public policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Miliband’s wife, a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra, is an American citizen, and the couple adopted a baby boy from the United States…) No, it’s not about Iraq.  It is just that London is increasingly farther from Washington than at any time since the beginnings of trans-Atlantic flight. The Telegraph:

…For now, the US State Department is willing to give the Brown Government the benefit of the doubt. As one official put it to me: “We get it. We understand that Gordon has to distance himself a bit from America, if only to win votes at home.”

The view in the White House is that Mr Brown is a good thing, the first rounds of video-conferencing between Gordon and George having gone smoothly and amicably…

Good thing we have video conferencing nowadays. By the way, why hasn’t Mr Miliband gotten that sailing ship for Washington yet? At this rate, he’ll never get back by Christmas from that face-to-face with Secretary Rice. 

Also, if he doesn’t fly there, he’d better be wary and make sure he has all the keys with him . . . or Lord Malloch-Brown seems likely to move in and try to redecorate the Foreign Secretary’s office during any extended absence.