The collapse of British foreign policy

International Affairs

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2005, Pages

  Wallace, William ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 20844454072     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2005.00438.x     Document Type: Review

References (21)

1. Peter Riddell, Hug them close: Blair, Clinton, Bush and the 'special relationship', rev. edn (London: Politico's, 2004), p. 156.
2. Timothy Carton Ash comments on this image that 'although Tony Blair might like to describe Britain's role as "pivotal", Europe's real pivot is Germany': Free world: why a crisis of the West reveals the opportunity of our time (London: Allen Lane, 2004), p. 73.
3. Irwin Stelzer, 'An alliance of two', Weekly Standard 10: 10, 22 Nov. 2004.
4. Riddell, Hug them close; Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: the making of a world leader (New York: Viking, 2004), ch. 11; Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004), ch. 38. Seldon notes (p. 608) that the personal message of congratulations that the British prime minister sent to Bush as soon as the Florida recount was resolved declared that 'I know that together we will strengthen the special relationship.'
5. Riddell, Hug them close; Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: the making of a world leader (New York: Viking, 2004), ch. 11; Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004), ch. 38. Seldon notes (p. 608) that the personal message of congratulations that the British prime minister sent to Bush as soon as the Florida recount was resolved declared that 'I know that together we will strengthen the special relationship.'
6. Riddell, Hug them close; Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: the making of a world leader (New York: Viking, 2004), ch. 11; Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004), ch. 38. Seldon notes (p. 608) that the personal message of congratulations that the British prime minister sent to Bush as soon as the Florida recount was resolved declared that 'I know that together we will strengthen the special relationship.'
7. Shireen Hunter, ed., Islam: Europe's second religion. The new social, cultural, and political landscape (Westport, CT: Praeger/Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002), provides a dispassionate survey of the implications of Europe's settled Muslim population for domestic politics and foreign policy. It estimates France's Muslim population in 2001 as 4-5 million, Germany's as 3 million and Britain's as 1.5 million, along with 730, 000 in the Netherlands, 500,000 in Italy, 370,000 in Greece, 330,000 in Spain, 300,000 in Belgium, 250,000 in Sweden, 250,000 in Austria, 125,000 in Denmark and smaller communities in other states. Their countries of origin are highly diverse, from Morocco to Indonesia, with distinctive communities in different European states. The majority of Muslims in Germany are of Turkish origin; the French community is predominantly Moroccan and Algerian, while most British Muslims come from the Indian subcontinent. Nearly a third (110,000) of Greece's Muslim minority are descended from converts and immigrants from the Ottoman era. Rapid population increase across north and sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, combined with slow economic development, continues to drive legal and illegal immigrants into Europe; the most rapid increase over the past two to three years is reported to have been in Spain.
8. On the gap in expert analysis, see Fred Halliday, '9/11 and Middle Eastern studies', International Affairs 80: 5, Oct. 2004, pp. 953-62.
9. Seldon, Blair, p. 621.
10. Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 4 July 1962. He went on: 'I will say here and now, on this Day of Independence, that the United States will be ready for a Declaration of Interdependence, that we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming ... a mutually beneficial partnership between the new union now emerging in Europe and the old American Union founded here 175 years ago.'
11. Frederick Studemann, 'US Conservatives anxious over European treaty', Financial Twin, 6 Nov. 2004, quoting staff members of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the New Atlantic Initiative.
12. Stelzer, 'An alliance of two'. Irwin Stelzer has himself been closely involved in the informal diplomacy of US-UK relations, as an adviser to Rupert Murdoch, an associate of several American conservative think-tanks and publications, and a frequent visitor both to the British prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer.
13. The term 'market state', meaning states that protect their citizens' safety but leave their prosperity to an increasingly global market economy, is developed by Philip Bobbitt in The shield of Achilles: war, peace and the course of history (London: Allen Lane, 2002).
14. Irwin Stelzer, 'Neoconservatives and their critics: an introduction', in Stelzer, ed., Neoconservatism (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), p. 20.
15. Personal conversation with the working group chairman, Michael Saunders Watson. See also National Curriculum, History Working Group: final report (London: HMSO for Department of Education and Science, April 1990); William Wallace, 'Foreign policy and national identity in the United Kingdom', International Affairs 67: 1, Jan. 1991, pp. 65-80.
16. Personal conversation with the working group chairman, Michael Saunders Watson. See also National Curriculum, History Working Group: final report (London: HMSO for Department of Education and Science, April 1990); William Wallace, 'Foreign policy and national identity in the United Kingdom', International Affairs 67: 1, Jan. 1991, pp. 65-80.
17. Garton Ash, Free world, pp. 47-9. He calls this Blair's 'emotional Anglospherism'.
18. Gordon Brown's speech to the CBI annual conference on 9 Nov. 2004 presented the familiar British image of the EU as a 'trade bloc looking inwards on itself, contrasted with 'a Britain that leads Europe to an open, flexible and global future': a dichotomy that Margaret Thatcher was propounding 20 years ago. It suggests a deep misunderstanding of the export-oriented German economy, in particular, and slides over the remarkable achievements of the economies of Ireland, Finland, Spain and Portugal in recent years.
19. Garton Ash, Free world, p. 36, argues that 'all British foreign policy since 1940 has been footnotes to Churchill'. He describes the essential 'Churchill legacy' as 'unambiguous commitment to the United States, ambiguous commitment to Europe' (p. 41). Interestingly, the American conservatives around the Bush administration, and the president himself, have adopted Churchill as an icon, while rejecting his American ally, F. D. Roosevelt. The classic study of the British elite's inability to overcome the legacy of Churchill and the memory of the Second World War is provided by Hugo Young, This blessed plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (London: Macmillan, 1998).
20. Garton Ash, Free world, p. 36, argues that 'all British foreign policy since 1940 has been footnotes to Churchill'. He describes the essential 'Churchill legacy' as 'unambiguous commitment to the United States, ambiguous commitment to Europe' (p. 41). Interestingly, the American conservatives around the Bush administration, and the president himself, have adopted Churchill as an icon, while rejecting his American ally, F. D. Roosevelt. The classic study of the British elite's inability to overcome the legacy of Churchill and the memory of the Second World War is provided by Hugo Young, This blessed plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (London: Macmillan, 1998).
21. Gordon Brown, British Council Annual Lecture, 7 July 2004; HM Treasury text.