Three Circles into One by William Waldegrave

Author:William Waldegrave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: UK;politics;Brexit;referendum;Tory;conservative;remain;William Waldegrave
Published: 2019-09-10T10:43:43+00:00

7 Can Normal Service

Be Resumed?

Let us remind ourselves of what is being disrupted and consider whether the disruption may simply pass. Let us consider the First Circle, our ‘Special Relationship’ with the US, embedded in NATO but for the purposes of our national narrative simply described as the Special Relationship. NATO derived its legitimacy from the genuine need to resist the expansion of Stalinist Communism in Europe and elsewhere. It was not a fantasy to imagine that Stalin and his only slightly less dreadful successors meant exactly what their 1945 slogan ‘onwards to the west’ said. It is hard now to remember how many apologists, some of them paid for by the Soviets, attempted to undermine the necessary solidarity of the west in the face of aggression and subversion by the perpetrators of the Katyn massacre, of the Gulag, and the torture chambers of the KGB. What is easier to recall is the stalwart solidarity of the huge majority across the political and social spectrum, from social democrats to conservatives, which in the end prevailed.

However, from the moment of the dissolution of the Soviet European empire, NATO began to lose the power it derived from the simplicity of its mission. As a player in a more traditional multipolar diplomacy it may still have a role to play. Europe’s relationship to its Russian neighbour will ultimately surely become a matter for Europeans to decide as Americans ask themselves what exactly their interest would be in, say, conflict with Russia over Ukrainian borders or Georgian independence.

Indeed one current member of NATO at the time of writing, Turkey, seems as close to Russia as it does to America. Then there are the immense tectonic geopolitical shifts taking place around the world. China’s relationship to America and to Russia, to Europe, to India and to Japan; Europe and America’s responses – all this seems far beyond the scope of an alliance founded in the bipolar world of the 1950s. The rise of Africa, whose huge population by the end of this century will match those of the other continental behemoths of India and China, will be generating issues for Europe quite different from any which it may raise for the United States.

To attempt to interest the United States in the rebuilding of what has been for years a largely imaginary Special Relationship with Britain against the background of this changing world seems, to put it mildly, an ambitious project. President Trump, in his crude way, has reminded those with eyes to see and ears to hear that the United States has no sentiment in relation to its foreign policy other than its own self interest (and is no different from any other sovereign state in that). Arguably, he has done us a service in Britain by saying so.

The Commonwealth? India will be by far the most important nation of the Commonwealth should that organisation survive another quarter of a century or so – an outcome rather pleasingly foreshadowed by the Indians taking control of the Commonwealth’s unique sport, cricket.

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