The US-UK 'special relationship' isn't broken – it's just
entering a dangerous new phase
Michael H Fuchs
Reckless rightwing incompetents have taken over both the US
and UK governments – and we all have to live the consequences
Thu 11 Jul 2019 16.09 BST Last modified on Thu 11 Jul 2019
18.51 BST
The dumpster fires of US and UK politics have converged, and
the special relationship is going up in flames.
The resignation of Kim Darroch, UK ambassador to the US –
and a longtime British civil servant – because of a temper tantrum by Donald
Trump is an illustration of the toxic politics of both countries, and the real
damage it is doing to the US-UK alliance.
Kim Darroch has
resigned. Now Britain risks becoming a vassal of the US
Martin Kettle
The events of the last week would have been hard to imagine
before Trump. The Daily Mail published leaked cables that the British embassy
in Washington sent back to London describing the mess that substitutes for a
presidential administration in DC today. In doing his job by sending honest,
private analysis to his government, Darroch described Trump as “inept” and
“incompetent” and called the White House “uniquely dysfunctional” in messages
that describe what is readily apparent to anyone who has read the news over the
last two and a half years.
In response, Trump tweeted out a series of criticisms of
Darroch and Theresa May’s government and said of Darroch, “We will no longer
deal with him.” Darroch’s resignation came as no surprise.
Trump’s attacks on the UK come as no surprise either.
Despite the “special relationship” between the two countries and the prime
minister’s efforts to forge a working relationship with Trump, Trump has
reciprocated with endless public insults of May and the mayor of London, Sadiq
Khan – not to mention policy decisions detrimental to the alliance, as Thomas
Wright has documented.
In a time when partisan politics creates gridlock in DC and
polarization makes it more and more difficult to have a constructive national
conversation about substantive issues, the daily conduct of the president of
the United States makes that of a toddler appear mature by comparison. (I’m a
parent of a five-year-old. I know these things.) It is still shocking, but far
from surprising, that an American president taking to Twitter to call the
ambassador of a US ally a “pompous fool” will pass from the news cycle within
days.
Politics in the UK are hardly better. When the UK voted to
leave the European Union in 2016, it was as if the country had hit a national
self-destruct button. Ever since, the fuse has been burning and every attempt
made to mitigate the damage or to change course so far has been as useless as
that person waiting for an elevator who keeps hitting the call button but knows
it won’t do anything. A country that was a global empire not too long ago and
remains one of the top 10 economies in the world now looks – save a massive
course correction – to be on the path to global irrelevance.
This is in part because radical and reckless rightwing
incompetents are taking over the UK government too. When asked about whether he
would keep Darroch in Washington, British member of parliament and presumed
next prime minister Boris Johnson threw Darroch under the bus. In doing so,
Johnson made clear that his priority was not his nation, but rather his own
interests of being prime minister and having a good relationship with Trump.
After that, Darroch knew it was time to go. As one article in this paper put
it, Darroch was “effectively sacked by Johnson on the orders of Trump”.
Speculation in Washington now swirls about whether Johnson would appoint
arch-Brexiteer – and Trump favorite – Nigel Farage as UK ambassador.
The disastrous effects of both countries’ domestic politics
aside, the Darroch incident is a vivid illustration of how Trump’s twitter
tirades cause real harm to the US. Trump’s visits to the UK have been delayed
because of massive protests. His insults of the UK – culminating in the Darroch
affair – have now made it politically expedient for some British politicians to
stand up to the US president.
Again, no surprise. In Trump’s Washington, this is how US
allies are treated. Trump’s fondness for dictators and disdain for democratic
allies is well known, and the impacts on American alliances beyond the UK have
been real. Trump’s policies and repeated criticism of Germany’s chancellor,
Angela Merkel, caused a German foreign minister to call for a European strategy
to push back against Trump’s America. The relationship between France’s
president, Emmanuel Macron, and Trump has soured and erupted into open
hostility.
In fact, the only positive relationships Trump seems capable
of maintaining are with autocrats and populists. All of this plays into
Russia’s goals of undermining European and American democracies and Nato – and
it’s no coincidence, since Russia is actively meddling in American, UK and
European politics.
But neither Trump nor those in the UK like Farage and
Johnson, who take a “burn it all down” approach to politics, seem to care about
what’s happening to their countries or to the alliance. For the rightwing
populists on both sides of the pond, the political nosedives in motion in each
country are bringing the rightwing populist movements in the US and the UK
closer together.
The US-UK special relationship may very well be entering a
new, especially dangerous, phase.
Michael H Fuchs is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for east
Asian and Pacific affairs
Trump created a storm over Kim Darroch. Boris Johnson will
bring a hurricane
Simon Jenkins
With the forces of no deal whirling faster, Johnson is
banking on the idea that a dramatic shock could be Britain’s salvation
Thu 11 Jul 2019 18.05 BST Last modified on Thu 11 Jul 2019
22.05 BST
‘Boris Johnson seeks comfort in the bonkers faction of James
Dyson and Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin (right).’ Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Imagine chaos. Dream disruption. Think of a hundred Kim
Darrochs as the Boris Johnson moment approaches. Tear up the script. Shout “no
deal”. Laugh with Johnson, cry with him. Welcome to anarchy hall.
Even as a stubborn Eurosceptic, I can see no conceivable
benefit in Britain leaving Europe’s economic area on 31 October, least of all
without any sort of customs deal. For a nation to initiate controls on border
movement and trade with its adjacent continent is mindless self-harm, in this
case driven by populist machismo. Yet that is what both Johnson and Jeremy Hunt
have agreed to countenance after this week’s leadership debate.
I have attended Brexit seminars, briefings and rallies over
the past two years, and am baffled by the absence of any remotely positive case
for it – other than on the softest of single market models. Even hardened
Brexit economists such as Patrick Minford and Gerard Lyons acknowledge some
“short-term” disruption. This is quite apart from the millions, approaching
billions, now being diverted from other uses to prepare companies and
individuals for a no-deal Brexit, a blatant reneging on Theresa May’s
frictionless border pledge.
Preparations for no deal outlined by the BBC and the
Institute for Government have examined scenarios varying from extreme
disruption to genuine chaos: chaos at the ports, chaos in food and medicine
distribution, chaos in care staff recruitment and chaos as financial markets
shift to the EU. No one seems to have a clue how the Northern Ireland border
will operate. Johnson fluffs all questions on the subject, seeking comfort in
the bonkers faction of James Dyson and Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin.
Yet ask Johnson’s small band of more sophisticated
no-dealers, and a different justification begins to emerge. It lies in the
theories of creative disruption espoused by the postwar economist Joseph
Schumpeter and his followers. To them, occasional bouts of chaos are necessary.
As during wars, recessions and Thatcherism, Britain needs a therapeutic shock
to jolt it into a new karma, a new inner greatness.
‘No one seems to have
a clue how the Northern Ireland border will operate. Boris Johnson fluffs all
questions on the subject.’ A demonstration against a hard border in Newry,
Northern Ireland. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images
To these no-dealers, sheep farmers and fishermen are the
lackeys of Euro-protectionism. UK manufacturers have become slaves to
Euro-conglomerates, forced to import bits of cars and planes because they can
no longer fashion their own. They should get real. Likewise, it is humiliating
that Britain should have Bulgarians picking its fruit, Poles building its
houses, Portuguese staffing its clinics and care homes. Of course no deal will
be painful in the short-term, but the short-term is for economic snowflakes.
This vision of no deal accepts that it will take years to
fashion “trade deals with the rest of the world”, but self-sufficiency is not
built on deals. A no-deal Brexit might be a self-imposed economic sanction, but
sanctions can strengthen siege economies. They enforce downsizing, and slash
regulation and bureaucracy. They encourage import substitution behind a
plummeting exchange rate. Schumpeter posited just such a “gale of creative
destruction … a process of industrial mutation that revolutionises the economic
structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating
a new one.” That is no-deal Brexit to a T.
Schumpeter’s explicit inspiration was Marx, who wrote of
“the violent destruction of capital not by relations external to it, but rather
as a condition of its self-preservation”. Though no Marxist, he was much
attracted to Marx’s thesis that capitalism required “explosions, cataclysms,
crises, in which … suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of
capital … violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on]
fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide.” To Marx,
capitalist disruption was a gateway to socialism, but Schumpeter saw it as
cleansing, purifying through pain.
Johnson’s supporters may be right in seeing ossification in
the oligopolistic economics of the EU. Capitalism needs constantly updating and
refreshing – which is why many believe that Britain should stay and offer
Europe its leadership in this endeavour. But creative destruction is a bizarre
turn-up for British Conservatism, with its traditional caution and respect for
established institutions and interest groups. It is a measure of this
ideological revolution that it was Hunt, not Johnson, who said the sacrifice of
export-reliant businesses was a price worth paying “with a heavy heart” for a
no-deal Brexit. Hunt was a Tory traditionalist, panicking and capitulating to
modern populist politics. Johnson’s heart was nowhere to be seen.
As Thatcher showed, even creative destruction demands crisis
management. Johnson’s politics seem more in tune with the wilder shores of
chaos theory. In one gaffe after another, he has been the butterfly whose
wing-beat can effect an unpredictable storm. While the chaotic forces of no
deal whirl ever faster, his bland shrug of the shoulder becomes the “strange
attractor” around which they mysteriously cohere. As with Donald Trump, anarchy
can mean bad things, good things, absolutely any things.
Thus Johnson might last just a few months before a scandal
erupts or his party cries enough. A Commons revolt might see a Labour-Lib Dem
coalition, even perhaps briefly under Jeremy Corbyn or a “caretaker”. A sudden
referendum might reverse Brexit – humiliating the Brexiters. There might emerge
an Irish customs union, or a Scottish secession. Pain and cost could be
enormous, but there could be gains as well as losses. That is the essence of
chaos. Nobody knows.
• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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