Although new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made all the right noises so far about the war in Iraq and issued statements of solidarity with President George W. Bush, Americans should not expect to see the buddy-buddy relationship of the Tony Blair era continue. Blair was a loyal lapdog to the American president who tried to increase British power projection by tagging along with the world's only remaining superpower. Largely thanks to the efforts of Bush and Blair, this title gained during the Cold War is now very much up for grabs. Sure, American military might is still unrivaled and our nuclear arsenal ensures primacy, but our adventure in Iraq and horrific episodes like Abu Ghraib threw our credibility out the window. Don't think for a moment that countries like Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China have not noticed this. Europeans have noticed too and are more wary than ever of American influence although national politicians would never say as much.
All of this is best reflected by Blair's decision to leave his post and hand it over to his former Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Brown is a very able politician who handled Britain's treasury deftly and without the usual string of crisis. He also has deeper roots in the Labour Party than Tony Blair, whose father was a Conservative barrister, and should please the grass roots of the party. However, it is important to remember that he was a member of the Blair government and is unlikely to radically depart from any of his policies, even the extremely unpopular war. I think, however, Brown is smarter than that. He knows that if he has any chance of staying in power as long as Blair did he will have to disentangle the Brits from American foreign policy without upsetting a very sensitive American president who does not take personal affront lightly. The British have been drawing down their troop levels in Iraq for some time now and you should expect this to continue under Brown until nothing but a token representation is left. The big departure from Blair will happen once Britain has extricated itself from Iraq.
Even with a new American Commander in Chief come 2009, I think that Britain will ever so slowly begin to turn its back on the "special relationship." Why would they do such a thing? Tagging along with American foreign policy has only hurt Britain internationally because they have been dragged through the same mud the United States has and the British people are fed up with it. Also, Brown sees that there is more to be gained by cooperating more fully with his continental counterparts on the fledgling European Security and Defense Policy, which has already built up a sterling reputation in small-scale crisis management and civilian operations. Don't get me wrong, Great Britain is still wary of the EU and supranational organizations, but Brown has no loyalty to the Bush administration and knows that Europe is far more important for Britain's future than America. You won't see it in one headline, but watch over the next couple years as Britain is ever so gradually pulled back across the Atlantic.
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