03 April 2010 : IRNA
London, April 3, IRNA -- A senior expert of US-Britain relations says the “damage” in the “special relationship” between the two countries was created by the Iraq war.
“The Iraq war was very traumatic in the nature of US-UK relations.... It is sometimes hard to get yourself out of the hole that you’ve dug for yourself but I think it’s doable and that applies to the US and its allies,” Dana Allin, a senior fellow for the US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs in the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), told IRNA when asked if the so-called “special relationship” between Britain and the United States will continue in the future as in the past.
Allin said there is no question that this relationship was damaged by the Iraq war and more recently by the publication of confidential CIA evidence indicating the complicity of British agents in the torture of detainees abroad.
“The matter of the fact is the US reputation was also damaged by these things.”
Allin added that the Iraq war also ruined the “project” of former British premier Tony Blair who wanted to wield influence on Britain as an ally of the US apart from Europe and, at the same time, be at the heart of “European deliberations to magnify its power”.
“However, for generations and decades there has been an issue about whether the UK by stressing its close relationship with the US has lost influence in Europe. On the other side, most US administrations have wanted Britain to be central in European affairs...to give Americans extra influence in Europe.”
Asked about a recent report by the House of Common’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which recommended a ban on the use of the term “special relationship”, Allin said the term should not be completely abandoned even though “it is healthy to have a little more realistic way of talking about it.”
The report dubbed “Global Security: UK-US Relations” concluded that the use of the phrase “the special relationship” to describe UK-US relationship is “potentially misleading”.
“We recommend that its use should be avoided. The overuse of the phrase by some politicians and many in the media serves simultaneously to de-value its meaning and to raise unrealistic expectations about the benefits the relationship can deliver to the UK,” the report said.
“I gave evidence in the session of the Committee to discuss the issue of the special relationship...To avoid this term, I think, makes sense,” Allin said.
Describing the term as “an artefact of World War II”, he said the idea of a special relationship is a “demeaning British pre-occupation”.
He explained that Europeans have always been “keen to admire” the United States even on occasions of strained relations.
Referring to the report, the IISS expert said it was only a “fact-finding” report which might not affect the “fundamentals” of this relationship.
“This relationship is very important to the UK foreign policy... It strikes me as natural that they [British MPs] would occasionally do an inquiry into the state of it.”
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