How To Win Friends and Influence People

Foreign policy is hard. Managing foreign relationships is difficult. However, some areas of policy are more difficult than others and some relationships are more frought with problems than others. For example, getting our policy on Russia is hard and managing that relationship difficult.

While, getting our policy on the U.K. is relatively straight-forward and managing that relationship is not that difficult. In fact, for all the modern talk of diversity and the global community, you don't have to be in the official foreign policy establishment for very long before you come to know the four countries we more-or-less have no problems with and with whom we co-operate very closely.

Canada - Australia - New Zealand - United Kingdom

That makes sense to me and I'm sure it makes sense to you. Which is why I'm finding this Administration's ability to pick fights with the U.K. so damn disturbing. The American press is, as usual, useless on the matter, but it doesn't take a long time reading the wider British press before one realizes that we have a problem.

It's always true that if you read the Guardian or a Brit of the sort like Robert Fisk you get the usual and knee-jerk anti-Americanism. You'll find the same, slightly different anti-Americanism is the pro-Euro wing of the Conservative Party, like in Kenneth Clarke. That is to be expected.

But what I'm seeing now is nothing less than warnings from that much larger section of the British political establishment that matters. Here are some samples, just from today:

Lord Tebbit:

"At least on the other side of the Atlantic the conduct of President Obama over the great oil spill is explicable, even if despicable. The whole might of American wealth and technology is displayed as utterly unable to deal with the disastrous spill – so what more natural than a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance against a multinational company?
It is time that our American friends were reminded that they sang a different tune when the American company Union Carbide killed many thousands of Indians at Bhopal. Not to mention when the American company Occidental killed 167 people on a North Sea oil rig in 1988.

"At the very least, the president might acknowledge that the company directly responsible for the Gulf disaster was American, not British. He may be holding on to some Democratic Party votes, but he is storing up a great deal of ill will that he might regret at some time. "

Peter Hitchens:

"I doubt if Barack Obama could fix a dripping tap in his bathroom. So I tire of his aggressive anti-British attitude towards BP as it struggles with the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Twice now – once over the Falklands and now over BP – the White House has shown it has no gratitude for our presence in Afghanistan, and has even placed our troops under US command. We should leave as soon as a withdrawal can be organised. "

Iain Dale:

"I don't know about you but I am getting increasingly irritated by President Obama's somewhat faux outbursts of fury against BP. Every day he seems to be thinking how he can seem angrier than the last. He's clearly worried that this deeply unfortunate incident could be his 'Katrina', but instead of blustering he might do better to think how his administration could actually help BP in its quest to stop the oil flowing. He unjustifiably accuses BP of doing little while doing very little himself to help the situation beyond go on TV to express his rather synthetic looking anger.

"I see no sign of BP hiding from its responsibilities but see every sign of a company struggling to find a solution in incredibly difficult circumstances. A bit of recognition of that from Obama wouldn't go amiss. Instead of coming out with anti British and anti oil company sentiment and pandering to populism, Obama should roll up his sleeves and give BP his and his government's support in the clear up operation.

"And isn't it interesting how Obama constantly refers to the company as "British Petroleum", a name it hasn't used for decades. Why would he do that, I wonder. I think we know."

I expected three things from President Obama: 1) An end to the war in Iraq; 2) An end to the war in Afghanistan; and 3) A return to traditional American foreign policy.

Instead, what we've gotten is: 1) An open admission that the *BEST CASE* scenario Obama envisions for Iraq is for us to continue to provide Eqypt level aid packages for at least 25 years (Note: I heard this directly from the President's point man at an open, unclassified briefing); 2) an expansion of the war in Afghanistan; and 3) no significant changes in foreign policy, except now in addition to pissing unconvincingly on our enemies we are now also pissing on our friends and important allies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this will not end well.