Skip to main content
Log in

No longer special? Britain and the United States after Iraq

  • Original Article
  • Published:
International Politics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The United Kingdom's National Security Strategy states that it will maintain ‘a commitment to collective security via a rules-based international system and our key alliances, notably with the United States’. But what should the United Kingdom do when the United States is accused (as during the Iraq crisis) of circumventing the procedural norms of the United Nations (UN)? This article examines the normative foundations underpinning what it calls Blairite Atlanticism. This supports the US unilateralism not simply because it is in the national interest to do so, but because ultimately the United States acts as a custodian of the international common good when the UN fails to do so. Drawing on Christian Reus-Smit's critique of ‘liberal hierarchy’, the article challenges the claim that this approach meets the criteria of a progressive foreign policy. The article then draws on Republican Security Theory to demonstrate how the progressive defence of the UN system can avoid the charge of anti-Americanism by appealing to the anti-hierarchical traditions of the American founding.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See, for instance, the remarks by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Blomfeld, 2012) and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair (2011, pp. 4–5). According to David Sanger (2012), the Obama administration's preventive strategy has been limited to cyber-attacks against Iranian capabilities.

  2. Mark Phythian (2007, p. 5) notes that the defining characteristic of a Labour's foreign policy before Blair was a suspicion of the US power and an ‘insistence on the primacy of the UN’. See also Dunne (2012, p. 423).

  3. On the redefinition of the national interest under New Labour, see Croft (2002).

  4. Good international citizens are not required to sacrifice their vital security interests out of fidelity to the rules of international society, but they are required ‘to put the welfare of international society ahead of the relentless pursuit of [their] own national interests … to place the survival of order before the satisfaction of minimal national advantages’ (Linklater 1992, pp. 28–29). For an application to British foreign policy, one which defines defining the ‘welfare’ of international society to include respect for human rights, see Dunne and Wheeler (1998); also Linklater (2000).

  5. ‘Restrictionist’ interpretations of Article 51 of the UN Charter deny the right of any form of anticipatory self-defence, noting that the Charter insists states only respond to an armed attack that has occurred. However, a ‘counter-restrictionist’ argument claims that a customary right to use pre-emptive force against an imminent armed attack is indeed consistent with the UN Charter. The question of what constitutes an ‘imminent’ threat and what thereby triggers the right to use force in self-defence was strongly contested in the National Security Strategy of 2002 (see Ruys, 2010).

  6. On Suez and its legacy – ‘that such a rift must not be allowed to recur’ – see Dumbrell (2001, p. 47).

  7. Written Evidence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, cited in Foreign Affairs Committee (2010a, p. 39). For details on the ‘deeply rooted, broadly based, strategically important and mutually supportive’ defence and security relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, see HM Government (2010b, p. 60).

  8. See Goldsmith (2010, pp. 108–129). When asked by the Inquiry why he did not consult with French on the meaning of Resolution 1441 Goldsmith argued that ‘the message that that would have given Saddam Hussein about the degree of our commitment would have been huge. … The United States and the United Kingdom were acting very closely together. We were not acting very closely with France’. This, in his view, made little difference to his decision because, ‘what the French Ambassador said to me, that actually the French knew and believed that there wasn’t a need for a second resolution’ (see also Goldsmith, 2010, p. 157).

  9. On the disappointment that the UK support for the United States during the Iraq War did not translate into particular benefits, see Meyer (2009).

  10. Dunne (2012, p. 421) indicates that Cook and Blair had always differed on how the relationship with the United States related to the ethical dimension of the British foreign policy.

  11. On the emphasis on development and reform of the UN Security Council in Brown's foreign policy, see Honeyman (2009).

  12. On Atlanticism as the default Conservative position, see Beech (2011). On the idea that Blair's American policy was driven by a domestic political consideration and the idea that Labour still had to shake off the anti-American image that had made it unelectable in the past, see Kampfner (2004, p. 161).

  13. Despite this continuities with the Bush administration's approach to the use of force as a matter of self-defence do exist. In the context of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to target al Qaeda, for instance, Presidential counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan (2011) echoed the 2002 National Security Strategy when he noted that the US policy was based on ‘a more flexible understanding of “imminence” ’. He argued that ‘the traditional conception of what constitutes “imminent” attack should be broadened in light of modern-day capabilities, techniques and technological innovations’. Also see a speech by the Attorney General, Eric Holder (2012) who noted in the context of Obama's programme of drone strikes that the President was not required ‘to delay action until some theoretical end-stage of planning – when the precise time, place and manner of an attack became clear. Such a requirement would create an unacceptably high risk that our efforts would fail, and Americans would be killed’. According to Klaidman, Harold Koh, the Legal Adviser to Obama's State Department, also developed a theory of ‘elongated imminence’, which he likened to ‘battered spouse syndrome’. ‘If a husband demonstrated a consistent pattern of activity before beating his wife, it wasn’t necessary to wait until the husband's hand was raised before the wife could act in self-defense’ (Klaidman, 2012, pp. 219–223). On the US use of drones and allegations that the United Kingdom had ‘a policy of passing British intelligence to US forces planning attacks against militants’, see BBC (2012).

  14. Hague (2010) did introduce the new emphasis on bilateralism in a networked world by starting ‘with our unbreakable alliance with the United States which is our most important relationship and will remain so. Our shared history, value and interests, our tightly linked economies and strong habits of working together at all levels will ensure that the US will remain our biggest single partner for achieving our international goals’. But, he quickly added, ‘other bilateral ties matter too, whether they are longstanding ties which have been allowed to wither or stagnate or the new relations that we believe we must seek to forge for the 21st century’. Neither went as far as the Foreign Affairs Committee (2010b, p. 3), which stated that ‘it has long been assumed that UK national interests are best served by the touchstones of the US special relationship and our economic interests within the European Union. Uncritical acceptance of these assumptions has led to a waning of our interests in, and ability to make, National Strategy’.

  15. This stemmed from the tendency, following Churchill, to view British foreign policy as occupying a unique position at the centre of ‘three great circles’: the Commonwealth, the United States and Europe. On the need to adapt the model ‘to make sense of a vastly different global political landscape’, see Daddow and Gaskarth (2011).

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship. It was presented at the ISA, San Diego. The author would like to thank the panellists, in particular Paul Sharp, for their comments. He would also like to thank Mick Cox, Graeme Davies, Jamie Gaskarth, Aggie Hirst and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ralph, J. No longer special? Britain and the United States after Iraq. Int Polit 50, 333–359 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.10

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.10

Keywords

Navigation