White House home truths for Cameron

Forget Europe. Britain can always play Greece to America’s Rome. The notion that a ‘special relationship’ with Washington is a more agreeable alternative to engagement on its own continent has long been a conceit of Britain’s eurosceptics. If it was ever true — and it looked dubious more than half a century ago when the then prime minister Harold Macmillan toyed with the idea — the moment has long passed. If British Prime Minister David Cameron imagines otherwise, he will be disabused during his current visit to the White House.

For Cameron, the pilgrimage to Washington is a pre-election photo opportunity. Sure, there is a full agenda for his talks with US President Barack Obama, not least the terrorist outrages in France, the military campaign against Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and Russia’s armed intervention in Ukraine. What Cameron really wants, though, are pre-election “selfies” with the US president — images of the two leaders standing shoulder to shoulder in a dangerous world. The US may be a somewhat diminished superpower these days, but Obama still sprinkles stardust over visitors to the Oval Office.

In what promises to be a close election in May, Cameron’s hopes of defeating Ed Miliband’s Labour party rest in sizeable part on his higher leadership ratings. Aides say that the very fact he has been offered a White House sleepover so close to polling day shows he is also the president’s choice. They point to a symmetry: Just before the 2012 US election, Obama had stayed with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.

From Washington you get a more nuanced view of the relationship. The US president can do business with the British prime minister. The two leaders get on fine and know how to stick to an agenda. And official Washington has not quite worked out what to make of Ed Miliband, so continuity has its attractions. Yet, a central plank of the Tory election manifesto leaves the US administration at best incredulous and sometimes scathing. Why on earth, Obama has been heard to ask, would any British leader flirt with the idea of pulling up the drawbridge against the European Union (EU)?

The conventional view in the corridors of the US administration is that so-called Brexit would be disastrous for Britain, bad for Europe, damaging for the Euro-Atlantic alliance and inimical to the national interests of the US. Doubtless Obama will be tactful in discussions with his guest, but the essential message could not be much clearer. Has not Cameron, who has promised a referendum on British EU membership by 2017, learnt his lesson from the closeness of the vote on Scottish independence? And yes, Miliband’s disavowal of an EU referendum has been noted in the White House.

Britain’s stock in Washington is not at its highest. For Cameron, the “oldest ally” tag bestowed by the US on France in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris is mildly inconvenient. More striking, and substantial, is a shift in the centre of geopolitical gravity to Berlin. Obama, with plenty of other foreign policy challenges on his hands, is content for Germany to take a lead in setting the West’s response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Stripped of diplomatic niceties, the American view of Europe is that, since Germany pays most of Europe’s bills, Chancellor Angela Merkel more or less runs the show.

The same US officials say the habit of cooperation with Britain is deeply ingrained. Paris and Berlin have their Elysee treaty; the US and Britain have a unique security and intelligence relationship. When the US is canvassing support among its allies, as often as not London is the first port of call. Britain’s privileged access, though, rests in good part on the assumption that it has a leading voice in shaping European decision-making. Take away the latter and the former is decisively weakened.

The Americans have other concerns. Doubts have been stirred by the parliamentary votes limiting British participation in the coalition against the Islamist extremists in Syria and Iraq. The prospect of further cuts in the UK defence budget — Cameron has refused to rule them out — has prompted US officials to question whether their ally will continue to pull its weight. Whitehall likes to boast of Britain’s “full-spectrum” military capabilities. Washington says that many of the capabilities have been hollowed out.

It has not escaped US notice that the UK is now one of the few island nations without an effective maritime patrol aircraft; or that the best it can offer to the air campaign against the Islamist forces in Iraq are a few ageing Tornado bombers due soon for the scrapyard. Britain, one senior US official says, is at an inflection point. Additional defence cuts would “call into question its role as a reliable military ally”.

Some in Britain will say that is all to the good: The country has had its fill of fighting wars alongside the US. Superficially this is a seductive argument for a middle-ranking power with high deficits and debt. It ignores the uncomfortable facts of the present world disorder. With the exception of the US, western democracies lack the resources to safeguard their own security.

Palmerston, the 19th century British foreign secretary, famously observed that great powers do not have eternal allies, only interests. Today’s US is likewise unsentimental about its pursuit of national advantage. Britain matters in Washington, but the measure of its worth is how much it contributes.

— Financial Times