mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (11/11/83)
There have been a few articles recently that discuss the fact that US and UK actions have not always been friendly. The tone of several of these articles suggests that the authors feel the UK is an untrustworthy ally of the US because it has acted contrary to US interests on occasion. I think that a fair reading of history links the US and UK more closely than these incidents suggest. First I want to give some other historical evidence to go along with what has been presented, so as to show that aggressive or interventionist behaviour has not been solely British, and then to argue that these disagreements have more the character of family spats than of flare-ups between mistrustful opponents. The interests of nations often coincide, but are seldom identical. Several writers have brought up the British support of the Confederacy as evidence of anti-american behaviour in the Civil War. But was it? Suppose that the South had won. If Britain had supported the North, it would have been seen as unfriendly by an independent South, and if it had supported the South it would have been seen as unfriendly by the North. Why should Britain have supported the North? On the one hand, Britain was anti-slave, despite having contributed greatly to the original slave trade. On the other hand, the North abutted Canada, and had a history of unprovoked agression against the Canadian territories, starting with the land-grab that failed in 1812-14, and continuing through the peiod of the Civil War with the illegal but tolerated Fenian raids (rather like the Syrian support for the PLO now). Again on the side of the South, England's economy depended heavily on cotton manufacture, and the South supplied cotton. The situation there was much like present US government support of US business interests in various parts of the world. You support governments that you object to on moral grounds if they are useful to your business. In the US, do you remember the slogan "54.40 or fight?". We do in Canada. That was a popular slogan until (and maybe after) the Anglo-US boundary commission settled on 49N as the boundary between the US and Canada. In that case, the US did not fight for the land, but it certainly didn't support British-Canadian interests. Look closer to the present. You justify the Grenada operation by saying that it will lead to a more stable Caribbean in future (at least the majority of US citizens support the Grenada invasion for some such reason, even though many netters don't). The UK is seen as unfriendly because it opposed and still opposes it. But what happened in the parallel case when the Suez Canal was forcibly taken from the Anglo-French company that was running it? Eisenhower forced the UK and France to withdraw their invasion forces that had recaptured Suez. At least in Suez, both countries had some kinds of legal rights, if not moral rights, which is more than can be said about the US in Grenada. Look at 1943-45, and especially the last days of the European War. The UK fought strenuously to prevent the US from giving Eastern Europe to Russia, but was unsuccessful. Even after the treaties had been signed, the UK still tried to get the Allied troops to take as much territory as they could before the Russians got there. But Eisenhower stopped them at the treaty line, and now we have a divided Germany and Communist Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Who was that friendly to? Now to reverse the field. There are lots of other examples of what some might call US agression against Britain and the Commonwealth, but I claim that does not mean that there is any basic ill-will. Can you think of any two states in the US that have had no frictions? I remember when I was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins there was an actual shooting war for a few days across the Maryland-Virginia border. Maryland thought Virginia oyster-catchers were poaching and using illegal harvesting methods, and Virginia thought Maryland was illegally obstructing the interests of its fishermen. Does this mean that Maryland and Virginia are not allies in the greater cause? One correspondent brought up the fact that there was considerable pro-German sentiment in the US before World-War I, and that Anglo-US friendship dated only from the sinking of the Lusitania that was engineered by Churchill and Wilson. But there was also pro-British sentiment before that. If there had not been, how come there was a pro-British President willing to enter into that kind of deceit? If there had not been, I doubt that the sinking of one ship would have brought the US into the war. (Anyway, from what little I know of Wilson, I doubt very much that it was he who arranged the Lusitania affair. He even had to be tricked into invading Mexico a few months earlier.) As for pro-German sentiment before WWII, there was a lot of it in the UK as well. If Edward VIII had remained King, that pro-Nazi sentiment might have been stronger, and could have kept England either out of the war, or assisting Hitler in a war on Russia. The existence of pro-German sentiment in the US is hardly evidence that the US was unfreindly to Britain. Certainly after WWII started in 1939 the US did everything it could to help, short of actually fighting. I think the thing a lot of people tend to forget is that friends can differ without losing their friendship. When one partner insists that the other toe the line all the time, you have a colonial relationship, not a partnership of allies. Colonial relationships lead eventually to enmity. Your friends MUST be able to criticize you as well as praise you, or what good are they? Enough. Martin Taylor
jmg@houxk.UUCP (11/22/83)
Martin Taylor states in his article that the wars in which America and England found themselves on opposite sides were really only "family spats". Actually WWI was REALLY a family spat because the king of England, the German kaiser and the czar (or tsar) of Russia were all first cousins! Pity the poor commoners who were shoved out onto the battlefield to settle this family dispute! Please Martin, don't kid us by calling these conflicts "family spats". It's meaningless and pointless and does nothing to rectify the wrongs that were committed. Martin goes on to try to justify England's support of the South by saying it would have been just as wrong for England to support the North. The obvious answer is that England should have supported neither side - stayed neutral - in other words kept its nose and fingers out of American politics. Does this seem like asking the impossible? Ask yourself how many other nations have interfered in U.S. internal affairs as much as England has. Martin writes about the "unprovoked agression" of the U.S. How about the unprovoked agression (during the same period) that resulted in the English conquest of India, the English conquest of China, the English conquest of Africa to name just a few? And what about the English conquest of Tibet? When were they ever a threat to the British Empire? And what about all the native inhabitants of Tasmania (the smaller island south of Australia) who were TOTALLY WIPED OUT, ANNIHILATED by the brave soldiers of the British Empire? People who live in Crystal Palaces shouldn't throw stones. Martin brings up the 1956 Anglo-French re-invasion of Egypt and compares it to the present operations in Grenada. If you ask the people of the Phillipines which the U.S. first took from Spain in the Spanish-American War and then set free, they will probably remember the U.S. presence there with some nostalgia. Phillipine nationals are still allowed to serve in the armed forces of the U.S. just as if they were American citizens. Yes we took Cuba from Spain and then set it free. Yes we went into South American countries and Central American countries, but we never stayed long and were usually better to the inhabitants than the previous rulers. If you go around the world and ask any former British colony if the people would like the English back they'll laugh in your face! And when did the English ever leave a colony except after a protracted colonial war? Eisenhower knew just as the Egyptians knew that once established the English would never leave. And how did the English ALWAYS gain a foothold in some new colony? First they send in a "private trading company", then they provoke an incident and claim that THEY HAVE BEEN WRONGED! Next the British military is sent in to "protect the lives of British subjects". The inhabitants resist the invasion and that is the justification for the conquest of the entire country because the British army cannot rest until it's stamped out the last vestige of resistance. If you think this applies only to backward nations or "heathens" then look at South Africa where Dutch-African civilians were placed in concentration camps at the turn of the century before Germany ever thought of such a thing! Martin writes about the fact that there were many pro-British people among us. That is a fact, but it has very little bearing on what should be the correct course of U.S. policy. Ronald Reagan is certainly an Anglophile but when he or Nancy go to England they are treated like poor relatives. Not that I particularly admire Ronald Reagan, but he is the President of the U.S. and when he is snubbed by a foreign head of state it is the same as insulting the people of the U.S. as a whole. Once while visiting Queen Elizabeth they went out riding together and when Reagan asked to have his picture taken with the Queen she simply rode off out of camera range and turned her face away! When Nancy Reagan went to the wedding of Charlie and Di she was placed in the center of the church away from all the other guests as if she were a leper and the British press criticized her vehemently for not bowing to Queen Elizabeth saying she was "acting like royalty" (you know - those people who don't have to bow to each other). I don't know what Ronnie and Nancy's IQ's are but I know they're light-years ahead of anyone in Buckingham Palace. I think they would do better to turn down any invitations from London in the future. And I hear that American servicemen are somtimes stopped on the street in England and told that England could have won WWII without U.S. aid! Anyone with half a brain knows that this is pure dreaming. Even with TWELVE BILLION DOLLARS in U.S. wartime aid to England, there were many times when the food supply there came dangerously close to being wiped out. And if the U.S. had not supplied everything for the British during the Falklands War they would have lost! Even British military commanders concede that if the Argentinians hadn't had so many duds among the bombs they bought from other countries they would have sunk so many ships the British would have had to give up. And Margaret Thatcher would not be as haughty as she is today, nor as critical of the U.S. while they are busily taking in every cruise missile they can get their hands on.
preece@uicsl.UUCP (11/24/83)
#R:dciem:-48000:uicsl:16300034:000:1412 uicsl!preece Nov 23 10:58:00 1983 It's pretty silly to spend a lot of time complaining about the behavior of the British in India, South Africa, or wherever in a much different world. However we may feel about colonialism now, in times gone by it was the rule that areas not under strong central control were fair game. We never did much in the way of colonies for two obvious reasons: we weren't big enough and powerful enough during the time that suitable places were available, and we had our own private preserve stretching to the Pacific, which we colonized the Hell out of. We're not talking about anybody having been, or being now, angels. Our interests and those of the British have generally been parallel and we have generally supported each other's efforts. It's stupid to knock the British for not perfectly aping our foreign policy; their differences with us are limited but real. As to the intelligence of the White House dwellers and the Royal Family, I have no evidence. One would, however, expect more from the elected executive of a country than from the hereditary, titular head of a country. They don't pay the Queen for being smart, they pay her for being Queen. With luck, one day soon, we won't pay Ronny for anything... [I know, I know, ex-Presidents still get a bundle, and we'll still have to watch him on television, etc., etc.; I was speaking only in abstract terms...] scott preece ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece