Et sur l’autre rive de l’Atlantique, aussi…

Reginald Dale est un chroniqueur proche de Wall Street, actuellement Senior Fellow du Europe Program au Center for Strategic and International Studies. Il est écouté et ses prises de position reflètent souvent un sentiment général dans les milieux financiers de tendance internationaliste de Wall Street.

Sa dernière chronique, du 8 septembre dans l’International Herald Tribune exprime des craintes assez proches de celles que l’on distingue dans la chronique de Gerard Baker, du Times, signalée par ailleurs dans cette chronique.

Sa vision de l’avenir des relations USA-UK après le départ de Blair désormais annoncé est assez pessimiste. Tout le monde, à Washington et à Wall Street, voit le départ de Blair comme une catastrophe pour les intérêts nationaux des Etats-Unis. A force de le croire, effectivement, l’événement va l’être effectivement, catastrophique…

«When Blair goes, his foreign policy will go with him. Even before then, he is bound to lose political clout now that the end is near. And for the Bush administration the most distressing aspect of Blair's departure is the main reason for it - mounting nationwide anger at his support for the war in Iraq, recently exacerbated by his backing for the pro-Israeli U.S. position on Lebanon.

«In a poll in mid-August, more than eight out of 10 Britons said that Britain should split from the United States in the war on terrorism. Many normally sober members of the British elite are incandescent with rage that Bush and Blair, as they see it, are turning the Middle East into an ever more lethal powder keg, endangering their own lives and those of their families.

«In global, and particularly trans-Atlantic affairs, Blair has increasingly operated as a one-man band, running British foreign policy according to deep personal convictions not shared by the majority of either his country or his Labour Party. He has done nothing to ensure the continuity of those policies under his successor, widely expected to be Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer.

«In his last cabinet reshuffle, in May, Blair could have named a new foreign secretary who both shared his world views and stood a chance of staying on under Brown. Instead, he tapped the unfortunate Margaret Beckett, then Secretary of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who did not want the job and knows nothing about foreign policy. It is difficult, thankfully, to imagine her surviving in a new Brown cabinet.

«Not that anyone really knows what Brown thinks about foreign policy or how he would approach trans-Atlantic relations. He is personally pro-American, spending his vacations on Cape Cod, and, as Britain's finance minister, his admiration for America's economic success has risen as his respect for the low-growth euro zone has diminished.

«But Brown is a colder fish, more intellectual and calculating than Blair. He lacks Blair's charisma and deeply felt convictions about world affairs. He will find it hard to duplicate Blair's personal chemistry with Bush, and, for domestic political reasons, he will want to create some distance between London and Washington. Following Blair's fate, no British prime minister is likely to join America in major military ventures for the foreseeable future.»

Mis en ligne le 9 septembre 2006 à 23H56