Instantanés des special relationships

Pris dans des domaines de leurs vies respectives qui devraient être proches, puisque tous deux dans le domaine conservateur, deux analyses et avis US et britanniques montrant les extraordinaires différences de conception qui séparent les Américains et les Britanniques.

• Voici le rapport d’une intervention d’un candidat à la désignation républicaine, l’ancien gouverneur du Massachussets Romney, qui est bien loin d’être le plus belliqueux, qui nettement moins pro-guerre qu’un McCain par exemple. (Repris de SFGate [San Francisco Chronicle] du 16 juin) :

«The former Massachusetts governor said his plans include boosting the size of the military by at least 100,000 troops and increasing the military budget. Romney recalled the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said the United States should “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” in its foreign relations.

»“I want to carry the big stick,” Romney told about 200 people at an event in Dubuque. “I hope I don't have to use it, but I want to make sure we have it so that people understand we are a nation of strength.”

»“If you look across the world you can recognize that there is terror going on,” Romney said. “... There is a worldwide effort of different people all intent on bringing down modernity and, replacing it, in some respects, with barbarism.”

»Romney defended President Bush's performance, noting his policies extend beyond Iraq. He called Bush a statesman who has shored up the nation's economy, expanded renewable energy capabilities and chosen appropriate U.S. Supreme Court justices. “Everything he does, he does from the standpoint of what is best for the American people,” Romney said.»

• Voici maintenant Anatole Kaletsky, dans le Times du 15 juin, qui se lamente de la crainte qu’il éprouve que Gordon Jones puisse ne rien changer à la politique qu’a suivie jusqu’ici Tony Blair. Le conseil de Kaletsky est clair et net : “Il faut rompre avec ces dingues d’Américains”…

«When Gordon Brown returned from his fact-finding tour of Iraq on Monday, he proclaimed the importance of learning from our mistakes but also of looking forward instead of backward. Did this admission hint at a shift in Britain’s foreign policy when Mr Brown takes over in ten days’ time? To judge by the announcement he made in the next sentence – a restructuring of the British security apparatus to guard against future intelligence failures such as the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction – the answer is “no”. Mr Brown’s foreign policy will remain as backward-looking and self-deluding as Tony Blair’s.

»I say this with growing despair, because I too have returned from a fact-finding tour, to America. Viewed from across the Atlantic it is clear that the parochial British obsession with WMD and “sexed-up dossiers” bears no relationship to the catastrophes now unfolding in the Middle East and beyond – not only in Iraq, but also in Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan, and soon maybe Syria, Iran and Pakistan. What people are talking about in America is not whether the invasion of Iraq was legally or morally justified but why it went so disastrously wrong and whether the same blundering fanatics will launch another catastrophic military adventure, most likely a bombing campaign against Iran, to distract attention from failure in Iraq. After all, the neoconservative ideologues who still run the Bush Administration have nothing left to lose politically – and in their fevered imaginations they still think they could inflict military defeat on the “Islamofascists” in what they now see as an even greater historical confrontation than the Cold War.

(…)

«As the anarchy in Iraq goes from bad to worse and Washington’s only answer is to expand the circle of its aggression, clichés about the special relationship are no longer sufficient. Mr Brown must decide whether to remain a silent but active partner in this madness, whether to retreat quietly like the Italians, Poles and Spaniards or to develop a third and genuinely courageous option. This is to positively forestall further disasters by breaking publicly with the Bush Administration and trying to develop a genuine European alternative to the suicidal American-led policies, not only in Iraq, but also in Israel, Palestine and Iran.»

Mis en ligne le 17 juin 2007 à 16H23