September 02, 2007 ... Special relationship.

The special relationship with the United Kingdom and not France is purely a coincidence of history and, if all things were more equal, the United States would be much happier for that special relationship to be European Union (EU) wide so that it becomes a relationship special because of the breadth of specialities available, and not be simply a form of special-needs to circumvent the woeful inaction of the EU in the Balkans, for example.

The latest mutter-from-the gutter is yet another swinging criticism about the current state of the Iraqi government including the dismissal of the previous regime’s military and civil administration. This is based on the premise that although the previous military and civil administration were ideologically unsound with regard to the aspirations of the world at large, it was at least familiar with Iraq and could have been taken under coalition and UN administration to improve its performance and to smooth out the rough going. But this is wishful thinking simply because the previous administration was simply specific tribal tyranny riven by internal feuding under ministerial title to create the internationally acceptable impression of government. The only government Iraq previously enjoyed was governance by the gun. To take the much vaunted example of Northern Ireland as a paradigm for conflict resolution, as a rough parallel, the various paramilitaries involved added a veneer of legitimacy to their activities by simply assigning titles such as General, Brigadier, etc., to themselves. Give it a name.

We are where we are, and if France, Germany and the UN had not been in the vanguard of undermining UN sanctions, for comparatively trivial economic gain through trade and corruption of the oil-for-food (OFF) programme, it is likely that the previous Iraqi regime would have collapsed without any need for American and British intervention.

As already said, America would very much like a broad EU special relationship, which would be hastened into being if the EU governments spent much less time in the creation of an overburden of bureaucratic guff, little better than that employed by Iraq’s previous regime, and got down to figuring out what the EU project is actually for. In addition, it must be said that, since the EU can barely manage to govern itself including securing its own territory in the face of Islamic terrorism, it is hardly credible for the EU to criticise our ongoing efforts in Iraq, which is open for them to get seriously involved with, if they want. Hardly likely, given that the hard men from the UN cut and ran after only one truck bomb.