ABSTRACT
Post-September 11, 2001 developments have exacerbated British anxieties about its place in the world and particularly about its relationship with the United States. These anxieties are far from new: former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's barb, “Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role,” still has the power to nettle. Given this history, Tony Blair's unequivocal backing of the Iraq War has touched a nerve in British public opinion, not only because many British citizens, like many continental Europeans, question the morality of this war, but also because Blair's unequivocal fidelity to U.S. foreign policy has been widely perceived as transforming the “special relationship” from one of partners—albeit senior and junior partners—to one of superpower and satellite. That some British journalists have employed terms as provocative as “adjunct,” “51st state,” and “client state” to describe the current relationship between the United States and Great Britain shows how dramatically they feel the ground has shifted. 1 Even harsher language has been employed to describe Blair himself, including the nearly ubiquitous “poodle” and “lapdog.” Novelist John LeCarre has even gone so far as to describe him as “a minstrel for the American cause” (qtd. in Naughtie 116). Many Blair critics believe that British prestige in the world has perhaps been irreparably harmed by Blair's dogged loyalty to Bush's foreign policy. While Blair's late February 2007 announcement that Great Britain would withdraw some troops from Iraq suggests that Blair is willing to compromise between his commitment to the “coalition of the willing” and the demands of the British public, most domestic British commentators agree that the damage has already been done; Blair has already lent credibility to the United States' war effort.
