Nile Gardiner
This website posted in the Quotebank yesterday some comments made by the US ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, regarding the British relationship with the EU. (Read them here.)
He said that “The US does not want to see Britain’s role in the EU diminished in any way” and that “all key issues must run through Europe.”
American neo-con commentator Nile Gardiner, writing on the Daily Telegraph website, is outraged. “His statements were an extraordinary intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation,” he complains. “Britain’s future direction and her approach towards the European Union can only be decided by the British people themselves.”
Indeed it is true that British policy on Europe will be decided by the British and not by the Americans, but that does not mean that the Americans are not entitled to express an opinion. Is that not what friends do?
Furthermore, the neo-cons themselves are not shy when it comes to expressing opinions about other countries when it suits them. Lebanon too friendly with Syria? The Hamas regime in Gaza too dependent on Iran? Whatever happened to the internal affairs of a sovereign nation then?
Or here in Europe, when we were discussing the constitution, among the people who opposed the idea were the American neo-cons. Nile Gardiner, to take an example, wrote that:
“It is frightening to imagine what would happen to American interests if the supranational imperative in Europe extended further into the foreign and security policy realm.”
No, it is entirely appropriate for countries to comment on the foreign policies, or indeed any policies, of others. The Ventotene manifesto of 1941 contains the recognition that even the constitution of one country can have an impact on others. The idea that governments should be silent on matters that concern them is wrong and dangerous and should be resisted.
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That’s somehow the cause of “being a neo-con”?
Do you even know what a neo-con is, after a decade of abuse and revision of the term by those so far removed from its’ context? You seem to be trying to take them (us) as a race of automoton robots that can be objectified. No wonder Europeans are seen as ineffectual global parasites.
Gardiner’s reaction is not surprising at all. It was a typical knee-jerk reaction designed to moralize the political interests of one government against another. As I believe Lord Palmerston noted, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” The problem is that Gardiner doesn’t see a U.S. interest in a stronger UK-Europe relationship. This is what classifies Gardiner as a neo-con.
Perhaps Joe can better explain what a neo-con is, and how Gardiner’s comments don’t comport with his definition. As for the suggestion that neo-cons are “automaton robots”, it is easy to reach this assessment when any effort to extend liberty and law to the supranational level or establish broader norms of good governance transnationally, their response is a automatic “NO!”.
Tony
Maryland, USA
That’s the point: Gardner doesn’t discuss “being a neo-con”. Richard does. How long does it take to soften a brain to tyhe point where the attirbution in a blog comment somehow makes Gardner’s comment fit the conditioned response someone across the ocean has when they hear the word “neo-con”?
Not long, apparently.
Gardner is saying little more than to use normal restraint in diplomatic communication, and to deliniate a personal opinion from a message meant to be carried government to government.
Or is that too “nuanced”?