And The Empire Continues To Sink

It was Dean Acheson, President Truman's Secretary of State, who coined the phrase that Britain had lost an empire, yet had failed to find a role in the world. And that this phrase persists indicates it's continuing vervacity.

I think it's pertinant this week as our masters cowtow to the former colonists from Saudi Arabia. And watch how those venal old Saudi's are rubbing Britain's nose in it . They know just how much Whitehall and their lackies are willing to grovel to get their hands on some of that soiled old oil-money, and they're going to see just how low Britain's prepared to stoop.

The phrase also cropped in the BBC's No Plan, No Peace, the documentary addressing Britain's culpability in America's failure to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq debacle.

I enjoyed two moments of the programme in particular.

On my travels in recent years, I've often been asked why Blair allowed himself to be embroiled in such stupidity as that eminating from the Whitehouse. My response was that Blair was vain, wanted a role on the world stage, and believed he could influence Washington.
The programme put forward another, more geo-political, notion. Prior to the war, as Washington set up exercises in preparation for the pre-war diplomacy, the CIA operative given the job of role-playing Britain at the negotiation table, elected to agree to anything, just to remain at the top-table. Somewhat prescient.

In regard to the aftermath of the war in Iraq, there was the experience of a British economist, who, on reading American's "reconstruction plan", found a section stipulating the agreed currencies to be permitted during reconstruction. The American Dollar, unsurprisingly, was there. But so too was the German Reichmark, a currency abandoned in 1948. The document had clearly been hastily cut and pasted from reconstruction documentation from the Second World War. Equally disturbing was the documentation in regard to the restoration of electricity to the nation. It consisted of one sheet of A4, only half-covered, and comprised merely of a list of addresses of power stations.

Iraq didn't stand a chance.