Andrew Rawnsley, Chief Political Commentator of the Observer, writes in a commentary posted yesterday that Boris Johnson’s “Global Britain” has been exposed as “impotent and friendless” by Biden’s decision-making on Afghanistan. The Anglo-American special relationship was declared to be “warm and friendly” after Biden took office and made his first phone call to Boris Johnson, but “Now we know differently,” Rawnsley laments. “When it came to the calls that mattered over Afghanistan, Mr Johnson’s capacity to influence Mr Biden was less than that of the president’s dog,” he continues. “The withdrawal of what remained of the NATO presence in Afghanistan was dictated by abrupt and unilateral decisions made in Washington. Ministers privately admit that not only did they fail to see a resurgent Taliban coming, they have been reduced to second-guessing what the United States will do next.”
The reaction of Conservatives in the House of Commons was intense. “Where is Global Britain on the streets of Kabul?” Theresa May angrily demanded of Johnson in Parliament last week. “I have never heard so much fury so ferociously expressed by Conservative MPs about the behaviour of the U.S. Behind their hot anger was a cold fear: the foreboding sense of an impotent Britain friendless in a frightening world,” Rawnsley writes.
The future of “Global Britain” seems to be left hanging. “If we are entering an era of American disengagement, the questions are acute for a Britain that chose to estrange itself from the liberal democracies in its neighborhood at the same time as the U.S. was becoming a less dependable partner,” Rawnsley writes near the end. “Some plausibly conjecture that the future is a new world disorder in which the great powers jostle for predominance and norms of international conduct are trampled underfoot. This will be a rough place for a country in the north-east Atlantic with lots of vital interests around the globe, but not the means to safeguard them by itself and no one it can count on as an all-weather friend….”
“‘Very well, alone’ did good service for Winston Churchill as a wartime rallying cry in 1940. British impotence in Afghanistan demonstrates that it is an utterly hopeless strategy for survival in the 21st century,” he concludes. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/22/boris-johnson-global-britain-exposed-impotent-friendless-afghanistan)
