There is something strangely flattering in the Russian and Iranian portrayal of Britain as a Machiavellian intriguer, bending the might of the American empire to its own will in subtle and devious ways. For the truth, alas, is somewhat different. Since the end of the Second World War, Britain has been a subordinate part of the American imperial project, perhaps the equivalent of the Indian Princely States or Nigerian kingdoms of Britain’s own lost empire. Britain provides a touch of exotic glamour through the quaint and picturesque customs of its loyal native rulers, and the now largely ceremonial armed forces it maintains. Yet the policy of indirect rule remains in force: British rulers may arrange their own internal affairs as they wish — up to a point — but the vital matters of defence and foreign policy are not permitted to stray from serving Washington’s interests.
Such fealty to an imperial protector may be the lot of all small states: yet where British exceptionalism truly distinguishes itself is in the eagerness of our elites to serve their master, a yearning for subordination which at times arouses as much contempt as satisfaction in the imperial capital. Britain’s elites have chosen to view themselves as, if not equal partners in the imperial project, then a uniquely favoured ally, elevated in affection above rivals by the Special Relationship. That the Special Relationship is an entirely parasocial one is a truth American securocrats are generally too polite to mention, and too hard for their British equivalents to bear. The results have generally been disastrous: so zealous have our leaders been to prove their mettle in imperial wars, Britain committed itself to tasks in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved far beyond its abilities. This eagerness to go above and beyond Washington’s requirements may now be repeating itself both in Ukraine, where America’s second thoughts about continuing a war rapidly turning sour threaten to leave ultra-hawkish Britain looking dangerously exposed, and in the Pacific, where the Royal Navy has almost entirely refashioned itself for a vulnerable auxiliary role in the looming war with China.
Yet the strangest aspect of this humbling dynamic is how natural it all seems: to even notice it is frowned upon in British defence commentary, but to lament it is utterly taboo. Britain’s postwar slide from equal partner to fawning subordinate was such a gentle and gradual decline that it has — with the exception of a few psychic shocks such as Suez and the Skybolt crisis — gone largely unremarked. It is with the aim of rethinking this unhealthy, unrequited relationship that the journalist Tom Stevenson’s excellent new book, Someone Else’s Empire has appeared. “For what must ultimately be psychological reasons, British leaders and national security clerks have tended to dislike seeing Britain framed by American power,” Stevenson observes, yet this state of affairs is neither natural nor desirable: “it is one thing to station military forces around the world to maintain your empire, but quite another to do so for someone else’s”.
Given the heavy costs and dubious benefits of such a relationship, why should the notionally independent British state not look towards British interests first and foremost? Why should our defence establishment so jealously guard their position as Washington’s loyalest compradors while denying the true nature of their role? Stevenson’s book provides a rare, clear-eyed dissection of Britain’s humbled status. Largely a reworked collection of LRB essays on 21st-century warfare, featuring original reporting from the disastrous fallout of the Arab Spring — and I can personally attest there is no more radicalising argument against the American empire than direct observation of how the sausage is made — the book is at its strongest in its opening and closing chapters on the mechanics of British self-subordination, and its searing essay on Britain’s defence intelligentsia.
Stevenson dissects the strange case of the British securocrat class, the products of our cloistered strategic think tanks RUSI, the IISS and Chatham House, and their feeder school, Kings’ Department of War Studies. As he observes: “Among the British defence intelligentsia, Atlanticism is a foundational assumption. A former director of policy planning at the US State Department and a former director at the US National Security Council are on the staff of the IISS. RUSI’s director-general, Karin von Hippel, was once chief of staff to the four-star American general John Allen. In 2021, RUSI’s second largest donor was the US State Department.” Yet despite their obsequiousness to American interests, British security think tanks have “next to no influence across the Atlantic”. In so far as their strategic counsel has been followed by British governments, the results have been, at best, humiliating and at worst war crimes, dragging Britain into reckless campaigns “of the sort that nations were once disarmed for committing”.
Like the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement, the function of such institutionalised subordination is simply to align the British defence establishment with Washington’s fickle desires of the moment. Yet if the aim is to serve American interests, the results have proved of doubtful benefit to the imperial centre. For despite “the consistency of British servility”, the results for Washington are generally underwhelming. “Even British participation in the Iraq war was often a liability,” Stevenson observes, as in Basra where, after crowing about the Army’s superior abilities in counterinsurgency drawn from experience in Malaya and Northern Ireland, British “soldiers withdrew from the city in a single night like criminals leaving a burgled house”, leaving US troops to reimpose some fragile order. If Britain hoped to win some special favour from the Iraq adventure, American gratitude was not forthcoming. France and Germany were not punished for their refusal to join in, while Britain earned the dubious status of a regrettable partner in a dalliance Washington wished to forget.
