The Umbilical Cord

By NIGEL LAWSON

IT is a common conceit of writers on contem- porary events to suppose that one is living through some great historical turning point. All the same, a better than usual case can be made for saying this sort of thing now. In a new book, Must the West Decline?,* based on a series of lectures delivered at Columbia University last year, Lord Harlech attempts to define the nature of the turning point he discerns at the present time.

As Sir David Ormsby-Gore the author was for some four years British Ambassador in Wash- ington and, more significantly, trusted friend and confidant of the late President Kennedy. But his analysis is worth scrutinising not only oh this account: it also represents as convenient, brief and lucid a summary as we are likely to get of the philosophy of the consensus which dominates political thought in this country whichever party is nominally in power.

According to Lord Harlech, Western civilisa- tion is engaged in a desperate struggle for sur- vival against the forces of Marxist-Leninism. Up to a few years ago there was every sign that we were winning. That was because, after the Second World War, the West belatedly dis- covered that ever since the nineteenth century the sovereign nation-state had been an anachron- ism, and nationalism gave way to inter- nationalism, while growing Western unity secured unprecedented world prosperity. By July 1962, the 'highwater mark of unity and common pur- pose,' President Kennedy was able to declare as his goal 'a concrete Atlantic partnership' be- tween a new European union and the old American union. But since then outdated nationalism—chiefly, although not exclusively, in the guise of France—has once again reared its ugly head. It was reverence for the nation- state that was responsible for both World Wars, as well as the great depression of the 'thirties. If we are not careful it may now lose us the struggle against Communism and so seal the fate of mankind.

So, at any rate, runs the Harlech thesis. It is, as I have said, an admirable summary of the con- ventional wisdom. It is also, I believe, largely fallacious.

So far from being an anachronism, the nation- state has adapted to the modern world with out- standing success. As Lord Gladwyn—and no more devoted nationalist than he—commented earlier this year in the Proceedings of the Amen- cm Academy of Arts and Sciences, 'there is no doubt that the nation-state is still the only unit in international relations which has any real political, as opposed to economic, significance.' It is true that in the immediate post-war decade this tended to be obscured by the temporary and essentially unstable dominance of Russia over the Communist bloc and of America over the Western allies, which may have given the illusion of a trend away from the nation-state, but there can be no return to this period now.

Meanwhile, world peace has been (more or less) maintained not by the United Nations but by the balance of terror between the two most sovereign nation-states of all, America and Russia. And world (or at least Western) pros- perity has been secured principally by national governments following national policies of full • MUST TFIE WEST DECLINE? (Columbia Univer- sity Press, 26s.) employment, coupled with the lubricant of America's undeliberate failure to cure her own balance of payments deficit. The truth is that the two institutions that appeared so thoroughly discredited in the 'thirties, the nation-state and capitalism, have in the past twenty years proved successful beyond all expectation.

However, the oddest aspect of Lord Harlech's casting of the nation-state as a villain so menacing that it and it alone is capable of bringing about the decline of the West and the victory of world Marxism lies in his treatment of the United States. For the United States of America is quite simply the greatest nation-state the world has known, and behaves as such. Yet somehow she totally escapes Lord Harlech's cen- sure. At one point, for example, discussing the integration of Western force in NATO, he comments, 'only France seems to be moving to- wards a defence policy that is based upon ideas of national sovereignty which belong to an earlier generation.' Yet if France is moving to- wards it, America is already there. Although she assigns a small proportion of her defence forces to NATO, the great bulk of both her conven- tional and nuclear strengths is deployed in a sovereign national force which is, in fact, at present engaged in an old-fashioned national war in South-East Asia. Do America's ideas equally belong to those of an earlier generation? Apparently—if, given Lord Harlech's declared views on the nation-state, incomprehensibly— they do not Now one explanation of this apparent con- flict may be that Lord Harlech is not really so much against nation-states as such, but believes that in the modern world only the giant nation- state makes sense: anything else is an anachronism. Lord Harlech is certainly right if he means that in an age of super-powers no tradi- tional European nation-state can hope to exercise any real and continuing influence on the course of world events. For this reason I share with Lord Harlech his support of President Kennedy's 'twin pillar' or 'dumb-bell' concept, in which an inde- pendent United States would be allied to, and balanced by, an independent but united Europe of which Britain would be a principal com- ponent But this objective, to my mind, makes sense only if one accepts that LBJ is not infallible, or, to be more precise, that there will be occasions when a European 'super-power' will rightly wish to persuade the US administration of the day to change its policy, and will do so by threatening otherwise to pursue a different policy on its own. For there is little point in arduously combining together to enable our voice to be heard if, when it is it turns out to be simply an echo of that of the United States. We might just as well sit back and let America run the show alone, with the rest of the West her loyal satellites. Yet for Lord Harlech it appears that the purpose of a united Europe is simply to provide America with a united supporters' club.

And so at last we reach a true understanding of the establishment atlanticist view of world affairs that has up to now dominated policy thinking in Britain. The cause of liberal demo- cracy must speak with one voice, and that must be the voice of its biggest exponent, America. Any liberal democratic nation that steps out of line is guilty of serious insubordination; but we can't call it that, so we'll call it nationalism, a nasty-sounding word, which we can claim has caused all our troubles in the past. Naturally, we in Britain wouldn't dream of doing anything like that, especially since if we don't blot our copybook we may get a prize. Moreover, pro- vided we ignore the fact that modern America is the most successful nation-state the world has ever known (and any other awkward evi- dence to the contrary), we can always claim that the nation-state has become an anachronism. This will enable us (a) to excuse our own sub- servience to the United States, (b) to explain our uncomfortable feeling that we have indeed • become an anachronism, and (c) to support the creation of a united Europe designed to make it even harder for anyone to step out of line.

For this sort of view to continue to be acceptable in Britain, three conditions are neces- sary. First, there must be continuing confidence in the direction of American policy. Second. this must remain the most hopeful way of seek- ing, however modestly, to influence the course that policy takes. And third, within Britain, the consequences of providing the United States government of the day with total support must be both politically and economically acceptable. At the present time, none of these three con- ditiont obtains. America is now. deliberately spoiling for a war with China which, whatever else it might achieve, would do irreparable harm to the prospect of consolidating and deepening the détente between the West and Russia. Under President Johnson, British influence in Washing- ton has finally disappeared: the notion that by our unquestioning loyalty we may be in a position to affect the course of American policy is now simply laughable. And internally, the economic burden of Britain's traditional 'atlan- ticisf foreign policy has now plainly become an intolerable burden.

It must be admitted that there is very little we can do about the first two counts, at least in the short term. By severing, not of course the alliance, but the Anglo-American umbilical cord, we should certainly be able to avoid asso- ciating ourselves with American policies of which we disapprove, but this in itself would be a pretty minimal and unexciting gain. Again, although British influence in Washington could scarcely be less than it is at present, it is equally unlikely to become much greater until we can speak as part of of a united Europe. The main advantage of cutting the umbilical cord here lies in the fact that unless we do so our prospect of joining and helping to shape that united Europe is substantially diminished.

But given that all arguments now point in the same direction, the real advantage for Britain in abandoning the (self-imposed): rules of the Anglo-American special relationship is that here is the only key to a lasting improvement in our own economic and political health.

In the first place it would enable us to with-

draw, slowly but totally, our enormous military establishments East of Suez. These forces are utterly irrelevant to the defence of Britain; and if they got there in the first place to protect now obsolete imperial or Commonwealth in- terests, they remain there simply as an auxiliary of the Americans (as the Defence Review itself admits). Moreover, since the United States knows that she can perfectly well do without this assistance if she has to, it can have no influence on the policies it would help to implement. It is simply an intolerable burden on our balance of payments and our economy.

A strong case can also be made for reducing the strength of the 'British Army of the Rhine: General de Gaulle is basically right in his evaluation of the strategic implications of the change in Russia's attitude towards Western Europe and developments in defence technology, however much it may stick in British ministers' throats to admit it. But the defence of Western Europe has to be looked at as a whole: the logi- cal withdrawal is not of British but of American troops—both because this process has already begun and is likely to continue as America becomes steadily more deeply involved militarily and politically in Asia, and also because it is palpably absurd that a group of nations with (to take Britain and the Common Market alone) a population 20 per cent greater than that of the United States and a gross national product some 40 per cent greater than that of Soviet Russia should not be able to provide at least its own conventional defence. Although a nuclear um- brella would still be provided from Fortress America, it would obviously also make sense for us to combine with the French in forming the nucleus of a European Nuclear Force: we cannot allow ourselves to be bound for ever by the McMahon Act. But a gradual physical American withdrawal would pave the way to a corresponding Russian withdrawal, leading in turn to the possibility of German reunification.

Although a reorientation of British policy along these lines need not weaken the United States, it must be accepted that it may make her less ready to continue to support the pound. Nothing could be more in the long-term British interest. At the present time we are in the position of a man who has to borrow money from his tailor in order to buy suits that he doesn't particularly want to wear anyway. More- over, a devaluation of the pound is, I am con- vinced, the only way of opening the door to a lasting solution of our chronic balance of pay- ments problem : spending less East of Suez cannot do the trick on its own. Once again, a major practical obstacle to devaluation at the present time is that the United States, anxious about the dollar, does not want us to. But the time has come when the price for Britain of supporting the dollar, and therefore America, in this negative way is too high and the return too low.

Lastly, it is surely now clear that a 'European' policy of the kind sketched out, together with the devaluation of the pound, is a necessary and possibly even a sufficient condition for British entry into the Common Market, without which we can never become part of the united Europe of which President Kennedy spoke. But our situation is such that these policies are necessary for our own national economic and political health, whatever happens to the Com- mon Market. And all of them depend on the severance of the Anglo-American umbilical cord.

A foreign policy does not last for ever. In modern conditions a generation is probably the longest it can reasonably be expected to remain valid. It was with much wisdom that the framers of NATO after the war set its initial term at twenty years. The policy then, which emerged naturally from the peculiar conditions of the war and its aftermath, was right then and has proved successful as a result. It is right no longer. Just as the old gold-exchange standard, which has also served the world incomparably well, has now, after a generation, ended its use- ful life, so has the British foreign policy based on an Anglo-American relationship which has . since_ changed beyond recognition. To recognise this turning-point, and to act upon it, is not to threaten the decline of the West, but to lay the policy foundations for the next twenty years of its advance.