Why the British remain our most important allies

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world … Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

– George Washington (then the President of the United States), in his 1796 “Farewell Address”

On April 19th, 1775, shots were exchanged at Lexington and Concord, beginning America’s war for independence from Great Britain. The following year, the thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the mother country in 1776, with the British recognition of this independence coming some years later in 1783. The United States would again fight against the British Empire, in the American “War of 1812” – which actually ended in 1815. Britain would again contemplate a war with the United States during the later American Civil War – although, fortunately, this was narrowly averted by the Abraham Lincoln administration. (More about that here.) Thus, relations between the United States and the British Empire have not always been so amicable. In both of these wars, we had been allied with France, even though we had also fought the intervening Quasi-War with the French on the high seas. Later on, America was allied with both the British and the French, during the First and Second World Wars. Which of these two nations, if any, is our greatest ally? This is the question that I will focus on today.

Battle of New Orleans, 1815 – the last major battle between the British and the Americans

FDR and Churchill aboard the HMS Prince of Wales – Atlantic Charter, 1941

Margaret Thatcher and the free-market revival in Britain

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

– Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to become the prime minister of the United Kingdom. She was also the country’s longest-serving prime minister in the twentieth century. But she is known more for her conservative leadership, particularly in her fiscal conservatism and tough foreign policy. Decades’ worth of socialism in Britain came to a halt in Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. The socialism would later return with a vengeance, but she did temporarily return Britain to the free-market principles of the Scottish economist Adam Smith. She would briefly fight a war in the Falklands – one of the few sources of friction in her relationship with Ronald Reagan. (The other was Ronald Reagan’s deploying troops to Grenada, which still had Queen Elizabeth the Second as its nominal monarch.) Overall, though, Thatcher’s relationship with Ronald Reagan would be a good one, and is rightly remembered fondly in both nations. The two leaders also helped to turn the tide of the Cold War in the free world’s favor, as the Berlin Wall fell during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure. The year after Thatcher left office, the Soviet Union would collapse entirely in 1991.

Margaret Thatcher

Forgotten battlegrounds of the Cold War: Latin America

If the Cold War were a chess game, Latin Americans were often the pawns …

Long before the Cold War began, American president James Monroe had introduced the now-famous “Monroe Doctrine” in 1823. This doctrine said, in essence, that “the American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” (Source: Monroe Doctrine, 1823) Theodore Roosevelt later added a corollary of his own to this doctrine in 1904, in response to the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902-1903. This “Roosevelt Corollary” basically said that “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.” (Source: Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, 1904)

Fidel Castro visits United States, 1959

Keeping European powers (like the Soviet Union) out of the New World …

The United States has not always adhered to this doctrine, but it has often been involved in Latin American politics under the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (and the original, for that matter). During the Cold War, the Soviet Union actually supported left-wing regimes throughout Latin America, and were thus interfering in the Americas. True adherence to the Monroe Doctrine thus required that we try to keep them out of the Americas, and prevent communism from gaining a foothold in our own “backyard.”

Map of Latin America

Cold War crises: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and “Able Archer 83”

“Is this a game, or is it real?”

– Quote from “WarGames” (1983), a fictional movie about a close call with nuclear war, which came out a few months before the first of these real-life crises

The Soviet Union shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 …

In 1983, a Boeing 747 aircraft took off from JFK International Airport in New York City on the 30th of August. Its planned destination was Seoul in South Korea, but it was scheduled to make a stop in Anchorage, Alaska, and routinely did so on the following day (the 31st of August). But the aircraft actually never made it to its planned destination, because it was shot down the next day on the 1st of September. It was flying over prohibited Soviet airspace. The Soviets thus mistook it for an American spy plane, and sent up a Sukhoi SU-15 interceptor aircraft to shoot it down. The interceptor did the job with air-to-air missiles, and the aircraft quickly crashed into the Sea of Japan, near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin. All 269 passengers and crew were killed, including a United States Congressman from Georgia named Larry McDonald. Two weeks later, on the 15th of September, the Soviets actually found the wreckage under the sea; and in October, they even found the flight recorders. But they kept all of this secret for the next ten years, not releasing any of this until 1993. (I borrow some of the wording for this blog post from various parts of Wikipedia, which I must acknowledge here as a source.)

HL7442, the same plane that was shot down as “Korean Air Lines Flight 007”

A review of Andrew Marr’s “Modern Britain” series (1901-2007)

I should preface this review with an up-front disclaimer, which is that I am not a citizen of Britain. I am an American citizen who has never been to the British Isles, and my ancestors haven't lived in Britain for more than a hundred years. Although I do have ancestors from various parts of the British Isles, who emigrated to the United States over a period of centuries (with some branches arriving at one time, and some branches at another). Thus, I have often felt rather British in my heritage; and this feeling is shared by many Americans of all ethnic origins, because of the cultural similarity between our two countries. (And I'm not just talking about our speaking the same language, although that does help. As George Bernard Shaw once joked, we are two countries "separated by a common language.")

Winston Churchill

A review of PBS's movie "George H. W. Bush"

"My opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, 'Read my lips: no new taxes.' "

- Presidential nominee George H. W. Bush, in a speech at the Republican National Convention on 18 August 1988

George H. W. Bush

Surprisingly sympathetic

PBS made a three-hour documentary about the life of the first Bush president, George H. W. Bush (not to be confused with his similarly-named former-president son). The film was surprisingly sympathetic to him, perhaps because his moderate economics were more agreeable to the liberal PBS filmmakers than the conservative economics of his predecessor Ronald Reagan, or his son George W. Bush.

US fighter wing during Desert Storm, 1991

A review of PBS's "Ronald Reagan" movie

"One of my favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never judge a president by his age, only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I've stopped worrying ...

Just to show you how youthful I am, I intend to campaign in all thirteen states."

- Ronald Reagan

Hatchet job

PBS made a four-hour documentary about the life of Ronald Reagan. The documentary could be described as something of a hatchet job. It does reluctantly admit that Reagan's defense buildup succeeded in its goal of hastening the fall of the Soviet Union, though it follows this admission with a left-wing talking head saying this enormous accomplishment was not worth its financial price, and then blaming the deficits of those years on Reagan, rather than on the spendthrift Democrat Congress of the time (where the blame really belongs). They also said that the most controversial speech of Reagan's presidency was the "Evil Empire" speech, implying that they disagree with this assessment of the Soviet Union. (How anyone, even an ardent communist, can deny that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire is beyond me.)