Analysis: Britain's 'splendid' isolation?

Analysis: Britain's 'splendid' isolation?

By Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Mr Blair's future hangs on the outcome of the Iraq crisis

The policy of the British Government towards Iraq has echoes of the "splendid isolationism" which kept Britain apart from its continental neighbours during much of the 19th Century.

The concept is deep in the British psyche. The collective memory of empire is not wholly dead. The individual memory of a different kind of splendid isolation, the heroic one, of 1940 is still alive.

A walk around the heart of British Government this week brought reminders of that past - the simple memorial to the war dead, the cabinet war rooms, the Admiralty and all that it evokes of struggles for survival.

All were draped in the pale sunshine of spring highlighting the daffodils and the newly cut grass in the parks.

But what was natural for a mighty 19th Century empire and stirring for a people standing alone in the 20th Century is not necessarily appropriate for a middle ranking European power of the early 21st Century.

There will be benefits from the current policy, but also costs.

Building bridges?

The benefits could include vindication from a swift victory which may be cheered by many Iraqis.

Tony Blair could then say that he had been as right over Iraq as he had been over Kosovo and Afghanistan.

One cost will be the perception of Britain around the world, and among many of its own citizens, as the lackey of America

He could claim that he had ended a real or potential threat and had planted another flag of freedom among an oppressed people, continuing the work undertaken during the World War II.

He could also argue that he has kept the bridge open between the United States and Europe and prevented future divisions and sullenness.

America itself is always torn between its own tendency towards isolationism and a temptation to impose its will.

Its Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, wanted no foreign entanglements but it has intervened often enough, especially in its own back yard.

America's 'lackey'

One of the costs will be estrangement from some partners in the European Union, from the French in particular, with whom and for whom Britain fought twice over the last 100 years.

Indeed the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale falls next year.

Those planning the event might well be justified in asking for a transfer to a less arduous job.

The inability of Britain and France to develop a serious joint decision-making foreign policy process condemns the European Union's hopes of a common foreign policy to failure.

The two countries, both nationalistic and cantankerous, are opposite sides of the same coin.

Another cost will be the perception of Britain around the world, and among many of its own citizens, as the lackey of America.

What for Britain is a noble cause, for another is another colonial war.

And lackeys can be easily cast aside, as the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made only too clear.

Futures in the balance

The present position therefore is ambiguous both in its justification and in its likely results.

The case for war against Iraq is much less obvious than it was in, say, Kosovo, where the war incidentally was waged outside the United Nations process completely.

Russia had said it would veto action, so Nato acted instead. Few would argue now that it was wrong to do so.

Tony Blair's future will be judged by results.

So perhaps will this approach to foreign policy.