Abstract
Tony Blair served as British Prime Minister for ten years, the first Labour Party leader to win three successive general elections. By the time he came to power in 1997, Britain was, at best, a second tier power in the world economically, and a significant military force only when compared with other European nations, for America, Russia and China easily surpassed British strength. Nevertheless, Britain was a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it possessed nuclear weapons and Blair was determined to play a role on the world stage. In foreign policy, he was in the forefront of a new interventionist approach and he encouraged the United States to be less hesitant about intervening in regional problems for humanitarian reasons. At the core of his foreign policy was the country’s relationship with the United States, as had been the case for British premiers since the Second World War (with the possible exception of Edward Heath, in 1970–1974). Given the centrality of the Anglo-American relationship to British foreign policy and American dominance of that partnership, Washington was where the power resided. The British Embassy in Washington had the proximity to the levers of American power and the expertise to be a vital ingredient in advising Blair and his government and in pursuing policy. It merits detailed analysis. Yet, the mission has rarely been the focus of scholarly scrutiny.1
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Notes
One of the few studies is Michael F. Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John W. Young (eds), The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939–77 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
See, for example, Paul David Williams, British Foreign Policy under New Labour, 1997–2005 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) which has a chapter, ‘Closest Ally’, pp. 35–55, on Anglo-American relations but does not mention the embassy or any ambassador.
Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010).
See also, Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004); idem., Blair Unbound (London: Simon & Schuster, 2007);
Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).
Peter Hennessy, Prime Minister (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 480, 483–484; Ministerial Code: A Code of Conduct and Guidance on Procedures for Ministers (London: Cabinet Office, July 1997), p. 30.
Robin Cook, ‘Foreign Policy and the National Interest’, at www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp?3259; Christopher Hill, ‘Foreign Policy’, in Anthony Seldon (ed.), The Blair Effect: the Blair Government, 1997–2001 (London: Little, Brown, 2001), pp. 333, 349.
See also Robin Cook, The Point of Departure (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003).
Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honour: a memoir of my years in Washington (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 453.
Tony Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’, speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, 24 April 1999; http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp; Tony Blair, ‘Terrorism must be tackled head-on’, speech to the Foreign Policy Centre, 21 March 2006, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page9224.asp ; Tony Blair, ‘Our Nation’s Future’, lecture, 12 January 2007, quoted in Michael Clarke, ‘Foreign Policy’, in Anthony Seldon, (ed.), Blair’s Britain, 1997–2007 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 598;
Tony Blair, ‘A Battle for Global Values’, Foreign Affairs, 86:1 (January–February 2007), p. 90.
See also Caroline Kennedy-Pipe and Rhiannon Vickers, ‘Blowback’ for Britain?: Blair, Bush, and the war in Iraq’, Review of International Studies, 33 (April 2007), pp. 210, 217.
Jack Straw, Last Man Standing (London: Macmillan, 2012), p. 327.
Norman Lamont, In Office (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 117. John Kerr confirmed this: author’s interview with Kerr, 11 April 2012.
Bill Clinton, My Life (London: Hutchinson, 2004), pp. 686 and 756.
See also, Peter Riddell, Hug Them Close (London: Politico’s, 2003), p. 70.
Quoted in Andrew Rawnsley, The End of the Party (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 28.
William Shawcross, Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), p. 46.
Meyer, DC Confidential, pp. 178, 210–214; Christopher D. O’Sullivan, Colin Powell (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 130–135.
Andrew Rawnsley, The End of The Party (London: Penguin, 2010), pp. 384–385.
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© 2013 Michael F. Hopkins
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Hopkins, M.F. (2013). The British Embassy in Washington and Anglo-American Relations during the Blair Governments, 1997–2007. In: Young, J.W., Pedaliu, E.G.H., Kandiah, M.D. (eds) Britain in Global Politics Volume 2. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313584_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313584_11
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