First there was President Obama's removal of a bust of Winston Churchill, lent by Tony Blair to President Bush in 2001, from the Oval Office in January. Then, at his first formal meeting with Brown this spring, when the latter came to the U.S. to address Congress, there was no traditional joint press conference, leading to British headlines suggesting "humiliation" for Brown. On his way out of town, Brown gave Obama an ornamental pen made from wood from the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet; Obama gave Brown a set of DVDs. More reports of snubbery.
As British sensitivity reached a boiling point and sizzled into a crazy vapor, a Telegraph blogger James Delingpole suggested it was the dastardly work of Michelle Obama--that the president nixed a press conference "to please his own Lady MacBeth." (Oh no you did not.)
The British press said Brown was snubbed in March, and they're saying it again now as Brown is in town for the U.N. summit in New York and G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
Brown's people reportedly tried five separate times to set up a high-profile meeting between the two men, and actually shifted their policy on providing flu vaccines to Africa, in an attempt to get some face time with the president--to no avail.
The British PM has not had an easy time of late. The scandal over MPs' liberal use of government expense accounts, which could cost the Labour Party a chunk of their seats in Parliament, has brought pressure on him to resign. Just this week, Brown denied that he'd step aside for health reasons.
And after Scotland released the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber, who killed 189 Americans who were aboard Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, Obama reportedly discussed his displeasure with the decision in a phone call with Brown. The release drew American protesters outside the U.N. summit this week.
So there are reasons, one can speculate, why Obama might not want to appear particularly close to Brown. And America's relationship with Britain is at an interesting point, historically: after the alliance between Bush and Blair over the Iraq war, both countries have new leaders, and America's is not interested in the justifications for war that Britain's government supported. Brown, for his part, has said the West is involved in a generation-long battle with Islamic terrorism...a viewpoint that does not quite mesh with that of Obama, who has revoked "Global War on Terror" from the official lexicon and removed references to Islam from denunciations of extremism.
But the U.S. alliance with Britain is interesting, now, for another important reason: the White House is now deciding on how to proceed in Afghanistan. It's reviewing the report submitted by its new commander, Gen. Stanely McChrystal. A big decision looms.
Britain is America's most significant ally in Afghanistan. It has 9,000 troops in Helmand Province, and its commanders have requested between 1,000 and 2,000 more. That commitment is a big variable as the White House decides what will happen next in the eighth year of the Afghan war.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/09/snubfest-obama-and-gordon-brown/27152/
