The Truth About the 'Special Relationship' With The Empire

Image courtesy of Beau Bo D'Or

A couple of years ago when I was new to blogging I wrote a post entitled "At what point does America become an empire?" Although the post raised some good points about the United States having troops in 70 percent of the world’s countries and about the subservience of so many states including Britain to the whims of US presidents, the title was naive. It's pretty obvious to anyone now that the United States is indeed an empire and has been for over a century. The Sunday Times provides us with the latest confirmation about the true status of the "Special Relationship".

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington. [My emphasis]

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

What is surprising about this isn't so much the arrogant assumption by America that it can do whatever the fuck it likes to anyone anywhere, it's the casual announcement that this is indeed the case after years of pretending that rules applied to everyone and sovereignty was, well, sovereignty. And not so much as a whimper from our oh so compliant government, a government, we may as well remind ourselves, that allows America to sack British ministers or rewrite the speeches for visiting Prime Ministers, command our armed forces, and use the country as convenient location to extend its power in Europe and beyond. In a way I'm grateful for the belated honesty. Now we know that Britain isn't even regarded any longer by the American regime as a client state - we have now graduated from what historians refer to as 'informal empire' when discussing the British Empire (the sphere of influence beyond the frontiers of the formal empire) to part of America's formal empire.

Another thing I find interesting is that there is a (very small) political party in Britain called UKIP which stands for UK Independence Party that bangs on and on ad nauseam about how Europe robs this country of its sovereignty (with some justification at times) and never has anything to say about the far more serious erosion of British sovereignty by the United States. After all, France, for example, doesn't have 10,000 troops stationed here and doesn't dictate who can or cannot be a minister. As part of the EU, Britain does at least have some sort of input on EU policy. This isn't the case with America where we just do as we are told and make no contribution to US policy. Our extradition treaties within the EU are reciprocal, unlike the one-sided arrangement we have with the USA. If UKIP really believes in UK independence and wishes to be taken seriously, it should look beyond the EU as well.

American power comes largely from our obedience to it. Without that the USA would have a much more difficult task in ruling us. I suggest that it's time we started disentangling ourselves from the USA, both militarily and economically (especially seeing as our economy suffers every time America mismanages its economy and its currency is going down the pan). It is after all a foreign country even if it does use the same language. We could start by asking the USA what right it has to kidnap British citizens because the last time I looked, the US supreme court had no jurisdiction here in the UK. We might then ask the USA if they would remove their troops and bases from Britain. Why are they here? Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945 and the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago. Finally we should tell the USA that we are quite able to formulate our own economic and foreign policy and strike alliances with whoever we wish. And if America does insist on kidnapping British citizens, then the next time an American citizen is wanted for a crime over here we could consider kidnapping that person and just announce that we've decided it's legal to do so. Somehow I don't think the USA would regard that as legitimate or fair.

Tags: American Empire, US Politics, Extraordinary Rendition