Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Tony Blair: The Search for Order

Ellison, James

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-72276-0_15

James Ellison³

271 Accesses

Abstract

As the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Reagan-Thatcher era ended, the Anglo-American relationship that had been forged to defend the world against fascism and then communism had fulfilled its highest purpose. It was expected that the asymmetry in power between the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) which had existed since the 1950s, and had been offset by Thatcher’s anti-communism, neo-liberalism, and force of personality, would now be the defining feature of their relations in a new unipolar age. There was certainly nothing especially close or impactful about the Anglo-American alliance in the opening years of the post-Cold War period and it seemed unlikely that an American president would in the future call singularly on a British prime minister to exert global influence in pursuit of common goals. Yet as this chapter will explain, the concurrence of events, ideas, and personal relations after 1997 would once more mean that US and UK leaders would work together and have effect on international affairs. For a brief period, but with lengthy consequences, Tony Blair aligned with Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush in the search for order in a world destabilised by post-Cold War atrocities, nationalisms and sectarianism, and then by al-Qaeda.

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Notes

1.
For two interesting contemporary articles, David Reynolds, ‘Rethinking Anglo-American Relations’, International Affairs, 65.1 (Winter 1988-1989), 89-111 and William Wallace, ‘Foreign Policy and the National Identity in the United Kingdom’, International Affairs, 67.1 (January 1991), 65-80.
2.
For example, Peter Riddell, Hug Them Close: Blair, Clinton, Bush and the ‘Special Relationship’ (London: Politico’s, 2003). Also see Con Coughlin, American Ally: Tony Blair and the War on Terror (London: HarperCollins, 2006) and James Naughtie, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency (London: Macmillan, 2004).
3.
James E. Cronin, Global Rules: America, Britain and a Disordered World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
4.
That evidence includes releases from the Clinton Digital Library (hereafter CDL) and from the UK Iraq Inquiry.
5.
For example, John Kampfner, Blair’s Wars (London: The Free Press, 2004). Also see biographies of Blair such as John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Warner Books, 2001); Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: The Free Press, 2005), and Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader (London: Viking, 2004). For critical studies, David Coates and Joel Krieger, Blair’s War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004) and Patrick Porter, Blunder: Britain’s War in Iraq (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
6.
Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010), 223.
7.
Raymond Seitz, Over Here (London: Phoenix, 1998), 321-2.
8.
John Dumbrell, A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 112-116.
9.
Douglas Hurd, ‘Making the World a Safer Place: Our Five Priorities’, The Daily Telegraph, 1 January 1992.
10.
Seldon, Blair, 122-3.
11.
Rentoul, Blair, 194-8; Stephens, Blair, 68-71; Seldon, Blair, 119-127.
12.
Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 38.
13.
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (hereafter PPP), ‘Remarks to the Parliament’, 29 November 1995; also, PPP, ‘Remarks at a Dinner Hosted by Prime Minister John Major’, 29 November 1995.
14.
PPP, ‘Remarks Prior to Discussions’, 29 November 1995; Bill Clinton, My Life (London: Arrow Books, 2005), 686; Sidney Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars: An Insider’s Account of the White House Years (London: Viking, 2003), 305.
15.
Blumenthal, Clinton Wars, 306; PPP, ‘Exchange with Reporters’, 12 April 1996; The New York Times, ‘In British Race, Blair Fits Bill’, 14 April 1996.
16.
See Richard Aldous, Reagan & Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship (London: Arrow Books, 2012), 230-7, and Chap. 14.
17.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Scribner, 2003), 422-3.
18.
Blair, Journey, 231. Also, Andrew Rawnsley, The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour (London: Penguin, 2010), 27.
19.
Seldon, Blair, 127.
20.
Jonathan Powell, The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World (London: Vintage, 2011), 262.
21.
Quoted in Michael Harvey, ‘Perspectives on the UK’s Place in the World’, Chatham House, 2011, 7.
22.
New Labour, ‘Because Britain Deserves Better’, 1997.
23.
The Irish Times, ‘Major was furious with Clinton for granting Adams a visa’, 28 December 2018.
24.
Clinton Digital Library, Declassified Documents Concerning Tony Blair (https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/48779) and Declassified Documents Concerning the Northern Ireland Peace Process (https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/101117).
25.
Clinton, My Life, 784-5.
26.
John Dumbrell, ‘Diplomacy in Northern Ireland: Successful Pragmatic International Engagement’, in Mark White (ed.), The Presidency of Bill Clinton: The Legacy of a New Domestic and Foreign Policy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 180-205.
27.
Interestingly, Blair does not emphasise Clinton’s role in his memoir account of the Good Friday Agreement. See Blair, Journey, 152-199.
28.
On Dayton, Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: The Modern Library, 1999).
29.
Hal Brands, From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 177.
30.
In general, Derek Chollett and James Goldgeier, America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008).
31.
On Bosnia, Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (London: Penguin, 2002).
32.
Blair, Journey, 223-253, 223.
33.
Public Papers of the President (hereafter PPP), ‘The President’s News Conference’, 6 February 1998.
34.
CDL, Clinton and Blair Telephone Conversations (hereafter Telcon), 3 November 1998 and 11 December 1998.
35.
BBC News, ‘Blair stands firm with Clinton on scandal’, 6 February 1998.
36.
David M. Malone, The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council 1980-2005 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 160-1. On French reaction, Frédéric Bozo, A History of the Iraq Crisis: France, the United States, and Iraq, 1991-2003 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 44-63. On UN and regional reactions, UK House of Commons Library Research Paper 99/13, ‘Iraq: “Desert Fox” and Policy Developments’, 10 February 1999.
37.
CDL, Telcon, 6 August 1998.
38.
NATO, ‘Statement to the Press’, 13 October 1998.
39.
CDL, Telcon, 14 October 1998.
40.
PPP, ‘Remarks on the Situation in Kosovo’, 22 March 1999; New York Times, ‘Conflict in the Balkans’, 22 March 1999, PBS Frontline, Holbrooke interview, ‘War in Europe’, undated; NATO, ‘Press Release (1999)040’, 23 March 1999.
41.
Malone, The International Struggle over Iraq, 160-1.
42.
Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, ‘Kosovo: International Reactions to NATO Air Strikes’, 21 April 1999.
43.
CDL, Telcon, 5 April 1999.
44.
Seldon, Blair, 395.
45.
CDL, Telcons, 10 and 14 April 1999.
46.
Blair, Journey, 237. Also, Seldon, Blair, 396.
47.
PPP, ‘Statement by the President to the Nation’, 24 March 1999.
48.
Hansard HC Deb, 21 April 1999, vol. 329, cc 898-905; Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 49.
49.
CDL, Telcon, 16 April 1999.
50.
Seldon, Blair, 399.
51.
Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary: A Memoir (London: Macmillan, 2003), 415.
52.
Seldon, Blair, 400; Rentoul, Blair, 525.
53.
Albright, Madam, 416; Seldon, Blair, 400; Stephens, Tony Blair, 164-165. On NATO, ‘Statement on Kosovo, S-1(99)62’, 23 April 1999.
54.
Blair’s speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, 22 April 1999. On the speech, Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 50-53; Powell, New Machiavelli, 263-5. Also, Lawrence Freedman, ‘Force and the international community, Blair’s Chicago speech and the criteria for intervention’, International Relations, 31.2 (2017), 107-124.
55.
Freedman, ‘Force and the international community’, 111-114.
56.
US Senate, S.J. Res. 20, 20 April 1999. Also, Chollett and Goldgeier, America, 217-9.
57.
NATO, NAC-S(99)63, ‘The Washington Declaration’, 23 April 1999.
58.
CDL, Memorandum of conversation (hereafter Memcon), Clinton and Yeltsin, 25 April 1999.
59.
CDL, Memcon, Blair and Clinton, 4 May 1999.
60.
Diary of Deputy Communications Director, Lance Price, 7 May 1999, quoted in Seldon, Blair, 402.
61.
Rentoul, Blair, 527; Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 57.
62.
Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 56-57.
63.
Blair, Journey, 240. Seldon’s source for Clinton’s quote is a confidential interview, Blair, 403.
64.
New York Times, 19 May 1999, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/051999kosovo-clinton.html; New York Times, 23 May 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/opinion/a-just-and-necessary-war.html.
65.
Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington: Brookings, 2000), 156.
66.
Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, 48.
67.
Daalder and O’Hanlon, Winning, 140-2; Adam Roberts, ‘NATO’s “Humanitarian War” over Kosovo’, Survival, 41.3 (1999), 102-23, 116-118.
68.
CDL, Telcon, Blair and Clinton, 10 June 1999.
69.
Riddell, Hug, 113-5; Seldon, Blair, 407.
70.
Text of the Prime Minister’s speech, The University of Warwick, 14 December 2000.
71.
Riddell, Hug Them Close, 2.
72.
CDL, Telcon, 19 April 1999.
73.
PPP, ‘Remarks at the University of Warwick’, 14 December 2000.
74.
Bush, Decision Points (London: Virgin Books, 2010), 230-232.
75.
PPP, ‘The President’s News Conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom’, 23 February 2001 and Joint Statement, 23 February 2001.
76.
The memoir accounts do not help. Blair, Journey, 395; Bush, Decision Points, 23.
77.
For instance, The Mirror, ‘Howdy, Poodle’, 8 March 2002; Washington Post, ‘Blair’s Ties to Bush: Partner, or Poodle?’, 6 April 2002; BBC News, ‘Blair battles “poodle” jibes’, 3 February 2003; Financial Times, ‘Was Blair Bush’s Poodle?’, 10 May 2007.
78.
Blair, Journey, 231-234 on Clinton, and 392-395 on Bush.
79.
Blair, Journey, 117 and 484; for Jenkins’ remarks, Hansard, HL Deb, 24 September 2002, vol 638, cc 893-4.
80.
Patrick Holden, ‘Still “Leading from the Edge”? New Labour and the European Union’, in Oliver Daddow and Jamie Gaskarth (eds), British Foreign Policy: The New Labour Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 157-169; Scott James and Kai Oppermann, ‘Blair and the European Union’ in Terence Casey (ed.), The Blair Legacy: Politics, Policy, Governance, and Foreign Affairs (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 285-298; Also, Stephen Wall, A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
81.
The Guardian, ‘Bush kills global warming treaty’, 29 March 2001.
82.
PPP, ‘Press Conference’, 19 July 2001.
83.
Blair, Journey, 395. On the February 2001 meeting, Coughlin, American Ally, 118-126.
84.
Bush, Decision Points, 230-232; on leadership, 108.
85.
Blair, Journey, 231.
86.
For example, Terry H. Anderson, Bush’s Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Beth Bailey and Richard H. Immerman (eds), Understanding the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: New York University Press, 2015); Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro (eds), In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy after the Berlin Wall and 9/11 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs, History, Legacy’, Diplomatic History, 37.2 (April 2013), 1-27; Fredrik Logevall, ‘Anatomy of an Unnecessary War: The Iraq Invasion’ in Julian E. Zelizer (ed.), The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 88-114.
87.
For early criticism, Coates and Krieger, Blair’s War, and for the most recent account, Porter, Blunder. Less critically, Blair’s biographers focus upon these issues as do early contemporary histories such as Coughlin, American Ally. For broad historical perspective, Cronin, Global Rules, 289-316. Also, Christoph Bluth, ‘The British road to war: Blair, Bush and the decision to invade Iraq’, International Affairs, 80/5 (October 2004), 871-892 and Jason Ralph, ‘After Chilcot: The “Doctrine of International Community” and the UK Decision to Invade Iraq’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 13.3 (August 2011), 304-325.
88.
The Report of the Iraq Inquiry, 6 July 2016, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123123237/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/.
89.
Iraq Inquiry, Statement by Sir John Chilcot, 6 July 2016, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123123237/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/.
90.
Bush, Decision Points, 140.
91.
Blair, ‘Note for the President’, 12 September 2001, Iraq Inquiry. Also, Campbell, Burden, 9, diary entry for 12 September 2001.
92.
Blair’s statement to the nation, 11 September 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1538551.stm. Also, Hansard, HC Deb, 14 September 2001, vol 372, cc 604-7.
93.
Leffler, ‘The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration’, 1-27.
94.
Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 70.
95.
Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (New Jersey: Wiley, 2005), 127-8.
96.
Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 70-71; Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 24-25.
97.
Blair, Journey, 354.
98.
Ibid., 353.
99.
Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 76.
100.
PPP, Address before a Joint Session of the Congress, 20 September 2001.
101.
Ibid.
102.
Blair’s Brighton speech, 2 October 2001.
103.
Campbell, Burden, 34.
104.
Ibid., 46.
105.
Ibid., Burden, 49.
106.
Ibid., Burden, 46; Blair to Bush, 11 October 2001, Iraq Inquiry; also Manning testimony to the Iraq Inquiry, 30 November 2009, 9.
107.
Bush, Decision Points, 234-5; Philip Zelikow, ‘U.S. Strategic Planning in 2001-02’, in Leffler and Legro (eds), In Uncertain Times, 96-116, 106-110; Woodward, Plan, 1-5, 30-31.
108.
Blair to Bush, 4 December 2001, Iraq Inquiry.
109.
PPP, ‘Address before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union’, 29 January 2002.
110.
PPP, ‘Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York’, 1 June 2002.
111.
George W. Bush White House Archives, ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, September 2002.
112.
Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘9/11 and American Foreign Policy’, Diplomatic History, 29/3 (June 2005), 395-413.
113.
Blair to Powell, ‘Iraq’, 17 March 2002, Iraq Inquiry.
114.
Manning to Iraq Inquiry, 15.
115.
PPP, ‘The President’s News Conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom in Crawford, Texas’, 6 April 2002. On the Crawford meetings, see also Coughlin, American Ally, 219-225.
116.
Straw to Blair, 8 July 2002, Iraq Inquiry.
117.
Campbell, Burden, 278-9.
118.
Ibid.
119.
Richard N. Haas, War of Choice, War of Necessity: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 216.
120.
PPP, ‘President’s Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly’, 12 September 2002. The formal request was made of Iraq in UNSCR 1441, 8 November 2002. Blair, Journey, 407-411; Bush, Decision Points, 238-242. 407-411.
121.
Rycroft to Sedwill, 17 October 2002, Iraq Inquiry.
122.
Blair, Journey, 412-3.
123.
This statement is attributed to a record of the meeting taken by one of the participants. See Philippe Sands, Lawless World (London: Penguin, 2006), 272-3.
124.
Woodward, Plan, 338.
125.
The Guardian, ‘US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s comments about UK involvement in war’, 12 March 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/12/usa.iraq.
126.
Campbell, Burden, 491-2; Jack Straw, Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor (London: Pan Books, 2013), 371-2.
127.
Campbell, Burden, 492.
128.
Hansard, HC Deb, 18 March 2003, vol 401, cc 760-858.
129.
Iraq Inquiry, Blair to Bush, 26 March 2003.
130.
Bush, Decision Points, 359. For Bush and Blair’s remarks in Istanbul, George W. Bush White House, ‘President Bush Discusses Early Transfer of Iraqi Sovereignty’, 28 June 2004.
131.
BBC News, ‘Transcript: Bush and Blair’s Unguarded Chat’, 18 July 2006. The New York Times reported the greeting as ‘Yeah, Blair’, see ‘Amid Pomp, Bush is Pumped and Chat is Candid’, 17 July 2006.
132.
For examples of criticism, The Guardian, ‘It wasn’t the “Yo” that was humiliating, it was the “No”’, 23 July 2006; The Independent, ‘Rupert Cornwell: The Yo-Yo relationship’, 23 July 2006. Also, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Yo, Blair! (London: Politico’s, 2007).
133.
Financial Times, ‘Blair’s popularity hits all time low’, 30 July 2006.
134.
BBC News, ‘Tony Blair: Highs and lows’, 10 May 2007.
135.
George W. Bush White House, ‘President Bush Honors Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients’, 13 January 2009.

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School of History, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
James Ellison

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Department of Humanities, University of Roehampton, London, UK
Michael Patrick Cullinane
School of History, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Martin Farr

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Ellison, J. (2022). Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Tony Blair: The Search for Order. In: Cullinane, M.P., Farr, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Presidents and Prime Ministers From Cleveland and Salisbury to Trump and Johnson. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72276-0_15

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