Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN.
Despite Britain’s close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain’s claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue.
Britain has been our best ally, contributing more than anybody else to fight our common enemies. And this is how the Obama administration repays them. I'll count my country lucky if we have any allies left at all in three years.
Still, this is what the British people (and the rest of the Europeans) said they wanted back in 2008. Now they've got it. Shared hatred of George W. Bush counts for a lot now, eh? Any regrets?
I wonder if Prime Minister Brown will again gaze at our president with that puppy dog look he had at their first meeting in Britain?
UPDATE: Mad Minerva notes this British reaction to our president's Falklands policy:
Over the course of the last year, we’ve seen a staggering array of foreign policy follies by this administration, from the throwing under the bus of the Poles and the Czechs over missile defence to siding with Marxists in Honduras. But this latest pronouncement surely takes the biscuit as the most brazen betrayal so far of a US ally.
The British-American special relationship is strong enough to endure one president's time in office. It is a special relationship between our nations--not a special relationship just between Obama and Brown.
I fully expect our nuanced, smart diplomacy will convince Argentina that we won't help Britain if it comes to war. But if Argentina actually launches a war, we will help the British as we did in 1982--logistics and intelligence. That would be the logical outcome of a policy of appeasing aggressors--you get war and lose your honor.
So to our British friends, stiff upper lip and all that. I've gotten over your calls to Ohio to sway American voters to vote Democratic, after all. If our special relationship endured that, we'll endure nuanced, big-brained, Leftist diplomacy, too.
