Trump has torn up the special relationship

If anything crystalised the strength of the “special relationship” between the UK and United States – forged during the Second World War and perhaps the most enduring international partnership in modern times – it was Tony Blair’s response to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC in 2001. Everyone who is old enough remembers where they were on 11 September that year – 25 years ago on Friday – when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The fourth failed to reach the final target, the Capitol building in Washington, after crashing into a field. Blair, then prime minister, made clear that the UK would stand by the US, come what may. “We the British are a people who stand by their friends in times of need, tragedy and trial, and we do so without hesitation now,” he said. Shorts In the aftermath of the atrocity which killed nearly 3,000 people – including 67 Britons – the two countries were drawn even closer in sorrow, as well as in military commitments which would last two decades. As Queen Elizabeth wrote in her message to Americans in the days after the attacks, signifying the new-found poignancy of the UK-US relationship: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that special relationship, a term coined by Winston Churchill in 1946, is now in a very different and more uncertain place to what it was in 2001. Will the bonds between the two countries ever be as strong as they were back then? International support for America On the morning of 9/11, David Heath, then the Liberal Democrat MP for Somerton and Frome, was one of a small group of British parliamentarians who had been invited to look around the Capitol as guests of the US government. It would later become clear to the British contingent that they had been saved from the unfolding attacks not just once – due to the courage of passengers on board United Airlines Flight 93 ensuring the fourth plane never reached Washington – but twice. Twenty-five years on, Heath tells The i Paper: “We had been meant to visit the Pentagon at 9.30am that morning, but as luck would have it that visit was rearranged, and we were in the Old Senate Chamber in the Capitol. Suddenly police ran in screaming at us to leave immediately. “I think most of us thought that a gunman was in the building, and it was only as we left that we were told of the possible terrorist attack. As we emerged, we saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon across the Potomac.” The MPs’ visit to Washington had been arranged as part of the ongoing special relationship between the UK and the US. Blair led efforts for multi-national force It was not inevitable in 2001 that the international community would rally in support of the US, according to Ed Owen who was special adviser to foreign secretary Jack Straw at the time – and it was the UK that helped corral that support. Just as there are concerns now about President Donald Trump’s isolationist tendencies, in 2001 “these impulses that America has to go it alone, to isolate or to act unilaterally were quite strong,” Owen says. He adds: “Trump is seen as an aberration, but this [fears over US unilateralism] was one of the big issues at the time.” Blair and Straw led efforts to persuade President George W Bush to secure multilateral backing to go into Afghanistan. Within a month, Blair would commit UK troops to fight alongside US and other Nato forces in Afghanistan to try to track down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, and al-Qaeda members harboured by the Taliban. Two years later, far more controversially, the UK joined the US in toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. In addition to tens of thousands of civilian casualties, those two wars cost 636 British Armed Forces’ lives as well as those of 7,074 American service personnel. It is why Trump caused such outrage in January this year when he said America’s Nato allies “stayed a little back … off the front lines” in Iraq and Afghanistan. While he later backtracked, Trump’s words underlined how frayed the special relationship has become. Also angering Trump has been the handing back of the strategically important Chagos Islands, and the refusal to allow UK bases, including Chagos, to be used for attacks on Iran – although permission was given for “defensive” operations. Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush discuss military operations in Afghanistan at a joint White House press conference in 2001 (Photo: Shawn Thew/AFP via Getty Images) While the UK and US still work closely together, President Trump has created a cloud of uncertainty over whether he would come to the rescue if Britain or another European Nato ally came under attack. Trump’s suggestion that US backing for the UK’s sovereignty of the Falkland Islands might now be in doubt shows just how far the special relationship has deteriorated. Can the special relationship be saved? Yet is this damage really irrevocable? Former Conservative defence secretary Ben Wallace says: “The closeness was never at the strategic level, it was in the hallways and offices where spies and officials were friends and colleagues. “That closeness is still there but upon high, when it suited them, the US always did what was in their national interest. We shouldn’t be surprised. “US protectionism on defence has been alive and well for decades. The ‘Buy America’ act goes as far back as 1933. “It is the UK’s shortcoming that by taking the US access for granted we failed to invest in our own.” Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, says: “The ‘special’ in ‘special relationship’ very much comes from the way the US and UK cooperate on intelligence matters. Investigations into 9/11 are a good example of that.” Heath says: “The UK and the US are bound by so much shared history, shared culture and, at least until recently, shared principles that it makes sense for us to work to improve to increase trust and co-operation. “That is difficult when you have a president who seemingly doesn’t understand the purpose of Nato, doesn’t recognise international law or diplomatic norms, and is incapable of being an ally on which one can depend. “But I do think a stronger relationship is both desirable and can be repaired once, sooner rather than later as we must hope, the current aberration is over.” ‘There was a feeling we would be attacked too’ On 11 September 2001, after the second plane hit the South Tower, officials in Whitehall began to mount a response for fear of similar attacks on Britain. It was just after 2pm UK time. A meeting of Cobra – the government’s high-level emergencies committee – was called. James Sorene, then a young Home Office press officer, says: “I watched the second plane go into the World Trade Centre, as all the channels had live feeds of the damage from the first plane. “The first plane was scant hope it was a terrible accident or deranged pilot, the second was when it was clear it was a large-scale terror attack.” The streets of downtown New York covered in debris after both World Trade Towers collapsed in the wake of the terror atrocity (Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) With the perpetrators seemingly bent on attacking symbols of capitalism and democracy, authorities in the UK feared London could be similarly targeted. The London Stock Exchange, Canary Wharf and other financial buildings were evacuated and airspace over the capital was closed. Sorene adds: “There was a definite feeling that we would be under attack too – I really expected it.” The broadcaster and Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika was working as a press officer at the old Department for Trade and Industry in September 2001. She says: “We all saw the second plane crash in real time. The entire press office fell silent. People were asking ‘is this real?’ At first no one could comprehend or process what had happened. “And then we were wondering how Britain would be affected, are we going to have coordinated attacks? “Very quickly departments were going into crisis mode. I remember being absolutely shocked by what I had just witnessed. “But an additional layer for me was being Muslim. I remember going home and watching the news all evening. I was crying, thinking, ‘Everything is going to change. There is going to be so much hate and retribution. Nothing is going to be the same again.’ “I had never really thought about my religion before. And I just thought, ‘The world is going to be so divided. Is this what the terrorists want, do they want to start a cultural war between us?’.” ‘An attack on civilisation’ With Tony Blair in Brighton at the TUC conference, foreign secretary Jack Straw was the minister leading the response from Whitehall. Over the road at the House of Commons, I had just started a shift as political correspondent at the Press Association when the TV showed United Airlines Flight 175 – the second plane – slamming into the South Tower. Around half an hour later I was called to the Foreign Office, as part of a journalist pool, where Straw was to make a statement. While we were waiting in the King Charles Street reception, news came that the first World Trade Centre tower had collapsed. We shook our heads in disbelief. “What we have all witnessed on our TV screens from America are acts of evil and horror beyond the imagination of any of us,” I wrote in my notebook as Straw spoke, ashen faced. The acts were an “attack on civilisation”, he said. Straw chaired Cobra meetings throughout the afternoon. His special adviser at the time, Ed Owen, says: “Everyone knew then that it had completely changed the world. From the TV pictures we were watching, it felt like the world of yesterday was going to be different to the world of tomorrow. And that came to pass.” Cobra meetings in the days afterwards focused on post-disaster management. Sorene says: “The thing I remember most is the [British] consul general in New York explaining why there wouldn’t be any remains to repatriate [for UK victims]. “There was the absolute palpable sense that the world had changed and that this was going to be the start of a whole new conflict that we didn’t yet properly understand.”