Analysis: Of Blair and Bush and the ties that bind

Now that Tony Blair is prime minister and George W. Bush is president, the term has been updated to "hug them close."

Where the original phrase suggested a sense of equality and partnership, the new one -- first uttered by a Blair aide and now in currency as the title of an authoritative book on American-British relations -- conveys a sense of vulnerability and wishfulness more appropriate to the present status of the relationship as seen from London.

Behind much of the opposition to the state visit by Bush is a feeling among many Britons that while the part of the association based on shared language, history, culture and economy remains solid and enduring, the political and diplomatic costs have become too high.

In hugging Washington warmly, Blair is doing what almost all postwar prime ministers have done, but it has placed him at the side of an American chief executive who is a polarizing figure in Britain and in support of a U.S.-led war that is deeply unpopular here.

Blair gains little if anything from being pictured with Bush. By contrast, said Robin Cook, a former cabinet member who resigned over the war, being seen at Buckingham Palace and alongside Blair, America's favorite foreign leader, amounted to "the mother of all photo ops for President Bush."

Bush's presence is serving to point up what divides the two allies as well as what unites them. Adding to British frustration, there are no indications that the visit will produce any concrete results that would answer the nagging question about whether the prime minister's loyalty gains Britain any added consideration in Washington.

Blair's official spokesman told reporters Tuesday that there would be no developments on two major issues of concern to Britons -- the status of nine British citizens captured by American forces and held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and tariffs imposed by Bush on European steel that have just been declared illegal by the World Trade Organization.

The spokesman deflected questions artfully by invoking the special nature of the relationship. Blair and Bush spoke weekly by telephone or video link, he said, and the state visit should be viewed as "part of a continuing conversation, not a one-off event where each side has to produce goodies for the other."

Blair is a firm believer in the idea that it is not possible for Britain to have an impact in the world without being America's reliable ally.

He developed a close personal and political association with President Clinton, and the two men collaborated in the Balkans, Kosovo and Northern Ireland. On his last visit to Britain as president in December 2001, Clinton told Blair to get as close to Bush as he had to him.

It was advice Blair had already taken since Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, Sir Christopher Meyer, had been cultivating the Bush campaign to make sure the prime minister's closeness to Clinton would not compromise his relations with the new Republican president.

Blair willingly became the president's defender to dubious Europeans and skeptical members of his own party, as well as his ally in Iraq. Peter Riddell, the author of "Hug Them Close," reports in the book that Blair actually found Bush a more straightforward and trustworthy partner than Clinton.

Blair's loyalty to the president has remained steadfast even though the perception that he favors America over Europe has undermined his ambition to become a leader on the Continent, and the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq -- the justification he cited to win Britons' support for war -- has cut his popularity at home.

If other Europeans were slow to realize the enormity and urgency of the impact of Sept. 11 on Americans, Blair's reaction was immediate. Sir David Manning, the former chief foreign policy adviser in Downing Street who is now Britain's ambassador in Washington, said that the attacks "struck iron into the spines of George Bush and Tony Blair."

Accused of unquestioningly following the president's lead in Iraq, Blair often points out that he raised the need to confront Saddam Hussein over weapons of mass destruction even before Bush was president.

In his toast Wednesday night at Buckingham Palace, Bush paid tribute to the victory in World War II, citing "a great Atlantic alliance that defeated tyranny in Europe." The president compared that to "a mission of freedom and democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq," adding "Once again, American and Britain are joined in the defense of our common values."

To objections over his close alliance with Bush, Blair asks if detractors would prefer the United States be left to shoulder the burden of international security by itself. "I always say to people that the thing I fear is not American unilateralism," he said to a group of London-based American reporters last week. "It is actually American isolationism were it ever to go down that path."