Examination of Witnesses (Questions 125
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 2 DECEMBER 2009
SIR JEREMY
GREENSTOCK, GCMG AND
SIR DAVID
MANNING, GCMG, CVO
Q125 Chairman: Gentlemen,
thank you for coming along this afternoon. Apologies for the slight
delay. This is our third session this afternoon, and we have gone
from academics to journalists, and now we are coming to diplomats.
We are very grateful to you, and we know that both of you have
been very busy in the past few days, and we may, in passing, touch
on those issues, but the purpose of the inquiry is to look at
UK-US relations in the context of global security.How would you
describe the current approach of our Government on transatlantic
issues? For the record, will you introduce yourselves as you begin
your remarks?
Sir David Manning: I'm David Manning.
I was Ambassador in Washington between 2003 and 2007.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Jeremy
Greenstock. I was Political Director in the Foreign Office from
1996 to 1998, Ambassador in New York from 1998 to 2003, and Special
Representative for Iraq from 2003 to 2004. Since then, I have
been director of the Ditchley Foundation.
Chairman: Who would like to begin?
Sir David Manning: With the caveat
that I am no longer privy to the relationship on a day-by-day
basis, it seems to me that the fundamentals of the relationship
have not changed. The present Government see the relationship
as the most important bilateral relationship in their terms, and
want to work as closely as possible with the United States on
the major international issues. I think that there is a recognition
that the United States is and remains the only superpower, that
it is indispensable in dealing with most of the international
problems we face, if not all of them, and that it is important
to try and work with the United States on those issues where our
interests coincide. So I don't think I've detected any great shift
in the approach of our Government to the Obama Administration.
I think those fundamentals remain unchanged.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would
agree with that. I think it's worth recalling, Chairman, that
over the last several years, going back into the last decade,
the closeness of exchange between the US and the UK Governments
has been, in historical terms, extraordinary. Obviously, there
was the subject of Iraq, which needed managing, particularly at
the beginning of this decade, but I don't think, in my diplomatic
career, I have witnessed from a distance such a constant flurry
of communication at the top, at the level below the top and down
into the senior reaches of officialdom, between Washington and
London—there is far more than, say, the 1970s, when I was
first in Washington, or the 1990s, when I was back in Washington
again.What makes up the US-UK relationship is, at this moment,
in good repair. The two Governments, as a whole—including,
on the American side, the legislature with the British Parliament—the
two economies as the biggest cross-investors of all in the world
in a bilateral relationship, and the two civil societies, have
as much exchange in correspondence as they have ever had and as
much business to do together between them as they have ever done.
While the media concentrate on the chemistry at the political
level—the high political level—it is just not right
to assume that what happens at that level characterises the relationship
as a whole. It is much more than that. However, I am sure that
this Committee will want to examine how that works in practice,
to what extent we have in mind real hard-headed UK interests in
our communication and business with the United States and whether
there are circumstances, as the world develops, in which we may
have to husband this great resource in a different way. But the
business that we do across the Atlantic bilaterally is in very
good repair.
Q126 Chairman: You referred
to media hype. Is there a tendency for politicians to play to
that by exaggerating talk about the special relationship? References
were made in previous evidence sessions to photo opportunities
and competition with other countries to try to be the first to
see the incoming President, and so on. Do we exaggerate the form
for the substance?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: This Committee
will know as well as anybody that there are various levels at
which politics works and one of them is the public level—the
demonstrative, presentational level, which gets milked—but
what happens underneath that in terms of substance is very real
in this relationship. I think that Sir David and I will both agree
that British officials do not use the term "special relationship".
We might have to respond to it in public if it is thrown at us
by Americans, but we don't regard it as special: we regard it
as an asset that has to be nurtured and worked at, and the access
to the United States in terms of politicians, officials and Members
of Congress has to be earned because we're bringing something
to the table. That is the way we think and work. We do not think
it is special unless we are introducing substance to make it special.
Sir David Manning: I would very
much agree with Sir Jeremy on that. There is sometimes a tendency
to over-hype the emotional relationship, probably for the reasons
Jeremy gave. I think it is natural to some extent, but underneath
it is only special if it is actually doing the business. One of
the difficulties about the term "special relationship"
is that it can be overused. It can give a sense that we can deliver
more than is actually going to emerge from this relationship.
It is important to stay focused on the business.As Sir Jeremy
said, it is not necessarily a good thing to refer constantly to
the emotional content of these labels but one should get on and
do the business underneath, not least because if the special relationship
is hyped too much, expectations are exaggerated about what it
can deliver and what to expect from it. As Sir Jeremy said, we
have to bring something to the table. The Americans are hard-headed;
they want us to participate in certain things. If we want to do
that, we have to bring something practical. Sentiment can be used
from time to time in support of a policy. I don't think one should
disguise the fact that warmth between the two countries can help
us, but it is certainly not a policy in its own right.
Q127 Chairman: You were both
right at the centre of relations between the UK and the US throughout
the period of Tony Blair's premiership. Lord Hurd said in his
written submission to us that the former Prime Minister confused
being a junior partner with subservience. Would you agree with
that?
Sir David Manning: May I say two
things? First, we should not be subservient. I am quite clear
about that, but I don't like the idea of junior partnership, either,
because it sounds as though we are tied to something in a junior
role. The key is to work in partnership with the United States
when our interests dictate—and they will in many areas although
not necessarily on every occasion. I think we need to approach
it from that perspective. I was often asked whether this relationship
delivered anything. It comes back to your point about subservience
and partnership. I always took the view that essentially the relationship
wasn't about quid pro quos. If we wanted to do something,
we should do it because it was in the national interest. The key
for us is to try to be part of the debate in Washington, in the
American system, on the key issues that matter to us, so that
at least our voice is heard and we try to influence. I certainly
did not feel, as ambassador there, that we were subservient but
neither am I keen on the idea of being anybody's junior partner.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Let's tease
this out a bit more because I think there is a poor understanding
in public in this country—particularly perhaps after the
saga of Iraq—about what the relationship really is and what
it means to us. First, if we have disagreements with the United
States in official business, we play out those disagreements,
we argue with the United States, in private. We tend not to argue
in public unless public explanation is necessary or we are having
a great row about something that cannot be kept out of the public
domain.One of the most difficult periods of my diplomatic career,
as far as the United States was concerned, was when I was No 2
in Washington in 1994-95 and had to deal with the question of
Bosnia and the Balkans when there was severe disagreement—perhaps
the greatest disagreement since Suez between the United Kingdom,
with some European involvement, and the United States. Some of
that was quite bitter; we had some hard arguments. At the same
time, under Ambassador Robin Renwick, we were arguing quite hard
with the United States over the American treatment of Gerry Adams,
Sinn Fein, the whole IRA question and American backing. There
were some bitter elements to that, most of which will remain private
for a few more years. But I do not remember great headlines about
the opposite sentiment, as it were; about our failing to realise
that we had to keep the United States on our side and that we
had to remember our place. We had arguments.I can give you another
example. At the United Nations, where we often worked hand in
glove with the United States because we had exactly the same interests,
there were plenty of areas where we had quite severe disagreements
with the United States. It was quite important for the United
Kingdom at the United Nations, which was my area of experience,
to make it clear to other members of the United Nations that we
were not agreeing with the United States for the sake of it, that
we had arguments and that we would sometimes expose the feebleness
of the US argument in the Security Council before anybody else
did, because we disagreed with the US.That sometimes got a blowback.
Indeed, in the period of the Bush Administration in Washington,
I got a bit of a name from time to time with the harder right-wing
elements for being much too soft a collectivist and a multilateralist
for their liking. That did not mean to say that I could not do
business with them on Iraq, the Middle East and the hard issues.
These things do not come out in public, but in your inquiry, Chairman,
I think that it is important that the public see a rather greater
range of what makes up the US-UK relationship than what normally
comes out in rather superficial media comment.
Chairman: Thank you. That is very helpful.
Q128 Mr Horam: I'm very interested
in what you say, Sir Jeremy. However, one of the things that was
put to us when we were in Washington was that the US is not very
co-operative with the UK on certain crucial things—for example,
the defence procurement treaty, discussion of which has been going
on for about eight years. That treaty is still stuck in Congress.
Whichever Administration you have in Washington, they do not seem
able to make any progress: we cannot get joint use of software
for the joint strike fighter, the extradition thing still remains
unbalanced and all of these things go on and on.In addition to
that hard stuff, where the US quite clearly considers its own
interests and does not pay much regard to us, there is now what
has been described as a "casual" attitude towards Britain,
which might not always have been there. Professor Clarke, one
of our witnesses, pointed out that at the UN General Assembly
meeting in September, it was clear that Gordon Brown was not favoured
by the Obama Administration. Indeed, people at the Brookings Institution
made the point to us that there was nothing more embarrassing
than the scramble to get to be first to see the American President.
And then there was the photo-opportunity that our Prime Minister
was finally given as he went for a walk-and-talk through the kitchens.
All that betokens a casualness towards us and a hard-headed ignorance
of our position, given that we have spilt blood and money in Iraq.
Isn't this really totally unbalanced?
Sir David Manning: On the defence
treaty, you are of course right. Throughout my time in Washington,
we were struggling first of all with the whole question of the
International Traffic in Arms Regulations waiver, which I am sure
the Committee has discussed. We were unable to get that revoked,
or changed in our case. In the end, we decided to try to go for
a different option, which was a defence trade treaty; I believe
that that is still stuck, but there are hopes that it may be ratified
in the new year.I think that that is quite an interesting example
of the problem that we have in the UK in dealing with the United
States, because of course the problem was not with the Administration;
the problem was on the Hill. I think that one of the things that
we have to understand when we are operating in America is what
a very different Government structure it has and what a different
society it is. I have said this before—forgive me if I repeat
it—but I think that there is a tendency sometimes for people
to think that the United States is the UK on steroids, that it
is just like us and that if you go across there and you talk to
the White House and they say yes, that is the end of it.
Mr Horam: I think we appreciate that.
Sir David Manning: The difficulty
on the trade issue, and indeed on other issues, was the White
House. I dare say this might be true in the Obama White House—I
don't know; I haven't been working with it—but we often
have a problem in the UK in that we get a yes from the Administration,
but we then have to work the Hill extraordinarily hard to try
to get what we want. In the case of the ITAR (International Traffic
in Arms Regulations)—ITAR waiver—it was one individual
who blocked it. There is a structural thing that we need to bear
in mind. When I was there, I felt that if the Administration said
that they wanted to help us with something, they meant it, but
very often they could not deliver. I think we have to beware,
therefore, of assuming that when we hear yes, it is going to be
yes all round.On the other issue that you mentioned—this
question of feeling embarrassed about whether you are first through
the door, to which Sir Jeremy alluded—I think a lot of this
is the way in which it is seen, if you like, through the media.
If we are not seen to be privileged in some way, the special relationship
is in crisis. I think it is important for us to relax. I get worried
if I think that we are obsessing about this—the sort of
"he loves me, he loves me not" school of diplomacy.
Q129 Mr Horam: But do you
detect a greater sense of casualness about the way that the Obama—
Sir David Manning: Again, I have
to be careful, because I have not been on the ground. I suspect
that you have a President who, first of all, is new to foreign
relations, and it is important for us to understand that his background
is completely different from that of his predecessors. He is a
very quick study, so there is no doubt that he will master these
issues, but he does not come with a knowledge of Europe and of
Britain that his predecessors would have had—indeed, had
McCain won, he would have gone back a long way.The President also
comes with a very different perspective. He is an American who
grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and
who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like,
are not there. As Sir Jeremy said, if you want President Obama's
attention at the moment, particularly when the agenda is so cluttered,
it has to be relevant. You have to bring something important—it
has to be something he is struggling with—so I do not think
that we should look for slights or imagine that because we were
only the second people, or you only got the meeting in the kitchen,
that this somehow indicates that we have a President who is casual
about the relationship and does not care about it. I think, however,
it means that it is going to be less sentimental. Having said
that, the advantage for us, it seems to me from the outside now,
is that you have a multilateralist. You do not have a sentimentalist
but a multilateralist. This is an opportunity for us, actually.
Q130 Mr Horam: What is the
opportunity?
Sir David Manning: It is an opportunity
for us, because if the United States wishes to work through multilateral
institutions such as the United Nations, it is much easier for
us than it was when we had a unilateralist sentiment, and we have
to find ways of capitalising on that. I am sorry—it is a
long answer.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Let me
take up this point of opportunity, if I may, to which Sir David
referred. I think that it is thoroughly healthy that we should
have a President in the White House whose respect we have to earn.
This is at the public level as well as at the level of confidential
Government business, because that is the reality, and it always
has been the reality. If it makes us sharper in a competitive
sense, because we are not relying on sentiment and a playing field
that is tilted slightly our way by history, values, sentiment
and all the rest of it, we will perform better.
Q131 Mr Horam: Do we have
to change our attitude? That is what I am getting at.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No, because
that is the way the system works already. You have rightly questioned
us over some of the things that might have gone better in the
relationship, but I think it is worth bringing out in this session
the enormous amount that we gain from a close relationship with
the United States. The British public need to have it explained
from time to time that you cannot just count on an abacus the
deals that go in our favour from the United States because they
like us. Why is BAE one of the largest defence companies operating
in the United States? Why is the City of London an absolutely
natural place for American finance houses, banks and insurance
companies to do business? Why is it that there is $400 billion-worth
of investment in the United Kingdom, which is more than in France
and Germany put together? There are many other examples, but it
is because in the American system and the British system, although
the two systems are different and in the future may drift further
apart—something that we might need to examine in this conversation—there
is an enormous familiarity and confidence between the two peoples
and the two Governments, the two corporate areas in which it is
as good for Americans to do business in Britain and for the British
to do business in the United States, whatever that business is,
as in their own country.We would not have in the world of global
security the partnership that is necessary to defend our interests
in an unpredictable world unless we and the United States worked
very carefully at the analysis of what was going on in a changed
security atmosphere, which brings us into partnership with the
only power in the globe that can project military capability anywhere.
It is an enormous advantage in an era when the United States is
no longer—as it was in the Cold War—a European power
through NATO. That has changed. That, too, needs examination,
but the sentiment at NATO—apart from the bilateral sentiment—is
also something that has moved on and needs examining. We get tremendous
advantages out of this relationship, and the figures speak for
themselves in that respect.
Q132 Sir Menzies Campbell:
I just wanted to explore with you in relation to the Hill—Congress—and
the Administration the extent to which British diplomats operate
in a highly competitive arena in which another 190 countries would
desperately like to have the ear of the Senator who is the Chairman
of the Armed Services Committee or the senior official in the
Administration. Sometimes you have to use your elbows to make
sure that you enjoy the pre-eminent position that previously might
have been for emotional or sentimental reasons, but is now much
more to be earned than to be handed out.
Sir David Manning: Yes, that is
absolutely right. You need sharp elbows. The Americanism is that
you had better be in your face. Basically, Americans do not do
self-deprecation, so you better get up there, make your case and
say why it is a really good one. You are quite right. It is important.
I always felt that the Embassy was itself a lobby group. I described
earlier my view that we had to be part of the argument in the
United States. It goes much wider than Washington, as you know,
but it is very important that your voice is heard. If you are
going to get it heard, there is a lot of competition from within
the American system itself, as well as certainly from other countries.Having
access to the Hill, having access to the White House and having
access to the media to make sure that you can get your message
across to the whole of the United States through a network are
all very important. It will not get any easier, particularly when
the regime has changed in the United States. We now have a Democrat
who is not familiar with us, so making such arguments again is
very important. If we are going to be heard and use our sharp
elbows, it comes back to the proposition that we have to have
something important to say and something to offer on the big issues.
Q133 Sir Menzies Campbell:
The slights do not matter if you close the deal. Do you agree?
As for doing the deal in the kitchen, Lyndon Johnson had some
interesting views about the venue where Senate business was conducted.
None of that matters if you actually do the deal at the end of
the day.
Sir David Manning: It is the substance,
and as Sir Jeremy said, the substance of the bilateral relationship
is extraordinary—whether it is the investment relationship,
the trade relationship or what we gain from intelligence and military
relationships. There are all sorts of pay-offs, but they are so
because we bring something important ourselves. It is objectively
in our interest and their interest. If we can show the Obama Administration
that we have things to offer, they will listen. But I am sure
that we have to elbow our way in to make the case.
Q134 Sir Menzies Campbell:
Can we do better at blowing our own trumpet about the achievements
or would that operate against future success?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: If the
slights mattered, the two of us would not have lasted as diplomats
for very long. You have to separate out the personal from the
official. Diplomats don't normally slight each other in a personal
sense, but if you're getting a blow in the face in terms of somebody
else's national interests, which won't accord with yours, you
take it, you move on, or you find some way round it.From experience
of the United Nations, one of the more interesting parts of the
US-UK relationship in New York—in the Security Council,
for instance—was in tactical handling. The United States
would want something in the Security Council, but the United States
tends to walk around with quite heavy boots, and there are sensitive
flowers in the United Nations of other nations. The United Kingdom
is a lot better at the tactical handling of other delegations
and of language in drafting texts and tactical manoeuvring. We
just happen to be tidier, more experienced and better at it, and
not worried about getting our hands dirty in that respect. The
United States, which has to conduct policy formation and implementation
in an even more public environment than this country, tends to
be very sensitive about short-term losses and presentational difficulties,
whereas we get on with it.When we agree with the United States,
we can be very helpful to it in that kind of subterranean tactical
handling, which doesn't come out in public. The Americans appreciate
that, because it brings them something they don't normally have.
We of course gain from being on the coat tails of the immense
power operation of the United States, which brings us into places
that we wouldn't reach if we were just on our own— and we
wouldn't reach, frankly, if we were just with the European Union.
The United Kingdom uses that, to some extent, quite shamelessly.As
Sir David said earlier, a quid pro quo is involved, and
occasionally you run up against Americans who don't like the way
we operate or think that we're slightly snotty-nosed about our
experience in global affairs or our colonial past. At times, when
it works for them—when we give them some tactical advice
on how to handle Iraqis in Iraq, or whatever—they can quite
appreciate it, because they haven't been there.There are a number
of facets to the relationship where these things really work,
but they aren't visible, and if we blew our trumpet on them, we
would spoil that relationship, because we're blowing a trumpet
then about our use of their power, which it's better not to go
on about—so I'll stop.
Q135 Chairman: So you wouldn't
use the Greeks and Romans analogy that we heard earlier.
Sir David Manning: No, I absolutely
would not use the Greeks and Romans analogy.
Q136 Mr Purchase: Moving not
very far from what we have been talking about, we have been gathering
evidence about our ability to influence the United States and
have got generally positive responses, but a bit of a mixed bag.
To what extent—I shall ask both of you, if I may—and
in what policy areas does the UK access US decision makers, and
how does that translate into influence? If it does, in what way
does it happen, and can you give us any concrete examples?
Sir David Manning: Perhaps I could
begin. The truth is we can go and talk to the Administration about
any issue that we want to, if it matters to us and we want to
discuss it with the Administration or on the Hill, we have access.
We are very fortunate, and I think it is the case that we probably
have as good access as anybody, and probably better than most.Access
doesn't necessarily mean that what you ask for you are going to
get, of course, and I think we need to be realistic about that.
This is an unequal relationship in the sense that the United States
is a global power. We are not; and one of the things that I think
we have to be conscious of is that, on a lot of these issues,
there's not much we can do by ourselves. But if we are successful
at getting access and influencing the Americans, it may have an
effect.I can only speak obviously about the time that I was in
the States myself. I do not know what sort of access and influence
we would have at the moment, but during the period that I was
there, we had a major difference with the United States Administration
over climate change, which was a very high priority for the Government
here and something that got a pretty low priority within the Administration.
We went and made the case, as forcefully as we could. When the
then Prime Minister made it one of our G8 presidency objectives,
this was not greeted with enormous enthusiasm in Washington, but
it did not mean that we gave up because the Administration didn't
necessarily like it. We, because of this network across the United
States that I spoke about, were able to do quite a lot of work
on climate change, for instance, in the states themselves. I think,
probably, opinion changed pretty dramatically in the four years
that I was there; and, increasingly, I felt, the White House was
out on a limb, and big business in America and a lot of the key
states were moving in the direction of accepting that something
had to be done. I am not going to claim that that was because
of the British Embassy, but I am quite sure that making a big
effort across America to influence these opinion formers on climate
change was worth it, and I think we probably contributed.If you
take an issue that was very much more specifically Government
to Government, the decision by the Americans to try and get Libya
to give up its weapons of mass destruction, that was very much
something advocated from London. Perhaps I should not go into
great detail in public at the moment, but, as I am sure the Committee
can find out, there were exchanges. That again is an example that
I would give you of the impact on American thinking.Something
that happened before I was in the United States in which I was
conscious that we affected American thinking was on the relationship
with Russia. This is quite hard to remember now, because the relationship
is so bad, but during the early period of President Putin's power,
there was a real effort, particularly after 9/11, to try and reach
out in a much more inclusive way. I can remember going with the
Prime Minister to Moscow, and President Putin said that he would
like a different relationship with NATO. We worked really quite
hard on the Americans to think about a different relationship.
The result of this was the NATO-Russia Council. So there are examples.There
are plenty of examples in which we try and don't get very far,
and the Middle East peace process was a source of constant frustration
to me. We wanted action, and we did not get it. We pressed; we
got various promises and suggestions, but we all know where we
are. But I come back to what I said: you have to be realistic.
We have a certain weight in the system. We should not exaggerate
that, but nor should we underestimate it. We should decide
what it is that we want to try and do, and then become part of
the debate. It will vary from issue to issue and from place to
place, but if we have this network, we should try and use it to
that end.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It is quite
important to unpack your question, Mr Purchase, about influence.
It is not as though we are standing outside and we need something
from the United States, so we go and lobby—like influencing
a board to give your cause a donation. We are talking with them
the whole time. Being a superpower is quite a lonely business—the
Americans don't have many friends out there; they talk among themselves
and, in fact, American decisions on hard issues are always finally
made among Americans, in the Committee of Principals or between
the White House and Congress, or whatever. Outsiders, even outsiders
in Washington, are not involved in it—it is an American
business.However, in the process of getting there, they like to
try ideas out on or seek the views of people who they can easily
talk to. Many Europeans feature in that; the Japanese might feature,
and, nowadays, they might talk to the Chinese, Indians or Brazilians
as well, but they nearly always talk to the Brits, one way or
another—"What do you think about this?" That gets
into a habit of just checking that our perspective on things,
which comes from a different national history and background,
gives them extra confidence that they are doing the right thing.
Very often, when they don't check with us, they can do the wrong
thing, as they find out, for their own interests. Good Americans,
as it were, in the State Department, in the National Security
Council and in Congress, who think about these things say, "What
do the Brits think about this?" Let me give you two examples,
since you were asking for examples. In November 1998, President
Clinton wanted to bomb the Iraqis, because they were defying the
United Nations—November 1998. Prime Minister Blair said,
"Okay, they are defying the United Nations". Then, at
the last minute, the Iraqis sent a letter saying that they would
accept the return of inspectors to Iraq. The Americans were inclined
to think that this was just another fob-off from Iraq. The Prime
Minister, in the middle of the night, said no to President Clinton—that
if, at the UN, a letter has arrived accepting what the UN has
asked for, the US and the UK cannot go and bomb them. The aircraft
had already taken off. Those aircraft returned to base without
taking any action because the Prime Minister had intervened. The
next month, the Iraqis did go over the line and we bombed them.In
the Balkans issue, on Bosnia, we had this fight with them over
"lift and strike" and their policy on Bosnia—a
bitter division. In the end, the Americans decided that, actually,
their policy was not going to produce peace in the Balkans and
that the Europeans actually had a route through to a possible
solution to the Balkans crisis, but the Europeans were implementing
it rather weakly. So suddenly, in August 1995, they came over
to London first, talked this through and said that they were going
to take over aspects of our policy but they were going to implement
it themselves, as the US, and that led to the Dayton agreement
a few months later.These are the ways in which the Americans go
through the various stages of grappling with a problem, listen
to others, go back into their own councils, decide on a new way
forward. And lo and behold, it is rather closer to where the UK
was than if they had not talked to us at all. That sort of thing
is going on the whole time.
Q137 Mr Purchase: Fascinating.
If I can follow on just a little further. Being very specific,
if we want to talk to the Americans about foreign policy—not
necessarily at the level of Iraq—who do we contact? Who
are the people? What are the organisations? Which are the channels
we go through? Can you give us some insights into that?
Sir David Manning: I can certainly
try and give you insights as far as I was concerned. You would
go to the White House. You would go to the State Department. You
would almost certainly go to the Pentagon. It would be very important
to go on the Hill and talk to the key foreign affairs committees,
both of Congress and of the Senate. Depending on the urgency and
the scale of the foreign policy problem, you would select individuals
in at least those areas to go and talk to. In terms of foreign
policy, though, it is also worth talking about those who are not
in government or on the Hill, or in the Administration. There
is a very powerful think-tank community in the US. It is important
to be alongside; it is important to talk to them about your foreign
policy proposals. It is a pretty wide panorama, but, as I say,
we have good access, and if it is a serious enough issue, you
can certainly talk to the National Security Council; you can talk
to the State Department; you can talk to the agencies there; you
can talk to the Department of Defence. So you have a wide range
of interlocutors, and on the whole, the door is open.
Q138 Mr Purchase: Is it ever
worth while speaking to the Foreign Relations Committee and its
Chairman?
Sir David Manning: Oh yes, absolutely.
I think—we may have discussed this when your Committee came
to Washington when I was there—it is important for the Embassy
to do that. It is important for visiting Ministers to do that
and it is very important for this Committee to do that. One of
the things that I was certainly keen on when I was there was thickening
up the relationship, not just with your Committee and your counterparts,
but with other committees. If we are concerned—we may get
on to this—about a lessening focus among American politicians
these days on us and on Europe, it is very important that they
hear the arguments from their political counterparts, not just
from officials.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: If I can
just add one other aspect to this, we need a very real understanding
of American public opinion, because it has an effect on Congress
and on the Administration. Therefore, it is actually rather important
for the Embassy to have a good feel for what is going on outside
the beltway. Remember also that American Administrations come
to Washington from governorships and other parts of the country—it's
as often an ex-Governor as an ex-Senator who takes on the presidency
of the United States. In my time in Washington in the 1970s, I
learned an early lesson in this. My Ambassador cultivated the
people in Atlanta well before Jimmy Carter became the lead candidate,
and he got credit for that. We then had a very close relationship
with President Carter in the White House because we were the people
who got furthest with the Atlanta team before he ever made it
to the White House. That doesn't mean to say you have to cover
every single base in the United States, but the British Embassy
and its system have a huge reach in the United States. That is
not just commercial or a service to British citizens in the United
States, but a very real aspect of the British ability to do business
in the United States in every way.
Q139 Mr Purchase: With two
very large missions—one in New York and one in Washington—how
do we avoid being cherry-picked by the Americans? How do we avoid
giving slightly different versions of the same story? Indeed,
do the Americans even try to cherry-pick? Do they like to go to
one particular city rather than another for particular purposes?
Sir David Manning: That is a very
good question. On the whole, you do get different stories, but
I don't think it's deliberate. You have a very complex process
of government in Washington, and different Departments are often
at odds with each other. A lot of the time, what you are trying
to do in the mission is to find out how the argument is going
internally. So it's absolutely likely that somebody will go and
see the State Department and somebody else will go and talk to
the Department of Defence, and you will get a different story.
One of the things that the Embassy has to do all the way through
is to try to assess who's up, who's down and where this argument
is actually going.I may be naive, but I don't look back thinking
that there was a tremendous campaign to deceive us and tell us
all sorts of different things. I think it was much more a question,
a lot of the time, of the Administration finding it quite hard
to come to a conclusion themselves, because there is such a cacophony
of voices. Even if the Administration do come to a conclusion—this
comes back to the structural issue—that doesn't mean to
say that the Hill will follow.Coming back to your earlier question,
that is why it is so important to go and see the senior figures
on the Hill who run these great committees, because they are immensely
powerful, and they certainly have the President's ear. As we have
seen over the Afghanistan issue, it often takes a long time for
an American Administration to reach consensus about what they
will do. One of the roles that you have in Washington—I
am sure this would have been true for Sir Jeremy in New York—is
to see how the argument is changing and shifting, to try to make
sure that our views are heard by those who we think will affect
the decision, and then to monitor things as best you can.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: To put
it the other way round—if that was part of your question—there
wouldn't have been different British answers in New York and Washington.
The mission in New York doesn't get played off against the mission
in Washington, because we read each other's telegrams and we know
where we are.
Mr Purchase: You're really tight.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The Consulate
General in New York is subject to the oversight of the Ambassador
in Washington. The Ambassador runs his own system in Washington.
The Ambassador in New York usually has a good relationship with
his colleague in Washington—it hasn't always happened.
Mr Purchase: We read nothing into that
at all.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Against
the background that, in my view, all Governments are to some extent
incompetent, the British system is less incompetent than most.
The capacity of the British diplomatic system and Whitehall to
say the same thing, whoever is asked, is quite refined.
Chairman: We won't pursue that line too
far; unfortunately, we don't have time.
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