(Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
The White House is increasingly looking to Germany and France for support, with Britain no longer being considered the U.S.’s most loyal ally in Europe, according to Bush administration sources.
A senior White House foreign-policy official told the Daily Telegraph that U.S. concerns over decreased support from new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were “compensated by the fact that Paris and Berlin are much less of a headache.”
“The need to hinge everything on London as the guarantor of European security has gone,” the official stated.
The Telegraph reported, “There has been a notable reduction in contact between Downing Street and the White House since Mr. Blair left and U.S. officials have remarked on how few British ministers have visited Washington in recent months” (October 3).
One factor contributing to the weakening of the U.S.-UK bond is Britain’s declining support of American forces in Iraq under the leadership of Prime Minister Brown. “At the Pentagon, there’s a feeling that Britain is letting the side down on Iraq,” a British diplomatic source said.
British forces failed to quell violence in Basra before pulling out of the southern Iraqi city last month, and it is accepted that under Prime Minister Brown’s leadership, Britain will withdraw the remainder of its troops from Iraq next year.
At the same time, the fact that some continental European states are beginning to take a more aggressive stance against terrorism and being more vocal against Iran makes them more attractive allies to Washington. French warnings concerning Iran, for example, bring its position toward Tehran more in line with that of the U.S., while White House aides suspect that Britain would not support the U.S. in military action against Iran.
Though theTrumpet.com does not expect the severing of relations between the U.S. and Britain by any means, deteriorating relations between the United States and the UK are opening the way for America to develop closer ties with continental European states, including Germany. A prophecy in the book of Ezekiel talks of a “lover”-type relationship between America and the Germans in the end time that will end in a terrible betrayal. We see such a relationship in embryo now.
