BETRAYING THE BRITS: ARTHUR HERMAN
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/betraying_the_brits_8pGmyw7gnh0fgNz5n1Z9tO
Betraying the Brits By ARTHUR HERMAN
Documents from Wiki Leaks indicate that the Obama administration, desperate to get the Russians to sign the new START treaty, agreed to pass on secret information about the British nuclear arsenal — right down to the serial numbers of the warheads.
In 2009, the United States lobbied Britain to supply Moscow with the data needed to calculate the exact size of the British nuclear arsenal — a number Her Majesty’s government has always kept secret. The British refused. Now, it seems, the White House did it anyway.
President Obama’s dealings with Britain, our ally in longest good standing, have been rocky from the start. He insulted Britain by returning a gift — the bust of Winston Churchill that sat in the Oval Office.
Then came the botched visit to the queen, with Obama handing her an iPod loaded with pop tunes and his favorites speeches — delivered by himself. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested publicly that the Falkland Islands — which Britain fought a bloody war in 1982 to keep — belong to Argentina.
But now we have something far more grave: the deliberate betrayal of Britain’s nuclear secrets to a former enemy.
Perfidy, they must be saying in the corridors of Whitehall, thy name is Obama.
Certainly, the US “special relationship” with Britain, our longest-standing ally, is at its lowest level since the 1956 Suez Crisis — or perhaps since the War of 1812.
The State Department brands the nuke story “bunk,” noting that, under the previous START treaty, America has had to share data about Britain’s nuclear arsenal with the Russians since 1991, and the British know it. But even spokesman P.J. Crowley couldn’t deny that the exact number of British nuclear warheads has always been an official Whitehall secret.
Now it won’t be, at least as far as Moscow is concerned.
The critics ask: So what? Britain’s “independent” nuclear deterrent has been a joke for years, while its once-vaunted navy has shrunk to 10th in the world (measured in personnel), behind Turkey and North Korea. World War II is ancient history, they say. We have more important friends we need to cultivate today — including Putin’s Russia.
Yet America and Britain share more than history. The British have been our steadiest ally in the War on Terror, not in sharing intelligence, but in sending troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan to fight and die — more than 530 so far.
Under its new prime minister, David Cameron, Britain is also the one European country that seems ready to truly confront radical Islam. In his landmark speech at last week’s Munich Security Conference, he warned that “Europe needs to wake up” to the fact that multiculturalism has been “a failure” and has helped to turn Britain into a “safe haven” for terrorists, according to a recent independent report.
Cameron now wants Britain to take its culture back and to reverse the relativist trend that disguises cowardice as tolerance.
There’s also a more self-interested reason for keeping the special relationship alive.
Four Trident missile submarines are Britain’s remaining claim to great-power status. They are due to be modernized or replaced at a cost somewhere between 11 billion and 14 billion pounds sterling — perhaps $20 billion.
That could mean some lucrative contracts for US shipyards — that manufacturing sector Obama keeps saying he’s worried about.
From submarines to fighting terrorists and shrinking the size of government, we still have good reasons for keeping Britain close at our side. Thanks to Obama, a new Republican president will have his work cut out in repairing that special relationship.
But for the sake of Western civilization, it will be worth it.
Arthur Herman is writing a book on the Arsenal of Democracy.
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