The Anglosphere Illusion.

• Author: Harries, Owen
• Position: Idea of creating a union of English speaking nations

DURING RECENT months, many have engaged in the pastime of looking back to the beginning of the twentieth century to find parallels with our present circumstances. Thus the position of Britain then--both with respect to its dominance and the first signs of its decline--has been compared to that of the United States today; the significance of the rise of Germany back then has been compared to the anticipated emergence of China as a genuine world power in the near future; and Norman Angell's belief--given expression on the eve of the outbreak of the Great War--that interdependence was rendering war obsolete has been seen as the equivalent of the current faith in the pacific effects of globalization and the spread of democracy.

There is one other parallel that deserves mention. Today, a few thoughtful and eloquent individuals--among them Robert Conquest, writing in the pages of this magazine, and John O'Sullivan in various journals--have been making the case for an English-speaking political union. The argument is that the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a few other smaller entities have so much in common in terms of political culture, values and institutions that they should draw together and enter into some sort of formal arrangement to act in concert--to create, that is, what some are now referring to as a political "Anglosphere."

Now this line of argument almost exactly replicates one advanced by a group of highly intelligent, well-educated and well-connected young men at the beginning of the last century. The group--sometimes known as Milner's Kindergarten, after its patron, Lord Milner, and sometimes as the Cliveden Set, because of its connection with the Astor family--included among others Philip Kerr (later, as Lord Lothian, Britain's ambassador to Washington during World War II), Lionel Curtis (founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House) and Geoffrey Dawson (to be for twenty-six years editor of the Times, when that newspaper still had great political influence).

The historian Norman Rose has recently written about this group in terms that could be applied almost word for word to today's advocates of an English-speaking union:

What they meant by 'doing things in the world' was primarily to sustain the Anglo-Saxon fraternity. Dedicated to an intimate partnership between the Dominions and Britain, perhaps federation or even union, and a strengthening of the Anglo-American connection, they aimed in this way to preserve Britain's distinctive role in international affairs.

The similarity extends also to what they disliked and feared:

For Kerr and his friends, France was the bogeyman of Europe. There was an almost paranoid fear that scheming French politicians would embroil Britain in disputes at variance with its genuine interests. [1]

The ideas propounded by the group reflected both the reality of British imperial power and the fear that, unless girded up, that power was doomed to decline in the not too distant future. This view of things had enough appeal that at the grand intergovernmental Imperial Conference of 1911 a proposal was made--it was formally put by Joseph Ward, prime minister of New Zealand, the smallest and most British of the English-speaking Dominions--for an Imperial Parliament, to be responsible for formulating common foreign and defense policies for the Empire.

The proposal was promptly shot down by Canada and South Africa, both of whom had substantial non-English populations that were not susceptible to the charms of Anglo-Saxon tradition. Indeed, while such an arrangement would have served the interests of Britain, as the strongest party, it was inimical to the quickly strengthening national sentiments of countries that had only just moved from subservient status to independence.

Values and Interests

IF THE IDEA of an English-speaking union, based on a common heritage and shared values, was not a goer in 1911, what are its prospects today? A consideration of that question can, it seems to me, usefully begin by considering an episode that occurred almost exactly midway between the Imperial Conference of 1911 and the present: that is the Suez crisis of 1956.

Recall that this crisis erupted a mere decade after the end of World War II. Those Americans and Britons who had worked so closely together to win that war were still running things: Dwight Eisenhower and his generation in Washington; Anthony Eden and his in London. Britain still possessed a vast empire and very substantial armed forces based on compulsory national service. Britain and France were America's principal allies--indeed its only significant ones. The Cold War was going strong. Within a year the Soviet Union would put Sputnik into space, shaking American confidence seriously.

In that year, 1956, the Egyptian military dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, seized the Suez Canal from the company that owned it and proceeded to nationalize it. Both the British and French regarded this as an outrageously immoral act. Even worse...