The Brits have never really given up on shaping American national security policy. Anyone who’s worked at the State Department or the National Security Council can confirm that British diplomats are very busy lobbying U.S. policymakers, digging for the latest in our thinking and knowledge, and establishing close working relations with our policy people. They had, and have, a double mission: Learn what we’re really all about and increase London’s influence on our policies.
Our British cousins are quite sure they understand the world much better than we do, and so, it is only logical for them to try to convince us to act as they would if they were still number one among national power rankings. Having lost that position after World War II, having seen the sun set on the British Empire, they resort to the next best thing: get us to follow their guidance.
They call it “the Special Relationship.” It gives them substantial leverage over our foreign policy.
It’s the diplomatic version of the great TV series, Yes, Prime Minister.
This activity goes back a long way, to the days of the Revolutionary War and includes some relatively unknown activity by some very well-known people. The basic contemporary mission was designed early in the World War II era, when British intelligence, MI6, established a high-quality network in Washington under the capable leadership of William Stephenson, a.k.a. “Intrepid.” Known as the British Security Coordination, it was set up in the U.S. by Winston Churchill. It featured many celebrities of the time, including Noel Coward and Leslie Howard, as well as anybody else Stephenson felt could mix comfortably in high Washington society. The British Security Coordination also ran a rumor factory, which sent misleading stories out — the “fake news” of the time.
Their most enjoyable activity was to seduce upper-crust American wives whose husbands were engaged in out-of-town activities. The ladies effectively became British agents of influence, and their British paramours included many we mainly associate with 20th-century fiction. Some, including Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, took their espionage experience to the world of spy literature, which is hardly a surprise. Others left that universe and created very different forms of literature, including, of all things, children’s books.
Yes, one of Stephenson’s most successful agents was Roald Dahl, who we think of as the author of classics about chocolate factories. There’s a lesson there: Fantasy is as important to spycraft as it is to fairy tales.
Hence, it was hardly surprising to read in the Daily Mail that:
Sir Kim Darroch, one of Britain’s top diplomats, used secret cables and briefing notes to impugn Trump’s character, warning London that the White House was ‘uniquely dysfunctional’ and that the President’s career could end in ‘disgrace’.
Darroch was carrying on a well-established tradition. I’m sure that, if the full story were known, we’d find British diplomats in Washington up to their necks in espionage and propaganda. Darroch has now been purged, and his diplomatic colleagues are understandably very irritated.
As the BBC reports, “Boris Johnson, a former foreign secretary, has basically thrown our top diplomat under the bus.” Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan says many MPs are “very, very angry” about the Tory leadership candidate’s “disregard” for Sir Kim Darroch.
Michael Ledeen is freedom scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He has written 38 books.
