Philip Bowring: What is it about Anglophones?
 
IHT
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Britain, Australia and the U.S.
 
HONG KONG Is there still an innate assumption, a manifest destiny among the major English-speaking nations that they have a Kiplingesque mission to bring order to the world? Why is that Britain and Australia are almost the only countries to be joining the United States in its attack on Iraq? Has the dominance of English as the global medium of communication unconsciously led its native speakers of the Anglo-Saxon tongue to assume a role out of proportion to their position in the world?
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The question was asked by an Indian friend as fluent in English as in his own language. There is no easy answer.
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It is easy enough to understand why President George W. Bush wanted war with Iraq, whether or not it will harm broader U.S. interests. But what is it that has made Britain and Australia so keen to sign up for an uncertain agenda of "regime change" that may remake the map of the Middle East?
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Both countries have long labored under the belief that they have a special relationship with the United States, although that has seldom been reciprocated. Britain's Suez folly was - rightly - cut short by the United States and for years Britain's dominant domestic problem, IRA terror, was funded from the United States. Australia followed the United States into the Vietnam mire but has since seen crucial economic interests ignored by Washington.
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In recent years Britain's major foreign policy goal has been to deepen its engagement with Europe, Australia's to be accepted as part of Asia. But these objectives have been cast aside in enthusiasm to join in what must be viewed, even if it is justified, as a an imperial venture.
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Britain's support for Bush is a huge setback for Britain's role in Europe, as well as for Europe itself. In Asia, the war is viewed as at best unwise at worst brutal and racist. Australia's participation strengthens the perception that its loyalties lie with whites, the West and Anglo-Saxons in particular, not with Asia. Australia conspicuously did not consult Asian allies and neighbors.
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Is this gut loyalty to the clan leader, the U.S. president? It goes deeper than that. In the case both of Britain and Australia, governments and much of the media are keener on war than the public at large.
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Among the media, the majority of those with international reach in both countries seem to reflect innate assumptions rather than the views of the wider world where they are seen and read. Rupert Murdoch's empire, which encompasses a wide range of newspapers and television channels on four continents, is particularly enthusiastic for war. So too is that globally circulating oracle of received Anglo-American rightist wisdom, The Economist. There is an almost missionary zeal to preach the righteousness of war to a skeptical world.
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As a perusal of local English-language papers that play a major role in Asia would show, such sentiments are quite out of touch with the non-Anglo-Saxon but English-reading world, let alone the world of Asian-language speakers. Even the less committed international news media based in the United States, Britain and Australia, including news agencies, television stations and newspapers that offer diverse opinions, clearly reflect national bias, though some purport to be neutral.
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Governments in both Britain and Australia like to try to "fight above their weight" in international affairs. Hence they prefer to follow the United States into action rather than think first of their broader interests. This is not just a legacy of imperialist pasts. It seems also to reflect the assumptions that derive from the dominant role played by English-speaking people in global media and in international organizations such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund - and indeed the United Nations itself. They have now just taken on themselves the right to judge and preempt the United Nations itself. Often what is seen as U.S. supremacy is actually a broader Anglo-Saxon linguistic and intellectual one, of which Britain and Australia are an integral part.
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The ubiquity of English has helped global integration and the spread of knowledge. It has been a force for good. But present combined actions by native English speakers are strengthening the views of those who see globalization as imperialism.

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