With Friends Like These
By RICHARD ALDOUS
NYT
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
AS the 30th anniversary of the Falklands Islands war approaches, tension in the South Atlantic is rising once again: Britain is deploying the destroyer Dauntless to the area, along with Prince William, the second in line to the throne, which has Argentina crying foul about British “militarization” and a royal “conquistador.”
The American response has been decidedly neutral, encouraging “both parties to resolve their differences through dialogue” — a sentiment reminiscent of the crisis in 1982, when the United States did everything possible to avoid war and having to choose between key allies.
These days we remember things a bit differently: The conflict is often hailed as a high point of the “special” bond between President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister. And yet America’s response at the time, and the subsequent attempts to revise it, exemplifies how complex and even fractious that historic relationship really was.
By the time Reagan took office in January 1981, Mrs. Thatcher had already been in power for more than a year and half. They proclaimed themselves conservative soul mates. “Your problems will be our problems,” she told him at their first meeting in Washington, “and when you look for friends we will be there.” Afterward James S. Brady, the White House press secretary, quipped that “it took a crowbar to get them apart.”
(More here.)
NYT
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
AS the 30th anniversary of the Falklands Islands war approaches, tension in the South Atlantic is rising once again: Britain is deploying the destroyer Dauntless to the area, along with Prince William, the second in line to the throne, which has Argentina crying foul about British “militarization” and a royal “conquistador.”
The American response has been decidedly neutral, encouraging “both parties to resolve their differences through dialogue” — a sentiment reminiscent of the crisis in 1982, when the United States did everything possible to avoid war and having to choose between key allies.
These days we remember things a bit differently: The conflict is often hailed as a high point of the “special” bond between President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister. And yet America’s response at the time, and the subsequent attempts to revise it, exemplifies how complex and even fractious that historic relationship really was.
By the time Reagan took office in January 1981, Mrs. Thatcher had already been in power for more than a year and half. They proclaimed themselves conservative soul mates. “Your problems will be our problems,” she told him at their first meeting in Washington, “and when you look for friends we will be there.” Afterward James S. Brady, the White House press secretary, quipped that “it took a crowbar to get them apart.”
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home