Today is the last Sunday before Advent. In Britain it's Stir-up Sunday, the day when traditionally the family would gather to stir the Christmas pudding mix. Each person gets to make a wish as they stir. The pudding gets its first steaming and is kept to allow the flavors to develop.
This year a Select Committee of MPs are using the day to do a bit of stirring themselves. Stirring up discontent about a Government agreement to allow the US to use an RAF base to house part of the missile defense system. The announcement was sneaked out before the Summer recess with no opportunity to debate it.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has been putting the boot in with a scathing criticism of the USA's foreign policy.
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has Foreign Affairs Select Committee for the way it announced allowing the US to use Menwith Hill to be used as a tracking station for missiles which link to US inceptor missiles based outside the UK. The stated purpose is to protect the US and Europe from missiles fired from "rough states" like Iran and North Korea. That's presumably on the assumption that the diplomatic efforts and even military efforts to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons will fail and that Iran will develop missiles capable of reaching those targets with such a warhead. In other words, for there to be a need for the system, the current Bush administrations two approaches will have to fail. (There is also a question whether the US interceptors would shoot down incoming missiles event though they have failed in tests. They also assume guidance systems in the incoming missiles sufficiently developed to give a precise incoming trajectory which their system will predict.)
Russia quite naturally sees through this dubious explanation and instead has deduced that the system to be also based in either Poland (now dubious) or another former Warsaw Pact NATO country will be used to try to neutralize the Russian armory.That is a breach of US treaty obligations and in turn Putin has pulled out of a conventional weapons in Europe treaty. Parliament has not had a chance to discuss this development in the light of the Menwith Hills agreement.
Like the foodies who are trying to reinvigorate the tradition of home made puddings, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee is trying to revive the tradition of parliamentary scrutiny of important government decisions. It seems like there is a growing aversion to buying things ready made off the shelf, be it Christmas puddings or foreign policies where Brown is continuing Blair's tradition of getting them ready made from Bush.
Also today the Sunday Times reports on a wide-ranging interview the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has given to a "Muslim lifestyle magazine" Emel. It showed his aversion to the way society is developing in the USA and the West generally.
In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation.
He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the "chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity".
The Times also makes available the Emel article in .pdf form. In it Williams is scathing on US policy in Iraq, calling it worse than the British imperial model.
"We have only one global hegemonic power at the moment." But, he propounds, "It is not accumulating territory; it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working." Far from seeing this positively, he describes it as "the worst of all worlds," saying, "it is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly that’s what the British Empire did – in India for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put things back together –Iraq for example."
On the other hand, Williams does offer a course of action for the USA which will roll back hostility to it.
"A generous and intelligent programme of aid directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarisation of their presence. All these things would help"