- The Observer,
- Sunday November 16 2003
Away from the constant threat of assasination, the endless White House meetings and the on-going problem about how to stem losses in Iraq, Bush will be briefed by officials aboard his 747 before turning in for the night, before three days of diplomacy designed to show that he is simply fighting for global peace.
Nobody else will sleep much. Not the pilots of the American fighter jets, armed with missiles and cannon, who will escort the President's plane to London. Not the chefs responsible for preparing every meal and testing food for poison. Not the military aide carrying the 'football' - a briefcase primed with the launch codes for America's nuclear arsenal.
Bush will also be escorted by 250 heavily armed secret service agents, up to 150 advisers from the National Security department and about 50 White House aides. More than a dozen sniffer dog teams be along for the trip.
The entourage will travel in two identical 747s and be accompanied by a third chartered Jumbo. Also being shipped are a specially converted Black Hawk helicopter and a motorcade of 20 armoured vehicles. 'America travels as an imperial power. But then America is an imperial power,' said one intelligence source.
It is in this strange 'bubble', as the President himself calls it, that Bush becomes Potus: the shorthand among staff for all the meticulous planning for President of the United States. But Potus is not alone with his acronym. There is also planning for Flotus: the First Lady of the United States. On state visits Laura Bush is almost as big a media asset as the President. Her itinerary is just as heavily planned, policed and guarded.
One former presidential aide, who has been on numerous White House expeditions, was brutally honest about the nature of such visits. 'It is very stressful for the staff. Everything is done for the President, and planned to the last detail, like the food. There are times when you want to scream: "I don't know what ****ing meal you are having!" But, of course, you don't say that,' he said.
Last Tuesday morning, Tony Blair set off on the short walk from his private office to the video conference room in the basement at Number 10. It was for one of his regular discussions with the President of the United States.
On the slightly flickering video screen in the room next to the kitchen, the two men talked global politics: Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, the steel trade row and the Middle East peace process.
It was the last time the two men spoke before they are due to meet face-to-face at the beginning of Bush's visit to Britain this week, and again on Wednesday evening at a banquet at Buckingham Palace. The following day, the Prime Minister and the President will spend all day together in Downing Street, sometimes just one-on-one, at other times joined by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, and Condoleeza Rice, National Security Adviser. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, Jonathan Powell, Chief of Staff, and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Blair's foreign policy adviser, will also be called in for a series of meetings.
John Snow, the US Treasury Secretary, will travel with Gordon Brown to Birmingham on Tuesday to announce the start of an ambitious plan to create a barrier-free market between Britain, Europe and the US. The Chancellor will say the project is as important as the European single market in the 1980s. It could be worth £100 billion to the European market and create a million jobs.
The special relationship, officials insist, is clearly alive and well. The two sides know that the results of the meetings will be pored over in minute detail, not only by those around the state dining room, but also in the wider world. There will be some progress on the British prisoners kept at Guantanamo and on the steel issue. Bush will promote American policy on HIV/Aids in Africa. Blair and Bush will insist they are still 'the firmest of allies', according to one Number 10 official.
Both men need each other. Blair wants to achieve two things: get Bush out to a wider British audience and make the argument that it is only by standing together with America that Britain can hope to have any leverage over the world's hyper-power.
'The only thing people see in this country of Bush is a few clips on television and some quotes in the newspapers,' a Number 10 official said. 'Now, the public will have the chance to see him speak at length, and then they can make up their minds.'
The process starts this morning with a television interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, which will last nearly 30 minutes. Frost, who flew to Washington last week after months of negotiation, found a President unrepentant about any of his actions over the past year and able to deal with questions fluently and without pausing.
'He didn't trip over his words and he had an immediate answer to each question,' said one BBC executive who has seen the interview. 'He is not some buffoon, dazed and confused.'
Number 10 officials know that Bush's image in Britain can only improve because of the visit. First arranged in spring 2002 as an offer of solidarity after 11 September, Bush will also make a speech televised live from the Banqueting House about global politics. Figures close to Blair say that they hope such exposure will mean that more members of the public will begin to understand why Bush is a man with whom Britain can do business.
Bush also needs Blair. Republican advisers remember how well pictures of Ronald Reagan with the Queen played with American voters in the 1980s, giving him gravitas and an aura of statesmanship in a television-dominated electorate. Behind Bush's folksy comments last week on renting a morning suit for Buckingham Palace lies a hard-edged media opportunity.
Domestically, Bush knows that - as long as the trip goes without an upset - the resulting media coverage could give him a vital lift in the polls. The Democrats have already used his dubious standing abroad as a fruitful avenue of attack. The emergence of anti-war Howard Dean as the early front-runner in the Democrat primaries is now starting to loom large in the minds of Republican party election planners. The Bush-Blair 'magic' could provide an able defence, not least due to Blair's immense popularity in the US. 'This trip is a defensive move. The relationship with Blair will help undercut the Democrat critique,' said Haas.
Economic indicators are showing that America's economy is starting to roar into life and is beginning to produce jobs again. That will help dent Democrat criticisms that, under Bush's stewardship, more jobs have been lost than under any president since Hoover at the beginning of the Great Depression. For the first time in months, Bush's approval poll ratings have ticked up to 51 per cent after a steady drop all year. A great photo-opportunity with his closest ally could provide more momentum as his election team tries to turn around his presidency in time for start of the primaries in January.
But it will help only if the British visit is problem-free, and if riots and demonstrations do not dominate the coverage. And that is out of the hands of the American President.
The Government has insisted that operational control of the visit, which has been 17 months in planning, will remain with the Metropolitan Police, despite attempts by the Americans to wrest control from them. Scotland Yard has already confirmed that all police leave has been cancelled, ensuring that 5,000 officers will be on duty during next week's visit.
US advisers initially wanted to create an American-only bubble around the President, with all protection provided by the US military and special agents.
Some demands were so extreme that they were dismissed as complete fantasy by Ministers. These included shutting down all Tube lines that passed under the sites the President planned to visit during his trip, for fear of a suicide bomber blowing himself up deep under Bush's feet.
Home Secretary David Blunkett has also refused to give diplomatic immunity to any of Bush's entourage if they shoot a protester by accident. The Home Office has confirmed that US agents will be treated in exactly the same way as any other individual who commits a crime on British soil.
One particularly tricky piece of negotiation involved whether the Americans would be allowed to bring a piece of hardware known as a 'mini-gun'. This piece of weaponry would usually be carried as part of a mobile armoury in the presidential cavalcade. British officials have told the Americans that they can bring as many assault rifles as they wish, even a machine gun, but not the mini-gun, which is used in battle mounted on a tank. In return, the Americans have been given concessions, including closing off much of Whitehall: the usual police practice is to use outriders to close roads only for the time it takes for an entourage to pass.
A leaked internal memo sent to Cabinet Office staff warned of disruption caused by 'the President Bush vehicle entourage requesting cleared secured vehicle routes around London and the security cordons creating a sterile zone around him.' Whitehall staff have been instructed to work from home if possible for most of next week to allow Bush to travel through London in a bubble.
For all the friendship between Bush and Blair, there will be tensions between Britain and America. Washington and London held very different standpoints on the post-conflict situation in Iraq.
A series of warning by British officials in the run-up to the war were ignored by the US Administration. The stakes are huge for this week's visit. Bush's recent announcement of a so-called 'Bush doctrine' to bring democracy to the Middle East is going to be at the centre of their talks this week. 'I think they will spend quite a bit of time on how the transition of the Middle East will take place,' a senior administration official said.
Officials left little doubt that the problems in Iraq would dissuade Bush and Blair from their commitment to pushing for democratic reform across the region, something that has many critics worried about a new kind of 'domino theory' that led to many Third World conflicts during the Cold War.
'They're both leaders who are committed to the proposition that the spread of freedom is basic to a more secure world and to the ultimate defeat of terrorism... It's a great cause for Europe and America to carry out together. There is a very strong desire to discuss that in some detail,' a senior administration official said.
Some politicians and commentators wonder at how a leader of an ostensibly social democratic government of the Left can possibly get on with a Republican president draped in the cloak of neo-conservatism.
British politicians were yesterday keen to be pragmatic. 'The relationship is going to follow the power nexus,' Straw told The Observer . 'Unless you are actually saying, "Stop the world, we want to get off," there isn't anything that can be done about the fact that America has this power. The question is: how do we relate to America in the most constructive way possible and what influence can we bring to bear to ensure that this power is used for the better?
'What I have never seen is a coherent argument saying that we should gratuitously detach ourselves from the transatlantic relationship. Should we pick an argument where there isn't one? Should we resolve things with a shouting match?'
Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to Washington, has a unique insight into what bonds Bush and Blair.
'I first met Bush in Austin in 1998, when he was Governor of Texas. The first thing that struck me was that Bush was a politician to his fingertips. The notion that he was stupid or slow off the mark I always thought was a complete misreading.
'He wasn't particularly good with press conferences. He is not a natural orator and, certainly in the earlier debates, he seemed tongue-tied and wooden. But in private, it was clear that this guy was very smart, very quick to learn.
'He spoke about the importance of being loyal to friends and allies - always of course on the condition that they were loyal to you,' Meyer said. 'He struck a parallel with your personal life; in friendship, loyalty was absolutely paramount. He thought in a similar way to his relationship with world leaders, that there should be strong mutual loyalty.'
There are two routes from Buckingham Palace to Downing Street: the back route along Birdcage Walk, skirting the edge of Parliament Square before turning north into Whitehall, and the statesman's route, along the Mall, under Admiralty Arch, across Trafalgar Square, then south. The President will be taking the former.
So the first state visit by a serving American President since Woodrow Wilson, initiated in 1918 under very different circumstances, will not lead to the closing of the Mall. This is just another signal of the intense nervousness surrounding Bush's visit.
Rather than tour London in all his pomp, Bush will be whisked in a motor cavalcade numbering up to 30 vehicles, along the most direct and least visible of routes.
During his three-day visit, Bush will spend nearly all his time indoors, either at Buckingham Palace or in Downing Street. There is likely to be one trip outside the capital, to Sedgefield, Blair's constituency home.
This contrasts with Bill Clinton's visit to Birmingham in 1998. He dropped into the Malt House pub for a pint of Greenalls, not out of any sense of nostalgia for the English beer of his student days, but because it promoted an image of him back home as an 'ordinary Joe'. Bush is unlikely to have any such opportunity. Protesters are pledging to dog his every carefully orchestrated step.
Leaders of the anti-war movement say they are hoping for a 'good old-fashioned British-style compromise'. The main bone of contention is the route of Thursday's march and whether protesters will be allowed to cross to the south bank of the Thames and return across Westminster Bridge past Parliament and Whitehall. So far, the answer has been a firm 'No', but a further meeting tomorrow afternoon should resolve the matter.
With more than 60,000 protesters expected, Thursday's protest will be led by Americans opposed to both the war and the US president, march under the banner 'Proud of My Country, Shamed By My President'. The Americans will march alongside Vietnam veteran and peace activist Ron Kovic, whose life became the subject of the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.
Kovic, who was paralysed in Vietnam in 1968 while serving as a US Marine, said he was proud to return as a guest of the peace movement 30 years later.
'I see myself as an ambassador of the American peace movement to share my heartfelt thanks with the courageous British citizens who have rightly opposed this war. Nothing is more tyrannical than fighting a pre-emptive war that should never have been fought in the first place.'
Bush may not see any of them. He will climb aboard Air Force One after being seen off by the Queen. The airborne White House will climb into the skies above London, flanked by US jets. The visit will be over. Only history can judge whether the talks between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have made the world a safer place.
· Additional reporting by Tom Reilly and Jonathan Gray
