Dick Morris almost says the word “Anglosphere”

This remarkable article by Dick Morris is an excellent short analysis of Britain’s most promising future world role — primarily as America’s ally, in alliance with the other English-speaking countries — and not as a province of the EU. Morris notes that during the Cold War, and under Clinton’s econo-centric foreign policy, Britain was not able to play a leading role.

But, post 9/11, things have changed:

But September 11 shattered the assumptions that underlay Bill Clinton’s world view. Suddenly, terrorism became the pre-eminent problem and the military-diplomatic-intelligence matrix we need to confront it our dominant need.

In this construct, the size of one’s economy is no longer the admission card to the top levels of global leadership. Japan’s large economy is of little use in addressing these new priorities and Russia’s small one no impediment. Britain need no longer come as a diplomatic package with France and Germany.

In the new era, willingness to act counts for more than any other factor in attaining global power. The war against terror does not require a massive economy to sustain years of expensive combat, but a relatively small and proficient military, combined with political will – among leaders and voters alike – to use it.

The political lesson of the war in Iraq is that the people of America and Britain have far more in common with one another than do the British people with the French or the Germans.

Our common linguistic heritage, shared values, renunciation of appeasement as a policy option, commitment to do battle against injustice, and our essential optimism about the possibility of success make us partners in a way that continental Europeans, with their history of foreign occupation, can never hope to match.

This is all very solid stuff.

I have long been an admirer of Morris as an astute analyst of practical politics, despite his occasional lapses and howlers. (The prostitute-on-the-phone thing I chalk up to an unusually bad case of plain old human weakness in the sex department leading to a severe stupid attack. Not like lying under oath or anything.) And in recent years I have been pleased to see Morris’s progress as a bitter enemy of his former masters, the Clintons. His book Behind the Oval Office is gripping, an excellent insider’s “how to” book, and one of my favorite books on nuts-and-bolts politics.

Now, on one of the major issues of the day, though under-appreciated as such, Morris has tipped his hand. He is, at minimum, an Anglospherist “fellow traveller.” I’m glad to have him aboard. I hope he will in the future offer some sage thoughts on the practical politics of the Anglosphere project both here in America and in other places.

And maybe Morris will even use the “A word” next time. C’mon, Dick, just say it. This might help, repeat after me:

It’s here. It’s the Anglosphere. Get used to it.

(Thanks to Iain Murray for the heads up on this article. )