Why Is Britain Fighting In Afghanistan?

British forces are currently engaged in a bloody fight against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. They are once again joining with their American allies ( including this time some of their EU partners) in a tough struggle. In fact, as has the American side the British have been ramping up their troop numbers and taking on, also again, the second leading position in this fight.

What is so surprising about the British effort in Afghanistan is that they are there at all, or in at least such comparatively large and increasing numbers---all while suffering casualties at a faster rate than they suffered in Iraq. After all, Prime Minister Tony Blair frankly ruined his political career by taking Britain into the Iraq War and then following President Bush’s lead through some very bad times for several years. He was frequented derided as “Bush’s poodle”.

Gordon Brown has, of course, now replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister. But his political stature is no higher than Blair’s at the end of his ten years as PM. In fact, the Labour Government overall, in its twelfth year in power, is politically bankrupt and seemingly headed for a massive defeat by the middle of next year when its third straight 5 year term of office (Prime Ministers in Britain can decide when the next election occurs but no longer than 5 years from the previous election which was in 2005).

So what’s going on? Why has such a deeply unpopular Labour government headed by a deeply unpopular Prime Minister Brown taken such a political risk. At bottom joining the war in Afghanistan is really not much more popular than Iraq, and we all know how little support that war had at its end.

The answer, it would seem, lies in some unusual political realities. First of all, though British voters dislike Iraq and Prime Minister Blair’s commitment to George Bush, they still like the United States, and most importantly regard the alliance with the United States as of paramount importance to maintain.

Second, while they generally want British Governments to be more careful in their commitments to American leadership, they do buy into the notion of fighting terrorism, which has touched the British people in very personal ways. There was the thirty years of trouble with IRA bombing at times in Britain and even in the Houses of Parliament and then there have been several terrorist incidents in London and around the United Kingdom over the last several years. These all highlight importantly a sense of terrorist danger, worth fighting against.

Finally, there is the issue of political support: the opposition Conservative Party which is likely to win the next election is even more supportive of the fight in Afghanistan then Gordon Brown’s Labour Party. So Brown can count on Conservative help to bolster British participation in the War, and in fact, creates a political necessity for Brown to be doing everything he can in support of British security.

So, in the end, British action in Afghanistan is another example of the fundamental special relationship between Britain and American that has persisted to some degree or another since after the War of 1812 when the British burned down the White House.