Cecil Rhodes, the 19th century British businessman and the architect of Apartheid, once said that to be born an Englishman was to have “won first prize in the lottery of life”. On another occasion he said: “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”
Due to the efforts of arch racists and colonialists such as Rhodes – who complained he could not “annex the planets” and colonise the stars because they were too far – the English race has spread around the world, forming a virtual Anglosphere.
The US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – or the E-5 – are the five countries of the Anglosphere. Post World War II they became are so closely allied and their intelligence networks so well integrated that you could say the Anglosphere is a single country spread across five separate territories.
It is well known that their militaries are well synced but few are aware that all three US Army Corps have Canadian deputy commanders. Moreover, citizens of the Anglo nations serve as important exchange or liaison officers with top US commands.
The E-5 has jointly fought in almost all modern wars – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Their ability to stick together during conflicts is a key reason why group leader US is able to rush forces into conflict zones.
Because the US is assured of the near total acquiescence of its English speaking siblings, it provides a critical mass of support to actions undertaken by the Americans. It bears pressure on other leading western nations such as Germany and France to fall in line.
The UK, for instance, plays the role of trying to keep the Europeans in line with American policies. In a draft paper dated August 1968, the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office noted that one of its key objectives with regard to Anglo-US relations is “to ensure that the longer-term relationship between Europe (including the UK) and the United States remains as close as possible”.
In this regard, the FCO noted: “The Americans are gifted at representing American national interests as noble ideals which all should follow. Nevertheless it is very much in our and Europe’s interests to prevent the United States becoming a rogue elephant. We have to persuade all the Western Europeans, including in the long run France, that a close relationship with the United States is the only way of preventing this.”
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed the nature and extent of teamwork among the Anglosphere members. The Snowden papers show that most spying projects are carried about to assist the US and allies gather political and economic intelligence country-by-country around the world. The Five Eyes spying network – which scoops up phone, fax and email data on a global scale – has undoubtedly led to commercial, diplomatic and political benefits for all five Anglosphere members.
First among equals
Although the E-5 works closely with the wider western world – as shown in the invasions of Iraq and Libya – there are limits and boundaries within the West. Allies such as Germany, France and Italy are relegated to the status of outsiders who can’t be completely trusted and must be constantly spied on. The E-5 forms the inner circle; they are cousins; they do not spy on each other.
While taking part in a panel at the New America Foundation in March 2015, Gen Michael Hayden, a former NSA and CIA director, said only members of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance have the privileged status of America’s most intimate friends. In his opinion, other nations are shut out of that club indefinitely.
In this backdrop, it’s easy to see why non-Anglo Europeans are a target of Five Eyes spying. One of the reasons cited for continued spying against Germany is that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder “had opposed American policy in Iraq, and who seemed to have a strange and mutually productive relationship with Vladimir Putin”.
Crumbling fortress
However, the Anglosphere isn’t what it used to be. After the triumphant post-Cold War phase, in recent years there has been a palpable sense of economic and military decline in all the five English speaking countries. The rapidly growing clout of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) group has also unnerved them.
With their old dominance gone, they can no longer write the rules of global governance any more. Whether at the United Nations, G-20 or APEC, the E-5 are finding it next to impossible to push through policies that favour the Anglosphere. While Russia and China are the heavyweights manning the frontlines, they are getting key support from other emerging powers such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Argentina.
In the book America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It, Canadian author Mark Steyn sees the US and England “facing nothing so amiable and genteel as continental-style ‘decline’ but something more like sliding off a cliff”.
American arch-conservative politician and one-time presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan is horrified at the prospect of a diminished global status for the Anglosphere even as much of what was once the ‘Third World’ is roaring up the growth charts.
Buchanan’s book Suicide of a Superpower, about America’s decline, has been called racist and homophobic by critics, but it nevertheless has some grounding in reality. “America is disintegrating,” he screams. “The centrifugal forces pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What unites us is dissolving. And this is true of western civilization…. Meanwhile, the state is failing in its most fundamental duties. It is no longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars.”
On the other side of the world, The Australian newspaper laments that Canberra has become Asia’s coalmine, dependent on supplying commodity exports to emerging economies such as China: “We are to be attendants to an emerging empire: providers of food, energy, resources, commodities and suppliers of services such as education, tourism, gambling/gaming, health (perhaps), and lifestyle property.”
Perhaps the tipping point – when the Anglosphere’s fear turned into panic – was Russia’s aggressive diplomacy that blocked the US from bombing Syria. This is hardly a small matter. The English speaking world was baying for President Bashar al-Assad’s blood. “Hit him hard” The Economist, the British mouthpiece, headlined.
But the Russian block – with BRICS backing – stymied those plans. The Anglosphere realised the world had changed considerably since 2003, when Saddam Hussein was overthrown, with few countries daring to protest the illegal act.
Crimea and Ukraine are two other instances where the Anglosphere finds itself isolated.
With their dominant status now a thing of the past, the Anglosphere countries are staring at the prospect of international isolation and irrelevance. This is making them close ranks. In this backdrop, the five countries of British origin have been making a number of moves towards integration.
August 19, 2014. Following days of bitter racial riots in the American city of Ferguson, Missouri, the state’s Lt. Governor Peter Kinder lashed out at the rioters for seeking justice in the streets, and bizarrely demanded “Anglo American” justice. “One of the great advances of Anglo-American civilisation is we do not have politicised trials,” he declared.
May 20, 2014. The UK government announced that the US, UK, Australia and Canada are establishing combined space operations among their armed forces. “Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States have furthered their defence cooperation by establishing a partnership on combined space operations,” it said.
January 14, 2014. Canada’s defence department announced the formal signing of a long-term partnership with the US Department of Defence. Among other things “this partnership permits the Canadian Space Operations Centre to coordinate and share unclassified information and data in support of government agencies”.
November 21, 2013. The US Air Force Space Command announced it would relocate a tracking radar from Antigua to Australia. It would also deploy a new DARPA-developed optical telescope there. The telescope is especially useful for monitoring geosynchronous orbit where major spy satellites are located.
September 24, 2012. Britain and Canada announced they will establish joint diplomatic missions and share embassy offices abroad. The proposals involve ‘co-locating’ embassies and sharing consular services in countries where one of the nations does not have an embassy. Australia and New Zealand already have such an arrangement in place.
These developments are part of a growing trend where the Anglosphere is closing ranks to form a more cohesive unit to increase their weight in global affairs. Considering the US is still a very large economy and its military power projection capability is unmatched, there is a good chance the group could bounce back.
Checkmating the E-5 revival
The great rival of the war-obsessed Anglosphere was the Russian-led Soviet Union, which is now history. That leaves the BRICS as the only group with the ability to take on the Anglosphere. For, as surely as day follows night, the Anglos will come swinging back.
So it is imperative that somebody be in a position to stop the E-5 from trampling on small countries and destabilising larger ones. The good news is Russia and China are strongly committed to the BRICS becoming a more political group. Brazil – ever since Snowden revealed the US was spying on Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff – is also bitterly opposed to the US.
The problem country seems to be India. Earlier this year, it signed a $2.5 billion helicopter deal with the US, which had in December 2013 publicly arrested an Indian woman diplomat and then conducted a shameful – and unnecessary – cavity search on her.
Despite its involvement in the BRICS, India sometimes acts like a fence sitter. One explanation for India’s behaviour is two centuries of brainwashing and Anglicising. Only a brainwashed person could have said what India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in 2005: “If there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English-speaking peoples, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component.”
Like Singh, there are plenty of Indians suffering from delusions of Anglosphere goodness, and are prone to make such shameful and factually wrong statements. The good news is they are growing old and will disappear soon. The bad news is the Anglosphere can dangle carrots – such as university education, jobs, green cards etc – before the young generation.
The best defence against the Anglosphere’s re-emergence is for the BRICS to stick together. As they have shown in recent crises such as Crimea, Ukraine and Syria, this rainbow coalition can stop the Anglosphere elites. To be more effective, the BRICS must coalesc e into a political union and join their military forces to form a rapid reaction force. The Anglosphere can only beat small nations to pulp so a militarised BRICS isn’t a bad idea at all.
