Latest news with #AmericanPower
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
The super-rich have done what protesters never could: taken over the US embassy in London
Until seven years ago, one of the key centres of American power in Europe was a few minutes' walk from the consumer frenzy of Oxford Street in London. Reassuring or enraging, depending on your view of American hegemony, for more than half a century the enormous US embassy, by far the largest in the capital, provided diplomatic, immigration and intelligence services – and an irresistible target for protesters. Its strikingly skeletal grey building on Grosvenor Square, which opened in 1960, became steadily more surrounded by fences, concrete blocks, bollards and other defences: signs of the increasing effort required to maintain the US's worldwide ascendancy. So it's strange to visit the square and find that all the defences have gone. You can walk right up to the building, as protesters never managed to in large numbers, on to pavements once menacingly guarded by the embassy's detachment of US marines, and peer through the rows of windows at an interior eerily transformed. Like the exterior, it has been almost entirely dismantled and then reconstructed over several years, its grey bones warmed and softened with a lavish new colour scheme based on gold. The signal being sent to visitors and passersby is not subtle. The building's new role is to serve those around whose needs and wishes the centres of London and other prestigious cities are increasingly being reshaped: the 1%. Staying at the Chancery Rosewood, as the former embassy is now known, will cost between £1,520 and £24,102 a night – the latter half the annual median salary in London – when the hotel's first guests arrive on 1 September. Among other amenities, they will have an 'immersive wellness area', 'courtesy Bentley cars' and a 'curated art exhibition with art concierge'. The combination of material ostentation, health micromanagement and exclusive cultural opportunities required by the very wealthy these days will be provided by a formerly American hospitality chain, now owned by a conglomerate based in Hong Kong. The building itself is owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. As so often in Britain, the ambition of some non-western countries to reverse their relationship with the old imperial powers is hiding in plain sight. Enclaves for ultra-wealthy guests are proliferating across a widening swathe of central London. Some of these hotels, such as Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) and the Waldorf Astoria London Admiralty Arch, follow a similar formula to the Chancery. Famous, well-located properties sold off by the state – the Old War Office and Admiralty Arch disposed of during the deep spending cuts by David Cameron's government – are having their history and faded grandeur commodified into something glitzier. By its final years, parts of the Grosvenor Square embassy were actually quite shabby, with worn carpets and frayed office furniture. Maintaining large government premises in expensive city-centre locations, exposed to protests or potential terrorist attack, can ultimately become unappealing for the state, not least because its revenues are limited by the reluctance of many of the 1% to pay their taxes. So the London boom in luxurious office-to-hotel conversions may have been partly prompted, in an indirect way, by the self-interest of some of those who now stay in them. As so often in the 21st century, the behaviour of the 1% feels impervious to satire or condemnation. Fifty-seven years ago, at the height of protests against the Vietnam war, Grosvenor Square filled with demonstrators, among them the leading activist Tariq Ali. In his memoir of the 1960s, Street Fighting Years, he recalls that he and his more excitable comrades 'dreamed' of forcing their way into the building, and 'using the embassy telex to cable the US embassy in Saigon and inform them that pro-Vietcong forces had seized the premises in Grosvenor Square'. Only mounted police charges and mass arrests saved the London embassy from invasion. Yet now luxury capitalism has managed to do what protesters could not, and take over the building from the spooks and diplomats. With Donald Trump transparently running the US for the benefit of the rich, it feels fitting that the building has become a place for them, rather than Americans in general. The hotel will be open just in time for his September state visit. Perhaps some of his wealthier supporters will take the opportunity to stay. For any guest who worries about the potential provocation of yet another elite hotel, operating at a traditional protest site, in a country in which most people are struggling with a seemingly endless cost of living crisis, the Chancery does have some discreet security. Cameras cover the hotel's perimeter, and guards circle the building after dark. Meanwhile a couple of miles to the south, in a new London landscape of residential towers and windswept roads at Nine Elms, the successor to the Grosvenor Square embassy stands in the middle of its own, far more extensive security zone, including a partial moat and a defensive wall disguised as a waterfall. The huge pale cube of the current US embassy dominates its neighbourhood even more than its predecessor did. It's also much further away from the usual routes of London political marches. Some protesters have already adjusted. Thousands of people supporting Palestine walked to the embassy in February, to show their fury at Trump's backing for Israel. The symbolic contrast between their defiant flags and flimsy placards and the fortress-like building did not work in the US's favour. The Grosvenor Square embassy may be gone, but the business of challenging the US goes on. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
22-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The super-rich have done what protesters never could: taken over the US embassy in London
Until seven years ago, one of the key centres of American power in Europe was a few minutes' walk from the consumer frenzy of Oxford Street in London. Reassuring or enraging, depending on your view of American hegemony, for more than half a century the enormous US embassy, by far the largest in the capital, provided diplomatic, immigration and intelligence services – and an irresistible target for protesters. Its strikingly skeletal grey building on Grosvenor Square, which opened in 1960, became steadily more surrounded by fences, concrete blocks, bollards and other defences: signs of the increasing effort required to maintain the US's worldwide ascendancy. So it's strange to visit the square and find that all the defences have gone. You can walk right up to the building, as protesters never managed to in large numbers, on to pavements once menacingly guarded by the embassy's detachment of US marines, and peer through the rows of windows at an interior eerily transformed. Like the exterior, it has been almost entirely dismantled and then reconstructed over several years, its grey bones warmed and softened with a lavish new colour scheme based on gold. The signal being sent to visitors and passersby is not subtle. The building's new role is to serve those around whose needs and wishes the centres of London and other prestigious cities are increasingly being reshaped: the 1%. Staying at the Chancery Rosewood, as the former embassy is now known, will cost between £1,520 and £24,102 a night – the latter half the annual median salary in London – when the hotel's first guests arrive on 1 September. Among other amenities, they will have an 'immersive wellness area', 'courtesy Bentley cars' and a 'curated art exhibition with art concierge'. The combination of material ostentation, health micromanagement and exclusive cultural opportunities required by the very wealthy these days will be provided by a formerly American hospitality chain, now owned by a conglomerate based in Hong Kong. The building itself is owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. As so often in Britain, the ambition of some non-western countries to reverse their relationship with the old imperial powers is hiding in plain sight. Enclaves for ultra-wealthy guests are proliferating across a widening swathe of central London. Some of these hotels, such as Raffles London at the OWO (Old War Office) and the Waldorf Astoria London Admiralty Arch, follow a similar formula to the Chancery. Famous, well-located properties sold off by the state – the Old War Office and Admiralty Arch disposed of during the deep spending cuts by David Cameron's government – are having their history and faded grandeur commodified into something glitzier. By its final years, parts of the Grosvenor Square embassy were actually quite shabby, with worn carpets and frayed office furniture. Maintaining large government premises in expensive city-centre locations, exposed to protests or potential terrorist attack, can ultimately become unappealing for the state, not least because its revenues are limited by the reluctance of many of the 1% to pay their taxes. So the London boom in luxurious office-to-hotel conversions may have been partly prompted, in an indirect way, by the self-interest of some of those who now stay in them. As so often in the 21st century, the behaviour of the 1% feels impervious to satire or condemnation. Fifty-seven years ago, at the height of protests against the Vietnam war, Grosvenor Square filled with demonstrators, among them the leading activist Tariq Ali. In his memoir of the 1960s, Street Fighting Years, he recalls that he and his more excitable comrades 'dreamed' of forcing their way into the building, and 'using the embassy telex to cable the US embassy in Saigon and inform them that pro-Vietcong forces had seized the premises in Grosvenor Square'. Only mounted police charges and mass arrests saved the London embassy from invasion. Yet now luxury capitalism has managed to do what protesters could not, and take over the building from the spooks and diplomats. With Donald Trump transparently running the US for the benefit of the rich, it feels fitting that the building has become a place for them, rather than Americans in general. The hotel will be open just in time for his September state visit. Perhaps some of his wealthier supporters will take the opportunity to stay. For any guest who worries about the potential provocation of yet another elite hotel, operating at a traditional protest site, in a country in which most people are struggling with a seemingly endless cost of living crisis, the Chancery does have some discreet security. Cameras cover the hotel's perimeter, and guards circle the building after dark. Meanwhile a couple of miles to the south, in a new London landscape of residential towers and windswept roads at Nine Elms, the successor to the Grosvenor Square embassy stands in the middle of its own, far more extensive security zone, including a partial moat and a defensive wall disguised as a waterfall. The huge pale cube of the current US embassy dominates its neighbourhood even more than its predecessor did. It's also much further away from the usual routes of London political marches. Some protesters have already adjusted. Thousands of people supporting Palestine walked to the embassy in February, to show their fury at Trump's backing for Israel. The symbolic contrast between their defiant flags and flimsy placards and the fortress-like building did not work in the US's favour. The Grosvenor Square embassy may be gone, but the business of challenging the US goes on. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
Bloomberg
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Trump Is Opening a New Chapter in US Foreign Policy
Nearly six months into Donald Trump's presidency, a Trump Doctrine is coming into view. Contrary to the fears of his critics, and the hopes of some admirers, Trump is no isolationist. And contrary to those who claim Trump is simply a marvel of ac hoc-ery and inconsistency, there is a distinctive pattern to the policies he has pursued. This Trump Doctrine emphasizes using American power aggressively — more aggressively than Trump's immediate predecessors — to reshape key relationships and accrue US advantage in a rivalrous world. In doing so, Trump has blown up any talk about a post-American era. Yet he has also raised troubling questions about whether his administration can wield America's outsized influence effectively and keep it strong. The isolationist label has long followed Trump, but it's never accurately described an idiosyncratic man. Yes, Trump disdains core elements of US globalism, from the international trade system America established to its promotion of democratic values and its defense commitments around the world. Yet Trump has also argued that America should assert itself more forcefully in a cutthroat world. And today, as Trump pursues a capacious view of presidential power at home, he is offering an equally ambitious conception of American power abroad.
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
America made a catastrophic mistake with the Iraq war. Is it about to repeat it in Iran?
Two decades ago, as Americans debated whether their country should invade Iraq, one question loomed the largest: did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? If so, the implication was that the United States should disarm and overthrow his regime by military force. If not, Washington could keep that option in reserve and continue to contain Saddam through economic sanctions and routine bombings. In time, the implications of the Iraq war far exceeded the boundaries of the original debate. Saddam, it turned out, had no weapons of mass destruction. But suppose he had possessed the chemical and biological agents that the war's advocates claimed. Invading his country to destroy his regime would have given him the greatest possible incentive to use the worst weapons at his disposal. The war would have been just as mistaken — more so, in fact. For the same reason, the matter of WMD hardly explains the war's genesis or its ultimate consequences. The advocates of invasion, it is true, didn't want Saddam to build his supposed arsenal and potentially go nuclear. More important, however, they saw an opportunity to assert America's dominance on the global stage after the country was struck on 9/11. They wanted to remake the Middle East and demonstrate American power. That they did, just not as they hoped. Today the United States government, under President Donald Trump, is again weighing whether to use military force against a Middle Eastern country that was not preparing to attack the United States. This time the decisive question is supposed to be whether Iran was building a nuclear weapon and reaching some ill-defined point of no return. If you answer yes, you therefore favor US strikes on Iranian enrichment facilities and possibly much else. After all, the United States has long maintained that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, and if that goal cannot be achieved by diplomacy — even if America's ally Israel may have spoiled that diplomacy — it must be attempted by force. The American public should resist such thinking, which does not make sense. Iran, according to US intelligence, was not on the verge of producing a useable nuclear device. It was giving itself that option, producing highly enriched uranium, but had not yet decided to obtain a weapon, much less undertaken the additional steps needed to construct one. For the past two months, Iran had been in diplomatic negotiations with the Trump administration, and both sides appeared to be getting closer to a deal that would drastically curtail Tehran's enrichment of uranium and prevent any path to the bomb. Then Israel attacked. It acted less to preempt an Iranian bomb than to preempt American diplomacy. A new nuclear deal would have lifted sanctions on Iran's battered economy, helping it to recover and grow. A deal would have stabilized Iran's position in the Middle East and potentially strengthened it over time. Precisely by succeeding in preventing Iran from going nuclear, a deal would have advanced Iran's integration into the region, accelerating the wary rapprochement Tehran had achieved with its historic rival, Saudi Arabia, over the past two years. The specific deal under discussion, which envisaged bringing Iran into a regional consortium to enrich uranium, would have kick-started the process. From there, who knows: perhaps the United States might normalize relations with Iran and, having rid itself of its main regional enemy, finally act on the desire of successive bipartisan presidents, Trump included, to pull back from the Middle East. This was the outcome that would have best served the interests of the United States. This was the outcome Israel acted to prevent. To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a formidable, normalized, and non-nuclear Iran was the threat that mattered most. Attacking Iran, by contrast, presented an opportunity — to cripple and perhaps even overthrow the Islamic Republic, whose best air defenses Israel had disabled the previous year, after Iran's strongest regional allies in Lebanon and Syria crumbled in spectacular fashion. Israel does not know, because no one can, what kind of Iran will emerge from the wreckage: whether it will be more aggrieved or less, nuclear armed or not, a functioning state or a cauldron of chaos. Netanyahu took a gamble nonetheless, figuring the United States would finish his job, clean up his mess, or both. Even if Iran were speeding toward a nuclear weapon, even if diplomacy had been exhausted, the threat of a nuclear Iran should not be inflated. Suppose for a moment that Iran went nuclear, which it may well do now that the absence of such a deterrent left it vulnerable to attack. If Iran got the bomb, the United States, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Israel, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Iran would go nuclear to ensure the survival of its regime. Firing nuclear weapons at Israel would assure Iran's destruction. Iran is unlikely to do that. Make no mistake: for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is entirely undesirable. It could trigger the further spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and beyond. Iran could resume its destabilizing and destructive activities, targeting US interests and allies, assured that no one would dare to strike at the regime. The United States has rightly invested considerable effort, over decades, to prevent an Iranian bomb. But is that objective worth war? Our war? This war? If the United States joins Israel's fight to try to finish Israel's job, it will enter into a war of unknowable scope against a country of 90 million people in a region of marginal strategic significance. Iran may well retaliate against Americans, triggering a large-scale, open-ended conflict. In the absolute best-case scenario, the war would quickly end in an Iranian capitulation so complete that Israel would be content to stop shooting. What then? Iranians won't forget being attacked. Israelis won't trust the country they attacked but left intact. And Americans will see that no matter whom they elect — even on the slogan of 'America first' — their leaders refuse to take control of events and act on the national imperative to leave Middle East wars behind and focus instead on the great many unsolved and worsening problems that will actually decide America's fate. If, on the other hand, the United States steps back from the brink, it will open up new possibilities. Of valuing the well-being of Americans over the hatred of distant demons. Of no longer living in permanent, insatiable fear. Of getting out of the position from which a rogue ally can obstruct America's efforts, determine its national agenda, and damage its civic life. Those are the possibilities worth fighting for. Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
