Britain: The Shadows of Suez; Thanks to Iraq, the 'special relationship' will never again be the same.

Byline: Stryker McGuire

The year was 1956, in the twilight of the British Empire. A crisis loomed in the Middle East. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, had nationalized the Suez Canal. Prime Minister Anthony Eden was determined to stop him--and 50 years ago last week sent an invasion force into Egypt. But the United States interceded. Washington saw Britain's Suez adventure as blind imperial hubris. It also feared a wider war if the Soviet Union intervened on Egypt's behalf. "You ain't going to get another dime from us until you've gotten out of Suez," U.S. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey told London. Within weeks, Britain had withdrawn its troops.

But what happened when a modern Suez, in the form of the invasion of Iraq, came along in 2003? Where was a sober Britain to rein in President George W. Bush? Nowhere. Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair cheered Bush on in a cause they embraced with equal fervor. Suez marked a turning point in British history: the foreign-policy establishment vowed never again to be on the opposite side of the United States in an overseas crisis. But Iraq is turning Suez dogma on its head. Whitehall's new doctrine: better to be out of step with the Americans than to follow blindly.

This is a historic shift. Blair remains unswervingly "shoulder to shoulder" with Bush. But in the depth and fervor of his allegiance to U.S. foreign policy, the prime minister stands virtually alone. Once Blair stands down next year, the two British political leaders likely to set the tone of future U.S.-U.K. relations have both adopted subtly cooler views toward Bush in particular and U.S. foreign policy in general.

Tory opposition leader David Cameron took none other than the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to warn against a "slavish" relationship with America. As for his rival for Downing Street, Chancellor of ...