On Sat November 19 2005 09:35, Frank Pohlmann wrote: > Please take into account that it is just MY > perspective and I don't exactly have a lot more than > newspaper articles as evidence.
Well let me put down my thoughts: "Triumphalism", vis a vis Germany probably did exist in the UK as did similar attitudes towards most of the world. Living in the UK in the 80s I observed a very British sense of being contemptuous of competitor's products - like German or Japanese cars, and a tendency to quickly claim credit for successes while blaming some foreign entity for failures. For example a botched US military raid would be laughed at (in public, on TV), but a successful US military action would be publicised as "US forces that had trained with the British SAS" As an Indian I used to be very sensitive to what was being said w.r.t. to the Indian subcontinent - but Indians were too low on the British radar in the 1980s for any serious references to come up other than being dismissed as irrelevant. It seems to me that the embracing of the US by Britain is a desire to continue the impression of British glory, and not have to accept or admit the geopolitical decline of Britain over the years in comparison to powerful European (Germany, France) and non-Europen states.
