The idea of the special relationship has a Lazarus-like quality; it has successfully been revived twice since Dean Acheson declared it dead, first in the 1980s and again in the late 1990s. Under Blair and Bush, the special relationship came to depend on the alignment of British policy towards the central focus for US global strategy, the Middle East, even though British and American understandings of the underlying security issues across the region differed.
The British government and the British press have nervously welcomed the transition from President Bush to President Obama, a Democrat whose understanding of world politics seems much closer to British (and other European) views than his predecessor's but who comes into office without any of the sentimental attachment to the English-speaking peoples and the Anglo-Saxon legacy which- British commentators seem to believe-have given British leaders a special welcome in Washington for so long.
One of the greatest illusions in the contemporary British concept of the special relationship is that there remains a special and sentimental attachment to Britain, beyond shared interests and welcoming rhetoric. Many of those involved in the management of transatlantic relations in London see the tendency for British leaders to give way to sentiment (and to the glamour of Washington), while their American counterparts pursue underlying national interests, as the greatest imbalance in the relationship.
A further widespread illusion in London is that the tie with Britain is America's only special relationship, or even its most important one. To many in Washington, ‘the most special relationship of all is undoubtedly that with Israel, as politicians and analysts both recognize'. General James Jones, President Obama's National Security Adviser, has remarked that the most important bilateral relationship for the United States is now with China, given the interlinking of economic interdependence with security rivalry.
The US-UK special relationship is a security relationship. Its maintenance requires the British government to invest enough in military personnel, equipment and operations, and in intelligence resources, to justify continued access to US policy-making. The benefits from this investment must be measured in additional British influence over the direction and detail of US foreign policy and in the contribution this added influence makes to Britain's claim to ‘punch above its weight' in world affairs. If under the Obama presidency the global agenda shifts away from hard security issues to economic coordination, global environment, migration and health, Britain's contribution will be less distinctive.
The danger for British policy-makers is that a concern to maintain links seen as advantageous to Britain's global standing serves to constrain British choices-in foreign policy, in military procurement and deployment, and in other areas of national policy (such as extradition) where they might have an adverse impact on Washington's perception of the value of the partnership. This may now be of most concern in British defense policy.
Anxiety in London, in January 2009, over whether President Obama would meet the British Prime Minister before or after his German or French counterparts, and relief that his first phone call to a European leader was to Gordon Brown, indicates how dependent Britain's claim to global status is on Washington's approval. The Obama administration is interested in a partnership with the major European states collectively more than with the United Kingdom alone. All the indications from Washington are that the new administration wants to see closer cooperation in European defense, with Franco-British cooperation at its core.
A third revival of the special relationship may therefore prove impossible. The US National Intelligence Council's scenarios for the world in 2025 assume a coherent European partner, with scarcely a reference to bilateral relations with the UK. Hard decisions on defense spending, likely to be cut back as economic recession bites, should not be shaped disproportionately by arguments about what will meet with most approval in Washington. Ministerial refusal to account to parliament for the conditions under which US bases operate on British territory-an abnegation of British sovereignty far greater than any yet conceded to the EU-might constructively give way to public accountability. British foreign policy would then at last free itself from the legacy of a concept conjured up by Churchill 60 years ago.
Lord William Wallace of Saltaire is Deputy Liberal Democrat Leader and Spokesperson for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in the House of Lords, and Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics
Christopher Phillips is writing his PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics
A longer version appeared first under the title "Reassessing the special relationship" in International Affairs (March 2009). This shortened version is published with permission from the authors.
Related materials from the Atlantic Community:
- Jordan Michael Smith: Making Europe's Relationship With Obama More Than a Flirt
- Scott Michael Moore: A Multidimensional Approach for a Planet in Peril
- Matthew Yglesias: How to Repair Our Relationship with Europe
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April 2, 2009
Member deleted
The basis for Obama's movements away from a US-UK 'special' relationship may be based more upon the awareness of the reality of a world that is different from earlier patent versions of their influences in third-world states like India that such "left intelligentsia" represented. This can be seen in their rather patent, along with the peasantry-based "socialists" ( a rather staid form of the anti-west qua anti-modern forces and yes - the brothers-in-arms of the Taleban-esque forces that so govern life in the Indian sub-continent, including their fuelling of a pan-national religious movement - interestingly, cutting across religious lines) that usually are a far cry from their avowed 'ideological' positions.
As forces that have been undercutting the liberal-democratic structure within India (no one would argue that Bollywood films make for modernity including their underworld compulsions-nexus), amidst historical and cognitive confusions about 1. Hitler, 2. the Second World War, 3. the Aryan Race, 4. Circularity-of-underdevelopment as well as the geographical and civilizational confusions that had arisen with 1, 2, 3 & 4, it is interesting to find a certain distancing of particular 'special' relationships in a world that gives rise to such confusions and developments. Just an observation.
The idea that earlier fuelled certain sentiments - and they still do - the Voice versus Exit people sentiments in continental Europe, and the attempts via such indian universities and their patrons of mimicking the rabid malformed versions within India - and yes, one can sense certain rationale behind a growing internationalism in Obama's movements in Europe.
The other issues over energy-security, of course, goes without saying without reminders about the Ottoman Empire, since Turkey barely can raise such historical flags. Or rather, it barely thinks so, perhaps.
The rise of a resurgent Russia, amidst such confusions in some developing states, may also have contributed to Obama's wider angle lens coverage! Though, for a future that is more sharp in vision - a special relationship in the longer run may end up being automatically revived and much more strongly (though perhaps not as radically exclusionary as the Voice verus Exit people sentiments in Europe represent). That may come around with Europe's discovery for the need of some common languages and multiple-identities, as the EU deepens and strengthens its internationalism - withn the EU borders. Something that the British have had a long experience of - in their colonial reign across the globe.
The more the EU grows and matures, the less strident would be its arguments and sentiments about the Voice versus Exit people syndrome. Something that may help in making the US-UK special relationship redefined as a shared memory of a 'dčja vu' over the EU's newer realizations - of commonalities and differences.
The shared threat perceptions of a newer world - perhaps stands to make the US-UK expertise within the strictly trans-atlantic context more cogent in the near future - for a greater co-operation in the trans-atlantic community. The spirit, it is said, never dies.