Et tu, Britain?
This is what a lot of Americans are thinking with the news that a British parliamentary committee has pronounced the special relationship ‘dead’.
Actually, one of the wonderful things about a special relationship is that it has more lives than a cat. Brits and Americans have been pronouncing the special relationship dead since the Suez Crisis, when the United States demanded that Britain end its invasion of Egypt. LBJ was furious with Harold Wilson — and vice versa — over the Vietnam War. Margaret Thatcher was furious when Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada (a member of the British Commonwealth whose official head of state is Queen Elizabeth II) without giving her so much as the courtesy of a phone call. Later, George H. W. Bush pushed the reunification of Germany against the combined objections of Thatcher and French president Francois Mitterand.
Yet somehow the relationship survived, and somehow it continued to be special — a relationship that, for all its drama and frequent disappointments, is like no other international relationship in the world.
Bulldog or Poodle?
But as Winston Churchill (who coined the phrase back in 1946) would have surely understood, the British and Americans, divided by the possession of a common language, understand the meaning of the phrase in different ways. For the Brits, ‘special relationship’ means more than a special feeling of connection or a persisting parallelism in our interests; it is a strategic idea. By sticking close to the United States, successive British governments have hoped that they could gain special influence over the United States, and that influence or the perception of it would contribute to Britain’s own power and prestige in the wider world.
This vision for the relationship has always led to disappointment; even Winston Churchill was shocked by the ease with which Franklin Roosevelt ignored (or actively opposed) Britain’s imperial goals during World War Two. When furious British pundits and politicians asked what Tony Blair got as ‘payoff’ for supporting the United States in the Iraq War, they were looking at the special relationship from this characteristically British point of view. Was Britain’s support for the US paying off? Was the United States giving Britain something valuable in return for its support? Was Britain’s prestige enhanced by its closeness to the United States?
The answer in the Iraq case was no and, as the parliamentary committee observed, Britain actually lost prestige in the world to the degree that the country was regarded as an “American poodle.”
When the parliamentarians tell Brits to give up on the special relationship, they mean that Britain should give up on the dream that fawning dependence on the US will make it somehow stronger and richer. The United States is not willing to pay a high price for British support, and so Britain should make foreign policy with less deference to Washington’s wishes and more attention to its own needs.
I can’t disagree; it’s going to be rare that Britain can extract major concessions from the United States in this way and in any case neither the British nor we would consider that kind of relationship either honorable or appropriate.
Together: Like It Or Not
But the special relationship is not really a matter of favors received and favors bestowed. The United States and Great Britain have a special relationship because our views of the world and our interests are so similar (though they are far from identical) that more often than not we both want the same things. This is no secret; the rest of the world knows that the two of us (along with the other ‘cousins’ in Canada, New Zealand and Australia and, increasingly, Ireland) will constantly bicker, but more often than not we end up on the same side.
Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s entry into the European Union because he thought Britain was a “Trojan horse” that would introduce American ideas and priorities into the inner councils of Europe. He was right. Ever since the British got into the club (after de Gaulle gave up the French presidency), they have worked to make the EU more ‘Anglo-Saxon’. They work for freer markets and they fight the centralization of power in Brussels. They steadfastly support expansion, partly to dilute the power of France and Germany in the club, and partly because they know that a wider EU will be less likely to grow into the kind of ‘superstate’ which would erode Britain’s own independence.
Globally, Britain and the United States agree far more often than they differ. We both like free trade, financial market regulation that is only as restrictive as it absolutely has to be, and we care deeply about the free flows of investment and ideas. We don’t object to the development of regional associations (like ASEAN, the EU and so forth) but we want these regional organizations to remain open to the rest of the world. We both dislike illiberal regimes; we like to see regional balances of power; we combine aspirations for a more peaceful world with a belief that force is sometimes necessary. We both like capitalism more than other people (perhaps in Britain the English like it more than the Scots these days) and over the centuries we have both been pretty good at it.
There are significant differences between us as well. The British establishment and the British equivalent of the federal government are much stronger than their counterparts in the United States. Overall the Brits (and especially the Scots) are a bit to the left of Americans, and social class matters more there than it does here. (Race matters less in the UK than in the US — but relations between some of Britain’s Muslims and the rest of society are significantly more difficult than in the US.) But while these and other differences are real and important, the resemblance between the two countries is so strong and the parallelism in their interests so obvious that diplomats from all over the world assume that most of the time the US and the UK will stand pretty close to each other on the major issues of the day.
This is not going to change anytime soon, and the parliamentary committee that called the special relationship over acknowledged as much. As they say in their conclusions:
We conclude that the UK has an extremely close and valuable relationship with the US in specific areas of co-operation, for instance in the fields of intelligence and security; that the historic, trading and cultural links between the two countries are profound; and that the two countries share common values in their commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law. (Paragraph 48)
The committee calls less for deep changes in the relationship than for the Brits to stop analyzing it incessantly, and to stop expecting a quid for every quo. Additionally, the parliamentarians complain, endless press fascination with the personal chemistry between particular British prime ministers and American presidents is not helpful.
This is all in all pretty sensible — not that it’s going to work. No matter what earnest parliamentary committees write the British press will continue to speculate about the personal chemistry between prime ministers and presidents, and Britons looking for signs that their country still matters in the world will look for signs of British influence over American policy.
But Americans should not take our relationship with Britain lightly. Britain, Canada and Australia remain our closest and most trusted allies. Given the common history, language, legal systems and interests that we share, nobody understands us better than they do — and nobody is more likely to be there for us when the dark hour comes. Honoring these relationships and ensuring that they flourish is one of the ways that we demonstrate that we pay our debts and recognize our friends. It’s worth repeating something I wrote earlier in the week: doing well by our existing best friends is one of the best ways to attract new ones.
Europe and The Special Relationship
Yet if that relationship is to have a future, both the American and British sides need to think more creatively about what we can do together to advance our common interests and vision. The key may well be what Charles de Gaulle feared all those years ago: working together on Europe.
For the Brits, Europe and the EU have been an enormous frustration. The European Union at its core is an agreement between France and Germany. As such it gave continental Europe some independence from the United States during the Cold War; it also consigned Britain to the fringes of the European political system. For centuries the British had worked to defend the interests and liberties of smaller countries in Europe as part of a grand strategy that preserved the balance of power in Europe to enable the British to build a worldwide system of power and trade. The British had always been able to count on the jealousy of the European powers; the weaker powers would fear the strongest, and willingly cooperate with Britain to limit the power of an aspiring hegemon.
The rise of the Franc0-German alliance and the EU challenged all the assumptions of British policy in Europe. With Germany tamed (partly because the ongoing American presence in Europe reassured the other countries, including France, that German economic power would not lead to a resurgent Germany that would threaten its neighbors’ security), the two largest west European powers, France and Germany, formed a durable alliance. With the American security umbrella over everyone, the smaller European countries were willing to cooperate as well, and the EU gradually took shape.
From an American point of view this was an excellent thing: no more wars in western Europe — but the EU showed (and shows) no signs of becoming a great power rival to the US. From the British point of view, it is a little trickier. The EU is so advantageous (a continental free market), that Britain can’t stay out, but Britain’s political position in the EU is so difficult that the arrangement remains unsatisfactory and troublesome. More than fifty years after the Treaty of Rome, both France and Germany continue to pay more attention to each other than either does to Britain. The EU is a tougher issue for Conservatives (whose voters tend to be more oriented toward sovereignty and free markets) than for Labour, but EU relations test all British governments, and the country is constantly agonizing over whether to join up with new European projects or stay out.
The United States can help Britain solve its Europe problem while advancing our own interests there. The expansion of the EU from the original six who formed the European Community back in 1957 (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and tiny Luxemburg) has reduced the power of the Franco-German core. The new members in central and eastern Europe are instinctively worried about both Russia and Germany — and they don’t trust France as to protect their interests. These countries, still in recovery from communism, also tend to embrace a more aggressively capitalist economic model than much of western Europe; they are hungry to grow.
Britain and the United States are the natural partners of these countries. The Americans want to ensure their independence as part of our own vision for European and Atlantic cohesion and security. The British can and should be their natural allies within the EU. To ensure fair treatment for the new members of the union and to throw Britain’s weight behind them will help rebalance political power in the union, shift both its economic and its political policies in directions that redound to both British and American benefit, and give Britain something it has needed ever since the loss of Empire: a role.
It is not the job of the United States to meddle in the internal affairs of the European Union, much less to tell Britain how to manage its European policy. Nevertheless, from the admission of Turkey to the reform of the EU’s trade-distorting and grossly unjust system of agricultural subsidies, the US and the UK share some important interests in the outcome of EU debates.
After the upcoming British election, the United States should urge Britain to develop a strategic plan for Europe involving closer, deeper ties with natural allies in the EU, and as that plan develops, the United States to look for ways to put our weight behind it, encouraging our friends in the EU to work closely with Britain. The goal is not an anti-French or anti-German network; the goal is the classic British agenda in Europe — the protection of the rights and interests of smaller states.
Helping Britain develop and implement a serious, long term European strategy is good politics and good policy for the United States no matter who wins the next British elections. If the Conservative party forms the new government, this kind of approach could be particularly useful. Putting America’s weight behind a sensible British strategy in Europe, one worked out with other Atlantic-minded members of the EU, will strengthen the western alliance and promote openness, growth and reform in Europe.
All this won’t, as de Gaulle feared, weaken Europe. It will make Europe stronger, wealthier and more respected in the world. It’s win-win-win, for the US, the UK and for both the old and the new members of the EU.