Britain’s special relationship with the US — forged by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war — no longer exists, says a committee of influential MPs.
Instead, America’s relationship with Britain is no more special than with its other main allies, according to a report by the Commons foreign affairs committee published today.
The report also warns that the perception of the UK after the Iraq war as America’s “subservient poodle” has been highly damaging to Britain’s reputation and interests around the world. The MPs conclude that British prime ministers have to learn to be less deferential to US presidents and be “willing to say no” to America.
The report, entitled Global Security: UK-US Relations, says Britain’s relationship with America is “extremely close and valuable” in a number of areas, particularly intelligence co-operation. However, it adds that the use of the phrase special relationship, in its historical sense, “is potentially misleading and we recommend that its use should be avoided”.
It does not reflect the “ever-evolving” relationship between the two countries and raises unrealistic expectations, the MPs say. ~The Times
Via Scoblete and Kevin Sullivan
This is entirely appropriate and long overdue. Even the closest of allies will have different needs and interests, and successful alliances will both permit these differences and provide both parties with tangible benefits. It will ultimately be best for the United States and Britain if neither government can automatically take the other’s support for granted. As I have mentioned before, and as many Tories started realizing after the recent Falklands controversy, Britain has rarely been able to count on automatic American support, but Washington has assumed and readily received British support for whatever initiative it has been undertaking.
Had Britain under Blair not become a lockstep supporter of Washington’s line on anti-terrorism, nonproliferation and regime change, and if Washington had therefore not had the fig leaf of British support and the political capital that came from Blair’s endorsement of the invasion, it is remotely possible that the invasion might never have taken place. Regardless, it would have been entirely appropriate for Britain to have refused to participate in the war, as Britain’s role and its interests in the region are not identical to the U.S. role and interests as Washington understands them. What’s more, had Britain assumed the role of a critic and opponent of the invasion, that could have lent considerable weight to the antiwar case.
Britain would have been doing America a far greater favor by working to prevent our government from making a terrible blunder in 2003. Our best allies in 2002-03 were the allies that told us quite frankly that we were being fools. A British Atlanticism that reliably takes the U.S. side no matter what made it easier for the U.S. to embark on policies that harmed both Britain and the U.S. Uncritical backing of one state by another rarely works out well for either one, and that is made all the worse when this backing is justified with a lot of overwrought, sentimental rhetoric.
In the event that Cameron is able to form a government, I would hope that shadow foreign secretary William Hague recognizes that he and Tories like him were part of the problem the report describes. They might yet discover that sometimes the best way to be “pro-American” is to disagree with American administrations on occasion and to oppose them when necessary.
Randal 
MBunge 
Anonymous 
Matt 
jebbushell 
Amen to all that.
“They might yet discover that sometimes the best way to be “pro-American” is to disagree with American administrations on occasion and to oppose them when necessary.”
In fact, for the moment and the near future, the best way to be “pro-world” is to be anti-American, since the US is far and away the greatest force for evil in the world as a whole at the present time.
That will, of course, sound like hyperbole to those who live within the ever-present and all-pervasive shade of our self-congratulatory western propaganda. But to those who can perceive reality through the gloom, it is clear that while there are many superficially nastier regimes around the world, none currently has a fraction of the brute power and the willingness to interfere in other peoples’ business.
In the last decade the US has destroyed two nations by war, committed acts of terrorism, subversion and assassination in several others, continued to be the essential prop and protector of the root and cause of much of the suffering in the middle east (Israel), and exported the suffering caused by its own people’s incontinent abuse of recreational drugs to numerous other countries, inflicting its poisonous prohibition policies upon large parts of the world at the cost in the last few years alone of tens of thousands of deaths that we know of, as well as endless human misery and suffering.
At the moment, the truth is anti-American. Those who were formerly pro-American, like myself, and still retain a respect for what America and Americans once represented, can only hope that the American people will one day get a grip upon their government again, for their own sakes and for the sake of the world.