Is the “Special Relationship” with Great Britain on the Rocks?

With Brexit on the horizon and Prime Minister Theresa’s May’s invitation to Trump in limbo, we may ask, “What happened to the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States?”

 

Will it survive the Trump administration? After the London terror attack, President Trump tweeted about Mayor Sadiq Khan, causing Khan to oppose the president’s visit, and a petition signed by the British public asking that the invitation be rescinded. More recently, Trump’s Charlottesville comments that equivocated on white supremacy have also stirred outrage from America’s ally, as well as at home. Again the Prime Minister is being asked to snub the American president.

 

What’s the ‘special relationship’?

 

In a nutshell, the “special relationship” means that because England is the “parent” of America, America shares British DNA. America borrowed England’s language, representative government, its jury system and courts to protect rights. Because the two are related by culture and civilization, the American-British alliance is the strongest and most durable in the world. In the twentieth century, America fought alongside Britain in two hot wars and a cold one.

 

In the post 9-11 world, that special relationship remains a bulwark of global politics. British troops fought alongside Americans in Iraq for a decade and half.

 

Rocky beginnings

 

Hold on a second! Didn’t Americans hate and fight the Redcoats as sworn enemies?  Yes, in both the Revolution and the War of 1812. Even well into the 1800s, tensions flared up along the border in Oregon, in Texas, along the Canadian boundary and even into the Bahamas. The Yankees and the Limeys brawled more than once. So how did the almost-constant antagonists of the 1800s become BFFs of the 1900s?

 

It was thanks to the rise of Imperial Germany, with its huge navy and ambitions of empire, that the two former foes became allies.

 

During World War I, Germany lacerated Britain with submarines and schemed with Mexico to attack the U.S. If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” then the American-British alliance was solidified. The two allies prevailed over Germany in World War I and then again in World War II. After that, the threat of Soviet communism kept them in the same corner. The NATO alliance was begun.

 

Since 1946, the two countries went through more hell together. Hot spots and crises from every corner of the globe tested the special relationship. Britain and the U.S. were one another’s rock solid allies. The Falklands War of 1982 was Exhibit A.

 

Even the leaders’ names became inseparable. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.  George W Bush and Tony Blair. Barack  Obama and David Cameron.

 

But Donald Trump and Theresa May seems more remote.

 

What Brexit shares, and how it differs, from Trumpism

 

By now, you’ve heard of Brexit, the British exit from the European Union. It just means that Britain is withdrawing from trade deals and contracts with mainland Europe in order to go it alone economically. Britain doesn’t want imported workers from Poland driving down wages in the same way many American resist cheap labor from Mexico. It’s driven by the belief, which helped President Trump get elected, that other countries are eating your country’s lunch while your own weak leaders temporize. If Trumpism and Brexit have one thing in common, it’s economic nationalism.

 

President Trump’s chief beef is his claim that America’s allies mooch off America’s security dollar. Trump contends that the American taxpayer has been footing the bill for European security for decades, while “friends” like Britain and Germany clobber America economically in trade deals, taking Americans for suckers. German cars are everywhere in the U.S., but how many Fords are there in Germany?

So the Anglo-American alliance is on shaky ground. The people of each nation have decided to put their own interests first, like a married couple who each decide to go their own way. The split gives each nation more freedom. The question is, is each now stronger or weaker?

 

President Obama once deemed the special relationship as “essential.”  As with most other policies, President Trump is seeking to undo his predecessor’s legacy.  The special relationship will survive the Trump/Brexit upheaval (America won’t suddenly stop speaking English), but in what form, nobody can tell.

 

Did you learn something from this post? Please forward to your Anglophile friends and all other interested parties.