How much longer can the Anglo-American alliance last?

Answer 1

Sorry, but this article says it all so much better than I could.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1961433,00.html

Oceans apart


Tony Blair has been mocked for his belief in the 'special relationship' - and now a US State Department official has come out and dismissed it as a myth. So what future is there for the transatlantic friendship? John Harris investigates

Friday December 1, 2006
The Guardian


Back in 1988, when George W Bush worked as a political aide to his dad, and Tony Blair was just a promising shadow trade and industry spokesman, Channel 4 screened A Very British Coup, the tale of a socialist prime minister named Harry Perkins who arrives in Downing Street promising to move away from the so-called special relationship between Britain and the US by evicting the American military from its British bases. This does not go down well. "We lost China in 1949 and got by," fumes the fictional (and unnamed) US president. "We lost Vietnam in 1975 and got by. But if we lose Britain, we're done for." The CIA thus teams up with MI5 and the forces of multinational capitalism and brings the Perkins project to an inglorious end.

Two decades on, were Perkins to come back to life, he might feel oddly vindicated. On this side of the Atlantic, the war in Iraq and antipathy to Bush have done their work: according to a recent Guardian/ICM poll, 63% of us think Blair "has tied Britain too closely to the US" and this newspaper also reported that 69% of the British respondents to an international survey believed that Bush was a greater threat to world peace than either North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il or Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Meanwhile, the dependably opportunistic David Cameron has been heard claiming that the UK must not be an "uncritical" or "slavish" ally of America, and that recent US foreign policy has lacked "humility and patience". Somewhere in the modern British psyche there perhaps still lurks the dreamy figure of a prime minister who might, at least occasionally, tell Washington where to get off - as in Love Actually, when Hugh Grant's premier sticks it to Billy Bob Thornton's president as follows: "I love that word 'relationship'. Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship . . . And since bullies only respond to strength, from now on, I will be prepared to be much stronger."
In British cinemas, the scene was occasionally greeted with spontaneous applause - yet as David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, later pointed out, the people who clapped "knew that the Love Actually moment was as improbable under Tony Blair, or any modern prime minister, as Don Corleone's ascension to the papacy".

In Washington, meanwhile, the hard realities of US-UK relations occasionally bubble to the political surface. This week, a senior State Department official named Kendall Myers - perhaps freed from the usual decorum by the fact that he is apparently "considering retirement" - offered a blunt critique of the UK's transatlantic clout at an academic event in Washington. The special relationship, he claimed, was a "myth" of around 60 years standing ("The poodle factor did not begin with Tony Blair," he said, "it began with Winston Churchill"), cruelly pointed up by the celebrated occasion in 2003 when Blair was desperately trying to convince his party to back plans for an attack on Iraq, but the ever-tactful Donald Rumsfeld said that the UK's help was not necessarily required. "I feel a little ashamed . . . that we treated him [Blair] like that," said Myers. "And yet there it was - there was no payback, no sense of reciprocity in the relationship."

Around Westminster, however, such illusions still prevail. The special relationship - a phrase first uttered in 1946, in the same Churchill speech that contained the first mention of the Iron Curtain - remains all but uncontested, and such matters as the role of UK bases in Bush's "Son of Star Wars" programme or the fact that there are American nuclear weapons in rural East Anglia barely intrude on mainstream politics. Instead, give or take the arguments about Iraq, the political class unanimously accepts the alleged benefits of close ties: privileged access to high-end intelligence, the vital role of the US in the upkeep of British nuclear weapons (without which they would effectively be useless), and the fact that the special relationship allows a medium-sized ex-imperial country to punch above its weight. Such is the background to recurrent bits of political theatre: from Blair's gushing speech to both Houses of Congress in 2003 to Condoleezza Rice's sojourn with Jack Straw in Blackburn, undertaken just a few months before he lost his job as foreign secretary - when whispers circulated that it was a nudge from Washington that did for him.

Ask the right kind of people the question that most of our politicians choose to ignore - what would life without the special relationship actually be like? - and you find yourself listening to a mixture of counterfactual history and excited future-gazing. Some go back to the Euro-centric rule of Edward Heath (who, in the words of Henry Kissinger, attempted nothing less than "a revolution in Britain's postwar foreign policy") and enthuse about the possibility of the UK allying itself with a newly powerful Europe and realising that stepping out of Washington's shadow brings all kinds of benefits. Others sketch out a vision of Britain commencing an era-defining showdown with the US, and reinventing itself as an impartial international mediator. Perhaps most fascinatingly, one or two supporters of the special relationship - including some who have recently observed transatlantic dealings at very close quarters - claim that the bond that Blair and Bush have built is an aberration, and that we can actually approach the Americans with a robustness that would not cause the grief that some people imagine.

On the face of it, Sir Rodric Braithwaite does not fit the profile of a special relationship sceptic. A veteran of the Foreign Office who served as British ambassador in Moscow, John Major's foreign policy adviser and the chairman of the government's joint intelligence committee, in 2003 he wrote in Prospect magazine that there was "a good deal less to the special relationship than meets the eye" and that it increasingly amounted to "an emotional comfort blanket for a declining power" (Britain, that is). Three years on, his convictions have only hardened. "What the special relationship does in terms of the national interest - if anyone can tell you what that is - is rather doubtful," he says. "If we were in the same position as, say, Germany, would we be any worse off? It's partly a question of self-perception and identity: we think of ourselves as being different from the wimpish Europeans, and if we stopped punching above our weight, we wouldn't be different. I don't think that would be such a bad thing, but you won't find many people in Whitehall who'd agree."

On the supposedly indispensable benefits of our cosiness with Washington in terms of international espionage, he is hesitant. "The intelligence cooperation with the US is extremely useful to us, and somewhat useful to the Americans. If we didn't have it, our intelligence capabilities would be probably [still] better than the Germans and the French, but not by an order of magnitude. And the question then is, Would that matter? Look at Iraq. With most of these things, you actually don't need all that much intelligence; you need common sense, which is a different kind of intelligence. You certainly don't need a lot of secret stuff which turns out to be wrong." On the subject of anti-terrorist activity, he is more equivocal, though no more convinced that the current special relationship brings essential benefits that would fall away without it: "The fact is, that's an area where the Americans need partners as much as we need them. If they're going to track a terrorist who comes from the Middle East via eastern Europe and Britain to America, they need the cooperation of a lot of people."

When it comes to nuclear weapons, visions of uncoupling Britain from the US ignore a few realities that our senior politicians never mention. As Dan Plesch, the London-based academic and author who has made it his business to shine light on these things, points out, Britain's current nuclear weapons system (and, indeed, the one that looks likely to replace it) is umbilically linked to the US. The missiles themselves are leased from the US government. They depend on American maintenance - carried out at a base in King's Bay, Georgia - and American software. All this has one crucial upshot: though we got them on the cheap, paying as little as a 10th of the sum they would have cost if we built and maintained them ourselves, they fail what Plesch calls "the 1940 test": if we were at war without the say-so of the US, we probably couldn't use them. "The current system is like an insurance policy that the insurer can take away if they don't want you to use it," he says. "And how bad a deal is that?"

Without the Americans, therefore, Britain could either take a bold step into nuclear collaboration with the French - or, as Plesch argues, adjust to life as a non-nuclear power. In his view, the absence of the weapons would be a worthwhile price for liberating Britain from stifling US dominance. "We would have a much clearer and honest position in the world," he says. "On that basis, you could do things like arresting General Pinochet and actually keeping him in jail. Wasn't that one of the moments when we felt proud of New Labour, when Britain was behaving as Britain was supposed to behave? Well, we could feel like that a great deal more."

Underlying Plesch and Braithwaite's outlines of life beyond the special relationship, there's the sense of a once emotionally charged subject being recast as a matter of level-headed debate. With the cold war now a fading memory, talking about a move away from the US no longer conjures up a Britain vulnerable to the Red Menace, but the less sensational prospect of a closer relationship with the EU. The UK would still be a member of the G8, and we would hang on to our permanent seat on the UN security council (indeed, distancing ourselves from the US might make some countries more relaxed about it). Somewhere in their arguments, there also lurks an under-appreciated effect of globalisation: that with power blocs long superseded by the dominance of the free market, the idea that shifting our foreign policy would bring economic ruin looks very old-fashioned.

For some people, however, a break with the US has always been couched in slightly more dramatic terms. Tony Benn, the leftwing idol who quit parliament in 2001 to give himself "more time to devote to politics", begins, "You have to look at all this historically, don't you?", whereupon he tumbles through a story that starts with the colonial rule of George III being overthrown by "a terrorist called George Washington" and ends with the Bush/Blair compact. "Now, America is an empire," says Benn (whose son Hilary now defends Britain's role in the Iraq war and liaises with the New Rome in his capacity as international development secretary). "It's got overwhelming military strength, economic strength, and power in the media. And we are, in a sense, a colony of the United States." Benn's vision, by contrast, is of Britain becoming a free-floating country, as distanced from any European military alliance as from the US, and dedicated to "making the UN work" by becoming the kind of diplomatic force - like, say, Sweden - that could make itself useful as an honest broker.

By way of getting a slightly different perspective, I put in some calls to what might be termed the Washington policy establishment, the web of academics, ex-government insiders and ambitious young(ish) politicos who might one day be called to the White House. The first person I speak to is 39-year-old Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institution, the influential US think-tank once placed on Richard Nixon's list of sworn enemies, but that has long sat in the non-partisan centre. The American view of the special relationship, as he sees it, is partly built on the fact that "the British army is basically the only army in the world really capable and willing to operate in any large numbers with the United States", though what's really important is more symbolic. "The most crucial thing the US gets is less tangible," he says. "It's the sense of legitimacy and morality and purpose that comes from having an independent ally that is willing to support you."

Surveying Bush's time in office, Shapiro feels the UK's pain. "From a British standpoint, looking at the last six years and trying to put your finger on tangible ways that you've moved American policy as opposed to being dragged along, it's pretty hard to come up with much," he says. "And there isn't much. This has been an administration that's been extremely cruel to its allies. And the better the ally, the crueller they've been. This administration feels very good about the British, but for that reason, they feel very little need to do much for them."

In that context, I ask a question that presumably does not come up in Washington very much. What if Britain eventually felt so hurt that we decided to kick the special relationship into touch, close those bases, and align ourselves more closely with, say, Sweden?

"It's tough to imagine," he says. "It would be a pain in the ***, certainly. And losing the British in some sort of visible, public way would be a public relations disaster, even here in the United States. The US could get over it, depending on whether it had other countries on its side. But in the current environment, when the UK is kind of the last reliable ally, apart from the Australians . . ."

I mention the possibility of skullduggery, and whether the US might indulge in political and economic sabotage against the UK. Shapiro is having none of it - and besides, he thinks the scenario is too far-fetched even to contemplate. "The relationship is so intertwined at so many levels that you have what I'd call automatic stabilisers. If things started to move in those directions, forces would emerge and assert themselves, and push both governments the right way."

In the vague, academic way that policy wonks tend to talk, I'm sure he means something entirely benign - though from a paranoid perspective, such words might just conjure up the same dread fate that befell Harry Perkins.

In the course of a couple more chats with influential Americans, two things become clear. First, talk to just about anyone who has been involved in US foreign policy, and they will assure you that a crisis in the special relationship is utterly inconceivable; and second, they won't be at all comfortable talking about what the Americans call "hypotheticals".

James Rubin, who served in the Clinton administration as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief state department spokesman, spends the first 10 minutes of our conversation explaining his own view of the special relationship ("If the United States wants to do something with a coalition as opposed to by itself, the first stop is London - in practical terms, that's what the relationship boils down to"), before we briefly chew over an imaginary turn of events. Take the possibility of the US deciding to attack Iran (which, despite the first signs of a rapprochement with that member of the Axis of Evil, Blair and Bush still refuse to rule out) but the British government sticking to the idea that President Ahmadinejad's nuclear ambitions are best dealt with diplomatically, and stepping aside. What then?

"It would depend on what was said and done," he says. "Would you deny any cooperation or just refuse to participate? Would you allow over-flight rights? Would you condemn it or take a neutral stance? All of those things would determine how consequential an action it was."

He pauses. "I've actually always been puzzled by the fact that Tony Blair has not chosen to respectfully disagree on some issues. On Guantánamo, it took him a long time to come round to talking about it. He could have been louder on the environment: he's done it, but very, very softly. The international criminal court, the ABM treaty [the anti-ballistic missile agreement, from which the US withdrew to allow work on Bush's missile defence plans], the chemical weapons convention . . . It seems to me that Blair could have maintained an effective working relationship with the president and still been able to speak honestly about disagreements, so long as he warned Bush in advance: 'Look, this is where my country is.' The relationship can stand a few distinctions."

Sir Christopher Meyer, the red-socked former British ambassador to Washington who so incurred the government's wrath with his memoir DC Confidential, seems to agree. A fervent believer in the US/UK alliance who none the less acknowledges the distance between hype and reality - while in Washington, he would not allow the use of the phrase "special relationship" inside the embassy, because it risked creating "a set of delusions" - he too thinks Britain could easily be more forthright. "One thing you learn from the relationship with the United States is that if you're very tough with them and stand very firmly on your position and really push, it doesn't actually damage the relationship at all. In fact, they rather respect that," he says. "The Israelis - who really do enjoy a special relationship with the US - are incredibly tough with them, even though they're utterly dependent on zillions of dollars of aid. But Tony Blair has a different approach to handling the Americans ... Looking back, the overriding reason has been the fact that he's on the same mission as George W. He hasn't seen the need to stand firm and demand and extract things. And certainly, if you talk to cabinet ministers, they'll tell you that Tony has a temperamental aversion to showdowns with anybody."

And so we arrive at something the Blair era has threatened to wipe from the political map: the fact that between calling time on the special relationship and the shoulder-to-shoulder position, there actually lies what New Labour used to call a Third Way - and with a less rabid US administration and a more pragmatic prime minister, a future British government would discover that there is more room for manoeuvre than we have recently been led to believe.

In the rush of comment that followed this month's US midterm elections, there was talk of exactly that kind of scenario: the Republicans' defeat creating an opportunity for the British government to be that bit more assertive, and the eventual arrival of Gordon Brown in Downing Street cementing the change. There again, despite the idea that his heavily qualified backing for talks with Iran and Syria represented some brave break from the Bush administration (as opposed to early notice of what the US was going to have to do anyway), Blair followed the midterms with the speech at London's Guildhall in which the current transatlantic terms of trade seemed unchanged: separating being anti-Bush from anti-Americanism was apparently "a cop-out", and the "test of any alliance is not when it's easy but when it's tough". When it comes to the chancellor, it is easy to think of a move away from Washington as yet another of those dreamy possibilities that optimistic lefties project on to his premiership. Brown is, let's not forget, a staunch Atlanticist.

Still, contrary to the crude reading of history whereby every British government post-Suez has done pretty much what the Americans have wanted, there are precedents for more lively relations. In the mid-1960s, despite publicly supporting the Americans' activities in Vietnam, Harold Wilson refused to send British troops, and explicitly dissociated himself from some of the US's bombing. Margaret Thatcher may have styled herself as Ronald Reagan's political other half, but her opposition to America's 1983 invasion of Grenada was expressed in the kind of pointed terms that seem to be beyond Blair's ken. Pre-Bush, as a Republican-dominated Congress pushed Clinton to the right, there was considerable transatlantic turbulence about such issues as the international criminal court, America's refusal to pay its UN dues, and European defence cooperation. Meetings were called in Washington while phonelines anxiously buzzed, but the differences were simply the sign of a normal working relationship.

Against that backdrop, Sir Rodric Braithwaite remains pessimistic about any big readjustment, though he is guardedly hopeful that Britain might rediscover the art of approaching transatlantic matters with a bit more cunning. "If we were consistently rude to the Americans in public, or did something like backing Iran against them at every turn, they'd get pissed off," he says. "But the trick is to say no from time to time." In any case, he explains, the Americans are a lot more phlegmatic about the special relationship than the Blair-era notion of them as a jealous geopolitical boyfriend would suggest.

For some people, however, such modest proposals have never been the answer. Towards the end of our conversation, having dispensed his revolutionary vision of British foreign policy and had a pop at those who would prefer to see us "crawling behind the White House", Tony Benn gives me a research tip.

"One thing I would do," he advises, "is have a look at A Very British Coup," whereupon he briefly rhapsodises about its portrayal of a Labour party mercilessly trampled underfoot and Britain confirmed as a client state of the US.

"I met Chris Mullin the other day, actually," he says. "He said, 'It couldn't happen now.' I said, 'No, no - it has.'"

Answer 2

The Anglo-American alliance will probably last forever because they have the same interests and culture.

Answer 3

From a 2016 perspective, from the attitude of the US government and, to a much lesser extent, the attitude of some (I said some) American posters here with their withering contempt for the UK and contempt for 'liberals' and worship of guns and God (pronounced 'Gahd'), perhaps we might as well save our money spent on defence and withdraw to our little island. The Americans really don't seem to appreciate us anyway. It saddens me because I have always admired the USA.

Answer 4

The British people are on the whole highly unhappy with the current state of affairs. I cant imagine this will happen any time soon though, but when and if the day comes the American people will be shocked and dumbfounded.

Answer 5

It will last in its current form until there is a United Europe, in which case the US will be Europe's biatch, and people in the US will be asking what they are getting out of their "special relationship" with Europe ("Europe doesn't listen to us", "Europe just does what it likes", etc, etc).

It's hardly surprising that the US administration is strongly against closer integration in Europe. The more powerful Europe gets militarily, culturally, and economically, the less powerful and influential the US becomes.

Answer 6

What alliance? Bush says jump and Blair asks how high.

The only real alliance or "special relationship" is Israeli-US (or Zionist-US)..

Answer 7

If you mean in Iraq, our countries will eventually pull out soldiers soon & proclaim *victory* - ho hum pull the other one.

If you mean the 2 countries working in concert, well we share a common history, culture & language.

If trouble erupted, im sure each country would aid the other, although american *aid* historically does come with strings attached.

Answer 8

It will last forever as we are part of the same family of civilization.

The Egytian, Greek, Roman, British, American cultures have shaped the world.

Britian and America are family and friends forever.

Answer 9

Freedom & Independance - weren't they just the name of 2 Shuttlecraft from Armageddon???

Declaration of Independance = JOKE
America is Still the UK's Puppy

Answer 10

500 years

Answer 11

it will always last we are the same people so why would we part company we need each other now more than ever