18 BriefingThe special relationship The EconomistFebruary 1st 2020
21tary of state, concluded that Britain had
lost an empire but not found a role. Its at-
tempt to find one away from Europe, based
on a “special relationship” with America
and on being the head of a Commonwealth,
he said, was “about played out”.
Joining what was then the European
Economic Community in 1973 offered
something of a solution. As Ray Seitz, an
American ambassador to London, noted in
a valedictory speech in 1994: “If Britain’s
voice is less influential in Paris or [Berlin],
it is likely to be less influential in Washing-
ton.” In Mr Blair’s formulation: “Strong in
Europe and strong with the us...There is no
choice between the two. Stronger with one
means stronger with the other.”Our romance is growing flat
Special or not, the relationship has often
been fraught. Apart from the Suez debacle,
friction arose between Harold Wilson and
Lyndon Johnson over Wilson’s refusal to
support the war in Vietnam. Even Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who were so
chummy that Reagan’s successor, George
H.W. Bush, said “he was just smitten by
her”, fell out over America’s invasion of
Grenada in 1983.
Yet over the years, in several different
spheres, America and Britain have grown
closer. Some 28 Nobel prizes have been
awarded jointly to people from the two
countries. British actors, such as Daniel
Craig, are as likely to play an American de-
tective in Hollywood movies as American
ones, such as Renée Zellweger, are to put on
plummy British accents to play characters
such as Bridget Jones.
The economic ties are especially deep.
New York and London, the world’s top two
financial centres, are rivals but they are
also intertwined. Nearly a fifth of Britain’s
exports go to America, more than double
the share going to Germany, the next-big-
gest partner. America accounts for 15% of
Britain’s total trade. American investmentin Britain supports an estimated 1.5m jobs,
and 1.3m vice versa. Britain attracts more
than 10% of American foreignr&d.
As much as anything, though, it is
shared values and habits of co-operation
that have bound Britain and America to-
gether. Britain, says Nicholas Burns, a for-
mer American ambassador to nato, is “the
country we trusted the most, and worked
most closely with.” At the State Depart-
ment, where British diplomats enjoy a lev-
el of access afforded no other country, Brit-
ain was “the most like-minded country”
with America, and “the first port of entry”
with the euon many issues, according to
Amanda Sloat, a Europe specialist who
served there under the Obama administra-
tion. In an Emerson poll from October 2019,
40% of Americans saw Britain as their
country’s most valuable ally and strategic
partner, far ahead of next-placed Canada
on just 22%.
This closeness has often been evident at
the top, starting with the wartime partner-
ship between Churchill and Franklin Roo-
sevelt. Whether it was the free-market free-
dom-championing of Thatcher and Reagan
or the war-fighting of Mr Blair and George
W. Bush, British and American leaders have
tended to act in tandem.
One of the questions facing the special
relationship today is whether or not the
same will apply for Mr Johnson and Mr
Trump. They have a lot in common; per-
haps unsurprisingly, they openly express
admiration for one another. Yet other lead-
ers, including Mr Macron, have learnt that
it is unwise to place high hopes in a “bro-
mance” with Mr Trump. And if Mr Trump
expects that Mr Johnson will go along with
his wishes on issues such as the Iran nuc-
lear deal or relations with China he is likely
to find himself disappointed.
Mr Johnson’s own instincts may even
lean towards European positions on many
issues, from climate change to Ukraine. As
long as the Trump administration remainsin place, “we appear to be more aligned
with the Europeans on values and interests
than with the United States,” suggests Sir
Peter Westmacott, a former British ambas-
sador to Washington. Federica Mogherini,
until recently the eu’s foreign-affairs rep-
resentative, expects continuity, too.
Huawei provided a first test of Britain’s
post-Brexit policy. Now two other areas
will come to the fore: defence and trade.
Traditionally, the Anglo-American rela-
tionship has been deepest in military, nuc-
lear and intelligence matters. Britain’s
armed forces have fought alongside their
ally in every major campaign of the past
three decades. “The way we fight is nearly
indistinguishable,” says Philip Breedlove, a
retired American general who served as
nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Eu-
rope from 2013 to 2016.
Partly this is down to an unparalleled
level of integration. Every major in the Brit-
ish Army goes through a course in America,
and more than 1,000 British military and
civilian defence staff are based across 29
American states. Some military assets are
held virtually in common, while British de-
fence firms are more closely involved than
those of any other country in building the
f-35 warplane. Britain also depends on
America to build, sustain and defray the
costs of its nuclear arsenal.You like tomato and I like tomahto
Their spooks lean heavily on one another,
too. Britain’s signals-intelligence agency,
gchq, and its American counterpart, the
nsa, are bound by the Five Eyes pact, which
includes Australia, Canada and New Zea-
land. Documents leaked by Edward Snow-
den, a former nsacontractor, showed that
Britain had a sweet deal: America paid at
least £100m to gchqin 2009-12 and 60% of
Britain’s high-value intelligence was de-
rived from the nsa. But the benefits are not
one-sided. Michael Hayden, an ex-nsadi-
rector, once told his British counterpart
that if Fort Meade, the nsa’s Maryland
headquarters, was to suffer a catastrophe,
he planned to entrust the machinery of
American electronic espionage to Britain.
This strategic intimacy dates to the sec-
ond world war. However, it is not immuta-
ble. Kori Schake of the American Enterprise
Institute (aei), a think-tank, warns that
“Britain is perilously close to becoming
just like any other Western military rather
than the preferred partner of the usany
time rules need enforcing.”
In recent years the sorest point has been
British defence cuts. In 2015 Barack Obama
demanded, in terms that would foreshad-
ow Mr Trump’s rhetoric, that David Camer-
on, then prime minister, pay his “fair
share”. General Ray Odierno, then head of
the us Army, said that he was “very con-
cerned” by the belt-tightening, which
amounted to an 18% fall in real-terms