Open Road

Tuesday Sep 1st 2009

The ‘special relationship’ between hacks and reality

Sometimes commentary pieces irritate the hell out of me. Lack of knowledge on a topic seems to be inversely proportional to the certainty of the commentator. In today’s Times Rachel Sylvester joins a chorus of hacks throughout the years who have proclaimed the end of the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’. She even names the date.

These sort of claims are usually based on an extremely simplistic concept of the ‘special relationship’. It is a concept popularised by Churchill and peddled mostly by politicians on this side of the Atlantic to lay special claim to the affections of the USA. It is nonsense. The sentimentality implied in the concept is at odds with the hard nosed reality of international diplomacy. While language and cultural similarities are a huge advantage to healthy Anglo-American relations one of the main factors is the British willingness to follow the US’s lead.

Here is a list of other times when the special relationship has been declared dead:

• The Suez crisis
• After Britain’s withdrawal its military forces from east of Suez
• When Britain joined the EEC
• When Edward Heath was in Prime Minister
• During the economic turmoil of Britain in the 70s
• When members of Conservative central office Major foolishly decided to work for the Bush re-election campaign in 1992.

These events were in the public domain. Largely out of view was the US’s anger at Harold Wilson for not sending troops to Vietnam, Heath’s refusal to let the US forces use British bases to supply Israeli forces during the October 1973 War and clashes between Henry Kissinger and James Callaghan over the Cyprus crisis in 1974. However, throughout this Britain and the US maintained very close cooperation in the defence and intelligence spheres.

Anytime, London has deviated from slavish devotion to Washington the death of the ‘special relationship’ has been proclaimed by a member of the commentariat. However, this has been balanced by periods when relations are relatively harmonious such as when Reagan and Thatcher and then Clinton and Blair were in power, and disastrously concordant when W was in power.

Relations between these two countries are constant. Sometimes they are good sometimes they are bad. They are both major nations on the international stage. Of course Britain’s influence internationally, and therefore its use to the US, is waning. Nonetheless, Britain is still influential, mainly as a major member of the EU (the major source of Britain’s global clout), a member of the UN security council and one of the largest economies in the world. No doubt there will be another time in the future when the interests of the US and Britain coincide to such a degree that Rachel will describe an astonishing Lazarus-like resuscitation of the ‘special relationship’ . And this time she might even ask some people outside of bars in Manhattan and Long Island and not the ‘influential celebrity agent’ she quotes to support her assertion. (He comes across as a coked up twat.) Another course of action would be to read a book on the subject. Of course, I say that as someone who writes the occasional blog on whatever topic takes my fancy. I can hear the glass house windows shatter as I write.