Special Relationship

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, (left) with President Franklin Roosevelt, at the 1945 Yalta Conference.

The term special relationship is a phrase originating in the United Kingdom used to characterise what British advocates view as the positive political, diplomatic, historical, and international relations between the United States and member nations of the Commonwealth of Nations or the United Kingdom. The phrase is often represented to mean the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States (see Anglo-American relations).

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used the term in 1946 to describe the special relationship between the US and the English speaking countries of the British Commonwealth. However, Churchill first coined the term in a 1945 speech, carried by the NY Times Herald. The phrase was used not to describe the UK - US bilateral relationship but rather to describe his hope for a "special relationship" between the UK and its transatlantic war allies, Canada and the United States.

Practically, the United States maintains a close economic, cultural and military relationship with Canada (see NAFTA, NORAD, APEC, NATO and the OAS), and significant trade relationships with other countries such as Mexico, Japan, Israel. However, according to British author James Wither, the level of cooperation in military planning, execution of military operations, nuclear weapon technology sharing and intelligence sharing between the U.S. and UK is unparalleled.

History and overview

The origin of the term may be Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace Address" in Fulton, Missouri, better known for addressing the rise of communism and the Iron Curtain. The phrase was not used to describe a bilateral relationship. The phrase was, in fact, first used by Churchill in 1945 not to describe the UK - US relationship but to describe the UK relationship with transatlantic allies Canada and the United States. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/special-relationship.html. A year later Churchill again used the phrase, not to describe the UK - US relationship but to note the special relationship between English speaking countries of the British Commonwealth, the Empire and the United States.

Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples ...a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. There is however an important question we must ask ourselves. Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our over-riding loyalties to the World Organization? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organization will achieve its full stature and strength.

Most American commentators had until relatively recently construed the special relationship as a "one-way street", namely that Britain relied heavily on the United States to promote its affairs in international relations . This was certainly true from post-second World War Britain , until the resurgence of the British economy, after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's radical economic and social reforms , 1979-1990. Moreover, Thatcher had an exceptionally close political and personal relationship with and influence on US President Ronald Reagan. A United States State Department official, doubting the UKs perceived transatlantic influence, called the UK idea of a "special relationship" with the US "a myth of around 60 years standing" noting the phrase began with Winston Churchill. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1961464,00.html

As of July 2006, the economy of the United Kingdom is the fifth largest national economy in the world (measured by GDP). The economy of the United States is the largest national economy in the world. The US is the biggest single investor in the UK, and vice-versa (figures for 2004). This economic strength, together with Britain's influence as one of the "big three" in the European Union, has altered the relative US/UK balance somewhat. On the other hand, British commentators have implied that British support of American policy is rarely reciprocated when it is not directly in America's best interests, leaving Britain diplomatically isolated - for example during the Suez Crisis and at the July 2005 G8 summit under the Presidency of the UK, where Prime Minister Tony Blair signally failed to persuade President George W. Bush to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol - the US citing "harm to the United States' economy" as their principal objection.

The British did not 'toe the line' with American Policy in Vietnam (at least not officially - nor commit troops), although Australia and New Zealand were allies in this complicated and lengthy conflict.

The 'special relationship' was most recently demonstrated during the war in Iraq.

During the worst periods of the cold war the United Kingdom was jokingly referred to as the "biggest aircraft carrier in the world." During certain periods of the 1970's and 1980's there were more US military aircraft based in the UK than the complete strength of the Royal Air Force.

National links

Examples of strong links between the two nations include military and intelligence co-operation as well as significant economic and cultural synergies.

Military

The Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia is home to a military base jointly operated by the US and UK.

The unparalleled level of military co-operation began with the creation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in December 1941, a military command with authority over all American and British operations. This cooperation has increased steadily since the early 1950's when military contacts were re-established.

Since the Berlin Blockade the United States has maintained substantial forces in Britain. In July 1948, the first American deployment began with the stationing of B-29 bombers. Currently, an important base is the radar facility RAF Fylingdales, part of the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, although this base is operated under entirely British command and has only one USAF representative for largely administrative reasons. Several other bases with a significant US presence include RAF Menwith Hill (only a short distance from RAF Fylingdales), RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall as well as a jointly operated military facility on Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Following the end of the Cold War, which was the main rationale for their presence, the number of US facilities in the UK has been reduced in number in line with the US military worldwide. Despite this, these bases have been used extensively in support of various peacekeeping and offensive operations of the 1990s and early 21st century.

Nuclear weapons development

The UK's Queen Elizabeth II and former American First Lady Pat Nixon in 1972.

The Quebec Agreement of 1943 paved the way for the two countries to develop atomic weapons side by side, Britain handing over vital documents from its own Tube Alloys project and sending a delegation to assist in the work of the Manhattan Project. America kept the results of the work to itself due to the postwar McMahon Act, but after Britain developed its own thermonuclear weapons the United States agreed to supply delivery systems, designs and nuclear material for British warheads through the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. Britain purchased first Polaris and then the Trident system which remains in use today. This co-operation has allowed Britain to establish a more efficient, cost effective nuclear deterrent than France's Force de frappe. British attempts to provide reciprocal technology to the U.S., such as Chevaline, have been largely unsuccessful. The 1958 agreement gave the UK access to the facilities at the Nevada Test Site and it would test a total of 25 underground tests until the cessation of testing in 1991. The agreement under which this partnership operates was recently updated, it is argued that US assistance for the UK nuclear deterrent is in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Intelligence sharing

The special relationship has maintained ties in collecting and sharing intelligence since World War II. This aspect of the relationship originally grew from the common goal of monitoring and countering the threat of communism. Currently, a major example of cooperation is of the UKUSA Community, comprising the USA's National Security Agency (NSA), the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) and Canada's Communications Security Establishment collaborating on ECHELON, a global intelligence gathering system. Moreover, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada are the only countries which the CIA has publicly stated that it does not spy upon. This is generally interpreted as meaning that the CIA does not maintain intelligence agents in these aforementioned countries.

Military procurement

The X-35

The UK is the only "level one" international partner in the largest U.S. aircraft procurement project in history, the F-35 Lightning II program. The UK was involved in writing the specification and selection and its largest defense contractor BAE Systems is a partner of the American prime contractor Lockheed Martin. BAE Systems is also the largest foreign supplier to the United States Defense Department and has been permitted to buy important US defense companies such as Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronic Systems and United Defense.

Other joint projects include the United States Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier II and the US Navy T-45 Goshawk. Both nations also operate several common designs, including the Javelin anti-tank missile, M270 rocket artillery, the Apache gunship, C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.

Economic

The United States is the largest source of Foreign Direct Investment to the UK economy, likewise the UK is the largest single investor in the US economy. [2] British trade and capital have been important components of the American economy since its colonial inception.

Personal relationships

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, (left) with President Franklin Roosevelt, August 1941.

In either case the relationship often depends on the personal relations between British Prime Ministers and U.S. Presidents. The first example was the close relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt who were in fact distantly related. Prior to their collaboration during World War II Anglo-American relations had been somewhat frosty. President Woodrow Wilson and Prime Minister David Lloyd George had enjoyed nothing that could be described as a special relationship, although Lloyd George's wartime Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, got on well with Wilson during his time in the United States and helped convince a previously skeptical Wilson to enter the war. Churchill, himself half-American, spent much time and effort cultivating the relationship which paid dividends for the war effort though it cost Britain much of her wealth and ultimately her empire. Two great architects of the special relationship on a practical level were Field Marshal Sir John Dill and General George Marshall whose excellent personal relations and senior positions (Roosevelt was especially close to Marshall) oiled the wheels of the alliance considerably.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan at Camp David in 1986.

The links that were created during the war - such as the British military liaison officers posted to Washington - persist. However for Britain to gain any benefit from the relationship it became clear that a constant policy of personal engagement was required. Britain starting off in 1941 as somewhat the senior partner had quickly found itself the junior. The diplomatic policy was thus two pronged, encompassing strong personal support and equally forthright military and political aid. These two have always operated in tandem, that is to say the best personal relationships between British prime ministers and American presidents have always been those based around shared goals. For example, Harold Wilson's government would not commit troops to Vietnam. Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson did not get on especially well.

Highlights in the special relationship would include Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy or Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Nadirs have included Wilson's refusal to enter the war in Vietnam and the American government's lack of support for British operations in Suez under Anthony Eden. While the relationship between the two countries may have been strained by Reagan's neutrality in the initial phases of the Falklands War this was more than countered by the US Defense Secretary, Casper Weinberger, who approved shipments of the latest weapons to the massing British taskforce. Bill Clinton was poorly disposed towards John Major after it was alleged that the Conservative government had allowed his Republican opponents access to British documents detailing his time at Oxford University. Friction in their relationship was also demonstrated when in March 1995 Major refused to answer the phone calls of Clinton over his decision to invite Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to the White House for Saint Patrick's Day.

The Blair-Bush relationship, discussed below, equalled the level of the Thatcher-Reagan relationship.

Bush and Blair

The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (left) hosted by the President of the United States, George W. Bush at Camp David in March 2003, in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq by their countries.

The relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush served to highlight the nature of the special relationship by increasing the importance of Britain in relation to the US. Following the September 11 Attacks in New York and Washington DC, British Prime Minister Tony Blair flew to Washington. In a speech to the United States Congress, nine days after the attack, President Bush declared "America has no truer friend than Great Britain." Following that speech Blair embarked on two months of diplomacy gathering international support for military action. The BBC estimates that, in total, the prime minister held 54 meetings with world leaders and travelled more than 40,000 miles (60,000 km).

President Bush stated that Britain was America's "closest friend in the world" in November 2003 in the Banqueting House in London. However, President Bush also emphasises close ties to other countries, for example "We have no greater friend than Mexico" (September 2001), and "We have no better friend than Canada" (February 2002). Traditionally, a new president meets the leaders of the US's neighbours before those of other nations. President Clinton, in his recent autobiography, cited Canada as the United States's closest ally and largest trading partner.

The involvement in the war in Iraq of Tony Blair has damaged his standing at home (both in the country at large, and especially within his own party) and in the rest of Europe, but helped to buttress the relationship at least to the end of his term in office in June 2007, due to the re-election of George W. Bush. When Bush first took office in January 2001, it was predicted by some that Third Way/Clintonesque Blair and the conservative Bush would have little common ground but in fact their shared beliefs and responses to the international situation following 9/11 formed the commonality of purpose so important to the special relationship. Blair, like Bush, was convinced of the importance of moving against the new threat both perceived to international order.

At the time of the 2004 presidential election Blair did not demonstrate any preference of candidate in the election. Although the majority of his party was backing Kerry, the Prime Minister was unable to voice such support for fear of damaging relations with Bush if he were to be re-elected. On the other hand, supporting Bush would have damaged links between Labour and the Democrats as well as infuriating a large proportion of backbench Labour Members of Parliament, many of whom are highly critical of Blair's relationship with Bush.

The 2006 Lebanon War has caused some tension between the United States and UK. The apparent support of both Tony Blair and the United States administration for Israel caused disquiet among the general public and Tony Blair's cabinet. On 27 July, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett openly criticised the US for "ignoring procedure" when using Prestwick Airport as a stop off point for delivering laser-guided bombs to Israel. On 17 August, The Independent reported that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had said that George Bush was "crap" with regard to the Middle East Roadmap, which Prescott felt had been a condition of his support for the war in Iraq.

Current status

Gordon Brown with George W. Bush

Although British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated his support for the United States, he has appointed ministers to the Foreign Office who have been critical of aspects of the relationship or of recent US policy. Present British policy is that the relationship with the United States represents Britain's "most important bilateral relationship"[3].

Public opinion

In recent years there has been a divergence between the close government relations and British public opinion, and UK perceptions of the relationship have come under increasing strain. In the UK, the problem is perceived as a lack of reciprocity and respect by America. There is a perception that it is a "one-way" relationship ie whenever the USA requests significant assistance from the UK it is readily given, but when the UK asks the USA for help it is frequently refused, even when the request is a small one:-

• The US has been perceived to pursue an aggressive trade policy, using or ignoring WTO rules; the aspects of this causing most difficulty to the UK have been high tariffs on European (including UK) steel products and a successful challenge to the protection of small family banana farmers in the West Indies from large US corporations such as the American Financial Corporation.

• Despite mounting scientific evidence of the importance of climate change, an issue high on the agenda in the UK, the US Government refused to accede to the Kyoto Protocol, the only major international accord aimed at controlling it.

• The US Government refused to accede to the treaty setting up the International Criminal Court, another UK priority. Foreign observers recalled the 1970s failure to bring the perpetrators of the My Lai massacre to justice.

• The US pressured the UK Government to agree to an unequal extradition treaty, whereby the UK needed to make a strong prima facie case to US courts before extradition was possible. In marked contrast, extradition from the UK to the US was a matter of administrative decision alone i.e. no prima facie evidence of guilt was required. This was initially seen as an anti-terrorist measure in the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Very soon, however, it was being used by the US to extradite and prosecute a number of high-profile City of London businessmen (e.g. the Natwest Three) on fraud charges. Contrasts have been drawn with the US's harbouring of Provisional IRA terrorists in the 1980s [4]. There has also been irritation that Americans who have killed British citizens in friendly fire incidents (where a subsequent inquest verdict of unlawful killing was returned) cannot be extradited to the UK [5].

• There have been a number of cases where cultural differences seem to have led to verdicts by US courts which have been perceived as markedly unjust in UK terms. One example was of an Aberdonian who after a "good night out" in a US city became lost and knocked on a door to ask the way; the householder shot him dead through the door and was later acquitted of any crime. Another was of Chantal McCorkle, a Briton imprisoned for over 24 years in 1998[6] following minor involvement in a trading fraud.

• After the Iraq War, there was a series of coroners' inquests into so-called friendly fire incidents relating to UK armed servicemen who had been killed by US forces. The US Government routinely hindered the coroner's investigation by refusing to cooperate. In January 2007 this culminated in the US preventing the release of cockpit videos showing events leading to the death of Lance-Corporal Matty Hull of the Household Cavalry, and threatening newspapers who published them with prosecution. This particular incident caused a diplomatic row.

• Britain's first Moslem Government Minister, Shahid Malik MP, protested on 28 October 2007 at having been detained and searched for explosives at a Washington airport on his way home (ironically) from a meeting with the US Department of Homeland Security [7]. It is important to note that this was not an isolated incident: it was the second occasion that this Member of Parliament had been detained and searched, having received the same treatment at JFK airport during a visit to the USA in November 2006. Mr Malik commented as follows: "The abusive attitude I endured last November I forgot about and I forgave, but I really do believe that British ministers and parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity at USA airports that we would bestow upon our colleagues in the Senate and Congress." [8]

A June 2006 poll by Populus for The Times showed that the number of Britons agreeing that "it is important for Britain’s long-term security that we have a close and special relationship with the US" had fallen to 58% (from 71% in April), and that 65% believed that "Britain’s future lies more with Europe than America". 44% agreed that "America is a force for good in the world." A later poll reported in The Guardian during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict said that 63% of Britons felt that Britain is tied too closely to the US.

Polls of the US public show that Britain, as an "ally in the war on terror" is viewed more positively than any other country. 76% of Americans polled viewed Great Britain as an "ally in the War on Terror" according to Rasmussen Reports.[9] According to Harris Interactive 74% of Americans view Great Britain as a "close ally in the war in Iraq", well ahead of next-ranked Canada at 48%, Canada, however, did not participate in the U.S. led war in Iraq.

See also

• Anglo-American relations
• Foreign relations of the United Kingdom
• Foreign relations of the United States
• The Great Rapprochement

External links

• June 2002, Policy Review, The State of the Special Relationship
• State Department Official disparages the relationship
• May 2007, Professor Stephen Haseler (Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University) has written a book examining the history of the special relationship from a British perspective entitled Sidekick: Bulldog to Lapdog, British Global Strategy from Churchill to Blair