Special Relationship (US-UK)

The Special Relationship is a term that is often used to describe the political, social, diplomatic, cultural, economic, legal, environmental, religious, military and historic relations between the United Kingdom and the United States or its political leaders. The term first came into popular usage after it was used in a 1946 speech by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Both nations have been close allies during many conflicts in the 20th and the 21st centuries, including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Gulf War and the War on Terror.

Although both governments also have close relationships with many other nations, the level of cooperation between the UK and the US in trade and commerce, military planning, execution of military operations, nuclear weapons technology, and intelligence sharing has been described as "unparallelled" among major world powers. The close relationships between British and American heads of government such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as well as between Tony Blair and both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been noted. At the diplomatic level, characteristics include recurring public representations of the relationship as "special", frequent and high-profile political visits and extensive information exchange at the diplomatic working level.

Some critics deny the existence of a "special relationship" and call it a myth. Former US President Barack Obama considered German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be his "closest international partner" and said the UK would be at the "back of the queue" in any trade deal with the US if it left the European Union, and he accused British Prime Minister David Cameron of being "distracted by a range of other things" during the 2011 military intervention in Libya. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, US President Dwight Eisenhower threatened to bankrupt sterling due to Britain's invasion of Egypt. In the 1960s, British troops served in the Vietnam War. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privately opposed the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, and US President Reagan unsuccessfully initially pressured against the 1982 Falklands War.

Origins

Although the "Special Relationship" between the UK and the US was perhaps most memorably emphasized by Churchill, its existence and even the term itself had been recognized since the 19th century, not least by rival powers.

The American and British governments were enemies when foreign relations between them first began, after the American colonies declared their independence from British rule, which triggered the American Revolutionary War. Relations often continued to be strained until the mid-19th century, erupting into open conflict during the War of 1812 and again verging on war when Britain almost supported the rebel Confederate States during the beginning of the American Civil War. British leaders were constantly annoyed from the 1830s to the 1860s by what they saw as American pandering to the mob, as in the Aroostook War in 1838–1839 and the Oregon boundary dispute in 1844–1846. However, British middle-class public opinion sensed a common "special relationship" between the two peoples based on their shared language, migrations, evangelical Protestantism, classical liberalism and extensive private trade. That constituency rejected war, which forced Britain to appease America. During the Trent Affair of late 1861, London drew the line, and Washington retreated.

Troops from both nations had begun fighting side by side, sometimes spontaneously in skirmishes overseas by 1859, and both liberal democracies shared a common bond of sacrifice during the First World War (though the US was never formally a member of the Allies but entered the war in 1917 as a self-styled "Associated Power"). British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's visit to the US in 1930 confirmed his own belief in the "special relationship" and so he looked to the Washington Naval Treaty, rather than a revival of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, as the guarantee of peace in the Far East.

However, as the historian David Reynolds observed, "For most of the period since 1919, Anglo-American relations had been cool and often suspicious. United States 'betrayal' of the League of Nations was only the first in a series of US actions—over war debts, naval rivalry, the 1931–2 Manchurian crisis and the Depression—that convinced British leaders that the United States could not be relied on". Equally, as US President Harry S. Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, recalled, "Of course a unique relation existed between Britain and America—our common language and history ensured that. But unique did not mean affectionate. We had fought England as an enemy as often as we had fought by her side as an ally".

Churchillian emphasis

The outbreak of World War II provoked the rapid emergence of an unambiguously positive relationship between the two nations. The Fall of France in 1940 has been described as a decisive event in international relations, which led the Special Relationship to displace the Entente Cordiale as the pivot of the international system. During the war, one observer noted, "Great Britain and the United States integrated their military efforts to a degree unprecedented among major allies in the history of warfare". "Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt", Churchill shouted at General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, in 1945, "I shall choose Roosevelt". Between 1939 and 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt exchanged 1,700 letters and telegrams and met 11 times. Churchill estimated that they had 120 days of close personal contact. On one occasion, Roosevelt went to Churchill's room when Churchill had just emerged from the bath. On his return from Washington, Churchill said to King George VI, "Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked". Roosevelt found the encounter amusing and remarked to his private secretary, Grace Tully, "You know, he's pink and white all over".

Churchill's mother was a US citizen, and he keenly felt the links between the two English-speaking peoples. He first used the term "special relationship" on 16 February 1944, when he said it was his "deepest conviction that unless Britain and the United States are joined in a special relationship... another destructive war will come to pass". He used it again in 1945 to describe not the Anglo–American relationship alone but Britain's relationship with both the Americans and the Canadians. ''The New York Times Herald'' quoted Churchill in November 1945:

Churchill used the phrase again a year later, at the onset of the Cold War, this time to note the special relationship between the US and the English-speaking nations of the British Commonwealth and the Empire. The occasion was his " Sinews of Peace Address", delivered in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946:

In the opinion of one international relations specialist, "the United Kingdom's success in obtaining US commitment to cooperation in the postwar world was a major triumph, given the isolation of the interwar period". A senior British diplomat in Moscow, Thomas Brimelow, admitted, "The one quality which most disquiets the Soviet government is the ability which they attribute to us to get others to do our fighting for us... they respect not us, but our ability to collect friends". Conversely, "the success or failure of United States foreign economic peace aims depended almost entirely on its ability to win or extract the co-operation of Great Britain".

Reflecting on the symbiosis, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982 declared: "The Anglo-American relationship has done more for the defence and future of freedom than any other alliance in the world".

While most government officials on both sides have supported the Special Relationship, there have been sharp critics. The British journalist Guy Arnold (1932–2020) denounced it in 2014 as a "sickness in the body politic of Britain that needs to be flushed out". Instead, he called for closer relationships with Europe and Russia so as to rid "itself of the US incubus".

Military co-operation

The intense level of military co-operation between the UK and the US began with the creation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in December 1941, a military command with authority over all American and British operations. After the end of the Second World War, the joint command structure was disbanded, but close military cooperation between the nations resumed in the early 1950s with the start of the Cold War.

Shared military bases

Since the Second World War and the subsequent Berlin Blockade, the US 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 the base is operated under British command and has only one US Air Force representative, largely for administrative reasons. Several bases with a significant US presence include RAF Menwith Hill (only a short distance from RAF Fylingdales), RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall (scheduled to close in 2027), RAF Fairford (the only base for US strategic bombers in Europe), RAF Croughton (not an air base but a military communications hub) and RAF Welford (an ammunition storage depot).

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. However, the bases have been used extensively in support of various peacekeeping and offensive operations of the 1990s and the early 21st century.

The two nations also jointly operate on the British military facilities of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory and on Ascension Island, a dependency of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. The US Navy also makes occasional use of British naval bases at Gibraltar and Bermuda, and the US Air Force uses RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, mainly for reconnaissance flights.

Nuclear weapons development

The Quebec Agreement of 1943 paved the way for the two countries to develop atomic weapons side by side, the British handing over vital documents from its own Tube Alloys project and sending a delegation to assist in the work of the Manhattan Project. The Americans later kept the results of the work to themselves under the postwar McMahon Act, but after the UK developed its own thermonuclear weapons, the US agreed to supply delivery systems, designs and nuclear material for British warheads through the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement.

The UK purchased first the Polaris system and then the US Trident system, which remains in use. The 1958 agreement gave the UK access to the facilities at the Nevada Test Site, and from 1963, it conducted a total of 21 underground tests there before the cessation of testing in 1991. The agreement under which the partnership operates was updated in 2004; anti-nuclear activists argued that the renewal may breach the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US and the UK jointly conducted subcritical nuclear experiments in 2002 and 2006 to determine the effectiveness of existing stocks, as permitted under the 1998 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Military procurement

The Reagan administration offered Britain the opportunity to purchase the F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft while it was a black program. The UK is the only collaborative, or Level One, international partner in the largest US 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 US Defense Department and has been permitted to buy important US defense companies like Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronic Systems and United Defense.

The US operates several British designs including Chobham Armour, the Harrier GR9/AV-8B Harrier II and the US Navy T-45 Goshawk. The UK also operates several American designs, including the Javelin anti-tank missile, M270 rocket artillery, the Apache gunship, C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.

Other areas of co-operation

Intelligence sharing

A cornerstone of the Special Relationship is the collecting and sharing of intelligence, which originated during the Second World War with the sharing of code-breaking knowledge and led to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, which was signed at Bletchley Park. After the war, the common goal of monitoring and countering the threat of communism prompted the UK-USA Security Agreement of 1948. This agreement brought together the SIGINT organizations of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and is still in place today (Five Eyes). The head of the Central Intelligence Agency station in London attends each weekly meeting of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

One present-day example of such cooperation is the UKUSA Community, comprising America's National Security Agency, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, Australia's Defence Signals Directorate and Canada's Communications Security Establishment, which collaborate on ECHELON, a global intelligence gathering system. Under the classified bilateral accords, UKUSA members do not spy on each other.

After the discovery of the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, the CIA began to assist the Security Service (MI5) by running its own agent networks in the British Pakistani community. One intelligence official commented on the threat against the US from British Islamists: "The fear is that something like this would not just kill people but cause a historic rift between the US and the UK".

Economic policy

The US is the largest source of foreign direct investment to the UK, and the UK is likewise the largest single foreign direct investor in the US. British trade and capital have been important components of the American economy since its colonial inception. In trade and finance, the Special Relationship has been described as "well-balanced", with the City of London's "light-touch" regulation in recent years attracting a massive outflow of capital from Wall Street.Irwin Seltzer, 'Britain is not America's economic poodle', ''The Spectator'' (30 September 2006), p. 36. The key sectors for British exporters to America are aviation, aerospace, commercial property, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and heavy machinery.

British ideas, classical and modern, have also exerted a profound influence on American economic policy, most notably those of the historian Adam Smith on free trade and the economist John Maynard Keynes on countercyclical spending, and the British government has adopted American workfare reforms. American and British investors share entrepreneurial attitudes towards the housing market, and the fashion and music industries of both countries are major influences on each other.Seltzer, 'Not America's economic poodle', p. 36. Trade ties have been strengthened by globalisation, and both governments agree on the need for currency reform in China and for educational reform at home to increase their competitiveness against India's developing service industries. In 2007, US Ambassador Robert H. Tuttle

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