The Especially One-Sided Relationship

We should have learned that the Special Relationship was a fantasy in 1956.

Earlier this month, it was announced that British soldiers are finally leaving Afghanistan, a country which never attacked Britain, and in which we had no strategic interests. However, we went to war there because we felt it important to be good allies and friends to our cousins across the pond, who had been attacked by a terrorist organisation the Afghan government was harbouring. Taking this action cost us at least twenty-two billion pounds and the lives and limbs of thousands of our finest sons and daughters. It even enraged many of our own citizens, leading to anti-war protests and stoking anti-British sentiment in our Muslim communities.

However, in return, the US has taken our side in our negotiations with the EU, and has offered us an advantageous trade deal. America has also supported us in discussions with the EU on the issue of Northern Ireland. In a different universe, perhaps.

In fact, the US took the EU’s side, and recently told us that we must compromise on Northern Ireland, and has threatened on more than one occasion to block any trade deal if we do not toe the EU line. Yet there were no Irish troops in Afghanistan, and France and Germany famously refused to participate in the Iraq War, another affair that forced Britain to expend great amounts of blood and treasure in pursuit of American foreign policy aims.

In foreign affairs, countries do not have friends – just allies whose interests temporarily coincide. We used to understand this, but have forgotten, and nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the so-called Special Relationship with the United States.

We should have learned that the Special Relationship was a fantasy in 1956. That year, Americans threatened to destroy the British economy and made plans to blast the Royal Navy out of the Mediterranean if we did not halt our military effort to wrest a key maritime chokepoint (which we had hitherto owned) from the socialist dictator who had nationalised it. The same year, the US was silent when the Red Army poured into Hungary after a revolution had temporarily removed the Soviet puppet government there.

Sixty-five years later, we still have not learned. We had better start. Being a member of the EU limited our sovereignty, but greatly enhanced that little we had left. It protected us from some of the consequences of our actions, as few countries wanted to get on the wrong side of such a huge trading bloc. Meantime, the diplomatic and legislative muscles needed to support a powerful nation state have atrophied in the last forty years, as we outsourced most of that work to nursemaid EU.

Already, the withdrawal and trade negotiations with the EU have led to a defeat that might be considered the diplomatic equivalent of losing a medium-sized war. We have been forced to cede economic suzerainty over a UK constituent nation to Brussels in much the same way China had to give Western Powers concessions to rule Hong Kong, Shanghai and other key cities as part of the Unequal Treaties the Qing Dynasty was forced to sign.

Somehow, this humiliation, as well as our military defeats in Basra and Helmand, has not sunk into the national consciousness. Britain has great potential to project soft, diplomatic and military power; however, it has for decades been unwilling to make the investments needed to do so. This is because it is much easier to brag about punching above our weight and having a Special Relationship with the world’s superpower than it is to have a serious discussion about where we find the money to properly fund the armed forces, the intelligence services and the foreign office. (Higher taxes? Less spending on the NHS or social security?)

Until we have this difficult conversation, we leave ourselves open to fresh defeats and humiliations. Meantime, we clearly cannot rely on the United States to protect us. The only special relationship we should focus on developing is one with the lessons of Marlborough, Canning, Palmerstone, Disraeli, Salisbury and Churchill in realpolitik.