The question is not--Is the use of the term, which has never been fully accurate and is degrading to both countries, ending? but rather--Are the British parliamentarians and Foreign Office mandarins pronouncing that the foundational concept is dead?
The relations between the US and Great Britain over the centuries are a fascinating study in love and hate, need and rejection, dependency and equality. No country has equaled Great Britain as a repository of American vitriol. For decades, more than a century really, it was incumbent upon nearly any and every politician seeking high office to proclaim the UK to be the most evil of evil empires, the fount of all that is bad in life.
At the same time the very existence of the US to say nothing of its prosperity resided solely in the hands of Englishmen. Her Majesty's Government had the power to determine whether the US would live or die during the War Between the States. Later, the London capital markets had a similar power over the development or collapse of the American economy during the great age of industrialization.
Fortunately for us the British, governments and markets alike, were so given to the rational pursuit of individual and collective interest to cheerfully (OK, maybe not cheerfully) overlook the obstreperous Yankee bombast as well as the periodic diplomatic insult. The Victorians had a clear enough vision to see that British interests were American interests and vice versa. More, as shown dramatically in the British treatment of the Alabama Claims, they were farsighted enough to see that the coincidence of national interest between the "two countries separated by a common tongue" would increase over time.
Before Queen Victoria died a special relationship existed between the US and UK. It was not so much based on shared values, common cultural features, or the speaking of English. It was not even based on the percentage of the American population which had English ancestors. These were all real, to some extent relevant, but finally must take a secondary position to greater imperatives.
Both the US and Great Britain were industrial economies. Both were maritime powers dependent upon seaborne commerce and free trade. Both possessed large and rapidly growing financial services sectors in their economies. And, last but not least important, both were pluralistic democracies in the process of development.
These commonalities implied a strong set of coinciding national interests. Both nations needed free and open commerce with all countries. Both needed a stable, predictable global political environment. Neither country could thrive in a global political and economic order which gave rise to a dominant monolithic bloc. And, neither was comfortable with the emergence of clear threats to the inherently inefficient democratic, free enterprise system on which each was utterly dependent.
The already extant special relationship was both firmed and brought to centerstage by the American entrance into World War I. The new, improved, publicly acknowledged "special relationship" survived British exasperation with the hyperbolic idealism of Woodrow Wilson and its aftermath--American rejection of the League of Nations. It survived as well the nationalistic stresses of both the post-war boom and the Great Depression. Faded, certainly; tattered, perhaps; the "special relationship" rested on the diplomatic and political shelf, available if needed.
And, needed it was as the years after 1939 demonstrated. Winston Churchill, in one of his moments of rationality understood that it was inevitable that the US would far outstrip Great Britain in its contribution to the defeat of the Axis. In another moment, one of his periodic less rational ones, he rather fancied that the UK would play the role of Athens, older, worldly wise, wily and manipulative so as to control the new "Rome," which role was assigned to the US.
At first it did seem that the US was willing and ready to follow the "guidance" and advice of England, to dance even to the music London commanded. The British found this was not the case by the time the guns of WW II fell quiet. The US with such acts as the legislation regarding atomic energy and the Bomb showed we were quite independent, thank you. This unflattering impression was speedily reinforced by American violation of several wartime "understandings."
That the fractures did not widen to eradicate the "special relationship" is the sole province of shared national interests. These coinciding purely national interests were under palpable threat by the other giant created by World War II--the Soviet Union.
Victory--no, survival itself during the Cold War--required emphasizing the coinciding British and American national interests, demanded elevating the "special relationship" from a pragmatic recognition of coinciding national and strategic interests to the level of myth. During the early Cold War, the years of the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, fighting in Korea, layers of rhetorical mythmaking were plastered on the core of national interest with the result that even the extreme stresses of the Suez Crisis, the cancellation of Skybolt, divergence over the China question, even British opposition to our efforts in Vietnam did not threaten either the myth of the "special relationship" let alone the essential core of coinciding national interest which resided at the center.
The British public and many in the media and political elite of the UK believe that the US exploited the "special relationship" to drag England into the Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq. Whether George W. Bush was so cunning or Tony Blair so sycophantic as to allow this is highly debatable, to say the least.
Over the past year the Obama administration has sent many signals that it considers the "special relationship" to have ended. In its recent considerations, Parliament and the Foreign Office appear quite ready to take the Obama position at face value. It was noted by mandarins and parliamentarians alike that the US has been constructing new relationships without any consultation with Her Majesty's Government. It was also mentioned more than once that the words "special relationship" have taken on an importance which deprecates British pursuit of its national interest.
Both observations are bang on. Both are also less than compellingly relevant. Whether the old term continues in use or not is unimportant. Whether or not Mr Obama continues his frosty and distant attitude regarding Great Britain is also unimportant.
The underlying fact is as potent today as it was a century and a half ago. The US and the UK are joined shoulder and hip in their national interests by the very nature of their economies, political systems, and consequent worldviews. Unless and until one or both countries ceases to be a maritime power reliant upon open and free trade, the national interests must remain coinciding. Unless and until one or both countries conclude it is willing to accept a global political and economic order marked by instability or dominated by a single monolithic hostile bloc, the national interests of both remain coinciding.
The take away? No matter what the relation is called, the ground truth remains that both the US and the UK are hostages to each other's fortune.
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