Special Relationships: Alive And Well? Or Going Down The Tube?

Whether the Obama administration likes the idea or not (or is even aware of it) the US has a number of "special relationships."  Three have been called into question recently.  In no particular order of importance, or specialness, these are: The Granddaddy of 'em all: the UK--the most solid in terms of approval by We the People: Israel--and, the most quiet of relations: Canada.

The relationship between the US and the UK was no doubt harmed by the cavalier treatment extended to the Brits by Mr Obama.  However that damage was low and self-limiting--the two countries need each other too much to stay in a snit over the sheer ineptitude of a president and some of his "team."

More recently the strong, historically rooted special relationship between the "Mother country" and "The Colonies" has been put in a greater degree of very real peril by the upcoming British review of defense requirements.  Due to a ukase from the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence is under irresistible pressure to cut its budget somewhere between twenty and forty percent.  This means simply that the British must view the threats to their security and global interests over the next ten years in terms of the severely constricted budgetary environment currently extant.

The last time HMG attempted to cut the size of the threats to meet the cloth of the Exchequer was during the Thirties.  The Great Depression was real.  So also was the looming threat of expansionist Nazism, Fascism, and Imperial Japan.  The budget driven weakness of the British was a major, arguably, the major, reason forcing the appeasement of Munich and the later set of defeats for British forces around the world.

At that time the US was available (along with the invaded Soviet Union) to provide the necessary wherewithal to contain and ultimately defeat the three aggressors.  That, as they say, is history.

The fallout from the Great Recession has combined with the spendthrift policies of New Labor governments to compel a period of austerity not seen since the grim, grey days following World War II.  The need for fiscal prudence is self-evident.  Not so self-evident is the need or safety of placing a great burden on the defense establishment.

Both Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton have viewed the potential retrenchment (to be polite) of the British armed services with a fair degree of public alarm.  So also have a number of British senior officers, both active duty and retired.

Stripped to its essentials, any British defense program which is predicated on cutting its active duty ground combat forces to something on the order of eighty thousand will have the effect of making the UK a military nullity in any joint operations approaching even pre-surge Afghanistan.  That unfortunate realty, a reality which will see British deployable battalions at forty percent authorized strength, is not compensated for by the very high quality of British troops.  General Petraeus was not simply being polite and politic when he praised the British operations in Afghanistan; he was being essentially accurate.

Weak battalions remain weak battalions even when the "few" are trigger pullers without equal.  In planning operations, US decision makers must look at quantity as well as quality.  The same is true for their colleagues in the UK when considering force projection missions even on the small scale of the one undertaken in Sierra Leone a few years back.  If a contemplated mission requires X troops backed with Y capacities in artillery, logistics, engineering, air support, and so on, but you only have X- men or Y- capacities, the mission cannot be undertaken with any measure of certainty.

Complicating the situation is the very hard to understand position adopted by the Royal Navy.  The Navy has two aircraft carriers authorized with one under construction presently.  To assure gaining these two large and evidently competent ships, the Navy's senior command is willing to cut their total fleet of surface combatants to roughly twenty-five (about enough to assure adequate defense against air, missile, and submarine threats.)  This would mean the Senior Service would have the same number of warships it did when Henry VIII was chopping off wives' heads.  The complete scuttling of any amphibious warfare capacity would make the Royal Marines redundant--and make it deucedly tough to replicate the Sierra Leone operation let alone the successful retaking of the Falkland Islands.  (The aging fleet of SSBN Trident carrying subs would be retained but on a scale which might render constant one boat deployment impossible.)

It is ironic that if the Navy gets its carrier, it will have to borrow some other country's aircraft to fly from it.  But, the chatter surrounding the forthcoming review hints at a severe shrinking of the RAF.  The famed "few" of seventy years ago will actually be constricted to an aircraft inventory not seen since 1913.  This state of affairs calls into question the capacity of the RAF to support even a miniature expeditionary force.

Asymmetrical homeland threats might be countered in a cost effective way by creative use of the Territorial Forces, but any projection of force to the centers of threat would be well neigh onto impossible unless as part of a coalition.  Of  course it is difficult (but not impossible) to envision the British doing a go-it-alone.  For the US as the most likely coalition partner, the question is what can the new, downsized British armed forces add to our efforts beyond diplomatic cover and concealment.  More bluntly, is it worth the inevitable political complications of coalition warfare to add even a highly proficient but quite pint sized British component?

With that as context, the larger question demands consideration.  If the British military capacity is of very limited diplomatic usage and almost nonexistent warfighting utility, what then exists as a basis for a special relationship?  History is nice.  So also is a legacy of shared values and norms.  Ditto a more or less common language.  But, when the vibram hits the road, the only thing that counts is the muscle behind the words of diplomacy.

In short, if the Incredible Shrinking British Military comes into existence, the US will have to (in the words of John Foster Dulles) undergo an "agonizing reappraisal" of our relation with the UK.  This process will be driven by a primary consideration: The British will need us a lot more than we will need them.  This will not be good for either us or them.  The special relationship has benefited our global diplomacy in the past far more than a mere comparison of relative military strength might appear to merit.  But, there is a point where one party's extreme weakness permanently alters the relation from one of equals to one of patron-client.  The US-UK dyad may soon cross that point.

The special relationship between the US and Israel is often seen as one of patron-client where the client is in charge.  No doubt it looks that way, particularly when the American president leans on the Israeli prime minister without useful result.

The important consideration when examining this particular special relationship is that its existence and parameters are not determined by the president or secretary of state.  Nor are they determined and defined by congress.  No indeed.  The nature and extent of the relations between Israel and the US have been and are determined and defined by We the People.  To an extent not equaled by any other state, We the People have decided that Israel merits unreserved support and assistance.  While the precise percentage of support waxes and wanes over time, there has never been a withdrawing of the commitment made generations ago to the existence and flourishing of the Jewish state.

The government of Israel is perfectly well aware of this.  After all, it was responsible in significant measure for the public relations efforts which have provided a great impetus for this support within We the People.  When Ike blew the whistle on the Anglo-French-Israeli Sinai War in 1956, the reaction of Israel's government was to take action to preclude such an event in the future.  There is nothing wrong nor reprehensible in a state pursuing its national interests through intensive and effective public relations, political actions, and lobbying.

The result is simply that Israel has the capacity to shrug off presidential coercion.  It can ignore arm twisting and veiled threats with impunity.  And has.

Unless and until the Israeli reputation within We the People can be changed or attenuated, the special relation will continue as presidents come and go.

To the north of us is a big country.  It contains people who are very nice, very concerned, people who are quite proud that their country has long been an excellent global citizen.  Beyond that, Canada has been an ally of the US in quite a few wars including the one in Afghanistan.  Because of shared norms, values, and understandings of life, the Canadian government has usually been on the same side of the voting in the UN as the US.

Canada wanted very much to hold a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.  It has already occupied one of the rotating seats six times.  The government mounted a long and hard fought campaign to gain one of the two seats reserved under the UN's geographical apportionment system for European and other Western countries.  It lost.

Despite having 135 written and 15 verbal commitments of support, Canada trailed Germany and Portugal so that, humiliatingly, it dropped out of the contest.  Various explanations for the defeat have been advanced up in the Great White North.  Among them are: Canada alienated Muslim countries by supporting the US and Israel; the US did not go to bat for the Canadians.

Not surprisingly these explanations have come with demands that Canada rethink its foreign policies with a view to putting more blue sky  between it and the Colossus of the South.  While the Canadians are nice, very civilized people, they are also dedicated nationalists.  There is resentment of the US--its domination of the Canadian economy, the appeal of American television, and other matters of even less consequential but quite irritating sort.

With that as context and considering that the US delegation to the UN did not make any real, evident effort to support Canada's bid, it would not be surprising if the Canadian government did not become more "independent" in its conduct of foreign relations.  This will not imply something as radical as the Canadians suddenly supporting the Islamist demands for an ending of free speech on religious matters, but it could indicate a set of subtle and eventually harmful lessening of Canadian understanding on a raft of issues including the growing matter of Arctic sovereignty.

The US and Canada have had more than a few down points in their mutual history--such as our two invasions of the country two and more centuries ago.  But, we share more than a common and still unfortified border, so any unnecessary daylight between us in foreign relations would be more than simply regrettable.  They would be mutually injurious.

We and the Canadians are joined hip and shoulder.  Far more than economics dictates this sometimes uncomfortable truth.  While not talked about as such, our relationship with Canada is uniquely special.  However, the contemporary dynamic is such that we must not take it for granted.  We would be well advised to undertake actions which will reassure the Canadians that we value them greatly.  This will require more than honeyed words and soothing mood music.  It will demand actions.  Perhaps the time is on us to have a more accommodating view of Canadian ambitions in the Arctic or environmental matters.

Special relations exist.  But each is different in its dynamics and requirements for nurture.  With the UK, we must quietly but firmly insist that the British armed forces remain credible.  With Israel it must be acknowledged that presidents do not define the relationship.  For the Canadians it is necessary that we listen effectively and treat with respect.

But, the Obama administration is tone deaf.  So we shouldn't hold our collective breath.

Killing The "Special Relationship"

When President Obama took office his vague and ever so progressive view of foreign relations included the specious notion that all US relations with all other countries were predicated upon a shared set of international "rights and relations." This hyper-egalitarian position was not only adopted contrary to the dictates of history and reality but shoved aside all considerations of "special relationships" typified by that binding the US and UK for the last century.

The US has always defined its conduct of foreign relations with an eye on its specific relation with the Great Britain. For the first century or so of our existence, we tended to define ourselves, our existence, by firm opposition to all things British. On more than a few occasions following the War of 1812 we came to the brink of war with the British, most recently during the Cleveland administration over the matter of "Olney's Eighteen Inch Gun" memo.

Since then, and, in particular, since 1917, the US has viewed its relationship with the UK as first among equals. FDR bent the law beyond recognition to give all aid short of war to the battered and beleaguered British following 1 September 1939. Americans fought and died in an undeclared naval war against Nazi Germany in order that supplies, including warlike stores, could get through the submarine blockade of the home islands. This was not legal. Arguably, it violated even the Constitution. But, it was the right thing to do. It was also a testament to the "special relationship" which tied the US to the UK.

Various presidents in various ways have acted to fray the web constituting the special relationship. So also have assorted British prime ministers. The ties of shared history, shared values, shared world views, shared needs and aspirations as to what constitutes a world order in which either and, therefore, both could flourish have assured the special relationship continued despite transient difficulties.

Before Mr Obama no American president eschewed the very notion of the special relationship between ourselves and Great Britain. Before Mr Obama brought his unique personal mixture of progressivism run amok, world class naivete regarding world affairs, and personal history, perhaps including myths regarding British mistreatment of a paternal grandfather during the Mau-Mau Emergency, the thought of jettisoning the special relationship was unthinkable.

While Mr Obama has also tossed out the similar, but not equal in either basis or consequence, special relationship between the US and Israel, he seems to have harbored a particular desire to destroy for once and all any vestige of the US-UK unique linkage. The motivations for this apparent drive belong in the realm of psychodynamics. The implications for both countries exist in the real world.

It is not necessary to rehearse the dreary record of the gratuitous insults heaped on the British starting with the removal of the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and continuing to the present day. Nor is it sufficient to excuse the record on the basis of Mr Obama's frustration and anger over the BP Gulf of Mexico oil blowout. (The recent exercises in rhetorical overkill are simply add-ons to the earlier, and far less excusable bad behavior on the part of the president.)

The American president and the new British prime minister have talked on the phone more than a few times, but the G-8 and G-20 meetings provide the first chance for the two men to breathe each other's air. The meeting will not be easy or necessarily productive given the two men's differences in political stance, economic policy, and world view.

The differences, taken in the context of both the administration's and Congress' harangues about and against BP and the intentional diminution of the "special relationship," are almost guaranteed to assure that the (in)famous "reset" button will not be pushed by the Obama finger. This implies that if any chance exists for the special relationship to survive the perils of the Obama touch, it depends upon the patience, forbearance, and far-sighted statesmanship of David Cameron.

Even though Mr Cameron has demonstrated in the opening days of his ministry a measure of deliberate calm, rationality, and openness marking him as a refreshing personality in the British political scene, the deck at home is stacked against any attempt to revivify--or even sustain in a minimal way--the "special relationship. In this context it should be recalled that the British parliament concluded in a report a few months ago that the "special relationship" may have run its days.

The House of Commons panel making that dreary assessment may have been prompted by an understated version of the you-can't-fire-me-I-quit dynamic. The panel may actually have been of the view that if the Obama administration was scuppering the generations of enmeshed history, perhaps it would be better to do the job first. That motivation is both quite understandable and forgivable. Far more understandable and forgivable than the Obama efforts at relationship murder.

Over the years, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, there has existed a feeling to the effect that the "special relationship" is far more critical to the British than to the Americans. There are quite obvious and equally superficial reasons for this conceit.

It would be quite easy to demonstrate the falsity of the view, however. All that would be necessary is for David Cameron to push up the date of British withdrawal from Helmand province to, say, 1 October 2010. The flap this move would produce throughout Beltway Land is delightful to imagine. Pulling ten thousand excellent troops out of the still quite hotly contested province would spell the end to any hope of pulling even the slightest semblance of "not-losing" from the yawning maw of defeat.

Even the vague hint of a British total withdrawal by 2015 has raised whispers of "defeat" in and around the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom. Ratcheting the hint to the level of even "semi-commitment" would raise the decibel level of panic from incipient to immediate.

There is another way to get the message through the preternaturally calm and detached presidential brain housing group. That would be a serious talking to by an adult member of the administration (if there is any.) The substance of the lecture would be, if the US, if a single American president, can unilaterally abrogate a diplomatic and political relationship which has been extended for generations and sealed by the blood of both Yanks and Brits, then what country can trust a relation with the US?

Credibility, the worth and strength of America's word, is what is at stake in the current situation. American credibility has been the reason thousands of Americans died in Southeast Asia. During the long, long war in Vietnam, several presidents of both parties dedicated the lives of Americans to the alter of credibility.

If past presidents have been so worried about the worth of American commitments that they have been willing to spend American blood in truckload lots, then, what is that Mr Obama does not understand? Why does he believe that his single handed jettisoning of the US-UK special relationship has no effect on the perceptions of other countries, other governments?

No matter what sort of public window dressing is put on the meeting between Obama and Cameron, the reality of the "special relationship" being an endangered species will remain. Unless and until Mr Obama can reverse his course on the nature and character of our relation with the UK, doubts will both linger and grow.

These doubts will continue, a cancerous bloom in waiting, not only in London but in the capitals of other countries which have considered themselves to enjoy a relationship, if not "special" then at least close with the US. If these countries cannot be convinced that the Obama Team is dedicated to the maintenance of the "special relationship," they will not be comfortable with any commitment made to them by the current administration--or the continuation of previous commitments by Obama and company.

The historical record as well as current dynamics in global politics demonstrates that not all relationships are created equal. There is no uniformity of relationship defined by international "rights and responsibilities." Rather all foreign relations are bi-lateral at root. At the same time, because they are each and all bi-lateral, the change in one long-standing relation has consequences, intended or not, on all others.

Once again, Mr Obama, reality has shown conclusively just how wrong your ideologically driven views are. And, how destructive they can be.

Taps For The US-UK "Special Relationship"

The splendid phrase maker Winston Churchill invented both the term "special relationship" and the concept which it expressed to describe what he hoped constituted the uniquely close relation between the US and the UK. It is fitting that the British announce the end of the "special relationship."

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.