Not so special any more

However cosy they may appear, neither Obama nor Cameron care much for the ‘special relationship’. But, says John C. Hulsman, that may be no bad thing

Good student that he is, Barack Obama has been careful to dot his ‘i’s and cross his ‘t’s after the British election. Well aware that he is viewed as uninterested in transatlantic relations, Obama made sure he was quick off the mark; he was the first foreign leader to phone David Cameron when he became PM. It’s well known in Washington that the President considered Brown uninspiring, but Obama made it clear that this time it was different; that between them, Barack and Dave, they were truly the new guardians of the special relationship.

So — did he mean it? Are Obama and Cameron the new Reagan and Thatcher? For far too long, too many foreign policy thinkers have used the ‘special relationship’ as a Rorschach test for their general feelings about the world. Over the last week the usual perennial assessments about the state of affairs between the UK and the US have made their usual appearances. But we need far more analysis here, and far less wishful thinking.

The truth is that whatever Cameron and Obama promised each other last Wednesday, the old special relationship is in tatters.

David Cameron certainly does not seem preoccupied with what is going on in Washington in the manner that Margaret Thatcher (or for that matter Tony Blair) was. Rumour has it that the new Prime Minister has never even been to DC. Instead, in terms of rhetoric, he can be regarded as the least Atlanticist Prime Minister since Harold Wilson. This, coupled with his innate euro-scepticism, makes Cameron seem to be a throwback, a sort of pre-Suez Tory, both hostile to Europe and slightly agnostic about America.