Christopher Meyer

The Special Relationship was never very special

It has always been America First for Americans, though they pay lip-service to the Special Relationship to keep Britain sweet, says Ian Buruma

(Photo by ANDREW COWIE/AFP via Getty Images)

I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship. The editor, Professor Roger Louis, was advised to give it another title. The director of Chatham House, the late David Watt no less, called it ‘rhetorical nonsense’. Yet, as Louis noted:

The ‘Special Relationship’ would not go away. Indeed it haunted the discussions. Eventually it was referred to as the ghost, ever present yet elusive, derided by some but acknowledged by all.

Thirty-four years later the ghost is still floating around. Ian Buruma’s new book is the latest attempt to exorcise it. I suspect that it will be no more successful than previous efforts. Though delivered with a certain caustic panache, the book is doomed to rake over well-trodden ground. One wonders why Buruma bothers. It is, of course, a blast from the ramparts of those in the American academy who find Brexit incomprehensible.

Colin Powell once told me ‘you Brits go ape-shit’ when Americans forget to mention the Special Relationship

The Buruma thesis goes something like this. The so-called Special Relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States was a rhetorical tool, mainly concocted by Churchill, but acquiesced in by Roosevelt, to underscore the strength of the two countries’ alliance as guardians of civilisation at one of the darkest moments of the second world war. But from the start, realpolitik fell far short of rhetoric. Britain and America had mortal enemies in common. But their national interests diverged. Roosevelt wanted to dismantle the British Empire and pressed Churchill to give India independence. He demurred. Roosevelt went on to prefer Stalin to Churchill as a brother-in-arms.

After the war, so Buruma argues, with Churchill out of office and Roosevelt dead, the notion of a Special Relationship between equals should have been allowed to wither before Britain’s decline and America’s ascent to global dominance.

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