The British media love to announce the end of the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain, and now they have been joined by a UK Parliamentary Committee, which recommends that the phrase, first coined by Winston Churchill, be abandoned. Britain should put its own interests first and stop showing so much deference to Washington, according to a report by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which argues that British influence on the United States will in any case continue to decline.
There can be little arguing that the influence of London on U.S. policy has taken a nosedive under President Barack Obama, who is much more interested in new, emerging nations than in old colonial ones. The same applies to all the other major European governments, including those in Paris and Berlin. It is equally true that few Americans have heard of the phrase “the special relationship,” which emerged from the World War II alliance that defeated Nazi Germany on its Western front. For decades, however, the phrase has bandied about by the British media, usually in stories triumphantly stating that it has been severely damaged or no longer exists.
The British media almost invariably overlook the multilayered nature of Anglo-American relations and focus narrowly on how well or badly the current occupants of the White House and Number 10 Downing Street happen to get along with each other. That strand of the relationship reflects the news of the day, the latest ebb and flow of foreign and security policies, and changes in personal chemistry between the two countries’ leaders.
It is also a gift that never stops giving for the British media: a dependable source of unending “snubs” to British leaders by U.S. presidents. Some are real, such as Obama’s famous offering to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a box of DVDs of “best American movies” – the kind available at Walmart for $29.99 – that did not work in England. In the absence of such obvious slights, Fleet Street sometimes falls back on making them up.
This superficial perspective on the relationship, however, ignores its more profound elements: a compound mixture of historical, cultural, linguistic, and political ties that is relatively unaffected by ups and downs in intergovernmental relations. Many Americans are Anglophiles and admire the way British troops are more likely than those of any other countries to be found fighting alongside U.S. forces – although one might generalize that Republicans tend to be more Anglophile than Democrats.
Even in today’s globalized “multipolar” world, British and Americans are almost certain to agree on what is right or wrong on the international scene, and usually want to do something about it. Anglo-Saxons are more interested in action than theory. They also share similar senses of humor and tend to trust one another in a way that does not always extend to other nationalities. These are important building blocks of a relationship founded on a long history of shared interests and common values.
Needless to say, the cultural and historic aspects of the relationship were ignored by media reports on the findings of the Parliamentary Committee, which delighted journalists by using the word “poodle” in one of its comments. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was mockingly described as “Bush’s poodle” during the early stages of the Iraq War. Thus The Telegraph, in a report entitled “Special Relationship” with U.S. is Over, MPs Claim, swallowed the bait in its second sentence:
Instead of seeing a significant partnership, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Commons said that many people, at home and abroad, saw Britain as the “poodle” of American interests.
That is somewhat dishonest, as the Committee specifically used the poodle word to refer to the years around 2003, even though it got its grammar wrong. “The perception that the British Government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the U.S. administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas,” the Committee’s report said. “This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK.”
The Committee clearly didn’t mean “leading up to the period of the invasion,” but “in the period leading up to the invasion.” No matter. Members of Parliament must have known that the media would jump on the reference, reminding everyone of the faults of Blair, from whom Brown is happy to distance himself as he conducts a difficult re-election campaign. The Committee is chaired by an MP from Brown’s (and formerly Blair’s) Labour Party.
The “poodle” remark was also picked up by the Associated Press – although much lower in its report. The AP story began with the unchallengeable statement: “the ‘special relationship’ is not so special any more,” basing its lead on the Committee’s recommendation that the phrase be dropped from current usage and be used only in a historical sense in future.
In The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill reported from Washington: “there is a major problem with the Commons committee calling on British politicians and diplomats to drop the phrase ‘special relationship:’ it is about five decades too late.” But once again, he was referring to relations between the leaders of the two countries rather than between the countries themselves.
Of course, the country-to-country links will progressively diminish as more non-Caucasians (most notably Obama himself) make up the U.S. population, memories of World War II fade ever further and the history taught in American schools emphasizes native cultures and anti-colonialism. Hollywood contributes its bit, with heavy doses of treacherous and/or idiotic English villains. But in the cultural and historical sense, the relationship is still likely to remain special for a while longer.
A Washington Perspective: The Fraying Bonds of the Special Relationship submitted to UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee by Reginald Dale and Heather Conley
