Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.
In 1991, for four days, Kazakhstan stood alone as the Soviet Union – despite there being no other soviets to be in Union with – including the Russians.
For 243 years, from the end of Mary I to the Act of Union that merged Ireland into the UK, the English and British sovereigns self-styled themselves as the rulers of France despite having no French land.
For just over a millennium, the Germans speaking little Latin, and enjoying near zero territorial or cultural continuity with Rome, declared their sovereign the Emperor of the Romans.
Each of these are titles arising from a moment in time where for a fleeting second they were indeed accurate – or at least accurate enough – but that aged into absurdity. Voltaire’s adage about the latter, the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, that it was “ni saint, ni romain, ni empire” is well known enough today. Its contemporary equivalent, that the ‘special relationship’ is neither special nor a relationship (at least not a healthy one) still needs some publicity work.
Much like the Holy Roman Empire snatching its Roman claim from the dying East, the special relationship was born in the snatching of leadership from the East. Before the special relationship Britain was what?
It was the centre of a global free trade area – a position that the US destroyed in Article VII of the lend-lease agreement. It was the home of the global reserve currency – a position the US destroyed using lend-lease and then cemented at Bretton-Woods. It was the major technological power – a position surrendered in the Quebec Agreement and Tizard Mission before the Americans having acquired the technology decided ‘perhaps not’. It was still capable of exercising power in its interests – before the Americans declared that they would break Britain if it did not back down and break itself.
You needn’t even go back to ‘ancient history’ to see what the special relationship looks like.
A US under Obama promising the Russians Britain’s nuclear secrets or Trump’s State Department making fun of British veterans and trying to dictate the UK’s purely domestic policies are not imperial history. Nor are tariff threats for standing up for basic morality as far as Greenland is concerned. The US government may be more openly hostile, more openly imperialistic, but it is, if we accept reality, not new.
We have established then the ‘What?’ but of equal consequence is the ‘Why?’. Why are ‘we’ obsessed with the Americans and our ‘special relationship’? There are I think four theories-
The first that, for about five years under Tony Blair the special relationship really was a special relationship. Blair was sincerely integrated into the American presidential machinery in the same way a Vice-President of Secretary of State might be – in the situation room, constantly receiving updates, co-determining plans to have the UN legitimise invading Iraq.
If we’re to accept the adage that “if you want to know a man’s politics, look at the events of his youth” then the five years of a real special relationship are unfortunately the five years that coincide with the youth, or at least the political formation, of most contemporary British politicians. Broaden it to include the late 90s, with Clinton, Kosovo and baby Toniblers and Tobilertas running round Pristina, and you get the vast majority of MPs, civil servants, and journalists. That becomes the default and the current situation a disruption from it.
For the Conservatives specifically add in a dollop of Reagan-Thatcher fetishism – the Americans of course doing nothing about the Falklands and next to nothing about their weapons and funds being showered on the IRA that would of course attempt to blow her up – and it becomes quite obvious how delusion becomes consensus.
Then there’s the flattery aspect. British politics are not trivial by any means, nor even low-stakes, but they are defined by a basic reality – that the average MPs career ends in a slightly damp, quite smelly, and potentially mouldy leisure centre at 4am before being shuffled off to posting that they are open to new opportunities on LinkedIn. It is something deeply unamerican where careers end in cash.
What we are left with then is Ministers wistfully dreaming of shuffling off to Washington where their title as former Chancellor or former Home Secretary or former Environment Secretary, even if for but a few months, will at least impress enough ill-informed Americans into giving them an advisory board role, or hiring them to give a speech, or letting them talk at CPAC about how their amazing success at vanquishing woke in the UK. You too might be useless but that needn’t be a barrier to being the next Liz Truss (or if at least plausibly competent the next Nick Clegg). The special relationship then is flattering for both the ego and for finances.
Then there’s language, the US is fundamentally the only substantial country whose language our people and our political class can claim to speak, beyond charitably a B grade in GCSE French. France might be right next door, and it might be the only country that can actually fix Britain’s illegal migration crisis, and it might be the only country that keeps the lights on in Britain, and it might be the only country Britain’s military depends on for much of its amphibious landing capability, but nobody ever quite gets them.
British politicos will be able to name the 27 amendments to the US constitution but ask them to describe anything in the French constitution beyond ‘there’s a President’ and you are left with what? The Germans slightly further away and with an even lower language uptake are even stranger.
Finally we are left with the psychological aspect, one that I think Bart de Wever, the Belgian Prime Minister who, despite not believing in the existence of Belgium, has managed to do something rare and actually be a notable figure for once, put best. “Being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else”. We have been a happy vassal since Suez and it is a feat of mental unpleasantness to opt for anything else – only now that miserable slavery is on the table does the thought of accepting mental unpleasantness raise its head.
We must take this opportunity. And though we may not be able to undo seventy years of subservience, at least not overnight, we can at least start to undo the mental servitude. Where is our de Gaulle? Or at least our Jacques Chirac?
