[Quote–That being said, we seriously kick ass]
I know we digress somewhat here -but at what cost ? Take a look at the article linked here-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-508299.html
Yes, but at what cost? Think of the children!
Absolutely --with that hail of bullets being fired-per insurgent it should be added.
We often forget about Canada.
I’d say that the USA relationship is special in the sense that Tiger’s relationship with his mistresses was. I’m sure that they were all “special”. Plus, the UK is clearly now the “bottom” in the relationship, although I’d say that prior to WWII they were the “top”.
There is a special relationship, regardless of politics in both countries.
Past Presidents have been oblivious of it but have soon been informed of it.
During the Falklands war the U.S. was allied to both Argentina and Great Britain.
America supplied arms and intelligence to Britain to prosecute their war against the Argentinians.
The armed forces of both nations work incredibly close together, much closer then NATO doctrines demand, both with exchange training and fighting alongside each other in Iraq and Afghan.
We have been allies in both world wars and Korea.
Inspite of the left wing British government of the time British S.A.S. soldiers fought in Vietnam while supposedly doing “exchange training” at Fort Brag.S.C. (Sorry I can’t give a cite so disregard this if you want to)
If a 9/11 event happened to Wall Street all of their data is duplicated in the City of London so that they could continue trading even if N.Y.C. was flattened.
We are members of the E.C. for pragmatic reasons (And I’m totally pro E.C.).
We identify with America for much deeper reasons.
The American founder families and issuers of the D.of I. were Brits,our ties go far beyond having a mutual language.
The UK is a special ally and it should continue in the future.
As far as i know, the UK is the only country that the USA shares secret intelligence with.
Can anybody verify that the USA gave the UK satellite data on the Argentine Navy (during the falklands War)?
Yep, with the possible exception of Canada.
I would not underestimate the importance of language and size. We are the two largest, English speaking countries in the world. And let’s not forget that London is a center of international finance, making it linked closely with NYC.
Yeah, I don’t know if it helps your career in a UK bank to do a few years in NY, but it does help your career at a US big bank if you do a few years in London.
People often date the switchover, so to speak, at that point, but I wonder… The famous closing line “America was thus clearly Top Nation, and history came to a .” of 1066 And All That was published in 1930 and in reference to the end of WWI. If this reflects the general sentiment of the time, then it suggests that America’s surpassing of Britain in status occurred rather earlier than WWII.
There should have been. My feeling is that that debt is now paid.
I don’t see that there is a ‘special relationship’, particularly that the wartime generation that had experience of that cooperation is now off the scene. Nobody in Washington gives a fig about Britain’s view on anything.
Sorry you feel that way, but this simply is not true.
Anytime something big happens in the world, something which makes us think, “Who’s on our side, Who can we emphatically trust?” it ain’t gonna be France or Russia or Israel, but Britain. That’s not to say that we don’t ever trust any of them, but never as much as the UK.
The “Special Relationship” is more than just sharing intelligence data and selling weapons (which we do with any number of states, like Taiwan and Israel) but references exceptional cooperation in the common defense, security, political, and (to a limited extent) economic interests of both nations and their commonwealths and protectorates, which has existed since WWII. Recall that the Manhattan Project was heavily staffed by scientists and engineers from the British Tube Alloys Project (tube alloy or tuballoy was the code name for plutonium) with the agreement that information about nuclear weapons and production of nuclear fuel would be shared between the two nations. Going the other way, many of the technologies needed to develop practical applied radar, which was used heavily by the British for defense, was developed in the United States but transferred over to British engineers to implement. And although the Allied forces of WWII all nominally worked together, it was the Americans and the British who provided the main body of forces and logistic capability for the major advances on the Western front, and coordination often extended to cooperation at all levels from strategic bombing campaigns to unit-level operations, despite the occasional personal differences between individual commanders.
Post-WWII, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while nominally composed of a majority of the nations of Western and Northern Europe, and was a critical strategic alliance for the placement and maintenance of military bases and defensive installations, the NATO alliance was dominated by the US and UK interests, and most major strategic negotiations were between the USSR and the United States with the UK either attending directly or providing tacit approval. For instance, the Yalta Conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, was probably the single most significant world summit prior to Reykjavik, which, while not formally attended by Britain, was strongly supported by the Thatcher Administration and resulted in the removal of intermediate range ballistic missiles from the European theatre.
Speaking of IRBMs, the first effective IRBM force was the PGM-17 ‘Thor’, developed by the United States and maintained by the USAF, but operated by the Royal Air Force Bomber Command on Britain. Although the system was not operational for long (initial deployment in 1958, removed from service in 1963 as the highly capable storable propellant LGM-25C ‘Titan II’ ICBM came on line), this is the only time that offensive nuclear weapons possessed by the United States were ever operated by a foreign military. (To be clear, the PGM-19 ‘Jupiter’ IRBMs were maintained and ‘operated’ by the Italian and Turkish Air Force personnel, but USAF personnel controlled the launch and arming systems.) The British, lacking funding or public approval to develop their own complete effect strategic weapon delivery systems (i.e. ballistic missiles) following the failure of the Blue Streak programme, entered into agreements with the United States to provide the launch system technology (the cancelled GAM-87 ‘Skybolt’ ALBM, followed by the successful UGM-27 ‘Polaris A-3’ and the UGM-133 ‘Trident II D-5’ SLBMs) while the British would produce their own nuclear weapons and penetration aids. This is the only case in which the United States has handed a complete strategic ballistic missile system over to a foreign power for independent use.
The US and UK also have had coordination in integrated strategic operational plans for the use of nuclear weapons which are much more stringent and definite than the more general agreement of common defense among NATO partners. The recent hubbub about the placement or sale of US ABM systems in Europe should highlight how unique this type of relationship is. The United States did also place nuclear-armed anti-bomber systems (the CIM-10 ‘BOMARC B’) in Canada, operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was a joint operation between the US and Canada. While its well-known (and now mothballed) main facility was the Cheyenne Mountain Directorate, a second facility in Canada, the RCAF North Bay installation, provided full operational capability as well.
As for why the United States and the United Kingdom (and Canada) shared such a relationship, while the common cultural heritage and language no doubt has a significant role, the real core of the issue goes to the common interests of the nations and their relative stature on the public stage. Even before World War II, it was clear that the position of Great Britain and the British Empire was waning in the post-colonial world, and Pax Britannica was essentially dead as of World War I. The costs of the WWII, the fiscal hardship of maintaining increasingly unprofitable colonial interests and the difficulty of governing colonies in which populations clamored for progressive autonomy, and the growing threat (real or perceived) of expansionist Soviet Communism, led Churchill to realize that the sun was, in fact, setting on the British Empire, and the only way to maintain Britain’s stature as a free first-tier nation was to align with a robust industrial power that shared Churchill’s opposition to Communist expansion in Eastern Europe, most memorably highlighted in Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Missouri. History has largely validated Churchill’s concern, as the Soviet Empire, while not perhaps quite as expansionist as originally feared, did encompass most of Eastern Europe and made the soviets of the East Bloc nations vassal states to be milked for products and resources the Russians themselves could not produce, and used as buffer zones against invasion that is culturally feared by Russians.
The US treated the UK largely as a partner rather than (as with many other nations) errant children or tokens to be played out in the newest Great Game between East and West, and in exchange, was provided ready access to the oil reserves in the formerly British dominated Arabian Peninsula and Middle East, and access for its growing naval power via the Suez Canal (prior to it being nationalized). Defense of the North Atlantic for shipping and strategic use in a hypothetical European land war led to common strategy and sharing of resources between the RN and the USN and had a marked influence on the individual acquisition and operational strategies of each force.
The Special Relationship has been eroded in a number of ways since its inception, both from within and without. Disagreements about strategic and military efforts led to significant barriers in cooperation, such as: the planned invasion of the Suez by a combined Franco-Britannic-Israeli force that was opposed by the United States; US involvement in French Indochina and the eventual Vietnam War that was opposed by Britain; the reveal of a number of intelligence leaks by the British intelligence services that compromised US intelligence operations and sourcdes, the most famous of which are Cambridge Ring and the Portland Ring. While the bombing and (re)-invasion of the Falkland Islands by Britain following its occupation by Argentina (which the latter intended only to be sabre-rattling by a third-rate naval force) was neither opposed or overtly supported by the United States (other than providing some surveillance information) it highlighted significant weakness in the USN-RN combined naval strategy and of protecting surface ships against conventional and even obsolescent anti-ship missiles, leading to significant revisions in naval operation strategies and the USN to reduce its dependence upon RN protection.
The Special Relationship still exists in many forms, notably British support for the otherwise unpopular 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition. The UK’s one-foot-in-the-bath acceptance of the European Common Union has left it with a somewhat reluctant stronger relationship with the United States than the rest of Europe following the end of the Cold War, though it is essentially economically independent; most of the common interests today are strategic and cultural. In summary, what makes this relationship unique is that it isn’t based upon more narrowly focused strategic goals (as with military alliances) or economic interests, but a more far-sighted common pool of interests and identities, plus a lack of other dance partners; despite the frequent missteps, the United States and the UK have been at least waltzing to the same beat, and will likely continue to do so for decades to come.
Stranger
Well, duh. They owe us by now, don’t they?
D&R
No, seriously, there is still a special relationship, but it simply isn’t as central to American foreign policy as it was in the FDR-Churchill years. Otherwise I would echo the points made by Hail Ants, Lust4Life and Stranger.
I recall on one of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes tells an American that he hopes Britain’s and America’s past differences “will not prevent our grandchildren from being members of the same world-wide empire whose flag shall be a quartering of the Stars and Stripes with the Union Jack.”
In (almost) his first major speech after 9/11, Bush stood next to Tony Blair and declared, “America has no greater friend than Britain!” (I understand the Canadians felt slighted he didn’t mention them on that occasion, as they had actually done something to help, with the rerouting of airliners.) Not long after, some American Neocons floated the idea of an alliance of the Anglosphere, which would be something like a reconstituted British Empire with America in the saddle (Britain, it was implied, would pull out of or gently dissociate from the European Union, and reorient its international associations toward the U.S.). But the idea seems to have faded by now.
