Written evidence submitted by Dr Andrew Mumford

Reasons for submission

The purpose of this written submission is to caution against notions of a ‘special relationship’ existing between the UK and the US. It is an important pillar of the British defence system, yet British relations with the United States need to realistically assessed in a world of complex and contending interactions between nations, international organisations and non-state actors.

Having been a visiting fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and written a book on the US-UK ‘special relationship’, I would urge the committee to adopt a more pragmatic understanding of ties between London and Washington (that they enjoy a, but not the, special relationship) in the realm of defence policy.

Executive Summary

• From Harry Truman to Barack Obama, American presidents have used the phrase ‘special relationship’ in statements and press conferences to describe American bonds with 22 countries other than the United Kingdom.
• A truly ‘special’ relationship must be defined as one that can ably demonstrate a mutual level of exceptional influence on each other’s policy outlook and, crucially, this relationship should be discernibly monogamous. Britain and America have never truly maintained this level of specialness since the end of the Second World War.
• Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s 1964 statement that the UK should “regard our relation with you [the US] not as a special relationship but as a close relationship” is an interpretation that this committee would be well advised to remember.
• An awareness of the imbalance of US-UK relations and a willingness to shrug off a romanticised version of what US-UK co-operation can do globally is essential for UK defence policy in the future.

1. The Origins of the ‘Special Relationship’

1.1 Since the ending of the Second World War it has been patently clear that Britain has needed America more than America has needed Britain. The attritional conflict against Germany and her allies pushed the two countries closer together than at any point since American independence, yet the exhausting impact it had on the British economy contrasted starkly with the effervescence of post-war American wealth. Post-war loans from Washington to London came to symbolise a lasting economic reliance that soon spread to other areas of policy making. Although accepting the asymmetry of the relationship, post-war British foreign policy clearly posited close ties with the Americans as a pre-requisite for preserving British power and interests globally. Fast forward into the twenty-first century and the British defence and foreign policy establishment is still trying to couch its entire raison d’etre through proximity to America – a tendency that has only been exacerbated by Brexit.

1.2 Undoubtedly, the oft vaunted ‘personal chemistry’ between presidents and prime ministers plays a part in setting the tone for broader Anglo-American relations. It was clear that some presidential and prime ministerial relationships have been close on a personal (and political) level to warrant the revival of the ‘special relationship’ label. Margaret Thatcher clearly saw Ronald Reagan as ‘one of us’, spawning an anti-communist, pro-free market transatlantic partnership. But even Thatcher and Reagan had moments when the purportedly ‘special’ nature of US-UK relations was fundamentally challenged, most notably American hesitance to provide significant support to Britain during the Falklands war in 1982 and Reagan’s decision to forcibly remove the leader of the Commonwealth island of Grenada in 1983. More recently Tony Blair and George W. Bush forged a close personal friendship based on shared faith, similar views on the imperative of spreading democratic values globally. But close personal chemistry between leaders is not proof of a ‘special relationship’, firstly because British leaders do not have a monopoly on friendship with American presidents, and secondly because an emphasis on agential proximity belies the deeper structural elements that even Churchill alluded to when talking about a ‘fraternity of English-speaking peoples’.

2. Debating the Meaning and Purpose of the ‘Special Relationship’

2.1 At a White House dinner in December 1964, Harold Wilson delivered arguably the most realistic assessment of the meaning and purpose of the ‘special relationship’ ever by a British Prime Minister.  Standing to give a toast to his host, Lyndon Johnson, Wilson detached with the accustomed sentimentality with which Anglo-American leaders usually wax lyrical on such occasions:

‘I have heard this often enough about whether there is a special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.  Some of those who talk of the special relationship, I think, are looking backwards and not looking forward. They talk about the nostalgia of our imperial age. We regard our relation with you not as a special relationship but as a close relationship, governed by the only things that matter and that is a unity of purpose and that is the unity of objective.’[1]

Eschewing the traditional rhetoric pertaining to common language and fraternal bonds forged in war, Wilson implicitly acknowledged how such sentimentality counts for little when the defence demands of the Cold War alliance and the diminution in political stature as decolonisation took hold, not to mention domestic economic constraints, meant that Britain brought less to the table than the Americans may have wished. Quoting the essayist Charles Lamb, Wilson acknowledged to President Johnson that ‘there is nothing so irrelevant as a poor relation.’ The prime minister’s desire to emphasise a shared mission, if not a shared burden, represents the most clear-eyed interpretation of the inescapable power imbalance at the heart of post-1945 Anglo-American relations – one this committee would be well advised to remember.

2.2 But Wilson’s demure recognition of Britain’s inherent junior partner status in the alliance has not prevented consistent reference to a ‘special relationship’ by subsequent leaders who have become inured to the rhetoric of decline and irrelevance. Yet the alliance has not so much show good survival skills as a flair for reinvention. In the post-1945 era we have seen the bonds shift in the nature of its ‘specialness’ from war-time solidarity to ideological symmetry. Reinventing reasons why US-UK relations remain exactly ‘special’ has been a perpetual political and academic task for the past seventy years, with emphasis being placed alternately on common heritage, language, identity, ideology and personal chemistry between the leaders. This reinvention has been the offspring of necessity, namely an imperative on behalf of the British to demonstrate on-going worth to their American cousins in the face of ever-increasing disparities in political, economic and military power.

2.3 The cheerleaders and naysayers of US-UK relations have provided a substantive corpus of literature on aspects of transatlantic ties from its Churchillian heyday to its 1970s nadir, through to its personality-driven re-ignition under Thatcher and then Blair. As one of the most scrutinised of modern international diplomatic relations, there is a large pool of literature that has built up over the past few decades offering grand chronological sweeps of the high politics of Anglo-American relations in which the big themes of defence, economics and leaders’ personalities prevail.[2] Alex Danchev delineated between the ‘evangelists’ who pursue close transatlantic relations with missionary zeal (personified by Winston Churchill), and the ‘functionalists’ whose more pragmatic assessment emphasises commonalities but omits sentiment (epitomised by Harold Wilson and arguably Dean Acheson too). Danchev went further by identifying a new strain of ‘special relationship’ observers: the ‘terminalists’. To this camp the ‘special relationship’ is pure fiction, a convenient Cold War construct that was rendered obsolete after 1989.[3]

2.4 Admittedly there was, and still is, much political hot air about Anglo-American ‘specialness’ that is purely rhetorical and reliant on heavily romanticised interpretations of past glories that gloss over present difficulties (or irrelevancies).  This author has empathy with Ronald Hyam’s description of the ‘special relationship’ as ‘ambivalent and intermittent’, most notably during the mid-twentieth century when it was based precariously on ‘a vague sense of affinity’.[4] Indeed there is perhaps very little that is special about ties between London and Washington since the end of the Second World War.

2.5 A search of the online Public Papers of the President (via the American Presidency Project) reveals how from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, American presidents have used the phrase ‘special relationship’ in statements and press conferences to describe American bonds with 22 countries other than the United Kingdom.[5] If there is a ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK the ‘specialness’ is certainly not marked by exclusivity.

2.6 The word ‘special’ has been an excessively used semantic device in American diplomacy in the Cold War and post-1989 era. In turn, British politicians have been naïve in assuming that a ‘special relationship’ with the US was seen as a monogamous one by Washington. A truly ‘special’ relationship must surely be defined as one that can ably demonstrate a mutual level of exceptional influence on each other’s policy outlook and, crucially, this relationship should be discernibly monogamous, with no other country coming close to levels of influence, patronage and good will. Britain and America have never truly maintained this level of specialness since the end of the Second World War. As a result of post-1945 power imbalances and increasing economic dependence the rationale of successive British governments that all must be done to preserve close transatlantic relations simply became the same as acceding to American demands or policy whims in an effort not to rock the boat. The price of ‘specialness’ for the British was perpetual acquiescence.

2.7 The ability of the British government to adopt a less deferential approach to the US in the twenty-first century is more of a reflection of how the UK was mainly on the periphery of the foreign and defence policy radar of the Obama administration. The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 set off a similar bout of hand-wringing about the on-going relevance of the ‘special relationship’, with the British press obsessing over the fact that Prime Minister Theresa May was only the tenth world leader Trump phoned after becoming president-elect.

3. The Traditional Realms of the ‘Special Relationship’ in Defence Policy

3.1 There are three predominant realms in which the ‘special relationship’ has been traditionally defined in relation to issues of defence: intelligence relations, nuclear relations and conventional wars. Arguably, these spheres of close Anglo-American co-operation in the wake of the Second World War came to shape our understanding of the intertwined nature of transatlantic defence relations. Yet the perceptible intimacy between London and Washington in the shady world of intelligence, the high risk domain of nuclear secrets, and the mythologised unity of large-scale war-fighting belied tensions on a much wider and deeper range of defence and security issues.

3.2 Several Anglo-American intelligence-sharing agreements during the Second World War were topped off in 1948 with what has come to be commonly known as the UKUSA intelligence treaty (which was not a singular agreement and also included the Commonwealth partners of Canada, Australia and New Zealand). This provided the basis primarily for co-operation in the realm of signals intelligence (SIGINT) although this has never meant that each party received unfettered access to the others’ material. Intra-alliance politics and friction ensured that UKUSA never created a system of joint intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination. Transatlantic intelligence fiefdoms maintain a fierce independence. Any significant joint sense of purpose was driven by a mutual suspicion of their erstwhile Soviet ally as world war gave way to Cold War. But as a result of several high profile defections to the USSR, including the exposure of the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ spy-ring, the intelligence dimension of the ‘special relationship’ in the 1950s was at a very low ebb. The American intelligence agencies began to develop a wary distrust of their British counterparts and this resulted in the search for alternative intelligence alliances. Indeed, the Cold War extended Washington’s intelligence horizons to such a large extent that the transatlantic exclusivity of the 1940s was transcended and the intimacy of US-UK intelligence efforts against Nazi Germany faded into memory.

3.3 Another key area in which Anglo-American defence relations have purportedly demonstrated a high degree of ‘specialness’ is that of nuclear weapons. This was symbolised in July 1958 with the signing of the Atomic Energy Defence Agreement that facilitated the biggest nuclear co-operation pact to date. This reversed the nuclear secrecy enshrined in the 1946 McMahon Act that aimed to build American nuclear supremacy by blocking allies’ access to expertise and technology. Yet far from being a cornerstone of a ‘special relationship’, nuclear and intelligence co-operation were arguably components of manipulation by Washington in order to garner greater influence over other areas of British defence commitments, including spending. They were used as carrots to encourage London to take particular paths regarding defence policy, most notably during the turbulent economic crisis of the 1970s that spawned defence reviews that recommended slashing the budget of the Ministry of Defence. This caused alarm in Washington, most acutely with Henry Kissinger who was concerned at the detrimental effect on American intelligence that the closure of British bases in the Mediterranean would have.

3.4 Even co-operation in the realm of conventional warfare, so soon after the triumphant alliance against the Axis powers, proved to be a troubled ghost of its former self. Take as a prime example that of the Korean War. Already faced with demanding troop deployments overseas the British Chiefs of Staff were at first reluctant to accede to the American request to contribute to their UN-badged force.  The Foreign Office was wary of what such a refusal could do to Anglo-American relations. Some Whitehall mandarins felt that the UK needed to deploy alongside the Americans if only to act as a brake on any rash decisions by President Harry Truman to utilise nuclear weapons. Eventually the Foreign Office position won out and two infantry battalions were sent to the Korean peninsula. Yet consistent American refusal to take on board any British advice over Korea led Sir William Strang, the Permanent Under Secretary to the Foreign Office, to gloomily concluded in January 1951 that the US ‘behaves insufferably to its allies.’[6] London had clearly deluded itself into thinking that it could mould American actions at a time when US grand strategy had become so ideologically entrenched – a context which has relevant contemporary echoes.

4. Implications for US-UK relations

4.1 The ‘special relationship’ is surely one of the most over-indulged yet vacuous phrases in the modern diplomatic lexicon. The very phrase is seldom used in Washington. On occasion it may be muttered by a president welcoming a visiting British prime minister at a Rose Garden press conference, but it rarely features in policy discussion. The continued use of the term in common transatlantic parlance owes more to paying lip service to past glories than reflecting any meaningful mutual political need. Indeed, the ‘special relationship’ is a chimera seen only by the British. The most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely failed to demonstrate the existence of the mutual levels of exceptional influence given the prevalence of mutual recrimination over tactical approaches and operational performance.

4.2 The British have had to place enormous faith in the creed of the ‘special relationship’ in order to maintain some semblance of power and relevance to post-1945 international relations. For the Americans, on the other hand, it became an occasional fillip to foreign policy goals in corners of the world where the rising tide of the Cold War met the fading British Empire. It was an expedience to the United States, perhaps an occasional embarrassment, but to the UK the ‘special relationship’ remained a necessity that permanently required the assurance of reciprocity, but has in reality received the tepid granting not of ‘specialness’ but of equity within a league of other allies around the globe. An awareness of this imbalance and a willingness to shrug off a romanticised version of what US-UK co-operation can do globally is essential for UK defence policy in the future.

17 October 2017

About the author

Dr Andrew Mumford is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, where he is also co-director of the Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism (CST). His new book Counter-Insurgency Warfare and the Anglo-American Alliance: The ‘Special Relationship’ on the Rocks is due out in early 2018 with Georgetown University Press. His previous books include The Counter-Insurgency Myth (2011) and Proxy Warfare (2013).

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