How "Special"? For How Long?: Between Washington and London - U.S.-U.K. relations

National Review, Feb 5, 2001 by John O'Sullivan

In the final reviews of his presidency, Bill Clinton's legacy is generally depicted as modest: stylish but slightly disappointing, something on the lines of a Louis Vuitton handbag containing a very small check. If you are the president-elect, however, it must look quite different: a large steamer trunk bursting with problems, situations, and contingency plans for all-too-likely crises. And at the very top of the heap is a particularly unpleasant surprise: The British are going.

American policymakers have become accustomed, especially since the advent of Mrs. Thatcher in 1979, to thinking of the U.K. as America's most reliable ally. Whether it was joining in the sanctions and bombing campaign against Iraq or offering early support for the stationing of cruise missiles in Europe, the British were generally helpful to the U.S. In addition, it was the view of both General de Gaulle and the U.S. State Department that Britain was America's Trojan Horse inside Europe, preventing the French from turning the European Union into an anti-American superpower. (The State Department approved; the General did not.)

This sense of trust and reliance, moreover, is of long standing. Sustained Anglo-American cooperation began shortly after Pearl Harbor and became almost second nature during the Cold War. Even today, ten years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the relationship remains based on a number of highly unusual arrangements. One is a very high degree of intelligence-sharing: The CIA's man in London actually sits in on Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee. (He has to leave the room occasionally, presumably when they are bitching about the CIA.) Another is a very high level of nuclear-weapons cooperation: The British buy Trident missiles from the U.S. (and are privy to America's nuclear secrets) as a result of a 1961 deal between Kennedy and Macmillan. This allows London to get a more effective nuclear deterrent than the French, at a much lower cost.

And the cooperation that began during the Cold War continues, because the British are among the very few NATO allies with effective armed forces, a promilitary public opinion, and a global outlook. They are willing to intervene abroad alongside the U.S.-sometimes, as in Kosovo, more willing than the U.S.-and are therefore actually useful as allies.

Both sides have benefited from this "special relationship." As Peter Rodman pointed out at a recent New Atlantic Initiative conference in London, the relationship has enabled the British to play "a pivotal role" in European-American relations, mediating between the sides and thus increasing their own diplomatic influence. This has generally suited the U.S., because it has both advanced U.S. policy on NATO matters (e.g., missile installations) and restrained Europe from adopting quasi-protectionist measures (generally disguised as health or "anti-dumping" regulations). But this relationship was a balancing act: Its success depended on the Brits' not committing themselves wholly to the European Union and, in particular, its schemes for a binding common foreign and defense policy. And the British suddenly look unsteady on the tightrope.

Consider the three items of Anglo-American cooperation listed above. First, U.S.-U.K. intelligence cooperation is under attack from both the French government and the European Parliament. They especially dislike Echelon, a highly sophisticated electronic-intelligence-sharing program that brings together the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand-on the grounds, inter alia, that the information it gathers is sometimes used to assist American companies in competition with Europeans for Third World contracts. But the Europeans' underlying motive is to force the Brits either to share U.S. intelligence with other Europeans, as part of the development of a common foreign policy, or to break the special links with the CIA. Everyone knows, of course, that if the British try to balance on this particular tightrope, U.S. intelligence agencies will simply downgrade the material they pass over. And one strand of the special relationship will have been quietly cut.

Second, U.S.-U.K. nuclear cooperation is also coming under criticism. The bipartisan drive in the U.S. for a national missile-defense system is causing ructions in Europe-and putting special pressure on Britain, which houses early-warning facilities at Fylingdales that would need to be updated for it. Most continental European politicians have expressed reservations about missile defense. European governments would prefer to oppose missile defense outright and, citing the common foreign policy, to obtain Britain's refusal to upgrade Fylingdales as well-thus breaking another link in the U.S.-U.K. relationship; but the Europeans fear America's reaction to such open opposition. As Francois Heisbourg of the Geneva Center for Security Policy wrote in the International Herald Tribune: "Indeed, since the shield is a hot button issue in the United States, where it receives bipartisan support, the Europeans should refrain from giving the impression that they are denying the U.S. population its right to defend itself against missiles." Indeed.