With David Cameron currently in Washington, John Dumbrell reviews the recent history of US-UK relations. The special relationship has clearly not been so stellar in recent times. With American foreign policy pivoting towards the Asia-Pacific region and US irritation with European contributions to NATO, Cameron will need to be very persuasive to resurrect the possibility of London acting as an ‘Atlantic bridge’ to Washingto

Dumbrell, John

English

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukCredit: The Prime Minister's Officehttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/03/14/special-relationship-dumbrell/David Cameron, Barack Obama and The US-UK‘Special Relationship’Mar 14 2012With David Cameron currently in Washington, John Dumbrell reviews the recenthistory of US-UK relations. The special relationship has clearly not been so stellarin recent times. With American foreign policy pivoting towards the Asia-Pacificregion and US irritation with European contributions to NATO, Cameron will needto be very persuasive to resurrect the possibility of London acting as an ‘Atlanticbridge’ to Washington.David Cameron entered Downing Street in 2010 against background of widelyexpressed anxiety about the future of the US-UK ‘Special Relationship’. President Obama’srelationship with Cameron’s predecessor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, had never approachedanything resembling closeness. Obama praised Brown for his leadership during the post-2007global economic crisis, but had also effectively clashed with London over a series of issues rangingfrom the BP oil spill to the release of the Lockerbie bomber in early 2009. Other sources of irritation,which lasted beyond the Brown years, included United States attitudes towards negotiationsregarding the future of the Falklands Islands, and the case of Gary McKinnon (the British youth, withAsperger’s syndrome, accused of hacking into Pentagon computers and the subject of US-ledextradition procedures).Numerous commentators pointed out before 2010that president Obama, unlike many formerpresidents of the United States, had no special orpositive emotional ties with the United Kingdom.Indeed, as Obama related in his autobiography, thepresidential grandfather had actually beenimprisoned and tortured by the British in Kenya. Toadd to the apparent disarray of US-UK ‘specialrelations’ as Cameron took office, the Brown-Obama relationship had been distinguished by aseries of public relations disasters. Obamaapparently commented negatively on Brown’streatment of prime ministerial aides at the G-20London summit in April 2009 and it was reportedBrown was virtually stalking the US president inNew York in September 2009, tracking him downeventually in the kitchen of the United Nationsbuilding.The problems between London and Washington after 2008, of course, need to be understood notonly in terms of personalities, but in terms of the backwash to the Blair-Bush partnership in thecontext of the War and Terror and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cameron himself used the occasion ofthe fourth anniversary of 9/11 to distance his own ‘liberal conservatism’ from American ‘neo-conservatism’ which drew a public rebuke from Lady Thatcher. As shadow Foreign Secretary,William Hague developed the theme of British support for the US being ‘solid not slavish’.There was indeed quite a lot of rebuilding to do when the new coalition came to power in 2010.Cameron’s task was not helped by Wikileaked revelations to the effect that, even as he pursued hisrhetorical ‘solid not slavish’ line, Hague was reassuring Washington that it had no reason to expectanything but enthusiastic pro-Americanism from any incoming Conservative administration.As the Cameron-Obama relationship developed, reports emerged of strains: notably in connectionwith American criticism of the British military performance in Iraq and in Afghanistan. With a leftistexecutive in Washington and a rightist one in London, tension also developed over preferredpolicies for dealing with recession. Washington (at least before the 2010 mid-term elections)stimulated the economy while London not only cut back aggressively at home, but urged theadoption of contractionist strategies abroad. As the US economy appeared to pick up by the end of2011, the US approach looked (from the perspective of Downing Street at least) ratherembarrassingly superior. Perhaps the major and most obvious ‘special relationship’ tensionemerged over Libya in 2010. French and British reactions to the civil uprising in Libya contrastedwith the (decidedly post-Iraq) tepid reaction in the White House to the entire Arab Spring.As often in the history of US-UK relations, a period of difficulty was at least temporarily contained bya display of symbolism. President Obama’s state visit to the UK in May 2011 was a public relationssuccess. Obama’s Westminster Hall address saw the president asserting his adherence to the kindof liberal interventionist (if not downright neo-conservative) values to which his own very pragmaticconduct over Libya had seemed opposed. Obama and Cameron embraced the notion of a US-UK‘essential relationship’, based on a fusion of interests and values, and deriving from pieces writtenby Cameron during his July 2010 visit to Washington. At least in rhetorical terms, the two leadersnow developed a reasonably persuasive defence of ‘special relations’, devoid of over-sugarysentiment. Obama showed during the state visit that he was prepared to talk the language of‘special relations’, even if he left audiences in no doubt that the UK was far from the centre of hisforeign policy.To understand the context of current interactions between the two leaders, we need to refer morewidely: to contemporary problems in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and to a widelyperceived crisis in US-European relations. London’s handling of the crisis will determine the futureof the ‘special relationship’ – at least if we define that relationship in terms of close diplomatic,intelligence and military cooperation, rather than simply sentiment and historical flummery. But, toput it bluntly, NATO is now in a mess. The problems, at least as seen from Washington, were putwith great clarity in the valedictory address delivered by Robert Gates in June 2011. Liberated byhis impending retirement, Gates gave full expression to American grievances; against Europeanarmies with almost a token, non-fighting presence in Afghanistan; and against NATO partners whocannot even muster two per cent of GPD for defence spending.The ‘strategic guidance’ issued by the Pentagon in January 2012 left little doubt that the Asia-Pacific, rather than Europe, will be the centre of American strategic attention in the foreseeablefuture. Chinese, not Russian, power seems to dominate American thinking in a strategicenvironment of shifting priorities, shrinking commitments, and intense spending pressures. The2012 Pentagon ‘strategic guidance’ includes plans for $450 billion in defence cuts, a substantialproportion of which is almost bound to come from commitments to Europe.From Washington’s point of view, London is certainly not the worst European offender in terms ofwillingness to share burdens in NATO. The UK is also seen as wisely having at least side-steppedthe toxic mess of the single European currency. On the other hand, Britain’s semi-detached status inthe EU calls into question London’s credibility as a transatlantic partner for the US. Cameron isbound to resurrect the possibility of London acting as an ‘Atlantic bridge’ to Washington. He willneed to be very persuasive.Please read our comments policy before posting.About the authorJohn Dumbrell is Professor of Government at Durham University. He is the author of A SpecialRelationship: Anglo-American Relations from the Cold War to Iraq (2006). His forthcoming bookis entitled Rethinking the Vietnam War and is due to be published by Palgrave/Macmillan inJuly, 2012.You may also be interested in the following posts (automatically generated):1. David Cameron’s pragmatic ‘liberal interventionism’ approach to foreign policy differs fromthat of his Conservative predecessors2. Cameron’s self-imposed isolation is of little surprise given the history of the UK’s troubledrelationship with Europe.3. David Cameron’s EU treaty veto is a disaster for Britain4. The EU Referendum rebellion has left David Cameron with little room to manoeuvre and ispicking apart his liberal conservative project

David Cameron, Barack Obama and the US-UK ‘special relationship’

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