Anglo-American Special Relationship Research Articles

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

Abstract There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

In Search of Ontological Security: Why the Anglo-American Special Relationship Endures

Abstract The period following World War II (WWII) marked a significant turning point in Britain’s global standing, characterized by the loss of its empire and the existential anxiety regarding its new role on the world stage. Dean Acheson’s famous quote, “Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role,” poignantly captures the sense of diminishing power and identity crisis experienced by the Kingdom since 1945. Along with the consequences of WWII, the process of decolonization, coupled with events such as the Suez Crisis, further confirmed Britain’s declining position in the international system, disrupting its established narrative of global power and leaving it in a state of ontological insecurity. This paper, focusing on ontological security studies in international relations, explores the connection between Britain’s ontological insecurity in the new global order after WWII, and the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) as a response to these anxieties. In this context, the suggested theoretical framework promises to address the concepts of narrative identity and existential anxiety and their respective contributions to understanding the underlying factors in explaining the emergence and stability of the AASR.

What ‘special relationship'? How the state department's intervention in Northern Ireland 2003–2007 strained the Anglo-American alliance

ABSTRACT The close bonds of cooperation between the US and UK are highly institutionalised and are exemplified across a range of closely aligned areas of mutual interests. These are namely intelligence, nuclear and military collaboration. The Anglo-American Special Relationship, however, has been severely strained by events over the last seventy years. This article will examine the validity of any special relationship that may exist between the US and UK. In doing so it will reveal how State Department-led intervention in Northern Ireland between 2003 and 2007 strained the workings of this alliance even as it enjoyed a resurgence under George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Global War on Terror. It will also establish how the unusual organisational framework and decision-making process at the State Department, vis-à-vis Northern Ireland, exacerbated transatlantic relations. The autonomous freedom to direct US foreign policy in the region brought the George W. Bush administration's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This article will expand on the extent of this fall-out and provide original first-hand accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.

U.S.-UK Voting Cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly: Important Votes (2001–2019)

The article analyzes US-UK voting cohesion in the United Nations General Assembly in 2001 – 2019 based on the annual lists of important votes drawn up by the US Department of State. Voting cohesion in the UNGA demonstrates the level of support for US policies in this representative international forum. Since most UNGA resolutions are not binding, countries have more room for maneuver compared to voting in the UN Security Council. Washington pays close attention to other countries’ voting behavior in the UNGA, especially when it comes to Israel-related issues. Whereas the Anglo-American Special Relationship has been extensively studied with the focus on the military and political aspects, US-UK interaction in international organizations, especially in the UN, deserves greater attention. Both countries use their permanent membership of the Security Council to promote their interests. Nevertheless, US-UK voting cohesion in the UNGA has not attracted much attention yet, although it can help to objectively assess the interaction of these powers in the world arena. Four groups of important resolutions were identified for comparison: human rights, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear non-proliferation and international security, as well as sanctions and development. In 2001 – 2019 U.S.-UK voting cohesion on important resolutions was relatively high. Nevertheless, under Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump it was lower than during Barack Obama’s presidency. Despite the special relationship, the UK often aligns itself with the EU countries when voting in the UNGA. We paid special attention to resolutions on which the countries diverged, although Washington did not vote in complete isolation. U.S.-UK cohesion was higher on non-proliferation and human rights. At the same time, there were differences regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and development, especially in those cases when the US and the EU disagreed. Divergences were apparent when the US was prone to act unilaterally.

America and the special relationship: the impact of the Trump administration on relations with the UK.

The article seeks to assess to what extent the Trump presidency damaged the Anglo-American special relationship. By drawing on a theoretical framework that is broader than much of the existing literature, this article argues that the Trump presidency inflicted largely short-term damage on the special relationship. Though common interests, common sentiments and mutual utility between the US and the UK were weakened in the Trump era, the institutionalized underpinnings of the special relationship were sufficiently robust to withstand the corrosive effects of the ‘Trump doctrine’. While President Biden cannot undo the negative impact of Brexit on the UK’s utility to the US, the early period of his presidency has witnessed the special relationship’s rapid recovery from most of the damage inflicted by the Trump presidency.

How Britain’s and Colombia’s Privileged Partnerships with the United States Influenced Their Respective Journeys through the European Community and UNASUR

This paper explores how Britain’s and Colombia’s privileged relations with the United States (U.S.) influenced their journey through the European Community (EC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The Anglo–American Special Relationship (AASR) was compatible with British participation in the European Single Market, but not with adherence to creating the EC’s common currency, nor with leadership in building a European defence structure autonomous from NATO. Thus, since the start of the Iraq war, Britain played a rather obstructive role in what later was called European Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The US–Colombia Partnership (USCP), based on a longstanding military association reinforced under Plan Colombia, naturally discouraged any meaningful Colombian participation in UNASUR’s South American Security Council (CDS), a regional cooperative security project, promoted by Brazil. Cherished projects of the liberal CAP – such as triangular cooperation (to export Colombian security expertise to Central America with U.S. co-financing and oversight) and NATO partnership – also distracted Colombia’s interest from UNASUR, diminishing the latter’s relevance collaterally. A role for UNASUR – alongside the Organization of American States (OAS) – in South American security management was compatible with the liberal CAP, but not with the neoconservative CAP. Even a lopsided complementation – such as the one between NATO and the CSDP – proved unviable between the OAS and UNASUR.

Reflecting on the ‘cultural turn’: new directions in the study of Anglo-American relations and the special relationship

The growing integration of cultural analyses stands out as one of the most notable contemporary movements in international and diplomatic history. The ‘cultural turn’ in these fields has made it evident that the analysis of cultural artefacts, identities, and representations has much to teach us about the ways states behave in the international system, as well as how cultural factors contribute to the conditions of alliance or enmity between nations. However, while the long-running and complex connections between Britain and America have always offered innumerable opportunities to explore the power of culture to shape their relationship, the ‘cultural turn’ did not begin in our field. Rather, it emerged from other disciplines of history and anthropology, and its subsequent impact on the study of Anglo-American relations has been noticeably uneven. US-UK relations in the 20th century have received somewhat less attention from cultural specialists than have those of earlier periods, and the role of culture in the post-1940 Anglo-American special relationship has been consistently underexplored in favour of more traditional methods of historical analysis. This article first addresses how the cultural turn has influenced the study of the overall historical relationship between America and Britain. The second section narrows the scope of enquiry to address how the cultural turn has affected the study of the special relationship in particular. A brief conclusion section offers a few thoughts on the need for and potential directions of future studies targeting the intersection of Anglo-American cultural sharing and US-UK partnership.

The Anglo-American Special Relationship and West Germany’s Eastern Policy from ‘Bridge-Building’ and Vietnam to Ostpolitik

This paper evaluates the interaction, which developed during the 1960s and early 1970s, between U.S. and British policies towards the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) Neue Ostpolitik and the impact that West German initiatives had on the special relationship in the context of deepening Anglo-American discrepancies over Vietnam and the UK’s East of Suez withdrawal. In the early 1950s the FRG’s integration into NATO had been a joint Anglo-American priority but the U.S. attitude on how to deal with Soviet concerns about Germany was regarded in London as too rigid. Both Conservative and Labour governments long advocated more flexibility in dealing with the East. However, Whitehall’s attempts to foster dialogue with Moscow, such as Winston Churchill’s 1953 Eastern Locarno proposal for great power guarantees of peace and the status quo in Europe, were resisted by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John F. Dulles. It was only in the early 1960s that the White House and the State Department gradually reversed the American view that détente would not be possible without progress on the German question. Building upon the legacy of President Kennedy’s 1963 ‘strategy of peace’ speech, between 1964 and 1968 Johnson’s policy of ‘bridge-building’ replaced the static notion of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with a broader vision of progressive engagement. Now Washington took a more flexible approach and encouraged the FRG to open up its own channels towards the Soviet bloc countries. The change in the American attitude was important also for U.S.-UK relations, as it brought it more into line with Britain’s views at a time when, as American involvement in Vietnam grew deeper, Washington exerted significant economic and political pressure on London to retain its East of Suez commitments. However, for the Americans it was equally important that the FRG’s overtures to the Soviet bloc states did not endanger Western cohesion and transatlantic unity. After Nixon’s victory in the 1968 Presidential election, the White House began to worry about the implications of some of the FRG’s initiatives. U.S. apprehensions were now partly shared in London, although new conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, like Wilson, continued to pursue cooperation with the FRG, seeking to ease the UK’s admission into the European Economic Community (EEC).

Beyond essential: Britons and the Anglo-American Special Relationship

This article assesses the unsuccessful attempt by US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron to rebrand the ties between their countries as ‘the essential relationship’. The failure of that initiative revealed the enduring attachment of ordinary Britons to the notion of a UK-US ‘special relationship’ regardless of how accurately it reflected the changing reality of the two nations’ interactions.

Anglo-American Relations and Soft Power: Transitioning the Special Relationship

This article argues that British soft power is a hitherto under-recognised factor in explaining the survival and changing character of the Anglo-American special relationship during the so-called long-1970s. First, the long-term interpenetration of UK and US soft power became a shared resource that British and American governments used to cohere their bilateral relations and provided for a ‘common cast of mind’ that facilitated high levels of policy congruence. Second, the particular international and domestic political changes that occurred during the long 1970s elevated the relative importance of soft power and thereby gave the British, within American calculations of mutual utility, a means of offsetting, in part at least, the relative decline of their hard power capabilities.

Anglo-American Problems: The Special Relationship

This review article focuses on three studies of different aspects of Anglo-American relations, and it attempts to place these studies in the larger context of Anglo-American scholarship. Kori Schake examines British-American affairs over a period of almost two centuries with the intention of explaining the unique process by which an established hegemonic power gave way to a rising power without an armed conflict. This thesis is articulated with a concern about the prospect of the threat of a rising China. Andrew Mumford emphasizes the extent to which the Anglo-American special relationship has been strained by counter-insurgency conflicts since World War II. In various of these crises, both Britain and the United States had different interests, constituencies, and counter-insurgency military methods that alienated and created tension between the two allies. B.J.C. McKercher takes a broader historical look at Anglo-American relations in the twentieth century and finds the special relationship much more flexible and workable than either Schake or Mumford does. He concludes that both countries needed allies and that Britain and the United States still have more in common with each other than with the rest of the international community. Anglo-American relations remains a topic of international interest and relevance.

Beyond Values and Interests: The Anglo-America Special Relationship during the Syrian Conflict

This paper attempts to reveal how intervention in international conflicts (re) constructs the Anglo-American Special Relationship (AASR). To do this, this article uses Syria as a case study. Analyzing parliamentary debates, presidential/prime ministerial speeches and formal official addresses, it offers a discursive constructivist analysis of key British and US political spokespeople. We argue that historically embedded values and interests stemming from unity forged by World War Two have taken on new meanings: the AASR being constructed by both normative and strategic cultures. The former, we argue, continues to forge a common alliance between the US and Britain, while the latter produces notable tensions between the two states.

Churchill and the Anglo-American special relationship

An important anniversary often provides a valuable hook on which to hang a re-assessment of a key theme in international history. In this case, the 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill's Fulton sp...

Contributors to This Issue

Previous article FreeContributors to This IssuePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreJingyun Dai is a doctoral student in sociology at Harvard University. She is broadly interested in political sociology, organizations, and the sociology of knowledge.Greg Distelhorst is the Mitsubishi Career Development Professor in International Management and Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an investigator with the Governance Project at Stanford University. His research on public participation and government responsiveness in China has recently appeared in The Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science.Anoushiravan Ehteshami is professor and the Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah Chair in International Relations and director of the HH Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah Programme at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. His publications include Dynamics of Change in the Persian Gulf: Political Economy, War and Revolution (2013), Iran: Stuck in Transition (2017), and, as co-editor with Niv Horesh, China’s Presence in the Middle East: The Implications of the One Belt, One Road Initiative (2018).Diana Fu is assistant professor of Asian politics at the University of Toronto. She works on contentious politics in China, with a focus on labor and civil society. She is the author of Mobilizing without the Masses: Control and Contention in China (2017), and her articles have appeared in Comparative Politics Studies, Governance, and Modern China.Niv Horesh is associate professor at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University. He has published several books and articles in the fields of history, business, and Asian studies. He is particularly interested in monetary policy and outbound foreign investment, past and present.Ewan Smith is the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and an associate at the Oxford University China Centre. He spent ten years working for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including five years in the Political Section of the British Embassy in Beijing. His current research considers the role of political rules in China’s constitutional order.Anthony J. Spires is senior lecturer at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Melbourne. His research focuses on the development of civil society in China, including philanthropy, governmental regulation, and the cultures of nonprofit organizations. He recently served as a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology and is a frequent reviewer for other academic publications.Beibei Tang is associate professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou. Her research focuses on state-society relations, grassroots governance, and social class in contemporary China. She was awarded the 2015 Gordon White Prize by The China Quarterly, and she has also published in The China Journal, Journal of Contemporary China, and other journals. She is the author of China’s Housing Middle Class (2018).Ruike Xu is lecturer at the School of English and International Studies at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. He specializes in China–Middle East relations and the US-UK special relationship. His articles have appeared in International Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Asian Affairs. He is also the author of Alliance Persistence within the Anglo-American Special Relationship: The Post-Cold War Era (2017).Xu Yi-chong is professor in the School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University. She is author of Sinews of Power (2017) and Politics of Nuclear Energy in China (2010), and co-author (with Patrick Weller) of The Working World of International Organisations (2018) and Inside the World Bank (2009). Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 79January 2018 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/694917 Copyright 2018 by The Australian National University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Churchill, Fulton and the Anglo-American special relationship: setting the agenda?

Churchill is often deemed to have failed at Fulton in delivering ‘the crux’ of what he came to secure, namely a special Anglo-American relationship based in both interest and ‘fraternal association’. As other contributions to this special edition demonstrate, there are good grounds for this verdict. However we ask whether, and if so in what ways, Churchill was actually able in and through the Sinews of Peace speech to set the agenda and frame the terms of discussion for the later emergence of a special relationship. To do this we treat the special relationship as a discursive construct and by combining diplomatic history with corpus-assisted discourse studies map discourse features of the Sinews of Peace speech against media discourse on Anglo-American relations in the early 1950s.

Institutionalization, path dependence and the persistence of the Anglo-American special relationship

One of the remarkable phenomena in post-Cold War world politics is the persistence of the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in spite of recurrent announcement of its death by pessimists. Current scholarship on Anglo-American relations largely draws on interests and sentiments to explain the persistence of the AASR, ignoring other important contributing factors such as institutionalization. This article is the first to give serious consideration to the role of institutionalization in influencing the persistence of the AASR. By using the concept of path dependence, this article argues that the high-level institutionalization in Anglo-American intelligence, nuclear and military relations plays a seminal role in contributing to the persistence of the AASR in the post-Cold War era. The institutionalized intelligence relationship is exemplified by the relationship between the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US's National Security Agency (NSA), which is underpinned by the UKUSA Agreement. The institutionalized nuclear relationship is exemplified by a variety of Joint Working Groups (JOWOGs), which is underpinned by the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement. The institutionalized military relationship is exemplified by routinized military personnel exchange programmes, regular joint training exercises and an extremely close defence trade partnership. The high-level institutionalization embeds habits of cooperation, solidifies interdependence and consolidates mutual trust between the UK and the US in their cooperation on intelligence, nuclear and military issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British national identity and the Anglo-American special relationship

Why are successive UK governments so staunchly committed to the ‘special relationship’ with the US? One common answer – a part of an answer at least – evokes the role of identity and identification. The UK supports the US because the UK’s ruling elite believe that the Americans and the British are birds of a feather. This article examines this hypothesis from a ‘national identity as a variable’ framework developed in constructivist International Relations theory. The main argument presented is that UK support for the special relationship is rooted not simply in elite beliefs but rather in a wider societal acceptance of the global hegemony of ‘American’ democratic neoliberalism. Multiple national identity discourses exist, but none of them calls on Westminster and Whitehall to chart a path that would be at odds with a world centred on Washington, DC.

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

Anglo-American Relations: End of a Special Relationship?

Obama's election in 2008 as the United States’ first self-styled Pacific President drew a hearty round of ‘end of the affair’ editorials about Anglo-American relations. His first term was littered with ‘snubgates’, serious irritations in policy areas regarded as being core to the special relationship, and indications of an accelerating US departure from Europe with his premier foreign-policy strategy declared to be a pivot to Asia. His return for a second term in 2013 augers a continuation of first-term adjustments in US foreign policy and greater domestic focus given a divided Congress and a bitterly split and war-weary United States with domestic priorities to the fore. Doomsayers - or so-called terminalists - have been repeatedly gainsaid by the Lazarus-like quality of the relationship in the past but can the Anglo-American special relationship survive in the Obama environment? This article suggests it can and sets out the author's rather unfashionable argument in four parts: the weight of history; the canons of international-relations theory; the importance of considering interest and sentiment in explaining the special relationship's resilience; and a relativist argument that suggests the United States still really does have no better ally than the United Kingdom.