President Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom comes at a period of great uncertainty for Britain, in terms of both when—or if—it will leave the European Union and who will lead the country when it does. It also comes at a low point in U.S.-U.K. relations.
Both sides continue to work together on defense, and a senior U.S. administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, insisted that Trump’s visit underscored that “the relationship isn’t just based on personalities. It’s based on long-shared service and shared sacrifice.”
Still, the “special relationship” between the two countries has seen better days. Currently, the US and Britain, are divided over how to deal with Iran (Washington has withdrawn from the nuclear deal with Tehran that London, along with its European partners, has struggled to keep alive), and they are split on Huawei and the implications of Britain’s decision to allow the Chinese company to build part of its 5G network.
They have even sparred over Britain’s domestic politics: Whereas a majority of British lawmakers oppose a scenario in which their country would leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement, Trump appears to have all but encouraged a no-deal Brexit.
The point of Trump’s state visit, seemingly, is to calm those divisions.
Anglo-American relations since 1776 have frequently been tense. The War of 1812 had left lasting resentment. A century of frigid diplomacy followed, fueled by disputes over territory, unease about whether Britain would intervene in the Civil War, and vocal Irish and German populations doing nothing to thaw the relationship.
So let’s look at a little history.
The War of 1812 was a conflict between the fairly new nation called the United States of America, and on the other side the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its North American colonies in Canada.
The war began in 1812 and ended in 1815.
Over 1,600 British and 2,260 American soldiers, marines, and sailors died in this war on both land and on the ocean. While at war with the United States, Britain was also fighting against France and her allies in Europe.
Due to their war with France, the British sought to restrict American trade with France, and imposed a set of restrictions which the U.S. considered illegal under international law.
The U.S. declared war on Britain on July 18, 1812 after years of suffering British restrictions and attacks on American shipping, the forcible impressment of thousands of American sailors into service with the British navy, increasing anger at British restraints on American trade with France and other European nations, and frustration at continuing British military support for Native Americans fighting against the expanding United States.
Also fueling the desire for war with Britain was a feeling that Britain never truly gave up thinking of America as a “lost” colony that should be punished. Many pro-war Americans saw a new war with Britain as a reaffirmation of American independence; in fact, the war became known as the Second War of Independence.
When war was declared by the United States in the summer of 1812, the American military was terribly unprepared for conflict with the world’s most powerful empire.
Even though the British were engaged in a life and death struggle with Napoleon’s France, troops were sent to reinforce British Canada and to battle the Americans.
The war that developed was a repeat of the American desire to invade and absorb Canada. Just as in the American Revolutionary War, British and Canadian forces beat back an American invasion.
As with many aspects of politics and public policy, this new war with Britain was popular in some regions of the United States, and vastly unpopular in others.
However, the British Burning of Washington on August 24, 1814, in which the White House and the Capital Building were burned by invading British troops, enraged all sections of the country towards the British.
Ironically, while many of the battles of the War of 1812 resulted in American defeat and humiliation, the greatest American victory on land came at the Battle of New Orleans, in 1815, which actually took place after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which would end the war.
The American victory at New Orleans produced a national hero in General Andrew Jackson, which would help propel him into the (rebuilt) White House in later years.
Who won the War of 1812?
Basically, the War of 1812 ended in a draw. Per the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, neither the U.S., nor Britain lost or gained any territory. The only real change was that American fishermen gained the right to fish in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
However, in the U.S., the war was seen as a victory due to the belief that the mighty British Empire had been held off.
The British view was basically that this pesky sidenote to the world war against Napoleon was finally over, and it had not adversely affected the outcome of their much more important war with France.
The real losers of this war were the Native Americans, whose lands were now more firmly in U.S. hands, and who could no longer rely on British aid against the Americans.
Memories of the White House in flames were still generating resentment four years after the British set it ablaze in 1814.
100 years ago, it was Western Europe ablaze in the First World War as German forces led a full scale assault tipping the balance against the allies.
In 1918 the Germans launched a Spring Offensive, a last-ditch effort to defeat the Allied powers before the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in force.
The British and American alliance, so much a feature of the previous hundred years, was a joint sacrifice in the trenches, fighting against this ferocious German assault.
President Wilson saw the U.S. interest at the beginning of WWI as best served by ensuring that neither of the combatants gained a decisive victory.
But as the fighting ground on, neutrality became more difficult to sustain. Slowly, the tide of public opinion turned against Germany, notably after the infamous loss of 128 American lives after a German U-boat sunk the British liner Lusitania in May 1915.
Wilson suspended diplomatic relations with Germany in February 1917.
A German message intercepted by British code breakers, known as the Zimmerman telegram, proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. The U.S. press published the telegram in March and public opinion could no longer be ignored.
On April 6, 1917, 3 years after the war started, Congress voted to declare war on Germany.
When the first major shipment of 120,000 American soldiers sailed to France in March 1918, they were tasked with holding quieter areas of the line, giving them their first experience of trench warfare and releasing French and British soldiers to halt the advancing Germans elsewhere.
American military impact may have been initially limited, but the economic and psychological effects were huge.
In the summer the Allies began a counter-attack, fortified by U.S. troops who had now swelled to over one million in number. By November the war had been won, the U.S. emerging from it a global power, and forged a strong bilateral relationship with Britain.
The last 100 years have seen peaks and valleys in the relationship. The relationship during the Second World War, for all the differences between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between 1940-45, marked the highest point in the whole U.S.-UK relationship.
Roosevelt had been re-elected in 1940 on a pledge to keep America out of “Europe’s war”; 80% of Americans wanted no part in it. While sympathetic to Britain’s plight, FDR was determined to restrict US involvement to supplying arms and aid.
Churchill tried every tactic he knew to draw the US in. He warned Roosevelt that if Britain were forced to capitulate, the Axis powers would target America next.
British agents in Manhattan waged a covert black propaganda and disinformation campaign to discredit American isolationists and appeasers.
Churchill sold British assets at knockdown prices and offered leases on overseas military bases in exchange for worn out US naval destroyers – a fateful step in the transfer of strategic power from Britain to the US.
“No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt,” Churchill wrote after the war. Swallowing his pride, he even styled himself a “loyal lieutenant”.
But Churchill had no illusions about American altruism. In the darkest hours of 1940-41, he knew Britain needed the US and must pay Roosevelt’s price.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, followed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, finally forced Roosevelt off the fence. Churchill knew then that Britain would survive. America “was up to the neck and in to the death”, he said.
As victory neared, Churchill used his influence with Roosevelt to shape the post-war order, binding the US into a new great power system where Britain would remain a pivotal player.
The two men co-authored the Atlantic Charter, embodying principles later adopted by the fledgling United Nations. Churchill ensured Britain kept a seat at the top table. He also argued that a strong transatlantic alliance was essential in confronting a new global threat – Stalin’s victorious Soviet Union.
What explains the peaks and valleys, and what light does it shed on how the relationship might evolve over the next 100 years? Personal chemistry is the first factor.
A shared ideological outlook and common domestic agenda binds both countries together, never more so than in the partnership demonstrated by Thatcher and Reagan.
Thatcher’s arrival in Downing Street, and the personal rapport she established with Reagan, president from 1981, changed the US-Britain power dynamic, though not the underlying realities.
The two conservative leaders shared a strong dislike of the Soviet Union, which Reagan dubbed the “evil empire”, and a passion for free market capitalism.
For these “ideological soul-mates”, it was love at first sight. “Your problems will be our problems and when you look for friends we shall be there,” Thatcher stated.
In 1985, celebrating the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations, she declared: “Our relationship … is special. It just is, and that’s that.”
On one occasion, Thatcher was on the phone from London, berating Reagan over his 1983 invasion of Grenada, when he put his hand over the receiver and said: “Gee, isn’t she marvelous!”
Mutual admiration did not prevent deadly serious disputes, not least over Reagan’s unhelpful response to Thatcher’s pleas following the 1982 Argentinean invasion of the Falkland islands.
Luckily for Thatcher and British forces, Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s defense secretary, secretly authorized crucial assistance.
But in a sign Britain could still make its voice heard in the Oval Office, Thatcher’s favorable appraisal of the new Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev as a man with whom she could “do business” helped to convince the hawkish Reagan that a peaceful end to the cold war was possible.
In 1987 Reagan went to Berlin and demanded: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, Gorbachev complied.
This brings us to the present situation.
Theresa May & Donald Trump
Succeeding David Cameron in 2016, May inherited a relationship that had cooled significantly during Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama was no fan of the British.
He held strong views about British colonialism in Kenya, where his father was born, and imperial-era slavery – though he and Michelle enjoyed hobnobbing with the Queen.
Unsentimental and cautious, Obama saw Germany, not Britain, as America’s principal European partner. He drew down US forces in Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan, refused to intervene in Syria, and wooed China in a geopolitical “pivot to Asia”.
If American disengagement posed a problem for May, it was nothing compared with what was to come.
Trump’s 2016 election victory opened up a whole new world of pain. On Russia, Nato, the UN, Israel-Palestine, Iran, trade tariffs, climate change, migrants, Muslims and multilateralism, Trump noisily advanced a position directly at odds with established British beliefs and interests.
The Thatcher-Reagan years marked a high point. The personal chemistry between the two was never replicated again.
Theresa May, leader of the Conservative Party, is stepping down as Prime Minister this Friday, June 7th, 2019. So now what?
The Prime Minister is an MP (Member of Parliament) and head of the government.
The leader of the party that wins the most seats in a general election is appointed Prime Minister by the Queen.
The Prime Minister is officially responsible for choosing the other members of the government.
The leader of the largest opposition party is the Leader of the Official Opposition, which for the Commons and Lords is currently the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn MP, leader of the Labour party, is the current Leader of the Official Opposition.
The Leader of the Official Opposition picks a ‘Shadow Cabinet’ to follow the work of government departments.
Cabinet
The Cabinet consists of a maximum of twenty-two paid government ministers chosen by the Prime Minister. They can be Members of either House of Parliament. The Cabinet develops government policies and some members head government departments
.
Shadow Cabinet
The Shadow Cabinet consists of members from the main opposition party in the House of Commons and Lords, currently the Labour party. Its role is to examine the work of each government department and develop policies in their specific areas.
So you can see the significance of determining who will replace Theresa May in setting the direction of Great Britain and its future relationship with the United States.
Britain’s 75-year balancing act is close to collapse. Brexit means Europe is no longer a viable strategic alternative to the US alliance, while the US is ceasing to regard Britain as an important European or global player. Trump’s words and actions, and the nationalist and unilateralist forces he represents, suggest the shared values and interests that bound Britain and the US together for 75 years are dissolving.
It’s a commonplace to say that Britain needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs Britain. Commonplace, and wrong. The relationship, grounded in a long standing history of common interests in economic, military, cultural, and intelligence fields, will continue to matter to both the U.S. and Great Britain.
This whole situation is a story we all need to follow.