The US–UK Special Relationship: Taking the 21st-Century Temperature
| Published date | 01 February 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2008.00352.x |
| Author | John Dumbrell |
| Date | 01 February 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The US–UK Special Relationship:
Taking the 21st-Century Temperature
John Dumbrell
Although highly contested, the concept of the US–UK ‘special relationship’ does have real existence,
primarily in the fields of defence and intelligence co-operation. The end of the premiership of Tony
Blair saw the emergence of a significant public debate in the United Kingdom about the future
appropriate trajectory for the relationship. This article assesses the state of the special relationship
under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, placing it in the context of the wider Atlantic alliance and
of perennial concerns about shared values and structural imbalances between London and
Washington.
Keywords: Atlantic alliance; Brown; Blair; special relationship
In April 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a major foreign policy address at
the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts. The speech was
trailed as Brown’s ‘answer’ to the speech made by Tony Blair to the Economic Club
of Chicago in 1999 at the height of the Kosovo crisis. In the 1999 address, inspired
by a briefing paper from Lawrence Freedman, Blair made his case for liberal
interventionism; for American global leadership; and for a revived ‘special relation-
ship’ in the context of the global struggle for democracy and human rights (Blair
2004; Freedman 2007, 624). Brown’s 2008 speech similarly posited global chal-
lenges, though with much more of an economic emphasis. According to Brown,
‘we are seeing in the scale, scope and speed of globalisation the biggest restructuring
of economic life since the industrial revolution’. Brown called for a rethinking of
global institutions in order to ‘build the truly global society’. Although his main
emphasis was economic—‘a new World Bank; a new International Monetary
Fund’—Brown also advocated a ‘reformed and renewed United Nations’, ‘a new
cultural effort’ for democracy, ‘a new kind of global peace and reconstruction corps’
to rebuild failed states, as well as urgent multilateral action on climate change. In all
this, ‘American leadership is and will be indispensable’ (Brown 2008a).
This article will attempt to take the temperature of the contemporary Anglo–
American special relationship. The discussion recognises the difficulty of wading
into a swiftly flowing Anglo–American river; imminent political and electoral shifts
in both the UK and the US will inevitably affect the relationship. Nevertheless,
Brown’s April 2008 address on US–UK relations provides a convenient hook upon
which to hang this effort to assess the current state of the special relationship, and
the article will take the speech as its first frame of reference. The discussion covers
the transition from Blair, whose latter days in office were made difficult by his close
association with a deeply unpopular American president, to Brown, looking also at
The British Journal of
Politics and International Relations
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2008.00352.x BJPIR: 2009 VOL 11, 64–78
© 2008 The Author.Journal compilation © 2008 Political Studies Association
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