Britons See Dangers Ahead in U.S. Relationship

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Britons see 'dangers ahead' in U.S. relationship


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Enlarge By Jeff Overs, BBC, via Getty Images



Conservative Party leader David Cameron, left, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, center, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown shake hands after a debate at the University of Birmingham on April 29.







NOT-SO-GRAND TOURS



Gordon Brown, current prime minister, leader of the Labor Party. In 2009, Brown paid the first visit by a European foreign leader to President Obama. Brits complained when Obama gave Brown DVDs of classic American movies in return for a gift from Brown of a carved desktop pen holder fashioned from the timber of HMS Gannet, a 19th-century British ship that served for a time on anti-slavery missions off Africa.



David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron met President Bush on a visit to Washington in 2007. The British media sniped at him for laying a $200 wreath, criticized as chintzy, at Arlington National Cemetery.



Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Clegg spent a year in graduate school at the University of Minnesota. On a road trip, he and two British pals blew out their tires in the Blue Ridge Mountains and ran over a roadrunner in Arizona.



By Traci Watson









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By Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY

LONDON — For Americans, "the special relationship" sounds like the title of a guidebook on marriage.

Many Britons instantly recognize the phrase as Winston Churchill's description of the tight bond between Great Britain and the United States. That alliance is on the rocks, experts say, and the results of Thursday's election may weaken it further.



The special relationship is "in tatters," says Nile Gardiner, head of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I do see … significant dangers ahead."



Poll such as a recent ComRes poll and a YouGov poll show voters are likely to turn the government over to two men who speak bluntly about the need to get tough with the United States. Both David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, and Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, emphasize that they won't kowtow to the superpower across the pond.



Britain "should never be frightened of saying 'no' to America," Cameron said this year. He has said the relationship between the two nations needs to be "rebalanced" into an alliance that is "solid but not slavish."



Clegg said the British "still too readily put ourselves in a position of unthinking subservience to American interests." He called on Britain to wake up from the "spell of default Atlanticism."



The ComRes poll predicts the Conservatives will win the popular vote but won't gain a majority in Parliament. That may force them to strike a deal with the Liberal Democrats, spelling a powerful role for Clegg in the government.



The links between the two nations go beyond a common language and an intertwined history.



Britain and the United States share intelligence and plot strategy in the United Nations. The number of British troops in Afghanistan is second only to the U.S. presence. Britain supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, prompting newspapers such as The Daily Mail to paste then-prime minister Tony Blair with the sneering nickname "Bush's poodle."



In the past few years, the special relationship has taken a back seat to U.S. worries about China, Iran and the Middle East.



"The U.S. is less focused on the U.K., and the U.K. is less important to the U.S.," says David Dunn of the University of Birmingham-Britain.



The trend has been particularly pronounced during the Obama administration, which has thrown the British news media into a frenzy through a series of perceived slights against Britain.



Prime Minister Gordon Brown was denied a formal news conference in his first visit to Obama, who angered some Britons by removing a Churchill bust on loan from Britain from the Oval Office.



"Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing," The Daily Telegraph blared.



"There's been a series of political sins of omission and commission" by the Obama administration, says Lisa Aronsson of the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. "It's clear that investing in the relationship with the U.K. was not a priority."



Obama's secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said in March that she wanted "discussion" between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a British territory. The U.K and Argentina fought a war over the Atlantic islands in 1982. Argentina recently demanded to negotiate over the islands' future, but Britain is adamant that the matter is closed.



It's telling, Dunn says, that "the U.S. regards it as more important to focus on a certain Latin American agenda rather than … respecting the wishes of the U.K."



The State Department emphasizes the tightness of the alliance.



"We share a unique and uniquely productive relationship with the U.K. based on our common values and shared strategic view of the world," spokesman Michael Tran says.



Britain's huge deficit is likely to make things worse. Experts consider it all but certain that the next prime minister, no matter who he is, will have to slash the British defense budget, which could imperil Britain's usefulness to the United States.



"A sharp decline in U.K. defense spending … will have a significant impact on the special relationship," Aronsson says.



Still, political analysts say the election may help matters somewhat if Cameron becomes prime minister. The Conservatives are by tradition ardently pro-America, and the affable Cameron may get along better with Obama than the notoriously touchy Brown, whose party runs third in election polls.



Reginald Dale of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says that if the two leaders have good chemistry, it's more likely "that Obama will pay attention to what Britain has to say rather than saying, 'Oh God, Gordon Brown again.' "