Since the end of World War II, by and large “U.K. brains” maintained their empire by deploying “American brawn,” the treasonous—for the United States—arrangement labelled the “special relationship.” The release of the U.S. Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) document overturned that chessboard, and there is now a policy brawl-and-a-half underway by the British monarchy’s imperialist minions over how best to ensure their empire continues.
“For decades, U.K. leaders assumed … that, as Washington’s closest ally, Britain would punch above its weight; and that British institutions would stabilize order, if not justice, in turbulent times.” No longer, warn the editors of The Guardian in a Dec. 8 editorial; “nostalgic appeals to `a special relationship’ that no longer exists will not renew Britain.” The Guardian argues that a “profound reimagining of the [U.K.’s] constitutional, economic and geopolitical identity” is required for this “post-American” period. They suggest dumping Prime Minister Keith Starmer to do that.
King’s College Professor of International Security Andrew Dorman likewise argued in his Dec. 11 post that the NSS “represents a further nail, if not the final nail, in the coffin of the U.S.-U.K. special relationship.… The United States can no longer be relied on to help defend the West and its values,” he pronounced. “The United Kingdom needs to rapidly unpick 80 years of defense integration with, and dependence on, the U.S..” He proposes it will have to be done “in partnership with the U.K.’s European allies.”
Chatham House’s U.S. and North America Program director Laurel Rapp, however, recommended on Dec. 9 to wait it out, at least publicly, because “all such strategies can be overturned by events.” The NSS is “rife with holes and contradictions which will limit its effectiveness,” and furthermore, the “strategy will not be implemented overnight. Due to shifting attention, its core elements may never be realized,” she wrote hopefully. “Hedging remains the best way for other countries to respond.”
The Council on Geostrategy, a U.K. thinktank joined at the hip to the Royal Navy, proffered another sophistical approach on Dec. 12. Yes, the NSS is hostile to the rules-based international order, but “to end support for a specific vision of order is not to terminate the quest for all order.” They argue against doubling down on a reliance on the EU and the existing European order. America’s NSS is “an opportunity” for the U.K. to adopt “a geopolitical ‘third way’ that dusts off the assertive realism of Ernest Bevin"—Bevin being the virulently anti-Russia, postwar Labour Foreign Secretary key to the creation of NATO.
While “Britain can no longer harness America’s awesome power through NATO to smother geopolitical competition in Europe as it did previously … the U.K. should lend its weight to the creation of a new order that it proactively leads.” The Council proposes AUKUS—the Australian-U.K.-U.S. defense agreement—as the “perfect template” for how the U.S. and U.K. can join forces to (once again) enforce an “exclusive order” in the world, “capable of blunting the ambition of hostile states.”
Creativity has never been the forte of the British Empire.
