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Originally Posted by Ken Savage  I was curious to the opinion of chewers on both sides of the Atlantic on the so calles special realtionship between the UK and the USA. There is talk over here at present that Obama may be the first US president since the alliance was formed in the second world war, to actually dislike the UK. If thats the case we may well see a cooling if not end to one of the strongest alliances in modern times.
Given the history between our countries and the fact we have always stood closer together than with the US than Europe I think this is kind of sad.
So what do you guys think? A good alliance or an unessary cold war relic?
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The "Special Relationship" means Britain does what its told. Period. I mean, the last time I checked we don't even retain strategic control of our own nuclear submarines (built and staffed by Brits but armed with American Trident nuclear missiles which cannot be fired without explicit US authorization).
I suppose SR does yield occasional benefits such as clearing the way for the major British corporations to do business in the States (such as BP) - but it's a hugely lopsided arrangement in favour of the US.
Take extradition for example. If the US courts want someone in Britain it's expedited without question. There are a couple of high-profile cases currently being fought (such as Gary McKinnon - the hacker who infiltrated various US intelligence agency computers and Abu Hamza, the extremist Muslim cleric) - but only through the tireless work of some of Britain's top lawyers working bro bono. Without their efforts both would have been extradited months ago. Understand that I'm not defending or supporting either. It's just that I'm uneasy when there's a suggestion that anyone - regardless of race, creed or credo - is being shortchanged by our legal system.
When British courts attempt reciprocal proceedings against a US citizen they invariably meet a wall of difficulties and in many cases the defendant never leaves US shores and the criminal case is left in a permanent state of limbo.
Given the similarities between the British and American judicial systems (two of the closest in the world) there really can be no satisfactory explanation for this imbalance.
On the global stage SR allows America to use Britain as a puppet proxy to respectfully abstain from, obfuscate or outright sabotage pesky elements of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the UN Declaration on the Right to Development, World Court judgements etc.
And when a pretext for an imperialist invasion of a sovereign state needs to be concocted at the UN, SR can be relied upon to provide such.
Various British governments claim SR provides a channel for pooling intelligence and its dissemination and I have no reason to doubt this. SR has also facilitated various military collaborations. Take the F-35 Lightning II multi-purpose fighter for an example. This is a unique collaboration between the US, Britain and a number of other countries which will become the primary carrier aircraft for the US and Britain (which is currently constructing two new carriers which are far bigger than anything deployed by the Royal Navy since WWII).
This project has been dogged with problems and it almost came unstuck when Britain got fed up with the United States withholding the computer source code - despite the fact that Britain is a primary partner and financier (the US felt that Britain's close ties with France might compromise security!) - and threatened to pull out. The US backed down (probably because the project was already worrying the White House and the loss of British capital would prove terminal), but this is far from the usual outcome of a SR engagement.
Is it good or bad? Well, when it's being used as a tool to hi-jack bipartisan human rights negotiations at the UN it's not easy to make a case for it.
Instead of being a US proxy Britain should stand on its own two feet and support or oppose the US on both merit and a case by case basis.
