As U.S. Mumbles, Britain Speaks Out
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
LONDON — Back in the 1940s a young Foreign Office recruit was asked what he thought were the most important things in the world. “Love and Anglo-American relations,” he responded.
That was the decade in which Churchill and Roosevelt defended the free world, combined British and American talent to develop the nuclear bomb, and arranged the burden-passing that Macmillan later described as Britain becoming Greece to America’s Rome (“We can at most aspire to civilize and occasionally to influence them”).
Too close to need treaties — what are pieces of paper between friends? — Washington and London shared every form of intelligence. American bases spread across Britain. Perhaps a U.S. spy put postwar arrangements best: “Whenever we want to subvert any place, we find the British own an island within easy reach.”
That was awfully convenient. But those days are long gone. With America suffering from quasi-imperial overreach, the Atlantic world overshadowed by emergent Asian powers, and post-9/11 renditions still clouding Anglo-American dealings, the question has arisen: What, if anything, is left of the “special relationship?”
(More here.)
NYT
LONDON — Back in the 1940s a young Foreign Office recruit was asked what he thought were the most important things in the world. “Love and Anglo-American relations,” he responded.
That was the decade in which Churchill and Roosevelt defended the free world, combined British and American talent to develop the nuclear bomb, and arranged the burden-passing that Macmillan later described as Britain becoming Greece to America’s Rome (“We can at most aspire to civilize and occasionally to influence them”).
Too close to need treaties — what are pieces of paper between friends? — Washington and London shared every form of intelligence. American bases spread across Britain. Perhaps a U.S. spy put postwar arrangements best: “Whenever we want to subvert any place, we find the British own an island within easy reach.”
That was awfully convenient. But those days are long gone. With America suffering from quasi-imperial overreach, the Atlantic world overshadowed by emergent Asian powers, and post-9/11 renditions still clouding Anglo-American dealings, the question has arisen: What, if anything, is left of the “special relationship?”
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home