Britain and America: Get It Together

British Prime Minister John Major called on President Clinton at the White House Tuesday and no matter what the British or American spin-meisters are telling you this morning after, it wasn’t exactly Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy on the cordiality scale. Or even Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, now that we think of it.

No, the British-American relationship is a-changing, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Neither nostalgic appeals to the glory days of World War II, when the Brits and the Yanks worked shoulder to shoulder against the Nazis, or reiteration of the more recent alliance against the Iraqis can paper over the continuing, if not growing, divisions between the two Anglo nations.

The horrible botch of Western policy on Bosnia stands out as the defining example. Here was a significant geopolitical issue right in Europe over which Washington and London were unable to hammer out a true common policy. Next come the evolving Northern Ireland negotiations, for which America’s nosy intrusion, though arguably helpful, was so resented by the British that at one point the prime minister for days couldn’t even bring himself to return Clinton’s phone call.

But personal pique is not necessarily the same thing as a permanent point of departure in a bilateral relationship that stretches over, well, 200 or so years. Presidents come and go, and Clinton faces a tough reelection campaign. For his part, Major has the talented and ambitious Labor leader Tony Blair breathing down his neck. Before too long both Clinton and Major may find themselves dictating memoirs to their ghostwriters.

The frictions and fissures between these two great nations go beyond personalities. Britain has to carve out a new role for itself in the larger, still-emerging Europe; America has to stop looking nearly exclusively across the Atlantic and realize that a great part of its future lies in the opposite direction--across the Pacific.

Still, increasingly divergent perspectives do not convert a longtime ally into anything even remotely resembling an adversary. But if the so-called “special relationship” is to remain special, it will be that only for new, special reasons. The old ones simply will no longer suffice. The job now for those who care about this alliance is to imaginatively define new ways of cooperating, rather than reopening old wounds that won’t heal easily, if ever.