Two apart

A committee of British MPs may have realised,60-odd years down the line,what Charles de Gaulle had perhaps grasped right at the start: youve got to be a little harsh and a lot arrogant with the Americans to make them take you seriously. This committee has recommended an overhaul of the special relationship that the UK believes it has shared with the US at least since Churchills Fulton Iron Curtain Speech in 1946 a relationship that was cast in iron in World War II,endured and won the Cold War,and then catapulted itself to a new dimension during the Bush-Blair bonding over the Iraq war.

Now,all that could have made for an equal partnership,one that both found indispensable. Except that,what was a G-2 in Churchills eyes has meant much more to London than to Washington simply because it was Britain that bereft of empire,without a new role in the world,as Dean Acheson put it needed reassurance of military security. A hotline to the US would also ensure a continued role in international politics. But more than six decades later,the British see themselves as tools by the wayside,useful but taken for granted. So even as Barack Obama reaffirmed the continuance of the special relationship,British diplomats,MPs,historians,policy analysts increasingly pronounced the qualifier special as a hurdle,culminating in the MPs committee recommending the relationship be driven principally by the UKs national interests within individual policy areas in a geopolitically changing world.

Its not the beginning of a transatlantic rupture. But another shift within the Anglophone cultural and politico-economic bond shared since the two stopped fighting in the New World. Post-WWII,the relationship survived the Suez Crisis,Vietnam,Falklands,the Northern Ireland Troubles. Tony Blair,before allegedly becoming George W. Bushs echo,had scolded Bill Clinton into intervening in Kosovo. Perhaps the MPs have that more dignified a national role in mind?