Since 1776, relations between the United Kingdom and the United States have ranged from military opposition to close allyship. The Thirteen Colonies seceded from the Kingdom of Great Britain and declared independence in 1776, fighting a successful revolutionary war. While Britain was fighting Napoleon, the two nations fought the stalemated War of 1812. Relations were generally positive thereafter, save for a short crisis in 1861 during the American Civil War. In the 1920s, New York City surpassed London as the world's leading financial center. The two nations fought Germany together during the two World Wars; since 1940, the two countries have been close military allies, enjoying the Special Relationship built as wartime allies and NATO and G7 partners. America and Britain are bound together by a shared history, a common language, an overlap in religious beliefs and legal principles, and kinship ties that reach back hundreds of years. In the 21st century, the United Kingdom and United States have closely coordinated on foreign policy, launching joint military invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and leading the 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya.
In the early 21st century, Britain affirmed its relationship with the United States as its "most important bilateral partnership" in current British foreign policy, and the American foreign policy affirms its relationship with Britain as its second most important relationship, behind only Canada. as evidenced in aligned political affairs, cooperation in the areas of trade, commerce, finance, technology, academics, as well as the arts and sciences; the sharing of government and military intelligence, and joint combat operations and peacekeeping missions carried out between the United States Armed Forces and the British Armed Forces. As of January 2015, the United Kingdom was the fifth largest US trading partner in terms of exports and seventh in terms of imports of goods. In long-term perspective, the historian Paul Johnson has called the United Kingdom–United States relations "the cornerstone of the modern, liberal democratic world order". The two countries have also had a significant impact on the cultures of many other countries, as well as each other. They are the two main nodes of the Anglosphere, with a combined population of just under 400 million in 2019. Together, they have given the English language a dominant lingua franca role in many aspects of the modern world.
Special Relationship
The Special Relationship characterises the exceptionally close political, diplomatic, cultural, economic, military, and historical relations between the two countries. It has been specially used for relations since 1940.
History
Origins
After several failed attempts, the first permanent English settlement in mainland North America was established in 1607 at Jamestown in the Virginia. In 1630, the Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony; they emphasised not only pure religiosity, but also education and entrepreneurship.
Smaller colonies followed throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. Each colony reported separately to London. During British colonization, liberal administrative, juridical, and market institutions were introduced. The colonial period also saw the introduction of indentured servitude and slavery. All of the Thirteen Colonies were involved in the slave trade.
Early history
Over time, the Thirteen Colonies gradually obtained more self-government. British mercantilist policies became more stringent, benefiting the mother country, which resulted in trade restrictions. Tensions escalated from 1765 to 1775 over issues of taxation without any American representation in Parliament. Congress unanimously declared independence in July 1776, formally initiating the Revolutionary War. The British managed to control New York City and parts of the South, but 90% of the American population was controlled by the Patriots. The entry of the French and Spanish decisively hurt British efforts. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1783, and the United States of America became the first colony in the world to successfully achieve independence in the modern era.
War of 1812
The two nations fought again in the War of 1812. Neither side prevailed. The end of the war marked the end of a long period of conflict (1775–1815) and ushered in a new era of peace between the two nations. It was celebrated in the US as a victorious "second war of independence", while the British, having finally defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, celebrated that triumph and largely forgot their second war with the US.
American Civil War
Relations verged on open conflict during the war, and remained chilly after it as Americans resented British and Canadian roles in their Civil War. Both sides worked to make sure tensions did not escalate toward war. The arbitration of the Alabama Claims in 1872 provided a satisfactory reconciliation; The British paid the United States $15.5 million for the economic damage caused by Confederate Navy warships purchased from it. The British also withdrew from their military and political responsibilities in North America, bringing home their troops from Canada (keeping Halifax as an Atlantic naval base), and turning responsibility over to the locals; in 1867, the separate Canadian colonies unified into a self-governing confederation named the "Dominion of Canada".
World Wars
The Great Rapprochement saw the convergence of social and political objectives between London and Washington from 1895 until World War I began in 1914. During World War I, the Americans planned to send money, food and munitions, but it soon became clear that millions of soldiers would be needed to decide the war on the Western Front. Two million soldiers were sent to Europe, with more on the way as the war ended.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the level of mutual hostility was moderately high. The British diplomatic establishment largely distrusted the United States for a series of reasons. They included British suspicion of America's newfound global power, intentions, and reliability. Despite the frictions, London realized the United States was now the strongest power, and made it a cardinal principle of British foreign policy to "cultivate the closest relations with the United States".
Although many of the American people were sympathetic to Britain during its World War II conflict with Nazi Germany, there was widespread opposition to American intervention in European affairs. But beginning in March 1941, the United States enacted Lend-Lease in the form of tanks, fighter airplanes, munitions, bullets, food, and medical supplies. Britain received $31.4 billion out of a total of $50.1 billion sent to the Allies. Lend-lease aid was freely given, with no payments. There were also cash loans that were repaid at low rates over half a century. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt announced the Atlantic Charter at a meeting in Newfoundland. It became a fundamental document—All the Allies had to sign it—and it led to the formation of the United Nations. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Churchill spent several weeks in Washington with the senior staff hammering out wartime strategy with the American counterparts at the Arcadia Conference. They set up the Combined Chiefs of Staff to plot and coordinate strategy and operations. Military cooperation was close and successful. Technical collaboration was even closer, as the two nations shared secrets and weapons. Millions of American servicemen were based in Britain during the war. Americans were paid five times more than comparable British servicemen, which led to a certain amount of friction with British men.
Cold War
In the aftermath of the war, Britain faced a deep financial crisis, whereas the United States enjoyed an economic boom. The United States continued to finance the British treasury after the war. Much of this aid was designed to restore infrastructure and help refugees. Britain received an emergency loan of $3.75 billion in 1946; it was a 50-year loan with a low 2% interest rate. A more permanent solution was the Marshall Plan of 1948–51, which poured $13 billion into western Europe, of which $3.3 billion went to Britain to help modernise its infrastructure and business practices. The aid was a gift and carried requirements that Britain balance its budget, control tariffs, and maintain adequate currency reserves. In British Malaya, the British colonialists got American aid in the war against the communist independence movement (1948–1960). The need to form a united front against the Soviet threat compelled the US and Britain to cooperate in helping to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with their European allies. NATO is a mutual defence alliance whereby an attack on one member country is deemed an attack on all members.
The Suez Crisis erupted in October 1956 after Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. Eisenhower had repeatedly warned London against any such action and feared a collapse of Western influence and the risk of a wider war in the region. Washington responded with heavy financial and diplomatic pressure to force the invaders to withdraw. When it became clear that the international sanctions were serious, the invaders withdrew in consideration of the very sizeable British post-war debt. The world noted Britain's fall from status in the Middle East and worldwide, and Anglo-American cooperation fell to the lowest point since the 1890s. However, the new prime minister Harold Macmillan (1957–1963) restored good terms with Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy (1961–1963).
Throughout the 1980s, Thatcher was strongly supportive of Reagan's unwavering stance towards the Soviet Union. Often described as "political soulmates" and a high point in the "Special Relationship", Reagan and Thatcher met many times throughout their political careers.
Post-Cold War
When the United States became the world's lone superpower after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new threats emerged that confronted the United States and its NATO allies. With military build-up beginning in August 1990 and the use of force beginning in January 1991, the United States, followed at a distance by Britain, provided the two largest forces respectively for the coalition army which liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's regime during the Persian Gulf War.
In the 1997 general election, the British Labour Party was elected to office for the first time in eighteen years. The new prime minister, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton both used the expression "Third Way" to describe their centre-left ideologies. In August 1997, the American people expressed solidarity with the British people, sharing in their grief and sense of shock on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who perished in a car crash in Paris. Throughout 1998 and 1999, the United States and Britain sent troops to impose peace during the Kosovo War. Tony Blair made it a point to develop very close relationships with the White House.
War on terror and Iraq War
Sixty-seven Britons were among the 2,977 victims killed during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere on September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda was the attacker. Following the attacks, there was an enormous outpouring of sympathy from the United Kingdom for the American people, and Blair was one of Bush's strongest international supporters for military action against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Indeed, Blair became the most articulate spokesman. President Bush told Congress that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain".
The United States declared a war on terror following the attacks. British forces participated in NATO's war in Afghanistan. Blair took the lead (against the opposition of France, Canada, Germany, China, and Russia) in advocating the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Again, Britain was second only to the US in sending forces to Iraq. Both sides wound down after 2009 and withdrew their last troops in 2011. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair provided sustained mutual political and diplomatic support and won votes in Congress and parliament against their critics at home. During this period, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that "America has no finer ally than the United Kingdom." The 7 July 2005 London bombings emphasised the difference in the terrorist threat to both nations. Terrorism against the United States and its military assets was primarily committed by foreign groups, like the al-Qaeda network and other Islamic extremists from the Middle East. The London bombings were carried out by homegrown extremist Muslims, and they emphasised the United Kingdom's threat from the radicalisation of its own people.
After claims by Liberty those British airports had been used by the CIA for extraordinary rendition flights, the Association of Chief Police Officers launched an investigation in November 2005. The report was published in June 2007 and found no evidence to support the claim. This was on the same day the Council of Europe released its report with evidence that the UK had colluded in extraordinary rendition, thus directly contradicting ACPO's findings. A 2018 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament found the United Kingdom, specifically the MI5 and MI6, to be complicit in many of the renditions done by the US, having helped fund them, supplying them with intelligence and knowingly allowing them to happen.