As you know, there’s a royal wedding coming up in England, and I wish them well. The media coverage is off the charts, as it rightly should be because it’s a big deal. Royal weddings don’t happen very often. But, why should we care?
We should care because the US and UK have a very unique relationship. To understand where it is today, we need to understand where it’s been. The truth is there’s no other nation on Earth that the USA has such an enduring and dynamic history with. Remember, England was once the most power nation on Earth. “The Sun never sets on the British Empire,” as the old saying went. The USA today is the most powerful nation on Earth. We wouldn’t be what we are today if not for England. We also share a similar structure and language. Yes, I know the USA doesn’t have a monarch or an official language and I know that British English and American English are like night and day in some cases, but we’re similar enough. It’s like a father-son dynamic in many ways. There’s a reason it’s said that if you want to see America’s future, look at England today.
England helped establish our colonies. In the earliest stages of our development in the Americas, things started off ok, but they steadily degenerated and we successfully broke away from England via the American Revolution to form the USA. We had another dust-up a few years later in the War of 1812, too.
Then, the Civil War broke out. The British (and the French) very nearly intervened in the war to aid the Confederacy, which approached them for help and recognition. The Union victory at Gettysburg effectively put an end to this, as the Europeans suspected the Confederacy could never prevail. No doubt, the British and French were licking their chops at the thought of a divided USA.
Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the USA began its rise to global prominence. We expanded ocean to ocean, fulfilling our Manifest Destiny, and then we looked beyond our shores. Our victory in the Spanish-American War illustrated our rise. By this time, the best days were behind England. A few years later, World War 1 broke out. The USA helped the English first by providing supplies and weapons, then eventually with force as we were drawn into the war due to German aggression against us.
World War 2 followed, with Germany laying mainland Europe to waste, leaving England as basically the last opponent to Germany (remember, Hitler and Stalin had a non-aggression pact, which Hitler would eventually break for reasons unclear to this day). We were not directly involved in the fighting until Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, then we declared war on Japan and Germany declared war on us to honor their Axis Pact.
After we won World War 2, saving the world in the process, England was a shell of its former self, rebuilding following World War 2. England effectively passed the superpower torch to us at the start of the Cold War era. We won the Cold War, too. The post-Cold War era hummed along for about a decade or so until 9/11 and our war in Iraq. The English were our staunchest ally in our victory in Iraq. Indeed, George W. Bush and Tony Blair seemed to get along quite well, like FDR and Winston Churchill before them. It was indicative of the special relationship.
Sadly, our relations with the English have soured considerably, and Obama deserves blame for this. Nile Gardiner wrote a top 10 list of insults by Obama against Britain in the Telegraph here. One Gardiner didn’t mention is how Obama recently said, “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy and the French people.” This was earlier this year, and will no doubt be included on his follow-up list. With insults like this, it should come as no surprise that the Obamas didn’t get an invitation to the wedding. It’s not technically classified as a state event, but several other heads of state got invitations anyway.
I’d love to see things improve, but it’s hard to envision that happening. Either Obama would have to realize the error of his ways or he’d have to lose in 2012 (the latter is far more likely, in my view). This is more than an isolated incident. It’s a pattern that must be broken.
Links: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100027838/barack-obama%E2%80%99s-top-10-insults-against-britain/
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