State of the Cousins

State of the Cousins What the British elections mean for the U.S.

AMERICANS are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941-and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath’s refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher’s backing for Reagan’s Libyan raid and Tony Blair’s commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation. There was even governmentto-government agreement for much of the time on the desirability of Britain’s joining the European Union to frustrate any tendency the latter might show toward anti Americanism. By and large this mix of policies worked well.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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State of the Cousins What the British elections mean for the U.S.

AMERICANS are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941-and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath’s refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher’s backing for Reagan’s Libyan raid and Tony Blair’s commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation. There was even governmentto-government agreement for much of the time on the desirability of Britain’s joining the European Union to frustrate any tendency the latter might show toward anti Americanism. By and large this mix of policies worked well.