The Special Relationship is a term used to describe relations between the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). It first came into popular usage following a 1946 speech by former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Among major world powers, the military co-operation, intelligence sharing, and trade between the UK and US has been described as "unparalleled". Both have been close allies in global conflicts including World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the war on terror.
The personal close relationships between UK and US heads of government, including that between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and later between Tony Blair and both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been cited as popular evidence of the special relationship. At the diplomatic level, characteristics include recurring public representations of the relationship as "special", frequent and high-profile political visits and extensive information exchange at the diplomatic working level.
Some deny the existence of a "special relationship" and call it a myth.John Baylis, "The 'special Relationship' A Diverting British Myth?," in Cyril Buffet, Beatrice Heuser (eds.), Haunted by History: Myths in International Relations, ch. 10, Berghahn Books, 1998, During the 1956 Suez Crisis, US president Dwight Eisenhower threatened to bankrupt the pound sterling due to Britain's invasion of Egypt. Thatcher privately opposed the 1983 US invasion of Grenada, and Reagan unsuccessfully initially pressured against the 1982 Falklands War and refused to offer US military support to the UK. Former US president Barack Obama described German chancellor Angela Merkel as his "closest international partner", alongside David Cameron while incumbent US president Donald Trump described the relationship in 2026 as "not what it was [before]", following the UK's initial response to US strikes on Iran. Others have argued that the UK is either now or becoming a vassal or client state of the US, sometimes being referred to as the 51st state of the US.
Origins
Although the "Special Relationship" between the UK and the US was perhaps most memorably emphasized by Churchill, its existence and even the term itself had been recognized since the 19th century, not least by rival powers.Existence in the 19th century and early 20th century: , quoting the "semi-official organ" the North-German Gazette: "There is, therefore, not the slightest occasion for other States to adopt as their model and example a form of agreement which may, perhaps, be advantage to England and America in their special relationship". "No Ambassador to this or any other nation is similarly honoured.... It is intended to be, we need hardly say, precisely what it is, a unique compliment, a recognition on our part that Great Britain and the United States stand to one another in a special relationship, and that between them some departure from the merely official attitude is most natural". "The answer of the [Japanese] Ambassador [Baron Kato] shows that he and his Government even then appreciated the special relationship between this country [the United Kingdom] and the United States.... That, probably, the Japanese Government understands now, as clearly as their predecessors understood in 1911 that we could never make war on the United States". "After comparing the programmes of Britain, America, and Japan, the First Lord said that so far from importing into our maintenance of the one-Power standard a spirit of keen and jealous competition, we had, on the contrary, interpreted it with a latitude which could only be justified by our desire to avoid provoking competition and by our conception of the special relationship of good will and mutual understanding between ourselves and the United States". "As was well pointed out in our columns yesterday by Professor Muirhead, Great Britain stands in a quite special relationship to that great Republic [the United States]". quoting J. A. Spender: "The problem for British and Americans was to make their special relationship a good relationship, to be candid and open with each other, and to refrain from the envy and uncharitableness which too often in history had embittered the dealings of kindred peoples".
The American and British governments were enemies when foreign relations between them first began, after the Second Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia and representing all Thirteen Colonies, unanimously declared their independence from British rule, which formalized the American Revolutionary War, which commenced the year before at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Relations often continued to be strained until the mid-19th century, erupting into open conflict during the War of 1812 and again verging on war when Britain almost supported the separatist Confederate States during the beginning of the American Civil War. British leaders were constantly annoyed from the 1830s to the 1860s by what they saw as American pandering to the mob, as in the Aroostook War in 1838–1839 and the Oregon boundary dispute in 1844–1846. However, British middle-class public opinion sensed a common "special relationship" between the two peoples based on their shared language, migrations, evangelical Protestantism, classical liberalism and extensive private trade. That constituency rejected war, which forced Britain to appease America. During the Trent Affair of late 1861, London drew the line, and Washington retreated.George L. Bernstein, "Special Relationship and Appeasement: Liberal policy towards America in the age of Palmerston".Historical Journal 41#3 (1998): 725–750.
Troops from both nations had begun fighting side by side, sometimes spontaneously in skirmishes overseas by 1859, and both liberal democracies shared a common bond of sacrifice during the First World War (though the US was never formally a member of the Allies but entered the war in 1917 as a self-styled "Associated Power"). British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald's visit to the US in 1930 confirmed his own belief in the "special relationship" and so he looked to the Washington Naval Treaty, rather than a revival of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, as the guarantee of peace in the Far East.
However, as the historian David Reynolds observed, "For most of the period since 1919, Anglo-American relations had been cool and often suspicious. United States 'betrayal' of the League of Nations was only the first in a series of US actions—over war debts, naval rivalry, the 1931–2 Manchurian crisis and the Depression—that convinced British leaders that the United States could not be relied on". Equally, as US president Harry S. Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, recalled, "Of course a unique relation existed between Britain and America—our common language and history ensured that. But unique did not mean affectionate. We had fought England as an enemy as often as we had fought by her side as an ally".
Churchillian emphasis The outbreak of World War II provoked the rapid emergence of an unambiguously positive relationship between the two nations. The Fall of France in 1940 has been described as a decisive event in international relations, which led the Special Relationship to displace the Entente Cordiale as the pivot of the international system. During the war, one observer noted, "Great Britain and the United States integrated their military efforts to a degree unprecedented among major allies in the history of warfare". "Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt", Churchill shouted at General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, in 1945, "I shall choose Roosevelt". Between 1939 and 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt exchanged 1,700 letters and telegrams and met 11 times. Churchill estimated that they had 120 days of close personal contact. On one occasion, Roosevelt went to Churchill's room when Churchill had just emerged from the bath. On his return from Washington, Churchill said to King George VI, "Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked". Roosevelt found the encounter amusing and remarked to his private secretary, Grace Tully, "You know, he's pink and white all over".Churchill's mother was a US citizen, and he keenly felt the links between the two English-speaking peoples. He first used the term "special relationship" on 16 February 1944, when he said it was his "deepest conviction that unless Britain and the United States are joined in a special relationship... another destructive war will come to pass". He used it again in 1945 to describe not the Anglo–American relationship alone but Britain's relationship with both the Americans and the Canadians. The New York Times Herald quoted Churchill in November 1945:
Churchill used the phrase again a year later, at the onset of the Cold War, this time to note the special relationship between the US and the English-speaking nations of the British Commonwealth and the Empire. The occasion was his "Sinews of Peace Address", delivered in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946:
In the opinion of one international relations specialist, "the United Kingdom's success in obtaining US commitment to cooperation in the postwar world was a major triumph, given the isolation of the interwar period". A senior British diplomat in Moscow, Thomas Brimelow, admitted, "The one quality which most disquiets the Soviet government is the ability which they attribute to us to get others to do our fighting for us... they respect not us, but our ability to collect friends". Conversely, "the success or failure of United States foreign economic peace aims depended almost entirely on its ability to win or extract the co-operation of Great Britain".
Reflecting on the symbiosis, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982 declared: "The Anglo-American relationship has done more for the defence and future of freedom than any other alliance in the world".
While most government officials on both sides have supported the Special Relationship, there have been sharp critics. The British journalist Guy Arnold (1932–2020) denounced it in 2014 as a "sickness in the body politic of Britain that needs to be flushed out". Instead, he called for closer relationships with Europe and Russia so as to rid "itself of the US incubus".Guy Arnold, America and Britain: Was There Ever a Special Relationship? (London: Hurst, 2014) pp 6, 153
Military co-operation The intense level of military co-operation between the UK and the US began with the creation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in December 1941, a military command with authority over all American and British operations. After the end of the Second World War, the joint command structure was disbanded, but close military cooperation between the nations resumed in the early 1950s with the start of the Cold War.Derek E. Mix - The United Kingdom: Background and Relations with the United States - fas.org. Congressional Research Service. 29 April 2015. Retrieved 13 April 2017. The Tizard Mission catalyzed Allied technological cooperation during World War II.
Shared military bases