The frustration of the Government of Boris Johnson at the reluctance of the United States to reopen the border to the British twice vaccinated against the coronavirus confirms the chronification of the delirium that, for decades, has kept the United Kingdom convinced that transatlantic society is a link between equal. The announcement this week that US citizens with full immunity will not have to quarantine upon arrival in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) still fails to find the desired reciprocity in the US, but what is truly unique is not that Joe Biden's Administration maintains its policy on international travel, but Johnson's thought it would give way.
The friction reflects the structural imbalance between two powers that observe the so-called
special relationship
from fundamentally opposite perspectives, in which the importance they give to the concept is unquestionably unequal.
In the Anglo-American dynamic, the White House has never needed to charm its British ally, while Boris Johnson is the latest link in the chain of prime ministers who are reluctant to assume that their country is the minority partner.
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From the moment it became clear last November who would be the 46th president of the United States, Downing Street launched an offensive to dazzle a president who had never shown an immediate predisposition to tune in. Johnson was at a disadvantage: in the face of Donald Trump's endorsement during the Conservative Party primaries that would make him prime minister, suspicion dominated Joe Biden's circle, not only because of Johnson's apparent proximity to the former president, but also because of his role as architect of Brexit.
Biden, the most Irish of American leaders, by his own admission, had openly supported the United Kingdom's permanence in the European Union, but it is precisely in these first stages of the solo journey that London depends on Washington more than ever since the end. of the Cold War. Eager to prove the usefulness of the divorce that he himself had sponsored, Johnson urgently needs to seal a trade agreement with the largest economy on the planet, but the prominence promised by Trump, at least in word, has given way to less obvious pressure on the part of the current US Administration.
In the months prior to the Brexit referendum, in 2016, Barack Obama, of whom Biden was vice president, had warned that, if it broke with the EU, the United Kingdom would "go to the tail" of the trade negotiations and the current president has evidenced not be in a hurry.
Among its conditions is a delicate demand, since the United States demands a solution to the dispute reopened with Brussels by the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol (the mechanism that avoids a border with the Republic of Ireland, considered vital for peace in the territory, and that the premier wants to renegotiate from the roots).
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Until now, London had pulled heavy machinery to defend its credentials as a useful ally.
Just two weeks after the 2020 presidential elections, it announced a significant injection of 16,500 million pounds (about 19,000 million euros) into the Armed Forces for the next four years, with which it aspired to reaffirm its commitment to maintaining capacity. military essential to the White House.
Despite the controversial adjustments imposed in London due to the financial impact of the pandemic, such as the reduction of the international cooperation budget, no price is considered excessive to reinforce the pillars of the transatlantic relationship.
This attraction campaign explains the disproportionate nature of the special relationship.
The UK sees it as key to its strategic interests, while Washington considers the sumptuousness of the concept more anecdotal.
After all, the role of each is based on two factors that have fed back each other since World War II: the consolidation of the United States as a world power, in the face of the end of the British Empire and the diminishing global influence of the United Kingdom, as it had diagnosed. As early as 1962, the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that the British "lost an empire and have not yet found their role."
Letting yourself be loved
Asymmetry, in fact, dominates from the beginning. It was Winston Churchill who, 75 years ago, in his speech on the Iron Curtain in Missouri (United States), had coined a term that is not to Johnson's taste, considering that it portrays his country as "needy and weak." It is not misguided either, the American leaders have no qualms about being loved, but in the face of the monopoly they exercise over the institutional and diplomatic agenda of the United Kingdom, the British prime ministers, and even their identity, go substantially more unnoticed on the other side of the Atlantic, where the star is always the president, and never a foreign leader.
From his privileged position on the front line for decades, Henry Kissinger is one of the observers who has most sharply described the mechanics between the two countries. Referring to a meeting between Prime Minister Harry Wilson and Richard Nixon, the former US Secretary of State said that Wilson "greeted the president with the paternal benevolence of the head of an ancient family that has had better times," although he has always seen fit to maintain the chimera. "We do not suffer from such an excess of friends as to discourage those who feel they have a special relationship with us," advice that has undoubtedly influenced the tenants of the White House to this day.
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