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WHEN BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown visits the United States next month he is unlikely to receive as enthusiastic a welcome as his predecessor, Tony Blair. A recent report in London's Sunday Telegraph cast a bleak spotlight on the current state of Anglo-American relations with the stark headline: "'Special Relationship' dies under Gordon Brown." The Telegraph article revealed that British diplomats were no longer using the term to describe the decades-long alliance between London and Washington that had, in its heyday, successfully defeated both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
The phrase has been quietly dropped by the British Foreign Office in deference to Britain's European Union partners. As the newly unveiled National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom made clear, while "the partnership with the United States is our most important bilateral relationship and central to our national security . . . the EU has a vital role in securing a safer world both within and beyond the borders of Europe." Referring to Washington in the same breath as New Delhi and Beijing, the report goes on to say that Britain "will continue to build close bilateral relationships with key countries, including the United States, and the emerging powers of India and China."
Equal billing for the United States and the European Union in the affections of Downing Street would have been unthinkable in the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but the notion gained ground during the Blair years, despite the former prime minister's strong pro-American sentiments. Blair mistakenly believed
that Britain could be both America's closest ally
"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." ~~John 15:5~~