Redefining That Special Relationship

WHEN British Prime Minister Harold Wilson pays his first call on President Nixon this week, a familiar phrase may very well come up during their meeting--the "special relationship." Even today, the phrase conjures up deep and enduring ties between the two countries that may be helpful. Yet it does not come even close to carrying the significance that it did in 1946 when the phrase was coined by Winston Churchill.

The foundations of the special relationship were laid at the turn of the century. According to Henry Adams, it was fostered by "the sudden appearance of Germany as the grizzly terror, which in 20 years effected what Adamses had tried for 200 in vain--frightened England into America's arms." There was more to it than a fear of German power. There was also more than the common language; as a U.S. official puts it, "the South Africans speak English too." It was a matter of shared history, parallel views of civilization, common traditions of parliamentary democracy and respect for individual rights. When Churchill referred to the relationship in his famed "Iron Curtain speech" at Missouri's Westminster College, he foresaw joint U.S.-British cooperation against the looming Soviet peril, which ultimately might lead to common Anglo-American citizenship. Nobody would go that far today.

End of the Affair. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill set a pattern of close friendship and camaraderie that was followed by their successors through John F. Kennedy. Since 1963, however, the relationship has grown steadily less special.

Britain's precipitous decline from world-power status to that of a second-class nation rendered its alliance with the U.S. unbalanced--and unproductive. As Britain liquidated its imperial holdings, its diplomacy largely lost the ability to influence and aid U.S. policy. Britain's failure to win admission to Europe's thriving Common Market only underlined its role, in the harsh words of one American, as "that butterfly content to flutter pathetically on the periphery of the world." In Europe, West Germany became a far more important U.S. partner; in Asia, Japan.

Says Lord Harlech, whose Washington ambassadorship spanned the transition from Kennedy to the Johnson Administration: "By the time of Lyndon Johnson, the American machinery was influenced only by what you could deliver. You couldn't hide it that you were continually asking for money and at the same time withdrawing from one commitment after another around the world." In addition, Johnson gave the impression that he regarded it as a waste of time to deal with the British.

No wonder the British are somewhat distressed that their friends, nearly all members of the Eastern intellectual establishment, have been replaced by men of a different background. "For years, it's been good old Dean [Rusk], or Walt [Rostow] or George [Ball]," says one diplomat in London. "Now there's suddenly Heinrich Kissinger in the White House basement sweating over the Baden-Wuerttemberg election, or names like Ehrlichman and Ziegler." One British writer saw Nixon's election as "the end of the affair."

Nixon's appointment of Publisher Walter Annenberg as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's has only reinforced that view. Annenberg lacks his recent predecessors' instinctive knowledge of Britain. He also lacks their style. Asked by a Briton for his opinion of the special relationship, Annenberg replied: "I have always maintained that England and America belong in bed together."

Shared Judgments. The special relationship is codified in law in only one instance. The 1946 McMahon Act, in effect, singles out Britain as the sole nation with which the U.S. may share its know-how about nuclear weaponry. But, despite the absence of formal bonds and the existence of severe strains, the relationship continues to manifest itself in scores of ways--particularly work routines and friendships. In London, the British Foreign Office has direct telephone lines to only two embassies: the Dutch, as Britain's closest Continental ally, and the American.

In scores of foreign capitals throughout the world, as one U.S. diplomat aptly phrases it, Britons and Americans are used to "sitting on the corner of each other's desks." Sir Patrick Dean, former ambassador in Washington, explains that they try to make certain "that the reasoning is the same, the appreciation of the problem is the same, and the courses open to action are judged to be about the same." Despite a few serious exceptions, U.S. and British policies since World War II have been reasonably compatible. In recent months, for example, the Anglo-American position has been fairly close on Nigeria, the Middle East, and the response to Moscow's call for a European security conference.

Broker's Role. For all that, the relationship is plainly in need of redefinition. When Harold Wilson saw Richard Nixon in London during the President's European tour last year, he spoke only of a "close relationship." Many Britons feel that their country's new role visa-vis the U.S. should be as a broker, speaking to America on Europe's behalf and vice versa. Perhaps--but the British must remember that Charles de Gaulle drew considerable European support when he barred Britain from the Common Market on the grounds that London was too closely linked to Washington.

With a new bid for Market membership coming up, the British are likely to pay closer attention to the Continent than ever before. That does not necessarily mean that they will turn away from the U.S. "I want to go into Europe," Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins said recently, "to make the Atlantic narrower between the U.S. and Europe as a whole, not to make it wider." Of course, the British alone cannot narrow the distance; the Americans will have to help, and it is still unclear whether the Nixon Administration believes that it is really worth the effort.

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