The departure of British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised questions in London and Washington about the future of trans-Atlantic relations. At their summit last weekend, U.S. President George W. Bush and his new British counterpart, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made it clear that the personnel change would not affect relations between their two countries. The special relationship endures.
Close ties between the U.S. and Britain have been a pillar of 20th-century diplomacy. The two-nation axis ensured that a "trans-Atlantic community" tethered the old world of Europe to the new one in America. In many regards, the Anglo-American alliance was the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a sign of the U.S. commitment to the defense of Europe. This special relationship reflected historical and social ties as well as political and economic links.
Indeed, historic-social ties often insulated against the vicissitudes of great power relations and facilitated the transition to U.S. dominance in the West after World War II. This relationship also provided a benchmark for other countries' relations with Washington, as Japanese well know, having heard the call for Japan to become "the U.K. of Asia" for nearly a decade.