American-British Alliance

The British no vote to joining the EU was the final nail in the EU coffin. The Europeans have Napoleonic law and economics, and the British, whom Napoleon did not conquer ─ like America ─ have common law and the free market. A new globalized Maginot Line has been drawn between Napoleonic Europe and the U.S.-British alliance. The U.S.-Britain coalition in Iraq is an alliance that has a long history, going back to the founding of America. When Tony Blair addressed a joint session of Congress in 2003, he reminded America how special that relationship is. Winston Churchill summed up the relationship best after America stopped the 1956 Anglo-French operation to seize control of the Suez canal. “We must never again allow our foreign policy to be decided in Washington ─ never.” The Iraq war has put the special relationship under strain because Blair failed to heed Churchill’s caveat, British soldiers killed by U.S. friendly fire, only added to the strain. The cross-Atlantic troubled U.S.-Britain relationship is a “special relationship” underpinned by much more than strategic interests. It is based on ties of culture, ideas, language and history.

This was highlighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and U.S. President George W. Bush when they toasted their countries’ tight bonds in the grandest White House dinner of Bush’s administration in May 2007. “Ours is a partnership always to be reckoned with in the defense of freedom and the spread of prosperity,” the queen said in a toast at the white-tie state dinner. Mr. Bush paid tribute to the queen’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance during her long reign. “We’re confident that the Anglo-American friendship will endure for centuries to come,” he said. “Our alliance is rooted in the beliefs that we share,” he added. Those beliefs date back to the first pilgrims that landed on America’s shores. The Queen toured Jamestown in Virginia to mark the 400th anniversary of the new world’s first permanent English settlement. “I would also like to take this opportunity, on the day that has seen the formal transfer of power to the devolved Northern Ireland government, to thank you and your predecessors for your contribution to bringing peace in Northern Ireland,” she said, noting the U.S. role in bringing about the historic Good Friday peace agreement in 1998.