Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Rethinking That ‘Special Relationship’ Between the U.S. and Britain

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, an English journalist and author of Yo, Blair!," is writing a book on the legacy of Winston Churchill.

Every four years, as the American people embark on the task of electing a president, Europeans are reminded that they simply don’t understand America. At least I don’t, and I like to think that I know the United States better than many Englishmen.

I first set foot in America 46 years ago during the summer before entering university, and I’ve since visited as often as I could. Although I live in the west of England, I write largely for American publications. I visit Austin, Tex., from time to time to lecture at the University of Texas and fully consider myself a long-distance Longhorns fan. (Yes, I know, news of the Red River massacre reached even Somerset, but as an Arsenal supporter, I have been emotionally conditioned for calamity.)

And yet I know just what G. K. Chesterton meant when he said that nowhere on earth does an Englishman feel as much a stranger as in the United States. That may be truer now, as I see very clearly that our two continents are drifting apart. Far from the world becoming flatter or smaller, the Atlantic is growing wider, politically and emotionally. For much of the past century the two sides have been bound together by what now appear to have been temporary circumstances — the series of military partnerships from World War I through the cold war. There were deep underpinnings for what Winston Churchill first called the special relationship, but what’s curious is that we should think it still exists. Will history see the years of “Atlanticism” as a passing episode, before America turns to a manifest destiny elsewhere?...