Chair of the IDEAS advisory board Lord William Wallace and Christopher Phillips, Programme Assistant of the Middle East International Affairs Programme, co-authored an article in International Affairs in 2009 which has attracted the attention of the UK Parliament.
Entitled 'Reassessing the Special Relationship', Wallace and Phillips' article argues that Britain's attachment to 'the special relationship' with the United States is a costly illusion that is not mirrored across the Atlantic and that the security elements of the relationship do not carry over into other areas of foreign policy. Britain would be well served to finally engage in significant debate about the nature of its relationship with the United States, with a view to freeing itself from an outdated mindset.
The article clearly struck a chord with UK policymakers, as the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee cite the article no less than fifteen times in their report on UK-US Relations which concluded that "The use of the phrase 'the special relationship' in its historical sense, to describe the totality of the ever-evolving UK-US relationship, is potentially misleading, and we recommend that its use should be avoided,"
Read the International Affairs article |
Read the Foreign Affairs Committee Report|
Guardian article on the Report|
Michael Cox comments on the Transatlantia Blog|