Special Relationship lecture

The relationship between the English and American’s has defiantly changed from its original position of warring countries. Throughout the years they have been able to form a sort of partnership that reached its highpoint in the twentieth century. The actions that took place during World Wars I and II were the defining moments when the United Kingdom and American’s were able to work together to a capacity that had not been seen before in world history.
Because World War I was a war that was able to reach all over the world and divided countries between two sides it would be expected that the most powerful countries to win would be the countries looked to for world leadership. It was through this that the special relationship between the United Kingdom and America was built and then began to thrive throughout the rest of the century. What then tends to be taken as the first strong example of this special relationship is the United States entering World War II along with British soldiers and their allies. Through this war we began to see the first real bond between the English Prime Minister, at the time Winston Churchill, and the American President, who at the time was Franklin Roosevelt. The way the two countries have been able to keep this sort of friendship in their leaders has been interesting over the years, but I found it to be especially interesting over these recent years. It makes sense to me that Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher were able to work cooperatively and that Bill Clinton was able to keep a strong relationship with Tony Blair. Both of these pairings were with leaders of a similar political stance and that may be why the special relationship was able to exist so well. Over the past few leadership terms though there have been very differing view points on each side with roughly eight years of Tony Blair and George Bush Jr. and then the start of Gordon Brown and President Obama. While these four leaders have all tried to remain friendly with each other they are of very different viewpoints and have seen what is now being called the end of the special relationship. While the countries and the leaders have maintained a good friendship they are not working together in the same way and we have to look towards other countries for the possibility of joint leadership.