The power triad of US, UK and India

One of the questions being asked as Tony Blair steps down as Prime Minister is the future of Britain’s special relationship with the US. Has his close association with George Bush strengthened or weakened that relationship? Will Gordon Brown continue it or turn away from it?

All of these questions presume that the special relationship between the two countries is based on personal relationships between British Prime Ministers and American Presidents. In fact, the special relationship is based on several factors in addition to this —shared language, culture, political values, economic systems — but most importantly on a shared view of existing geopolitical realities.

For most of the 19th century, even though the two countries shared the English language, political values, and economic structures, they were hostile to one another. From the War of 1812 through the American Civil War, when the British came close to entering on the side of the Confederacy, the British and the Americans were enemies.

Only as the century came to an end did the rising power of both the United States and Germany lead the British government to pursue a policy of appeasement towards the United States. The British had decided that an alliance with the United States would help offset the growing power of Germany, keeping with its four hundred-year-old policy of not allowing any one country to dominate the European continent.

The 20th century saw that alliance flower through two world wars, as both countries saw its major threat as coming from Germany. During World War II, the great friendship of Churchill and Roosevelt — which came to symbolise their special relationship — ebbed as the power of the USSR and the United States eclipsed that of Great Britain, and as Roosevelt attempted to establish a personal relationship with Stalin.

That wasn’t to be, however, as it had no basis in shared interests or goals; and for most of the remainder of the century — with a few notable exceptions such as the Suez crisis — the special relationship continued, with the British seeing themselves as “of Europe but not in Europe,” and joining the US in its policy of containment and deterrence.

Although Britain eventually joined the European Union, it enjoyed the benefits of sufficient political and economic distance from the EU to allow it to benefit from its role as transatlantic mediator.

As we look forward in the twenty-first century, the world’s geopolitical realities are likely to create another era for the special relationship. Both India and China are forecast as the rising powers, slated to join the United States as the great powers of this century. Europe is unlikely to achieve fully effective unity, and therefore will play an important but not pivotal role.

Regardless of whether the US-Chinese relationship evolves into an amicable or hostile one, the relationship between the United States and India has all the marks of a special one. And Britain shares in this — through language, democratic values and institutions, shared culture (we are all reading each other’s literature), a common approach to business and markets.

This triad — what one may call the special relationship plus India — would  be built on more than the personalities of its leaders. Indian companies are investing in Britain at a fast rate; the London stock market is growing as the centre of financial transactions among the three, and while the time difference between Delhi and Los Angeles is 11 ½ hours and between New York and Delhi 9 ½, that between Delhi and London is a totally manageable 4 ½ and between New York and London 5.

Glance at the globe and you discover that Britain again finds itself well located — this time between two great powers with which it shares language and culture, as well as situated off the continent of a third, although lesser, power. It may just very well be that in this century the British Empire will  again play a role, albeit in a highly transformed and more equitable and mutually beneficial fashion.

The writer is Senior Associate Dean,  The Fletcher School, Tufts University.