Britain and America: the abusive relationship

King Charles’s visit will not improve an alliance that was always shaped by bullying and condescension

Official White House Photo by Molly Riley

The United States wreaks havoc in the Middle East. As things unravel, one of the chief American powerbrokers, turns his ire on his junior ally. Spitting venom, he pithily remarks: “the British answer is uniquely wet”. A special kind of outrage for a special kind of relationship.

These are not the words of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth or JD Vance. Rather, they are from Paul Bremer, the retired diplomat George W Bush sent to govern Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion 23 years ago.He wrote to his wife every night from Iraq and, in 2021, quietly deposited the full volume of emails to his alma mater, Yale. I uncovered these documents, which form the basis of the cover story I co-wrote for the Sunday Times Magazine. One of the most revealing elements from these emails was Bremer’s antipathy towards Britain. I have given a further selection of these documents exclusively to the New Statesman. Read in the context of Trump’s recent comments, they shine greater light on a relationship which Britain’s ambassador to the US now admits is hardly “special”, in the very week King Charles has tried to sustain its illusions.

1 July, 2003: Bremer snipes that the commander of the British forces in Basra, Peter Wall, “has always been a bit of a blowhard and difficult to control”. He is positively gleeful when America starts to tread on the British military’s toes.18 August, 2003: “I am sure that pretty soon I will have a limp-wristed Brit in my office concerned about the waves we are making in their area of operation. Tough luck boys. New game in town.” 11 November, 2003: “the snake in the grass is the Brits”.

20 March, 2004: There is “prevailing gloom that comes through the US press reporting. The only thing I can say about that is: the British coverage is much worse.” 13 April, 2004: after a rebellion breaks out in Iraq, led by the militia leader, Moqtada al- Sadr, he complains “the British answer is uniquely wet: Moqtada’s people are part of the political process in Basra, so we don’t want to do anything against him. Hopeless.” In a letter to Bush in July 2003, Bremer fulminates about “biased BBC reporting”. After a BBC interview a month later, he declared “the guy was rude, disrespectful and obnoxious. It is the last BBC interview I do.” He had contempt for our media and denigrated our military. I wonder why this sounds so familiar?

However, Bremer reserves the greatest portion of his ire for Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s diplomatic representative in Iraq, whom he often accuses of disloyally “wandering off the reservation”. As for Greenstock’s speeches, “what they lack in substance they make up for in length”. By February 2004, Bremer wants him sacked – “I really thought the time had come to get Jeremy recalled. The situation here was complicated enough as it is without having to worry about the British representative working on a different sheet to us.”

For Bremer, partnership meant unwavering loyalty. He saw Greenstock as a subordinate, acting above his station; not as an independent diplomat, representing a distinct country. Yet when I asked Greenstock to comment on Bremer’s emails, he wrote that Bremer was “hard-working, courageous and full of integrity”, only offering the veiled critique that “his professional reputation was, in American circles, damaged by the outcome of his time in Iraq”. Despite the level of vitriol Bremer continuously levelled towards his British counterpart in Iraq, Greenstock remained demure and even complimentary. Why? Half of the Bush administration is dead; the other half are long retired from politics. The current Anglo-American relationship will hardly be affected by any remarks from a retired diplomat commenting on Bush’s old war. Why the language of diplomatic niceties?

His attitude strikes me as symptomatic of the psychological Stockholm syndrome which Britain’s’ political and diplomatic establishment suffers towards America. Bremer’s emails are a timely reminder that the “special relationship” is not at an all-time low. Rather, it has long been a fragile myth which Trump is exposing more clearly than ever. Bremer’s emails are stark enough to radicalise any wavering Atlanticist. And as historical documents, they provide yet another rebuke to Tony Blair’s insistence that joining Bush’s war enabled Britain to exert real influence over post-invasion Iraq.

The fact that the Bush’s administration ignored Britain’s voice on Iraq is a well-established fact of the Chilcot Report. Just weeks before the outbreak of war, Bush’s Defense Secretary publicly made it clear that Britain’s military participation in the war was surplus to requirements. Downing Street was furious at this dismissive signal. Blair had convinced himself that hanging close to America was the only viable way to safeguard British interests and make his voice heard. Events from 30 years prior suggest otherwise.

The two men first crossed paths in the aftermath of another crisis in Anglo-American relations. In 1973, Ted Heath’s government refused to comply with Nixon’s requests for military and diplomatic support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. In the mid-1970s, Greenstock was in the Washington embassy, and Bremer was a key State Department official, who helped him “interpret the deeper intricacies of Kissinger’s policies”, according to Greenstock’s memoir. Heath’s government had refused to provide support for America’s negotiating position in the immediate aftermath of the conflict; instead he demanded that Israel withdraw from the territories it had occupied five years prior. Heath was concerned that giving into America’s demands would make Britain a direct target of Opec’s oil embargo – and with good reason. Then – as today – it took the prospect of an acute energy crisis in the Middle East to jumpstart Britain into countenancing any kind of deviation from US preferences. Kissinger warned the British Ambassador, that our continued anti-American approach would be “the worst decision since the Greek states confronted Alexander”.

The mythos of “the special relationship” edits out these historical episodes where Britain has exercised strategic autonomy from America, banishing this from our collective political consciousness. In doing so, the prospect of standing our ground is made to seem like a far more fanciful prospect than would otherwise be. Blair and Bush’s 2003, instead of Heath and Nixon’s 1973, becomes the standard of loyalty through which our collective memory of Anglo-American relations have become immortalised.

Fast-forwarding to today’s crisis, Blair’s attitude has not evolved one iota. He argued that Britain should do more to aid the US’s war in Iran, basing his reasoning on the same set of false assumptions he made about Iraq in 2003. In his leaked remarks, Blair said we should have rushed headlong into America’s war: “if they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security… you had better show up”. When it comes to the transatlantic relationship, Blair has always conflated being adjacent to power with actually possessing power. He then consoles himself with the American plaudits, which his wilful confusion between these two concepts provides.

Blair wanted to feel valued over Iraq, so Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. Blair once again hopes to feel relevant, so Trump gives him a seat on the so-called “Board of Peace”. It is a personal microcosm of how Britain has grown far too content with the aesthetic, the symbolism and the ceremony of the “special relationship” as compensation for the lack of influence we exert in reality. This is partly why the British government was keen to host Trump’s second state visit, with all the pomp and circumstance that comes with it; it was not merely to soothe Trump’s fragile ego – it was to soothe our own.

The US’s 2025 National Security Strategy is a charter for an assault on British sovereignty. It declares that America should be “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. And this finds voice when the US State Department funds Maga-aligned think tanks in London, when Elon Musk gleefully agitates for violence on Britain’s streets, or when Trump sues Britain’s national broadcaster. These are not accidental and contingent provocations. Rather, they are institutionalised mechanisms of foreign interference, which will outlive Trump’s tenure and look set be re-enforced by a future Republican President. In this particular sense, Trump represents not continuity with the Bush administration, but a radicalisation of what was once implicit.

All of this informs the Anglo-American relationship in this current moment of crisis. In March, Starmer expanded the remit under which US warplanes can use British airbases. Yet delayed concessions have not restrained Trump’s anger, they simply remind him of the delay. “Starmer is no Winston Churchill,” is Trump’s new dig. We are now a “once great ally” rather than the “Rolls Royce of allies”. This metaphor is telling; even pre-Iran, Britain was a shiny vintage car, whose utility derived from being owned by someone else. The metaphor has received new personification in the King’s visit. Trump is as obsequious towards Britain’s historical symbols as he is condescending towards its contemporary representatives.

Why is it that Trump seems to repeatedly single out Starmer for not toeing the line on Iran, just as Bremer seemed to single out Greenstock as a particular source of ire in Iraq? The “special relationship” myth may not win us exceptional influence, but is does breed the expectation of exceptional compliance, which leaves us exposed when we fail to meet this standard. It’s therefore high time to lower America’s expectations. The psychological continuities between Bremer and Trump are unmistakeable. Trump’s attitude precedes his presidency; it will not fade once he leaves office. However, because Trump browbeats and ignores Britain publicly, in a way that Bremer and Kissinger only did privately, we are now provided with a greater opportunity than before to break from the past.

The argument for an independent British foreign policy, which must resist a domineering America, could progress from a narrow sub-set of the British left, to being a patriotic necessity, required to safeguard our sovereignty. And more broadly, this shift would help us come to terms with our post-imperial identity with much greater clarity. To console ourselves with having lost the empire, we took ourselves to be the trusted advisers to its spiritual successor – the American Empire. This has been a 60-year distraction from Britain thinking more productively about how it can and should exercise power.

There is a telling moment in Greenstock’s memoir when Bremer leaves home for 2003 Christmas break. Greenstock is left briefly in charge, the most senior figure in Iraq, for a week or so. He recounts having “some private fun with the symbolism of a British proconsul in Iraq 80 years on from Sir Percy Cox”. Yet all Greenstock and his British staff could do was muse with resigned sighs about what ifs. They knew their power was an illusion, but they were flattered by the tantalising shadow of it. This regressive allure inhibits Britain and has shackled us to an increasingly reckless 21st-century hegemon.

From Iraq to Iran, the US has used its military might to inflict destruction and state breakdown across the Middle East. We have a moral obligation to resist this and find our voice. Trump has increasingly sought to subordinate and squeeze European allies. Perhaps this will one day provide a new space for cross-continental forms of solidarity and imagination, which has been one of the biggest casualties of our unthinking, unreflective transatlantic delusion.

[Further reading: The worst people in the world love King Charles]