The Not-So-Special Relationship | Hacker News Reader

The Not-So-Special Relationship

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20 pointsapollinaire56 comments

The British like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. Canadians like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. Australians like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. I have even heard of South Korea referring to their special relationship with the U.S..

Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

Maybe the special relationship consists of "they can nuke us or our market any day"

It's really a special relationship with the Commonwealth A-list, and it's about military collaboration, nuclear technology and intelligence sharing. No other countries are as close to the US and work with them as peers in these areas, by a very large margin.

Britain is the lynchpin but Canada, Australia and New Zealand all contribute valuable strategic assets just by their location, but also bring specialist expertise to the table out of proportion to their population. The scientist in Britain that made arguably the single greatest contribution to the Manhattan project was an Australian.

It’s really not though, I’m from Canada, and the fact is we do 75% of our trade with the US and 3% with the UK. When push comes to shove, Canada would never prioritize the UK over the US.

Nor should you. The special relationship has never been about trade though. It’s about national security and intelligence sharing.

Only one of the five acknowledged nuclear powers buys rather than builds their warheads: UK buys from US, because of the Manhattan Project history. NB the critical calc about the mass of Uranium 235 necessary for fission was done at Birmingham Univ in 1942. Note the UK has supplied the US with plutionium as well as tech under the mutual defence treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_US%E2%80%93UK_Mutual_Defe...

I was under the impression the UK builds it’s own warheads at AWE/Aldermaston. What we bought was the delivery platform.

They certainly were fans of test detonations in the Australian Outback and atolls in Kiribati.

And I think you're right about AWE. I can't imagine the modern UK wanting to be dependent on the US for nukes any longer than it needed to be.

I still disagree. There’s a lot more cooperation with the US and Canada in Canada on both of those fronts. Small US military contingents train in Canada with our military and vice versa. Furthermore the United States has provided intelligence information multiple time now that have stopped terrorist attempts in Canada. I don’t believe there’s a similar depth of cooperation with the UK — what could the UK even provide to Canada that the US doesn’t already.

Furthermore we’re integrated with the US in ways that we aren’t with the UK, Canadians can stay in the US visa free for six months and when a Canadian enters the US by air they use the US immigration line, whereas UK citizens would not. There’s also freer movement between Canada and the US in that designated professional classes can get NT work visas easy and can be continually renewed with no limitations.

The Canadian UK relationship is just about tradition, and us being polite. At the end of the day, in modern times, countries like Japan or Germany have more sway in Canada simply because we invest and trade more with them. I know some British really want to believe it’s possible to bring back the empire, but it’s really not, Canada is a completely different country now from what it was 80 years ago.

I didn't mean to imply that Canada's relationship with the US is in any way via the UK. That may have been the case in some ways back in WW2 but certainly not since then. You're all growed up. The US is the lynch pin.

As a Canadian that grew up on the boarder with the US, and has family on both sides, this is exactly true lol

Anyone that thinks the American political establishment cares about Canadians, British or Australians are delusional. I’m not convinced the Americans political establishment even cares about Americans.

As that one French guy said “Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.”

Common law, winner takes it all voting, English as a language, non metric measurements. The anglosphere has quite a lot of unique things in common and that makes their relationship special.

Wasn't South Korea a military dictatorship set up and supported by the US for several decades? I don't know about "special" but that's definately a relationship.

According to Friedman, South Korea is where it is today because of American support. 80 years ago, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. It was in American geopolitical interest to turn it into what it is today.

> Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

Not at all; the Special Relationship is a standard political term that refers specifically to the relationship between the US and Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Relationship

Were you not around when comedy news was making fun of Mitt Romney for saying "the Special Relationship is special"?

Were you not around when comedy news was making fun of Mitt Romney for saying "the Special Relationship is special"?

No, I wasn't around. The assumption that I would have been is fascinating. I am not an American; I did, however, live in the U.S. for a grand total of 7 years and never once heard a U.S. politician talk about any "special relationship" with any of these countries on the news. In Canada, Australia, and Britain, I regularly heard about the "special relationship" in such a way as to imply no other country has a similar one. Take from it what you will.

> Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

Unsurprising, since these are about government-to-government relationships, and a large subset of Americans make ignorance of government a matter of personal pride.

Of course there was no special relationship before WW2 as the article describes, because that war is what created it. There were three things that established this relationship.

* Britain and the Commonwealth nations fought alongside America in every theatre of the war, and had a global network of naval bases to supply bunker fuel and supplies. This was massively important. Wherever US servicemen found themselves, there were Brits there somewhere around fighting alongside them or supporting their efforts.

* We were thoroughly embedded in the Manhattan Project, contributing crucial technology, research and skills. In fact when the collaboration started in 1940 the British nuclear research program was significantly ahead of that in the US.

* Intelligence gathering and sharing was deep and wide, and British intel was crucial to the war effort. Aside from extensive communications and humint resources, we had Bletchley and freely shared the technology with the US.

All three of these spheres of collaboration continued after the war, and continue to this day. Britain still has a global military response capability only rivalled by the US itself, and maybe France (Seriously, nobody else, Russsia isn't even close). AUKUS still shows our nuclear technology collaboration with the US is deep even in the most closely guarded strategic technologies.

That does not in any way imply the relationship is an equal one. That would be completely unrealistic, we have to peddle as fast as we can to keep up. This is why we spend significantly more on our military than most European countries. Also this is really a Commonwealth special relationship (at least the A-listers), not just a British one. Again see AUKUS for a prime example. Team Commonwealth collectively still has it where it counts.

France chose to go their own way, and I think at this point it's clear this hasn't worked out as well as they had hoped. It's a real shame, France has fantastic global experience and assets, and for all our ribbing a first class military. If it hadn't been for de Gaul we could be reading about FRAUKUS in the news.

It's still bizarre the way history turned out. The British, for whatever reason—and I'm including the greater UK in this definition—have led the way in virtually every field of technology. Why they didn't end up dominating the military, biological, computing, and space industry is quite a puzzle in itself.

Hubris

This is apocryphal, but I've heard it said that the reason Silicon Valley didn't start in the UK (where they obviously had a head start), was because they were biased against anoraks and boffins, and couldn't see the potential of future commercial computing opportunities.

Possibly because the British ruling classes tend to have an humanities education [1]. Cf Boris quoting Sophocles, and Kermit the Frog, at the UN earlier this week.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

So with the Chinese ruling class coming from predominantly engineering backgrounds (and yes, I've read the previous hn threads on this topic, which are fascinating), should we expect the future of innovation to come from China, or is there another aspect or component at work? My personal take is that Silicon Valley took off in the US because of its timing with WWII defense spending.

Francis Spufford's Red Plenty is fascinating on engineering culture in closed societies. The recent Chernobyl drama series addresses the same point too. Technical problem solving and innovation work best in open societies where there's minimal political interference in the flow of information. The US overtook the UK as economic #1 in 1870, and is still #1. Despite 100 years of decline the UK is still top 10. IMHO domestic market size, effective autarky, an open society and drawing the smartest immigrants globally has kept the US at #1, and will continue to do so despite challenges in the 80s from the Japanese and more recently the Chinese.

Dominating an industry goes far beyond invention and academia, in fact, in many those aren't even necessary. Money, marketing, and various business skills dominate industries.

Market access; the USA has a sovereign market of ~25% world GDP. Within this market the rules are all the fiat of the USA, other players can have a bit - so long as their contribution is net positive for the citizens of the USA. Any innovation is used to create value in this market and the result is an industry that then can go on to be a world beater.

China is doing the same sort of thing now.

This is natural - it's just how states and markets work and use innovation.

The UK has a market of ~2% of world gdp - it's industries are bound to be 1/10 of the size of the USA's, in practice less as it will always be at a structural disadvantage.

The EU has a market approximately the same size as the USA and China. The puzzle is why the EU doesn't have dominant industries - this is especially stark in sectors that have evolved since the 1980's. Software and Computer Hardware (chips) are clearly one of these, green tech is another.

> The puzzle is why the EU doesn't have dominant industries

It has - cars, industrial automation and finance.

The EU is a collection of countries with completely different languages and cultures. Doing business in another EU country is far more complex than doing business in another US state.

Writing on a piece of paper that there is a single common market doesn't make it so. Only a handful of really large companies (Airbus is the only one I can think of right away) can manage.

More like doing business in the EU is far more complex.

EU is not a single country, these countrues wrestle for control, so it's complex in that sence.

But it's not like the laws are particularly weired. I was amazed when i learned that in US it's a federal crime to posses a lobster that is too short.

High spending on employees, very risk averse investors, failure is seen as major shame, slow to form a company (not that big of a deal), sometimes weird restrictions on managers/directors.

It is a criminal offense to use public transport without paying in Germany.

Compared to the USA, maybe (even that is arguable from what I've heard about the US legal system). But I'm coming from a situation of before-and-after Brexit.

Before Brexit, trade in the EU was a comparative breeze.

It's an absolute dogsh!t, nightmare now (from a UK perspective).

You're not another EU country anymore, mate.

Not to worry though, the whole damn thing will collapse sooner rather than later, and then you'll be happy to watch the implosion from a comparatively safe distance...

Thanks for pointing that out. That's a revelation.

However, we do still trade with the EU, so the current situation is less than ideal. As would be your "implosion" fantasy. Not my cup of tea, thank you.

Please name any dominant US industry that isn't connected to defense (powered by flood of the world's reserve currency) or to venture capital (ditto). EU just does not have such resources and, till recently, the will.

Well - I can't name a US industry that's part of its international dominance that isn't part of it's international dominance.

Would you include Education? I guess that the USA dominates higher education in terms of $$ as well as prestige.

I'm not excluding anything, let's look into it. In The US there is about 600k international students [1]. In the EU if I read [2] correctly about half of total 1.3m foreign students is from outside Europe which is same or a bit more ( and european non-EU-members are probably not included, that would raise the number). It is very likely that US edu gets bigger profit, but dominance isn't only about profit.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

> The puzzle is why the EU doesn't have dominant industries - this is especially stark in sectors that have evolved since the 1980's. Software and Computer Hardware (chips) are clearly one of these, green tech is another.

I’m not an expert on the matter, but continental Europe is very conservative compared to the Anglo-Saxon world (here conservative doesn’t mean xenophobia and imperial units, but reluctant to change). My pet theory is that continental Europe is an older continent, where, to oversimplify, electorates understand cars but not computers.

On top of that: VCs, angel investors, etc… are not a thing, bankruptcy laws are not as good as in the UK or the US, and bureaucracy is a massive drag.

I set up a small software company in the UK, I spent probably 30£. In Italy it would have cost 5000€ just to register the company. God knows how much tax a software company pays in Italy (which is not the same as a café, which is not the same as a lawyer, which is not the same as a cleaning company, etc…).

The US has easy economies of scale for many types of business due to its large population. If you come up with a successful business model in one state, there is a low barrier to expanding it. Trivial example, if you manufacture a successful toy.

This might explain eventual domination of aeronautical engines (Rolls Royce) and home computing platforms (Acorn, Spectrum, etc).

This does not always work in the favour of the US. I have worked in a field where have I repeatedly seen US businesses try to bring their model to Europe, buoyed by optimism from earlier expansion in the US. The European structure of this domain is simply different, leading to the new entrants being doomed before they have even opened their office.

> The US has easy economies of scale for many types of business due to its large population. If you come up with a successful business model in one state, there is a low barrier to expanding it.

The UK had access to such a market and was quite a large force in certain sectors like finance but then decided to just burn all bridges.

Of course the challenge in the EU is a big higher because of different languages and possibly different cultural attitudes but the UK is now learning how much harder things were back in the good old days.

UK businesses never bothered much with the EU, anyway. It's ridiculous. There's big demand for cheese, ales, biscuits, even pasties, all over Europe.

Yet many farms and companies with an online store didn't even ship EU-wide. Why, just why?

Then they blame Germany for dominating. Well, yeah, they actually come and advertise their shit in other countries.

US has advantage of a single postal service, when I post something to Aberdeen it's £2, if i post it to Paris it's £20 and takes an extra week

Please. I had a small business in the UK, I shipped EU wide. Shipping to EU is slightly more expensive, and takes an extra day or two for like South Italy and Romania. No one ever complained about having to pay for shipping (yeah, the buyer pays, shocking), nothing ever got lost.

For a lot of UK businesses expanding in to the US is equally as difficult.

Revolut (the UKs biggest fintech unicorn) has been plotting expansion in to the US, and making it top priority, for a while now. I'm skeptical. If they can't do it, who can?

Because of greed. The leaders were not interested in progress. They just wanted more money and power.

Totally unlike the US, right? Jeez...

The UK is still doing pretty well in all those sectors, for a small rainy island in the Atlantic.

The British gave away a lot of their leading tech to the US in exchange for the US joining the war effort:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission

I'm surprised the article never mentioned War Plan Red: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

> the ‘special relationship’ is, and has always been, a British fantasy

More accurately, a fantasy by which British politicians embarrass themselves. Personally, this Brit would be happy to see the phrase die

> The British government sometimes bought as much as 30 per cent of newspaper advertising space.

That's interesting.

Possibly some would argue that was a "market failure", soap manufacturers should have stepped up. Therefore nationalise the newspapers, etc.

If Americans had any idea how deep the animosity for Americans still is among the British aristocracy they would seriously reconsider the status quo here. There is a deep and hidden history to this topic of which this article only superficially scratches the surface of.

I think this is pretty silly. Plenty of British aristos and upper middle class have married Americans, or are in fact part American at this point. Sure there may be some throwbacks who have a stick up their arse about it, but that's not "the British aristocracy". Not that those lot have all that much actual influence over anything these days anyway.

I don't think it is, but I think I understand your point. Of course there is no denyng there is a huge amount of cultural blurring of lines, primarily through the common language, but what I'm talking about goes far beyond just "but a few aristos have ties so why would they hate us" and more towards the systemic setup that has created much of the current mess we are in today. For example, there is a strong body of evidence supporting that Wilsonianism, which I credit as the primary turning point of US foreign policy, was very much entertwined with the upper establishment types in the UK. I could cite many similar examples (the banking system) that continue this narrative. These arent inherently bad per se, but the naive way Americans think of them makes them vulnerable to manipulation and deception.

Carroll Quigley's Anglo-American Establishment is a must read for background knowledge on this topic.

In the end? In the USA, you get that chance to fail. Actually it’s an honor.

Rest of the world? You don’t even get that chance, the chance to fail.

So my EU friends tell me now working 100 hour weeks? Just to get that chance, to fail.

Hey now, working 100 hours a week is illegal!

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