Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the close postwar association between the United Kingdom and the United States, which is known by a single mnemonic: the “Special Relationship.” It refers to an unusually close and cooperative partnership between two independent states, encompassing diplomatic, military-strategic, political, economic, and cultural spheres. For the UK, the Special Relationship has offered a means to preserve great-power status even though its capacity for unilateral action in pursuit of foreign policy objectives is greatly diminished. For the US, the UK's possession of nuclear weapons, access to political and military intelligence, and position on the United Nations Security Council are valuable appendages. Despite the occasional spat and periods of cooling, diplomatic relations between the two states have remained extraordinarily close. But for all that the concept of the Special Relationship has illuminated, it has also obscured much—for example, the political economy of Anglo-America, buried beneath more fashionable scholarly preoccupations with diplomacy, grand strategy, and the cultural and sentimental linkages between the two states. Thus, this book examines the political economy of the relationship between the UK and the US.