One of the things that the depleted, often denigrated British state is still pretty good at is persuading the public that another country is a threat. As a small, warlike island next to a much larger land mass, Britain has had centuries of practice at cultivating its own sense of foreboding. Arguably, preparing for conflict with some part of the outside world is our natural mindset.
Warnings about potential enemy countries are spread by our prime ministers and major political parties, intelligence services and civil servants, serving and retired military officers, defence and foreign affairs thinktanks, and journalists from the right and the left. Sometimes, the process is relatively subtle and covert: reporters or MPs are given off-the-record briefings about our “national security” – a potently imprecise term – facing a new threat.
And sometimes the state’s approach is more direct. Last month the head of the UK’s armed forces, Richard Knighton, gave a widely publicised lecture warning that “the [national security] situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career”, which began during the cold war in 1988. “It needs a whole of nation response,” he continued, “a sense of national pride and purpose that has characterised our nation in times of conflict.” To an increasing number of our senior military, intelligence and political figures, Britain is already in an undeclared war.
But with whom? Since the end of the second world war, according to the British security state, our most likely enemy has usually been Russia. Its invasion of Ukraine has prompted that message to be disseminated once again. Whether under the sea, in the sky, on land or in digital space, the biggest threat to this country, it is widely assumed, comes from the east.
Yet with Donald Trump’s ever more erratic, aggressive and often outright hostile presidency, that assumption feels ever more simplistic. The Greenland crisis is just the latest, starkest example of this administration’s deep antipathy to relatively liberal Europe, including Britain. So far, it has led to fundamental disputes over free speech, tariffs, the climate crisis, multiculturalism, military spending, international law, the regulation of tech companies, the rise of hard-right populism, US interference in foreign elections, and the government and policing of diverse European cities such as London.
Earlier this month, the director of the respected British thinktank Chatham House, Bronwen Maddox, said that western countries “must now contemplate what was unthinkable: to defend themselves against the US, in both trade and security”. She went on: “It is not grandiose to call this the end of the western alliance.”
How prepared is Britain for this huge shift? Many voters already seem to be adjusting: a recent poll by Opinium found that 32% regard the US as a threat, significantly higher than before Trump returned to office. Despite the centuries of cultural, economic and social ties between the two countries, millions of Britons appear to have no difficulty understanding that the Trump administration is not on our side – however frightening this prospect may be. In today’s volatile world, voters are learning to be flexible in their global outlook.
But for people or institutions more invested in the status quo, accepting its collapse or decay may be much harder. The Anglo-American “special relationship” has been central to Westminster and Whitehall’s political thinking and activities for more than 80 years. Other sites of often secret collaboration are scattered across Britain: from the GCHQ surveillance centre in Cheltenham, which works with US intelligence, to our nuclear-armed submarines at Faslane in Scotland, with their US-maintained missiles; from 13 US air force bases to the American ambassador’s vast residence, Winfield House, which has the second biggest garden in London after Buckingham Palace.
The last time this relationship was widely questioned in Britain was during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, more than 40 years ago. His initially confrontational approach to the cold war, including the 1983 invasion of the commonwealth state of Grenada – which outraged even the usually Atlanticist Margaret Thatcher – made many Britons see Reagan as a dangerous and unstable leader. The US’s British bases and other official privileges here became contentious, a focus for the then surging peace movement, films such as Defence of the Realm and songs by political rock bands such as New Model Army and The The.
But then Reagan became more conciliatory towards Russia, the cold war ended, and the US-UK relationship went back to being largely unquestioned by the British state and electorate. Last June, five months into Trump’s already alarming second term, Keir Starmer’s government published a strategic defence review. Its seven wide-ranging chapters considered the threats from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, yet essentially ignored Trump’s anti-European foreign policy, instead briefly mentioning a “shift in US security priorities”.
Despite some belatedly tough words from Starmer about Greenland on Wednesday, in its broader approach to Trump, his government still seems wedded to the British orthodoxy that there is little to be gained, and much to be lost, from fundamentally breaking with the US. As well as belief in the special relationship, there are other deep impulses at work. Ever since this country lost its global supremacy in the 1940s, our rulers and diplomats have got used to trying to make the best of bad situations, and at playing for time. Much as he might want to be, Trump won’t be president for ever.
Yet there are now plenty of other senior American politicians and strategists with an anti-European worldview, such as the vice-president and likely presidential candidate, JD Vance. Their contempt for Europe’s “unstable minority governments”, and belief that the US could and should achieve even greater “dominance” of the west – in the words of the Trump administration’s latest national security strategy – is a belief system that, previously half-submerged beneath more consensual ideas, has now burst to the surface of US politics. Even if the Republicans lose the midterms and the next presidential election thanks to Trump’s patchy domestic record and consistent unpopularity, this nationalist monster may not sink from view again for a long time.
The British state can believe that its American relationship is essentially unchanged, or can be adjusted, or can be extended in a diminished form for a few more years. Or it can do some new thinking.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
