the relationship between the UK and the USA

The relationship between the UK and the USA influences British foreign policy mostly. As what Barack Obama said, the relationship between the UK and the USA is special, which is a very eye-catching phenomenon. In the past, people often use "a national two countries" to describe the special relationship between the USA and the UK. It is special not only because of the history but also because of values and briefs.

The relationship between the UK and the USA encompass many complex relations over the span of four centuries, beginning in 1607 with England's first permanent colony in North America called Jamestown, to the present day, between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America. Dating back to that time, British foreign debt increased rapidly after the 7 years' wars against France, and meanwhile, the domestic economy was in a complete mess. So, Britain just opressed people in America to turn over much more tax. The contradiction between the two sharpened, which made the uprising in American land later. Then the United States of America was born.

Through times of war and rebellion, peace and estrangement, as well as becoming friends and allies, the UK and the USA cemented these deeply rooted links during World War II into what is known as the "Special Relationship", still described by a leading

commentator as "the key trans-Atlantic alliance", which the U.S. Senate Chair on European Affairs acknowledged in 2010 as "one of the cornerstones of stability around the world.

This was quite natural, as the two were closely allied during World War Ⅱ, and continued to work together closely in the post war years because they shared many of the same worries about the Soviet Union. Through the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement signed in 1958, the United States assisted the United Kingdom in its own development of a nuclear arsenal. In his famous novel titled 1984(published in 1948), the author, George Orwell, referred to Britain as "Airstrip One", an outpost of an American-dominated military bloc. It is true that as a part of its NATO commitments, the British host a large American military presence. There are 63 American military bases in Britain. Because these bases are under American control and because they host the NATO nuclear deterrent, the difficulty of dismantling them is very complicated. Leftists have argued that the presence of superpower bases simply makes Britain into a target and that the Americans should be kicked out. But supporters of NATO argue that early warning and defense systems and the intertwining of conventional and nuclear capabilities, etc., make this very difficult and might spell the end of NATO.

The United States accounts for the United Kingdom's largest single export market. The United States and the United Kingdom share the world's largest foreign direct investment partnership. Even today, in many respects British and American policy-makers agree generally on, for example, how the global economy should be managed, how a warlike state should be dealt with, issues about arms control and so on. British forces participated in the United States-led war in Afghanistan and unlike France, Canada, Germany, China, and Russia, the United Kingdom supported the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Besides, the relationship often depends on the personal relations between British prime ministers and the US presidents. The first example was the close relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt who were in fact distantly related.

Nevertheless, the "special relationship" with the United States has gone through many ups and downs. The major test of Anglo-American relations occurred during the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Egyptian nationalist president Gamel Nasser, tried to nationalise the Suez Canal, which harmed British and French economic interests, so together these two countries tried to take the canal back by force. To the surprise of the British, the Americans did not support this action and used America's economic power to

force the Anglo-French forces to withdraw.

Today, the relationship between the UK and the USA is regarded as the "most important bilateral partnership" in current British foreign policy while the United States takes its relationship with the United Kingdom as one of its most enduring bilateral relationship, as shown in political affairs. They have mutual cooperation in the areas of trade, commerce, finance, technology, academics, as well as the arts and science. They share government and military intelligence and carry out joint combat operations and peacekeeping missions between the United States Armed Forces and the British Armed Forces.

I think the relationship between UK and USA is special. But the main reason of this change is profit. Many other countries’relationship is also depending on profit. In the world, friends or enemies always can not be permanent.