David McCloskey is the author of the novel “London Station” and co-host of the podcast “The Rest Is Classified.”
President Donald Trump is no stranger to special relationships. The problem is that they tend to be with the United States’ enemies instead of its allies.
Consider his recent overtures to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump’s decision in August to cut back military drills with South Korea and his eagerness to restart talks with North Korea have raised fears among Asian allies. A version of this has played out in Europe, with Russian president Vladimir Putin as the strongman courted by the White House.
But what of the most enduring Special Relationship — that with Britain?
Here, bromance has waned.
Trump has delivered the verdict in an interview: “How is the relationship? It’s the relationship where: when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn’t need them, they were not there. And they still aren’t there.”
The U.S. has imposed and reimposed tariffs on the United Kingdom. Trump has disparaged the contribution of British troops during the war in Afghanistan. Former prime minister Keir Starmer and Trump had a public spat over U.S. threats against Greenland. Last year, the U.K. paused intelligence sharing that could assist American strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which London views as illegal.
Most recently, Trump has dipped into one of the most sensitive issues in British domestic politics, saying he would “love to see” Ireland unified and that it will “happen eventually.” Washington and London have also diverged over the war in Iran, with Starmer questioning Washington’s logic for regime change, stiff-arming U.S. requests to join in blockading Iranian ports, allowing the U.S. to use British military bases only for defensive purposes and belatedly offering to deploy aircraft carriers to the region in a move Trump said should have happened before the war started.
On both sides of the Atlantic, politicians and commentators have fretted about the end of the Special Relationship. But long-term relationships always have ups and downs.
The Special Relationship has weathered policy differences over the Suez crisis in 1956, the Vietnam War and Britain’s joining of the European Economic Community in the early 1970s. Then, President Richard M. Nixon temporarily cut off some intelligence sharing; the Brits retaliated during the October War of 1973 by restricting some U.S. intelligence activities and overflights from bases in Britain and Cyprus.
Still, the relationship’s depth and flexibility bode well. Bluster aside, the two countries share largely overlapping geopolitical interests. Public spats over Iran, for instance, hide basic agreements about the regime’s threat.
The two nations’ defense establishments are joined at the hip. The militaries train together extensively. Britain is the highest-level partner on the U.S.’s F-35 joint strike fighter program. Mid-century defense agreements that established the exchange of nuclear technology and the sale of submarine-launched ballistic missiles were renewed indefinitely in 2024.
According to Britain’s 2025 Strategic Defense Review, the nation’s foreign military sales portfolio with the U.S. is valued at more than $18.6 billion. The U.S. is Britain’s second-largest market for arms exports, accounting for approximately 14 percent of its exports between 2021 and 2025.
Undergirding this is an unprecedented intelligence partnership. The CIA and its British equivalent, the Secret Intelligence Service, share intelligence extensively and conduct joint operations worldwide. The National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters often use shared systems and collect signals intelligence together; the NSA has even paid the operating expenditure for some GCHQ sites. John Brennan, former director of the CIA, has said, “I had no qualms whatever about sharing our most sensitive secrets with my British counterparts.”
The flexibility is an advantage in an era when, as an April House of Lords report puts it, the “once easy cultural bonds between Britain and America are beginning to fray.” The Special Relationship is not formalized or rigid. A president or prime minister cannot withdraw from it or rip up a piece of paper, because one does not exist.
This flexibility means that cooperation can continue or deepen in one domain even as it weakens elsewhere. A web of affectionate bonds at the working level of the two nations’ militaries, intelligence services and diplomatic corps will continue keeping open lines of communication and tapping a deep reservoir of trust amid political headwinds and public mudslinging.
Still, Americans and Brits should expect continued divergence, at least in some areas. The two nations are decades removed from the shared experiences of World War II and the Cold War. Elements of the U.S. political class are skeptical of global entanglements and increasingly see Europe and the U.K. as weak and irrelevant. The relationship can still be close and mutually beneficial even if it becomes less “special” than it has been in decades past.
Even if a MAGA-aligned JD Vance or a democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez administration skeptical of European commitments takes power in Washington — or a Brexit-backing populist such as Nigel Farage becomes prime minister in London — the relationship is primed to adapt and shift, not break. If policy disagreements widen over American military interventions, geopolitical competition with China or Washington’s more go-it-alone, abrasive diplomatic attitude, the machinery exists to continue delivering military, security and political benefits that advance the interests of both nations.
The Special Relationship is well-positioned to evolve and survive amid stormy political seas across the Atlantic. Let’s hope it does.
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