THE END OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP…

The news that President Trump had fallen out with the Anglo-Brits and had criticised the UK for not following America’s lead may have shocked some. The US President Donald Trump  told the UK he did not need its aircraft carriers and accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of seeking to "join wars after we've already won", as the US and Israel continue to launch strikes on Iran.

In his own social media post, President Trump said the UK was "giving serious thought" to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East, before saying the US does not "need them". Downing Street endless to say has not responded.

One of the UK's two aircraft carriers has been placed on advanced readiness, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed earlier on Saturday last. President Trump's comments came after US bomber jets were seen landing in the UK as the US started using British bases for "specific defensive operations".

"The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. "That's OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don't need them any longer - But we will remember”. 

“We don't need people that join Wars after we've already won!" Speaking on Air Force One in response to a question about the use of UK bases in the war, Trump referred to his post on Truth Social, saying: "We don't need them," appearing to reference the carriers.

He added: "It's not the right time. It would have been nice to have them two weeks ago." The UK Labour Westminster government has defended its decision not to join initial US and Israel strikes on Iran, and has remained clear that it has no interest in joining the wider offensive campaign in the Middle East.

While the Anglo-Brits may appear surprised by these developments, other people are not. 

Despite the impression given by the Anglo Brit Atlanticist elite, the USA’s oldest ally is actually France, not the UK, they backed (for their own reasons the USA in its struggle with the British Empire. The Westminster elite from time to time display's an almost desperate if not frantic desire to retain a publicly perceptible closeness to US interests something that is barely concealed beneath the ever so thin veneer of so called 'special relationship."

Now this special relationship is worth exploring as it explains many of the decisions (and the consequences of decisions) taken over the last 60 years and much hangs on it for good or for ill post Suez and post BREXIT. This relationship in its current form largely exists as a direct result of the British defeat at Suez and it’s consequences. Thwarted by the USA, the Franco-British-Israeli alliance of convenience broke up with a degree of bitterness - which fed the historic French distrust of perfidious Albion.

After a brief sulk - the Brits and the French then made two very different decisions, the French decided to pursue and independent foreign policy (and an independent nuclear deterrent), if from time to time French and US interests were the same, all well and good, if not then tough - French interests would always prevail even if they put France at odds with the USA. So ever since the French are from time to time sometimes standing with the USA, and sometimes not.

This side of La Manche, the Anglo-Brits made a very different decision, British and US interests it was decided would remain forever intrinsically linked - where the US went so would the Brits regardless. This was despite (if not because) of the threat of economic dislocation used by the US to effectively engineer the removal of Anthony Eden. The USA had far financial leverage with the Brits and made good use of it, all the rest is spin.

In the late 1960's Harold Wilson, publicly (and privately) refused to commit Brit military assets to the on-going war in Vietnam. This reality was that this decision was carefully cleared in advance by Wilson with Washington (who cut the PM some slack) and was taken purely and simply for domestic political reasons rather than being a matter of high moral principal. All the rest is spin.

When Edward Heath was PM, and President Nixon was in the White House, Anglo-US relations cooled significantly - it was during this period that the UK entered the EEC - such perhaps was the PM’s rumoured  indifference to the special relationship that drove this change, along with political expediency and economic necessity. 

Heath was the only PM not to actively pursue the much desired White House lawn photo with the incumbent President, which every other PM has sought their moment in the media spotlight in Washington DC.

The post war so-called special relationship was originally founded from combination of desperation, expediency, misunderstanding, and post war debt management. At the heart of the relationship there lies a fundamental misunderstanding of US history and society which remains to this day.

The Anglo-Brits perception of the USA is based from the start on a simple but fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of America. In the 19th and 20th centuries the Brit elite imagined that the Americans were basically trans Atlantic English people (Personified as 'Brother Jonathan' so beloved by 19th century Brit cartoonists especially in Punch magazine).

While this may have been partially true to a degree in Mid to late 18th century but with the opening up of the frontier to settlement (something the Brits had resisted when running their colonies in the New World) after the American revolution there was a resultant surge of European immigrants seeking a better life in the USA.

They were joined by Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, Russians, Swedes, Mexicans, Scots, Irish and many others who flooded into America. The retention of the American form of English as a language of communication had little to do with trans Atlantic kinship with England and more to do with simple practicality and the influence of the US elite, although German was briefly in the running apparently (as Bismarck noted).

The Anglo-Brits, were at the end of the 19th century genuinely alarmed at US hostility towards Britain during the border dispute with Venezuela. The Anglo-Brits had forgotten or perhaps failed to grasp that support from Britain for the Confederacy during the civil war, with military supplies, the supply and construction of blockade runners and naval vessels was freshly and angrily remembered by the generations of US politicians that held power from the civil war until the start of the 20th century and many Americans.

The USA buoyed up by manifest destiny within the continent, and the Monroe doctrine - a  policy of preventing external inference in both north and South America set out from the 1890's onwards to thwart, undermine and destroy the British Empire - and by and large they succeeded - partially as a result of the First and Second World wars and partially because that was the real price (aside from the hard cash, gold reserves, financial bonds and the sell off cheaply of UK assets within America) to pay for lead lease.

Despite the best efforts of Brit leaders to persuade people within the UK to the contrary the USA's oldest ally is actually France. The French supported the insurgent United States against their former imperial overlords.  The USA is the end result of a vast melting pot of peoples from across and around the globe - a number of whom had little love for Britain.

Labour in power in 1945 perhaps hoped that by withdrawing from India - they might yet retain the potentially mineral rich imperial territories in Africa. This would help pay off the war debt and lessen the financial consequences of the loss of India. Attlee (and Churchill) hoped that post war that the special wartime relationship would continue - the Americans who were keen to see ‘Empire’ disappear had other ideas.

Winston Churchill back in as PM in 1951, hoped to rekindle the special relationship - once again - despite the public pronouncements - once again the Americans had different ideas. It is interesting to note that Eisenhower as incumbent President elect was annoyed by the Brits obsession with ‘the special relationship’ and their imperial inheritance. As blind to the truth as Churchill was about geopolitical realities post war, he did recognise that actually that many US republicans actually distrusted the Brits more than they distrusted the US Democrats.

Foster Dulles privately thought that the ‘Brits’ were something of a menace, ‘a rapidly declining power’ whose ‘clumsy and inept’ behaviour actually encouraged nationalists like Mosaddeq, and caused tensions that the communists might make use of. His staff observed that the new Secretary of State felt that ‘you simply could not count in the British to carry on in any responsible way’ and ‘he had no admiration or them’ and he dismissed Eden (then foreign secretary) as a dandy.

Any illusions that the Anglo-Brits had about preserving and exploiting their African colonies to pay off their wartime debt to the USA disappeared pretty rapidly after Suez. Barely four years after The Suez debacle the Winds of Change speech (delivered by MacMillan to the Parliament of South Africa (in Cape Town) on February 3rd 1960 effectively called down the curtain on the Empire in Africa.

Somewhat ironically this was the second time that the Winds of Change speech had been delivered, it was first delivered in Accra, in Ghana on January 10th 1960 but no one noticed. The hasty withdrawal from Africa that followed was a direct consequence of economic and political impotence following Suez and the threat of the financial rug being pulled out from under by the USA.

This side of the pond, the Anglo-Brit elite over the last 60 years despite generating a lot of rhetoric to the contrary have consistently wound down the UK defence establishment to the point where it as shrunk to insignificance and moved the UK from potentially useful Ally to potential liability.

The Conservatives have spun the illusion that they are good for defence - the reality is quite different - elected in 1979 with a manifesto pledge to retain 90 surface vessels in the Royal Navy. The surface fleet was down to 46 surface vessels by April 1982 - with both aircraft carriers sold to India and Australia - before any replacement had even been fitted out.

The over reliance on US defence equipment, some of dubious worth in some cases has become self fulfilling as the aerospace and armaments industrial sector had been run down and weakened to the point of destruction. The production of 2 aircraft carriers (which will have no aircraft for the foreseeable future) save what the US sells them) is merely a blatant example of chronically poor decision making coming home to roost.

The consequences of 5 or 6 defence reviews (since the late 1950's) rather than cutting ones cloth to match realities have merely run the defence sector into the ground and cutting the armed forces to the very edge of impotence. The thousands of jobs in Westland in Yeovil and aerospace in Bristol (and many dependent jobs in the extended supply chain) were openly sacrificed in plain sight not by stealth along with the coal and steel jobs in Wales and elsewhere.

The UK has moved from being the old reliable unsinkable aircraft carrier and potentially useful ally to a modern day version of Austria-Hungary - overblown with pomp and circumstance, politically unstable, unreliable and ill-equipped - all in less than 25 years. The decline - economic and strategic - is no doubt perceived as quite shocking in most of Europe's chancelleries,  Washington DC and elsewhere, but, perhaps with quiet glee if not anticipation in the Kremlin.

As Abraham Lincoln once said of the armies of the republic, the bottom is out of the tub. Defence cuts have followed defence cuts, and the military power of these islands has been diminished rapidly. The UK's last 6 sea harriers were literally retrieved from storage to bomb Ghadafis Libya. Over Christmas and the New Year (two yeas ago) all the Royal Navy's 15 surface ships were in home ports - something that had probably not happened since the days of King Alfred.

The Anglo-Brit elite, currently ruling over the majority of the inhabitants of these islands, have always lived on the edge of Europe’s wet and windy Atlantic coast, now (despite much agreement over supporting Ukraine) have next to little influence with the EU having burned any bridges with the EU and also having irritated the US elite by ceasing to be their boy inside the EU tent. 

Blair and Bush's much trumpeted New World Order, envisaged somewhat triumphantly when the USSR disintegrated has crumbled rather rapidly into the sands of a New World Disorder particularly in Iraq and more recently in Afghanistan.

Despite the tabloid and broadsheet headlines / delusions Empire 2.0 is not going to coming riding to the rescue. That ship rather than sailing away was quietly scuttled or abandoned in the early 1970's when the UK joined the then EEC - leaving potential commonwealth partners to sink or swim. The Anglo-Brit elite post Brexit found itself even more dependent on the so called special relationship with the US largely because they have not got anyone else to turn too. 

And then President Trump came along for the second time, blowing decidedly cold on the US relationship with Europe and the UK. The isolationists were back in the White House and back with a vengeance and with an agenda (based on a questionable interpretation of the Monroe doctrine) and with a plan of their own which put little importance on any relation with Europe or the UK.

What did not happen, during President Trump’s first term in office, was an honest reassessment of the so-called special relationship in the wake of the Afghan and Iraqi debacle(s) - this did not happen. It never happened after Suez, or when Empire ended in the mid to late 1960’s, nor did it happen when the Cold War ended, and based on past observations it’s not going to happen any time soon, as the delusion of the special relationship is too deeply embedded within the UK state and the Anglo-Brit elite. 

AN END TO ATLANTICISM

Actually if you think about the prospects of an American disengagement from Europe - and we put aside the histrionics from the current incumbent in DC - one interpretation of current events could be that US involvement outside of the Americas ( as defined by the Monroe doctrine ) is actually the aberration and non involvement outside of the Americas is actually the normal.

The very public spats with Canada and Mexico and threats of tariffs have followed, and the recent saga of Greenland while alarming to the Atlanticists. Since President Trumps second inauguration the US isolationists dislike of Europe has been very manifest for want of a better world. 

The isolationists have little interests beyond commercial benefits for the USA outside of the Americas and no love of any foreign entanglements in a disturbing modern day version of the Monroe Doctrine. Now while recent events can be interpreted as a reset of American foreign policy to its old pre 1941 position, something that understandably has the many of the Europeans on the mainland and within this island archipelago are very worried.

The Anglo-Brit elite, are facing the loss of one of their main pillars of geo politics since 1948. With the American commitment to Europe is effectively gone - and any relationship ( special or abusive or otherwise ) with the US being history. As for the first time since October 1941 the Anglo-Brit elite are potentially well and truly on their own…

The Canadian Prime Minister made a key not speech at the recent Davos economic summit, on the 20th January 2026 - which specifically addressed the issue for middle rank powers. While the Anglo-Brit elite would deny this as they would claim that the UK is a superpower - the speech is worth reading in full: 

Mark Carney speech - Davos - 20-JAN-2026

"It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.

Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.

But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.

The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.

Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable – the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.

It won’t.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. 

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.

It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. 

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. 

More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture of collective problem solving – are greatly diminished. 

As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains. 

This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. 

And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from “transactionalism” become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. 

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure. 

As I said, such classic risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.

The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid.

Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed “values-based realism” – or, to put it another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic.

Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights. 

Pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values. We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.

Canada is calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritising broad engagement to maximise our influence, given the fluidity of the world order, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next.

We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home. 

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, capital gains and business investment, we have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade, and we are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors, and beyond. 

We are doubling our defence spending by 2030 and are doing so in ways that builds our domestic industries.

We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements. 

We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months. 

In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.

We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.

To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry— different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests.

On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security. 

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future. Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering. 

We are working with our NATO allies (including the Nordic Baltic 8) to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground. Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve shared objectives of security and prosperity for the Arctic.

On plurilateral trade, we are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, creating a new trading block of 1.5 billion people. 

On critical minerals, we are forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. 

On AI, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure we will not ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.

This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. 

And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.

Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. 

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.

Which brings me back to Havel.

What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?

It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.

It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticise economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window. 

It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the old order to be restored, create institutions and agreements that function as described.

And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion. Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government’s priority. Diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.

And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.

We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

Canada has something else: a recognition of what is happening and a determination to act accordingly.

We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

We are taking the sign out of the window.

The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. 

This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.

That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. 

And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us."

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The speech should make other Middle ranking powers engage in some deep thinking about what comes next.