In a New Atlanticist essay “How Special is the Special Relationship?” I take a look at claims that the US-UK relations are in bad shape and argue that, while the US may need an attitude adjustment, our friends across the pond need to step up their contribution to the partnership.

While a Rumsfeldian dismissiveness and talk of “work-arounds” is decidedly unhelpful in building soft power, the underlying frustration is at least understandable.  It requires an enormous amount of effort to build multi-national consensus on something as big as going to and prosecuting a war.  For a variety of reasons, that’s a good thing.  If, however, the end result of the process is a substantial hamstringing of options with very little to show for it in the way of additional resources, it’s not entirely unreasonable to wonder if it was all worthwhile.

Comments welcome, especially at the full post.