The special relationship will be just fine
Principles, not politicians, unite Britain and America
As an American in the U.K., it’s been puzzling to observe Theresa May’s single-minded determination to win the favor of Donald Trump. Is she genuinely pursuing a bilateral trade deal to lessen the sting of Brexit, or simply making a desperate political calculation to show voters she remains in America’s good graces?
Regardless of motive or outcome, the “special and enduring relationship” between the United States and Britain will outlast these two leaders. That’s why May’s pursuit of Trump’s approval is likely to prove futile and short-sighted, damaging her own credibility and the values the special relationship rests on.
The first year of the Trump administration has confirmed what many knew all along: One cannot negotiate, compliment, or ingratiate one’s way into Trump’s favor for any longer than a segment on Fox & Friends (his favorite T.V. show) can change his mind. This is someone who demands loyalty but does not practice it. Someone who complains incessantly about unfairness but doesn’t understand the concept. Someone who ran for president as a dealmaker but can’t even negotiate with his own party in good faith. Someone who calls himself “the least racist person,” yet whose belief in white supremacy is one of the few commitments he’s maintained for decades.
What about Trump’s record suggests the prime minister can build a relationship that will outlast, say, Trump’s next outburst at May or missive against Sadiq Khan? Given Trump’s protectionist, zero-sum outlook on the world and penchant for promising one thing and doing the opposite, sacrificing principles in pursuit of a trade deal with him would be, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told the BBC in December, a “waste of time” — not to mention damaging to the very relationship May is determined to protect.
The only principles Trump values are those that serve his own self-regard. He has suggested to author Michael Wolff that he would “only honor the special relationship if he ‘gets what he wants.’” Earlier this month, a source told the The Times that Trump “felt he had not been shown enough love by the British government.” By Friday, Trump had proclaimed himself “somebody that loves Britain.” If the president indeed visits the U.K. later this year, who knows which Trump will show up?
For a stark lesson in the futility of accommodating the president, May should look to his Republican supporters in the U.S. Congress. As Brian Beutler wrote earlier this month for Crooked.com, Trump’s enablers “have all committed reputational suicide-by-Trump, in exchange for practically nothing.” An enormous tax cut for the wealthy represents their singular accomplishment.
Britons seem to have reached a similar conclusion. A year after Trump’s election, one poll found that nearly 80 percent believe he has hurt America’s standing in the world. Another survey suggests that just three in 10 would welcome an official visit to the U.K. A third predicts 2 million Britons would protest such a visit. These aren’t numbers that suggest trading core values for short-term political victories has a high R.O.I. Promises accountable only to the president’s whims require far more collateral than either America under Trump or Britain amidst Brexit can provide.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, May rejected a petition signed by nearly 2 million Britons opposing a state visit for Trump. As Matthew D’Ancona recounted in The New York Times, May’s government told MPs “that Britain’s diplomatic, strategic and commercial interests must override distaste for the American president’s racism, misogyny and offhand bigotry.” But is it true that accommodating the latter really serves the former?
Theresa May, of course, bears no responsibility for enabling Donald Trump’s presidency. No one is asking May to raise her fist and join the resistance. Rejecting engagement and diplomacy entirely would be both unrealistic and self-defeating, achieving little while leaving Britain further isolated. But her government is responsible for interacting with Trump and his administration without illusions.
Moreover, with her premiership faltering yet again, May has an opportunity to defend her country’s values, distinguish herself on the world stage, and draw a clear, and likely popular, distinction between herself and Jeremy Corbyn. May can refuse to indulge Trump’s vanity. She can take forceful, principled stands against Trump’s rhetoric. And she can do so while working closely with his administration on the matters on which the countries depend on each other, from trade and economic cooperation to intelligence, cybersecurity, and defense.
In fact, by engaging with the White House from a position of clear-eyed confidence and conviction, rather than illusion or desperation, May can actually strengthen the special relationship. By making clear that what unite Britain and America are principles, not trade deals or politicians, she can extend a democratic olive branch to allies and adversaries around the world who have good reason to question whether the Transatlantic relationship is anything more than transactional.
After a rough start in the late 1700s and early 1800s, through presidents and prime ministers of different parties and times of peace and war, the British-American relationship has remained anchored to its core values. Neither country has always lived those values. America, for instance, still hasn’t achieved the promises of freedom and equality laid out in the very document with which it declared its independence.
But as populism surges and democracy teeters around the world, turning away from those values because they fail to serve short-term political interests does threaten the special relationship. Being insufficiently accommodating of Donald Trump does not.
After meeting with Trump in Davos on Friday, May told reporters the two countries would “continue to have that really special relationship, standing shoulder to shoulder.” That is true, and May is right to fight for it. She would be wrong, though, to assume that its success depends on Trump.
“The United States,” Winston Churchill famously said, “invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.” The quotation may be apocryphal, but the message endures.
Crossing the president may put May on the wrong side of Trump’s ire today. But it will put her, and the relationship she values so deeply, on the right side of history.
