[3][7] Former US President Barack Obama considered German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be his "closest international partner" and accused British Prime Minister David Cameron of being "distracted by a range of other things" during the 2011 military intervention in Libya.

The occasion was his "Sinews of Peace Address", delivered in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946: Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples... a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.

Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges.

I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organisation will achieve its full stature and strength.In the opinion of one international relations specialist, "the United Kingdom's success in obtaining US commitment to cooperation in the postwar world was a major triumph, given the isolation of the interwar period".

The Americans later kept the results of the work to themselves under the postwar McMahon Act, but after the UK developed its own thermonuclear weapons, the US agreed to supply delivery systems, designs and nuclear material for British warheads through the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement.

[51] British ideas, classical and modern, have also exerted a profound influence on American economic policy, most notably those of the historian Adam Smith on free trade and the economist John Maynard Keynes on countercyclical spending.

Low points in the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. have occurred due to disagreements over foreign policy, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower's opposition to U.K. operations in Suez under Anthony Eden and Harold Wilson's refusal to enter the war in Vietnam.

[84][85][86][87] The debates over Skybolt were top secret, but tensions were exacerbated when Dean Acheson, a former Secretary of State, challenged publicly the Special Relationship and marginalised the British contribution to the Western alliance.

[90] The Skybolt crisis with Kennedy came on top of Eisenhower's wrecking of Macmillan's policy of détente with the Soviet Union at the May 1960 Paris summit, and the prime minister's resulting disenchantment with the Special Relationship contributed to his decision to seek an alternative in British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC).

"[92] Alec Douglas-Home only entered the race to replace the resigning Macmillan as Leader of the Conservative Party after learning from the British ambassador to the US that the Kennedy administration was uneasy at the prospect of Quintin Hogg being prime minister.

Although the two leaders' 1971 Bermuda communiqué restated that entry served the interests of the Atlantic Alliance, American observers voiced concern that the British government's membership would impair its role as an honest broker, and that, because of the European goal of political union, the Special Relationship would only survive if it included the whole Community.

[112] Critics accused President Nixon of impeding the EEC's inclusion in the Special Relationship by his economic policy,[113] which dismantled the postwar international monetary system and sought to force open European markets for US exports.

[114] Detractors also slated the personal relationship at the top as "decidedly less than special"; Prime Minister Edward Heath, it was alleged, "hardly dared put through a phone call to Richard Nixon for fear of offending his new Common Market partners.

"[115] The Special Relationship was "soured" during the Arab–Israeli War of 1973 when Nixon failed to inform Heath that US forces had been put on DEFCON 3 in a worldwide standoff with the Soviet Union, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger misled the British ambassador over the nuclear alert.

"[139] A July 2012 article by USNI News of the United States Naval Institute revealed that the Reagan Administration offered the use of the USS Iwo Jima as a replacement in case either of the two British carriers, Hermes and Invincible, had been damaged or destroyed during the 1982 Falklands War.

Furthermore, although British public opinion was highly negative, Britain won widespread praise in the United States at a time when Spain and France had vetoed American requests to fly over their territories.

[153] Peter Hennessy, a leading historian, singles out the personal dynamic of "Ron" and "Margaret" in this success: At crucial moments in the late 1980s, her influence was considerable in shifting perceptions in President Reagan's Washington about the credibility of Mr Gorbachev when he repeatedly asserted his intention to end the Cold War.

In February 1994, Major refused to answer Clinton's telephone calls for days over his decision to grant Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States to agitate.

[170] In November 1995, Clinton became only the second US president ever to address both Houses of Parliament,[123] but, by the end of Major's premiership, disenchantment with the Special Relationship had deepened to the point where the incoming British ambassador Christopher Meyer banned the "hackneyed phrase" from the embassy.

[184] As the leading international proponent of humanitarian intervention, the "hawkish" Blair "bullied" Clinton to back diplomacy with force in Kosovo in 1999, pushing for deployment of ground troops to persuade the president "to do whatever was necessary" to win.

[180] Blair's leadership role in the Iraq War helped him to sustain a strong relationship with Bush through to the end of his time as prime minister, but it was unpopular within his own party and lowered his public approval ratings.

Prior to his election as US president in 2008, Barack Obama, suggesting that Blair and Britain had been let down by the Bush administration, declared: "We have a chance to recalibrate the relationship and for the United Kingdom to work with America as a full partner.

[216] In March 2010, Hillary Clinton's support for Argentina's call for negotiations over the Falkland Islands triggered a series of diplomatic protests from Britain[217] and renewed public scepticism about the value of the Special Relationship.

The Christian Science Monitor observed that a "rhetorical prickliness" had come about from escalating Obama administration criticism of BP—straining the Special Relationship—particularly the repeated use of the term "British Petroleum" even though the business no longer uses that name.

[260][256] Baroness Warsi, former chair of the Conservatives, accused May of "bowing down" to Trump, who she described as "a man who has no respect for women, disdain for minorities, little value for LGBT communities, no compassion clearly for the vulnerable and whose policies are rooted in divisive rhetoric.

The first meeting between the two leaders included plans to re-establish travel links between the US and UK, which had been banned by the US since the start of the pandemic and to agree a deal (to be called the new Atlantic charter), which commits the countries to working together on "the key challenges of this century - cyber security, emerging technologies, global health and climate change".

A 1942 Gallup poll conducted after Pearl Harbor, before the arrival of American troops and Churchill's heavy promotion of the Special Relationship, showed the wartime ally of the Soviet Union was still more popular than the United States for 62% of Britons.

[363] The Death of Harry Dunn who was killed by the wife of a USA CIA officer on the 27th of August 2019 also caused criticism of the extradition treaty after Anne Sacoolas, the defendant, repatriated to the US and claimed Diplomatic Immunity against charges.

The aspects causing most difficulty to the United Kingdom have been a successful challenge to the protection of small family banana farmers in the West Indies from large US corporations such as the American Financial Group,[368] and high tariffs on British steel products.

[369] In 2002, Blair denounced Bush's imposition of tariffs on steel as "unacceptable, unjustified and wrong", but although Britain's biggest steelmaker, Corus, called for protection from dumping by developing nations, the Confederation of British Industry urged the government not to start a "tit-for-tat".