BRITISH-AMERICAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: GLOBAL AND REGIONAL COMPONENTS
Abstract
The lightning counter-terrorist operation in Afghanistan carried out under the U.S. aegis in the wake of the tragic events of 9/11 demon-strated beyond a doubt the special importance of the British-American strategic partnership and its stability. The U.K. actively supported the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq in March 2003.
y their actions the sides confirmed the partner-ship’s key role in shaping America’s foreign and defense policy and ensuring its security; they demonstrated that London and Washington could co-ordinate their foreign policy moves and wage a war in any geopolitical region independently and on their own.
It should be noted that their close foreign policy and military cooperation is based long-term bilateral cooperation. According to political analysts, consistent bilateral cooperation, a product of several decades, serves as a solid foundation for the sides’ “special relations,” which, in turn, give rise to the sides’
mutually complementary policy. The present developments show that these close ties have created a unique and successful political phenomenon—the British-American alliance—the influence of which will probably rise to the fore in global politics.
The U.S. and U.K. efforts to settle some of the international crises and their recent “blitzkrieg” in Iraq show that with the Eastern bloc out of the way this alliance is capturing the leading positions in the world and is claiming the role of a global policymaker. The scope and the impact of the alliance on European and world policies are assuming strategic importance.
The very fact that in the post-communist era the United States supported by Britain is actively extending the zone of its political control in Europe and Asia demonstrates that the alliance is acquiring fundamental and policy-forming in-fluence in the world and in geopolitical regions (the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia among them).
Anybody wishing to assess the alliance’s impact on the U.S.’s policies and strategy should pay particular attention to the European and global components of the alliance’s policies. This approach offers a more correct appraisal of the political situation in such complex geopolitical regions as the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia.
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