Not so special any more

However cosy they may appear, neither Obama nor Cameron care much for the ‘special relationship’. But, says John C. Hulsman, that may be no bad thing

Good student that he is, Barack Obama has been careful to dot his ‘i’s and cross his ‘t’s after the British election. Well aware that he is viewed as uninterested in transatlantic relations, Obama made sure he was quick off the mark; he was the first foreign leader to phone David Cameron when he became PM. It’s well known in Washington that the President considered Brown uninspiring, but Obama made it clear that this time it was different; that between them, Barack and Dave, they were truly the new guardians of the special relationship.

So — did he mean it? Are Obama and Cameron the new Reagan and Thatcher? For far too long, too many foreign policy thinkers have used the ‘special relationship’ as a Rorschach test for their general feelings about the world.