What if Britain and America didn't have a special relationship?

RNG

Banned
What if Britain and America didn't have a special relationship? When was this relationship called into being? What if the factors that lead to it didn't happen? How would history turn out if it didn't exist or wasn't as strong?
 
To me the term "special relationship" sounds like something a priest would say to his alter boy who he had just convinced to give him oral sex, then saying to the boy they have a special relationship.
 
No polaris and trident for starters, and all British nuclear warheads since 1958 have been based on US designs.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Well, the Allies would have been fucked in WWI for starters, and there's a ludicrous number of butterflies from there.
 
Well, the Allies would have been fucked in WWI for starters, and there's a ludicrous number of butterflies from there.

Not necessarily as I think the Allies would have won WW1 without American troops, but the war would have gone on into 1919 that is for sure.
 
Well, the Allies would have been fucked in WWI for starters, and there's a ludicrous number of butterflies from there.
The US can still participate on the side of the Allies and not have a special relationship with England. France is a dear and important ally to us (and I remember quite a few English papers were upset when some Obama officials or Obama himself had called them our "oldest ally" a few years ago, after the English refused the Syrian adventure and the French were with us), but nobody claims a special relationship with France. Certainly there were ties of the "English speaking people" and such which existed around or following WW1, but the special relationship as we think of it largely emerged after WW2, with its main propagator being on the English side, as some sort of tool to still maintain relevance and influence when all of the traditional bases of power had or were collapsing. Polls show that Americans are much less serious about the entire affair.
Which is a reasonable way to do short-circuit it : have the English have an alternate nation to construct their "special relationship" with. The timeline Blunted Sickle has that happening right now, with a Franco-English alliance being the main axis of foreign affairs of those two countries in a no Fall of France scenario.
 
No polaris and trident for starters, and all British nuclear warheads since 1958 have been based on US designs.

I would guess that without the Special Relationship the British nuclear deterrence would be based on V-bombers for a few years longer, after which there could have been joint Anglo-French design SSBN's and nuclear warheads. Although would Britain and the French get design help just like the French did in OTL, ie. negative guidance?

What would RAF and RN look like without all those American hardware purchases? On the other hand, France bought Crusaders, KC-135's etc.
 
I would guess that without the Special Relationship the British nuclear deterrence would be based on V-bombers for a few years longer, after which there could have been joint Anglo-French design SSBN's and nuclear warheads. Although would Britain and the French get design help just like the French did in OTL, ie. negative guidance?

What would RAF and RN look like without all those American hardware purchases? On the other hand, France bought Crusaders, KC-135's etc.

America is pretty willing to sell military hardware to countries that are not exactly close allies. Either way though, I could see the western European countries developing military equipment together if they could not buy American equipment. I mean they did it with the Eurofighter and the Leopard tanks.
 
no special relationship.

WW1 perhaps. Didn't the Poms blockade the yanks from leaving the atlantic, lets say a ship or two gets too close, gets sunk and the americans go into the war on the side of the Germans. I imagine the allies still win, though in this tl only just. Immediately that special relationship is done for and you have the americans hating the british more.
 

RNG

Banned
have the English have an alternate nation to construct their "special relationship" with.
How about the Germans. If perhaps the Fashoda crisis broke into war with Britain and Germany on one side and France on the other. Or perhaps Britain never gets involved in World War One as Germany never marches though Belgium for some reason and after the war Britain and Germany grow to be close friends, perhaps participating together in a war against Russian communists or the Japanese Empire. Perhaps both empires last a long time due to supporting each other and maybe they still exist today or at least large parts if it like colonies in Africa for example. Both being superpowers today. What about America though? Would they be a superpower without fighting in World War One and Two?
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Not necessarily as I think the Allies would have won WW1 without American troops, but the war would have gone on into 1919 that is for sure.

I was talking financially. US loans bankrolled the war almost entirely from 1916 onward.

By the end of 1915, the Allies were about as close to the ragged edge as possible without staring total military collapse in the face.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
The US can still participate on the side of the Allies and not have a special relationship with England. France is a dear and important ally to us (and I remember quite a few English papers were upset when some Obama officials or Obama himself had called them our "oldest ally" a few years ago, after the English refused the Syrian adventure and the French were with us), but nobody claims a special relationship with France. Certainly there were ties of the "English speaking people" and such which existed around or following WW1, but the special relationship as we think of it largely emerged after WW2, with its main propagator being on the English side, as some sort of tool to still maintain relevance and influence when all of the traditional bases of power had or were collapsing. Polls show that Americans are much less serious about the entire affair.
Which is a reasonable way to do short-circuit it : have the English have an alternate nation to construct their "special relationship" with. The timeline Blunted Sickle has that happening right now, with a Franco-English alliance being the main axis of foreign affairs of those two countries in a no Fall of France scenario.


You really need to sour the relations quite a bit though, and the US was pretty ambivalent about france in the war.

France is only our oldest ally because they helped us in the Revolution.
 
I would guess that without the Special Relationship the British nuclear deterrence would be based on V-bombers for a few years longer, after which there could have been joint Anglo-French design SSBN's and nuclear warheads. Although would Britain and the French get design help just like the French did in OTL, ie. negative guidance?

Yes, they'd probably develop the Blue Steel MkII and weaponise the Grapple tests, they'd also probably build the Red Beard MkII.

I think once the French proved they had the independent ability to develop a nuclear weapon the British would want to enter into an agreement with them similar to the US Special Relationship because its such a massive cost saver.
 
You really need to sour the relations quite a bit though, and the US was pretty ambivalent about france in the war.

France is only our oldest ally because they helped us in the Revolution.
The reason why France got mentioned as the oldest ally is because Franco-American relations were at a high point then. If Franco-US relations were still poor like under Bush, then nobody would have mentioned it. Its inherently a political message which was/is a sign of improved relations with France vis-a-vis those of England. There's a reason why British newspapers like the Daily Fail interpreted it as a snub towards England - that can be exaggerating it, but it does speak of US opinion on France versus England.
In addition the US wasn't ambivalent to France - there's a reason why almost all US volunteers fought with the French, why the French trained the majority of the troops cooperating with Europe, and there was extensive propaganda associated with Lafayette and historical ties. But anyway, that's irrelevant. It isn't that the US has to be best buddies with somebody else - they don't have to be, the US has the power and position to be able to do it alone. The UK and US just don't have to have close strategic ties, which is only imaginable in the context of WW1 and WW2, because it is those strategic ties which have given rise to the idea of the special relationship. Otherwise they're just close cultural ties, and nobody else says that they have a special relationship because of cultural ties.
 
Just as a matter of interest, prior to WW2 the special relationship Britain had was with France, starting in 1904. By WW1 is had developed to a point where the British Army's only deployment plan was to go to France and the RN would defend the French channel coast. By WW2 the British did the same, but with the whole BEF rather than just a portion of what was available.

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