Cameron and Obama: Special Relationship or Odd Couple?

Helle Dale / July 22, 2010

In an odd reversal, President Obama went all out to welcome Britain’s newly elected conservative Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday at the White House—this, after getting off to a terrible start last year with Cameron’s Labor Party predecessor Gordon Brown. Whereas Brown was humiliated by the extremely low-key reception accorded him by the new Obama Administration in March of 2009—a reception which did not even include a proper press conference—Prime Minister Cameron got the full court press, as well as superlative praise for the “Special Relationship” from President Obama.

Maybe this different reaction is a question of generational affinity between the two leaders; maybe the Obama Administration is actually taking diplomacy more seriously, having seen the consequences of declining relationships with important international allies, from Britain to Central Europe to Israel. Or maybe the White House is awakening to the fact that the United States’ most important international alliance has suffered badly over the first year of the Obama Administration and is in danger of disintegrating. The BP oil spill disaster is but the most recent in a series of discordant notes struck between the two nations; another is the Obama Administration’s refusal to back the United Kingdom on the issue of the Falkland Islands, a part of the United Kingdom claimed by Argentina. On many issues, the British perceive the Obama Administration to have gone from “Yes, we can” to “No, we can’t.” (more…)