Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well he is right. NATO and Europe are coasting off American defence spending a lot. He should have insisted that we keep to the 2% limit.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well the UK is spending a hell of a lot more than most other EU/Nato countries so quite what we're to blame for when it comes to contributions is beyond me.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well Osbourne did say last year that he would commit to the 2% spending until 2020

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33448383

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

I am not sure the context in which he said it but it's still true that America can be annoyed at their NATO allies. Maybe they have higher expectations of us for historic reasons and the failure of the other NATO states to pull their weight doesn't excuse us from doing the same.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Obama is one of the worst US presidents the has ever been, and I don't fancy either of the next two choices.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

On what basis? He was been relatively ok. The handling of the middle-east hasn't been great but it hasn't been worse than his predecessor. The decisions he took early on with the economy turned out to be correct, he managed to get some degree of healthcare improvement passed and his non-middle-eastern foreign policy has been relatively successful.

I would say at worst he is a middle of the road president. I mean he won two-terms and a lot of the 'worst' ones will have been one-term ones or Nixon.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Maybe he should just lecture Germany, France, Spain, Italy etc. etc. first then.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

The special relationship is being strained by the Brexit now, I liked the rebuttal

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...larry-summrers

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Posting this in a thread that declared the special relationship dead six years ago could be seen as demonstrating the opposite ;)

The essence of the special relationship isn't economic. It's security. There is a deep level of integration between our military and intelligence services at an operational level. Individual events and political changes don't fundamentally change this.