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Comment by goodcanadian | Hacker News Reader

The British like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. Canadians like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. Australians like to talk about their special relationship with the U.S.. I have even heard of South Korea referring to their special relationship with the U.S..

Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

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As a Canadian that grew up on the boarder with the US, and has family on both sides, this is exactly true lol

Anyone that thinks the American political establishment cares about Canadians, British or Australians are delusional. I’m not convinced the Americans political establishment even cares about Americans.

As that one French guy said “Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.”

> Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

Not at all; the Special Relationship is a standard political term that refers specifically to the relationship between the US and Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Relationship

Were you not around when comedy news was making fun of Mitt Romney for saying "the Special Relationship is special"?

Were you not around when comedy news was making fun of Mitt Romney for saying "the Special Relationship is special"?

No, I wasn't around. The assumption that I would have been is fascinating. I am not an American; I did, however, live in the U.S. for a grand total of 7 years and never once heard a U.S. politician talk about any "special relationship" with any of these countries on the news. In Canada, Australia, and Britain, I regularly heard about the "special relationship" in such a way as to imply no other country has a similar one. Take from it what you will.

It's really a special relationship with the Commonwealth A-list, and it's about military collaboration, nuclear technology and intelligence sharing. No other countries are as close to the US and work with them as peers in these areas, by a very large margin.

Britain is the lynchpin but Canada, Australia and New Zealand all contribute valuable strategic assets just by their location, but also bring specialist expertise to the table out of proportion to their population. The scientist in Britain that made arguably the single greatest contribution to the Manhattan project was an Australian.

It’s really not though, I’m from Canada, and the fact is we do 75% of our trade with the US and 3% with the UK. When push comes to shove, Canada would never prioritize the UK over the US.

Nor should you. The special relationship has never been about trade though. It’s about national security and intelligence sharing.

I still disagree. There’s a lot more cooperation with the US and Canada in Canada on both of those fronts. Small US military contingents train in Canada with our military and vice versa. Furthermore the United States has provided intelligence information multiple time now that have stopped terrorist attempts in Canada. I don’t believe there’s a similar depth of cooperation with the UK — what could the UK even provide to Canada that the US doesn’t already.

Furthermore we’re integrated with the US in ways that we aren’t with the UK, Canadians can stay in the US visa free for six months and when a Canadian enters the US by air they use the US immigration line, whereas UK citizens would not. There’s also freer movement between Canada and the US in that designated professional classes can get NT work visas easy and can be continually renewed with no limitations.

The Canadian UK relationship is just about tradition, and us being polite. At the end of the day, in modern times, countries like Japan or Germany have more sway in Canada simply because we invest and trade more with them. I know some British really want to believe it’s possible to bring back the empire, but it’s really not, Canada is a completely different country now from what it was 80 years ago.

I didn't mean to imply that Canada's relationship with the US is in any way via the UK. That may have been the case in some ways back in WW2 but certainly not since then. You're all growed up. The US is the lynch pin.

Only one of the five acknowledged nuclear powers buys rather than builds their warheads: UK buys from US, because of the Manhattan Project history. NB the critical calc about the mass of Uranium 235 necessary for fission was done at Birmingham Univ in 1942. Note the UK has supplied the US with plutionium as well as tech under the mutual defence treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_US%E2%80%93UK_Mutual_Defe...

I was under the impression the UK builds it’s own warheads at AWE/Aldermaston. What we bought was the delivery platform.

They certainly were fans of test detonations in the Australian Outback and atolls in Kiribati.

And I think you're right about AWE. I can't imagine the modern UK wanting to be dependent on the US for nukes any longer than it needed to be.

Common law, winner takes it all voting, English as a language, non metric measurements. The anglosphere has quite a lot of unique things in common and that makes their relationship special.

Wasn't South Korea a military dictatorship set up and supported by the US for several decades? I don't know about "special" but that's definately a relationship.

According to Friedman, South Korea is where it is today because of American support. 80 years ago, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. It was in American geopolitical interest to turn it into what it is today.

> Americans generally seem unaware of all of these special relationships.

Unsurprising, since these are about government-to-government relationships, and a large subset of Americans make ignorance of government a matter of personal pride.

Maybe the special relationship consists of "they can nuke us or our market any day"

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