US-UK Relationship

The BBC published a story about PM Gordon Brown's visit to the White House today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7918345.stm

The article points out that the Brown-Obama meeting took place in a formal setting in the White House, which is a complete change from many of the meetings and press conferences that Bush-Blair had. I feel like these Brown-Obama meetings are set up this way to show US-UK citizens that our leaders are actually accomplishing things. This not only will improve both Obama-Brown's images at home, but it will certainly win favor abroad as well, as the US and the UK are arguably the two most powerful nations in the world.

Another thing that I feel the BBC inadvertently points out is how we view the UK. Obama and Brown both talk about their nations as having a "special relationship" and an "unbreakable bond," and I think that their words here are particularly important. Although they use the word ally, it's always in addition to a phrase that adds something extra to it so as to differentiate this relationship from our relationships with our other allies. I think that Obama and Brown's choice of words in talking about our relationship is vitally important to understanding how we interact with one another and how the citizens of both the US and the UK view one another as opposed to how we view the citizens of other countries with whom we don't have this "special relationship" with.