It’s always the little things that make you stop and wonder. For me, it was the moment in the 1980s when the noble, dignified two tone klaxon of British emergency vehicles began its tragic extinction, replaced by the unhinged wailing of electronic sirens straight out of an American cop show. Supposedly, these new-fangled noisemakers were better at slicing through traffic congestion and car soundproofing. Blah, blah, science, blah.

Don’t get me wrong. We loved those sirens — when they were on TV. As kids in the 1970s, we were hooked on the adrenaline-pumped screeching of US police dramas, from Hawaii Five-O to Starsky and Hutch. It was thrilling. It was iconic. It was loud. And, most importantly, it was over there.

But now, it was here. Our streets, once graced by the reassuring, almost courteous rhythm of nee-naw, nee-naw, were now filled with the deranged yowling of sirens that sounded like they were personally affronted by your existence. Why did we have to import this commotion? Suddenly, it was like Miami Vice, only minus the beaches, palm trees or any hint of good weather. Whatever next? 24-hour drive-thru burger joints… oh right.

Fast forward to 2010 and an even more solemn inflection point in my memory: Cadbury Crème Eggs, the beloved sugar bombs of British childhoods. Cadbury’s, the quintessence of British confectionary, was taken over by the American food behemoth Kraft—later rebranded Mondelēz, presumably to sound less like the purveyor of those ghastly processed cheese triangles.

Kraft swiftly reneged on an, admittedly vague, undertaking to keep open Cadbury’s factory in Keynsham, near Bristol. Four hundred jobs were lost. Then-Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, fascinatingly now British Ambassador to Washington, mustered a feeble rebuke: “Kraft gave me no indication of this announcement when we met last week.”

The sheer, wretched, helplessness of it all, I recall fulminating. To add insult to injury, in 2015, Kraft, sorry Mondelēz, proceeded to monkey around with the recipe of its product, swapping out the signature Cadbury’s Dairy Milk for a cheaper, powdered milk alternative and reduced the number of creme eggs in a multipack from six to five while keeping the price the same. A textbook example of corporate cynicism: lower the quality, fatten the profit margin, and count on customers to keep buying, because nostalgia has no refund policy.

How was this allowed to happen? Why the meek acquiescence to an overmighty American corporation? And why all the broader cultural cringing? More to the point: is this a distinctly British predilection?

Two recent books, Tom Stevenson’s Someone Else’s Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony and Angus Hanton’s Vassal State: How America Runs Britain, scrutinise such questions and what they see as Britain’s chronic dependence on the US. The potency of both books is that they capture the zeitgeist of a country in chronically (mis)managed decline. And now, with Donald Trump’s re-election in 2025 and his unapologetically ‘America First’ agenda, the debate has gained fresh currency, especially in foreign policy circles, where British and European commentators wonder out loud if the US is still a reliable ally.

Not that they’ve come up with any coherent answers. Trump’s push for Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defence has led to much hand-wringing and general frothing at the mouth: the irony of a President trying to nudge Europe toward more independence being met with hysteria over the terrifying prospect of… more independence.

From Empire to Equerry State

The question of British deference to American interests is, of course, hardly new in public discourse. It stretches back at least as far as the Second World War, when Britain, some argue, effectively pawned its empire for a lifeline from across the Atlantic. Any lingering illusions of an equal partnership took a further battering in 1956 when President Eisenhower left Britain high and dry during the Suez Crisis—an experience that prompted one of the earliest sceptical accounts of the so-called ‘special relationship’, John Biggs-Davison’s The Uncertain Ally (1957).

Subsequently, politicians of all stripes have taken turns at side-eyeing the transatlantic bond. From Enoch Powell to Tony Benn, figures from very different ends of the spectrum have, for their own reasons, questioned whether the arrangement was truly in Britain’s best interest or merely a gilded leash.

Popular culture, too, has weighed in. Sometimes the critique is wrapped in the cozy, if slightly insecure, self-assurance of romantic comedy like Love Actually, where Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister delivers a public dressing-down to a lecherous, overbearing US President. Other times, it takes a sharper edge as the subtext of the episode ‘Fifty Ships’ in the historical drama Foyle’s War, or Robert Harris’s novel The Ghost, a barely concealed excoriation of Tony Blair’s subservience to Washington during the Iraq War. And in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré cuts to the existential heart: Bill Haydon’s treachery is born of bitter disillusionment — his generation raised to empire only to find itself reduced to ‘America’s streetwalker’.

For Stevenson, Britain’s willing subordination to the United States is best seen as a lingering symptom of imperial loss. Decades of displacement anxiety have found expression in what he terms “compulsive Atlanticism”. He counters Dean Acheson’s quip that Britain lost an empire but failed to find a role, arguing instead that Britain eagerly embraced one — as an “equerry state”, dutifully attending to the needs of America’s own empire. Less Rule, Britannia! and more the obsequious flattery of an ageing courtier fussing over a younger, mightier sovereign.

This dynamic has now played out with embarrassing predictability. Britain is reliably first in line to endorse American foreign policy initiatives, often with a touching disregard for its own limitations. This has included a “reflexive resort to military action” in the service of US goals, despite Britain’s diminishing ability to carry out such missions. No other country parrots Washington’s “democracy versus autocracy” script quite so earnestly, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine serving as the latest gift to the “permanent bellicose constituency in the Anglosphere”. Barely a decade after Churchill was extolling the “abiding power of the British empire”, Stevenson notes, he was urging his successors “never to be separated from the Americans” — a mantra around which the mythology of the “special relationship” took root.

‘The Special Relationship’: Unwavering, Unreciprocated, Undignified?

To claim that Britain’s post-war entanglement with the US has brought no dividends would be unfair. Washington’s military support was indispensable during the Falklands War, for instance. But it is difficult to ignore the one-sided nature of the relationship. From the cancellation of British missile and aeronautical projects — such as the Skybolt programme and the groundbreaking TSR-2 strike aircraft — Britain has, as Hanton points out in his book, repeatedly deferred to American technological supremacy, making itself increasingly reliant on US weapons platforms. Even when Britain mustered a sliver of independence, as Harold Wilson did by refusing to send British troops to Vietnam, it compensated by providing advisors, training and logistical support to free up American resources. Elsewhere, the UK is ever-willing to offer diplomatic cover for US adventures, provide basing facilities from Cyprus to the South Atlantic, and commit forces to conflicts that, in hindsight, have yielded little but misfortune.

Stevenson’s book distils years of writing on US power for the London Review of Books, where, as Foreign Editor, he has chronicled the grim consequences of American foreign policy and Britain’s enduring role as its loyal auxiliary. His analysis spans everything from space-based military strategy and drone assassinations to the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, along with the routine shoring up of pliant regimes in places like Egypt and Tunisia. This, he argues, is the price the world pays for Britain’s willingness to play the part of an equerry state.

As for Britain itself, the rewards for subservience can be meagre, if not downright humiliating. Ironically, while Donald Trump’s somewhat unorthodox diplomatic style often exudes an ostentatious affection for the UK, it is recent Democrat Presidents — which Britain’s foreign policy establishment ostensibly finds more palatable — who have been the most brazen in their disregard for the ‘special relationship’.

As Hanton observes, Obama treated Gordon Brown with the indifference reserved for a minor African dignitary, while Presidential advisor Jeremy Shapiro flatly admitted that the ‘special relationship’ was not that important. The phrase may be trotted out at Anglo-US press conferences, but behind closed doors it is little more than a punchline. The symbolic removal of Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office under Obama and Bill Clinton’s and Joe Biden’s thinly veiled Irish nationalist sympathies are reminders that Britain’s sentimental attachments are rarely reciprocated. When no US interests are served, Britain is swiftly reminded of its place.

The core of Stevenson’s argument is that American power is not sustained by a high-minded commitment to a “rules-based liberal order” but by the brute realities of military dominance, financial leverage and energy interests (something, incidentally, which Trump’s ascent has rendered open and perhaps more honestly explicit). Within this framework, Britain remains subordinate, yet a willing accomplice to imperial management long after its own empire has gone. And yet, despite decades of misadventure, Britain remains eager to play the role of adjutant, seemingly undeterred by the wreckage left in its wake. There is something especially pitiful, Stevenson maintains, about losing your own empire but then volunteering to serve someone else’s.

Think Tanks and War Drums

The most compelling parts of Stevenson’s dissection take aim at what he dubs the British “defence-intellectual complex” — a deserving target that frequently manages to evade the scrutiny it warrants. His book delivers a caustic appraisal of its pillars of influence: the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. These institutions, he argues, are less think tanks than fixtures of the military-industrial echo chamber, functioning not as purveyors of objective analysis but as supporting counsellors to the Atlanticist agenda. Some are conveniently bankrolled by the US Department of Defence, the EU, the arms industry and various Middle Eastern governments. Their collective output is, predictably, light on caution and heavy on cheerleading, serving as a “permanent constituency in support of excessive military responses” — a testament to the art of thinking what you are paid to think.

As someone who spent many years working in one of Stevenson’s prime targets — the Department of War Studies — the sting of his analysis is painful. I won’t feign outrage. I was one of those who helped expand the Department’s ever-proliferating MA programmes. My guiding principle, though, was to uphold the Department’s traditional, and energising, pluralism: a place where hard-nosed realists (like me) rubbed shoulders with liberals, philosophers, scientists, stuffy military historians, Marxist sociologists and even the odd Quaker pacifist.

That foundational ethos, I fear, has been gradually displaced by something more corporate. The Department metastasised into a sprawling degree factory, a feeder institution for the administrative state, churning out ready-made Deep State minions. Come the early 2020s its proudest achievements appeared to be pumping out regime-approved talking points on everything from climate change to anti-Trumpism, with a general enthusiasm for the progressive consensus. One of the lowest points, at least for me, was when the institution seemed to define success by how often its staff appeared in the media to pontificate on the Russia-Ukraine war. I was more than happy to leave.

Nevertheless, the whole experience still gnaws at me. David Betz, one of the most thoughtful (and principled) of my former colleagues once asked: “Are we just ghouls?” We reflected on three decades in the Department, assembling a few justifications to defend our careers. But as Stevenson’s book ruefully reminds me, the most honest answer is probably: yes.

The Sun Never Sets on the American Takeover

A chapter of Stevenson’s book tackles the overwhelming economic dominance of the United States — a reality that persists despite fashionable chatter about American decline and multipolarity. The US still reigns supreme in global capital, a theme central to Hanton’s Vassal State, which lays bare the staggering extent of American economic entrenchment in the UK.

Hanton marshals an impressive arsenal of facts and figures to illustrate how US corporate interests permeate every corner of British commercial life. From breakfast cereals to toilet paper, almost every major brand on the supermarket shelves leads back to the US. Then there’s the hegemony of Big Tech — Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and the like — controlling our payments, communications and entertainment. And all that’s before we get to the omnipresent American private equity firms hoovering up British assets, exploiting the UK’s welcome mat for “foreign direct investment” to acquire everything from Gatwick Airport to Blackpool Tower. As Lord Paul Myners put it, “Britain is open for business in the same way that a car boot sale is open for business.”

British readers will likely find themselves equally incensed at the ability of large American corporations to funnel their UK earnings offshore, routing sales through Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in a financial shell game that leaves Britain out of pocket. Amazon, for instance, racked up £12 billion in UK sales in 2020 yet somehow only parted with £18 million in taxes — zero corporation tax, and in fact even managed to receive a £7.7 million tax credit from HMRC. Meanwhile, it cheerfully freeloads on the very infrastructure it relies upon, from roads to waste disposal for its relentless torrent of packaging.

The cumulative effect of this dominance and financial sleight of hand is a systematic siphoning of wealth from the British economy, shifting the burden of revenue generation onto the average taxpayer — who is growing ever poorer and more indebted. If Britain were the 51st state, Hanton drily observes, it would rank below Mississippi in per capita income. The broader conclusion is bleak: when one side holds all the power, when a nation is steadily losing control over its businesses, data and destiny, what else can you call it but vassalage?

Hanton cautions that his study isn’t some anti-American screed but rather an examination of how US companies have mastered the art of economic domination — through relentless hard work, innovation, research and development. You can’t blame Americans for what American companies do best: ruthlessly winning. They seek every comparative advantage, outthink and outspend the competition, and invest with an eye on total supremacy. There may be no masterplan to turn the UK into a vassal state, but when you combine America’s economic prowess with Britain’s pathological eagerness to roll out the red carpet for foreign take-overs, the result — per Stevenson’s argument — is a country that increasingly resembles an overseas branch of the US empire.

A Question of Choice? Selling Off and Selling Out

One of the great strengths of both volumes is their refusal to engage in overt political messaging. The authors write with force yet maintain a detached clarity. As a result, their critiques may resonate as much with the disaffected Left as with the dissident Right, but ultimately converging on one, salutary truth: subservience is always a choice, never an inevitability.

And who makes that choice? Enter Britain’s political and financial elites — hapless, cynical, or just plain useless — who have not only allowed but actively enabled this state of affairs. The ongoing exodus of British capital into foreign hands isn’t some act of God; it’s the direct consequence of decisions made by those in power. Blaming the Americans for Britain’s self-inflicted wounds is absurd. After all, it’s the UK Government that insists on nationality-blind procurement policies, handing out massive contracts to US firms while British businesses are left in the cold. (Remember the Covid era, when US pharmaceutical giants scooped up over half the vaccine contracts?) Hanton emphasises the complicity of Britain’s over-hyped financial sector — the City of London’s legions of lawyers, accountants and consultants — always happy to pocket a quick profit by flogging off successful British firms to foreign buyers.

Such damaging short-termism, Hanton contends, seems uniquely British. Consider the aptly named Lord Grimstone, a privatisation enthusiast who merrily declared that British firms are more productive under foreign ownership. There’s little evidence to support this claim — indeed, often the opposite holds true, with services deteriorating and prices soaring (think of Britain’s utility companies). But even if it were correct, it would still be a damning indictment of Britain’s ruling class who believe that the country’s enterprises are so inherently second-rate that only outsiders can run them properly. A leadership caste committed to national self-negation — how very British.

The Solution that Dare Not Speak its Name?

In a way, Hanton’s analysis isn’t just focused on Britain’s peculiar vulnerabilities but the broader economic impacts of globalisation — particularly the rise of tech monopolies that exploit modern marketing, regulatory loopholes and sheer scale to dominate entire markets. We are now in an era where multinationals — mostly, but not exclusively, American — don’t just sell products but structure their operations in ways that reduce local sovereignty to a nostalgic fiction. The convenience they offer, however, comes at a steep price: a slow march into techno-serfdom.

Hanton insists he’s not advocating nationalism — except, he kind of is. His argument inevitably veers into ‘Britain First’ territory to sustain its own logic. He calls for British leaders to recognise their dependence on US firms, claiming — entirely reasonably — that this about being pro-British rather than anti-American or anti-foreign. His advocacy is about resisting servility, fostering national strengths and reclaiming independence. Thus, his proposed solutions — protecting domestic industries from foreign takeovers, favouring national suppliers in procurement and tailoring regulations to benefit homegrown businesses — are, unsurprisingly, nationalistic. And as he rightly submits, there’s no shame in it; most nations, unlike Britain’s post-national elite, already play this game without the faintest blush of embarrassment.

Stevenson, by contrast, takes aim at the Anglo-American habit of preaching democracy while practicing raw self-interest. Realists have long known that no state — least of all the US — relinquishes power out of principle. The real trouble begins when Western moral grandstanding hardens into a full-blown mission to improve the world, whether the world wants it or not — at which point the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore. Alas, international politics isn’t a morality play. Nations pursue their interests while wrapping their motives in the fine silk of virtue — a tradition as old as diplomacy itself. Stevenson doesn’t just support less meddling in the name of progress but implicitly suggests that if you must act in your own interest like everyone else, fine — but at least spare us the sanctimonious lectures and the world-improving military adventures.

Pax Americana: Once a Beacon, Now a Flicker on the Horizon?

All of this leads to a paradox. The very political and financial forces that Stevenson and Hanton blame for Britain’s subservience — those that built the Pax Americana — are also tearing American society apart from within. Globalisation is the ‘gift’ that keeps on taking. The extractive, exploitative logic of international finance capital hasn’t spared the US either, which has faced its own spiral of de-industrialisation, offshored manufacturing and unchecked migration. Working-class wages stagnate, the middle class erodes and social crises — urban decay, opioid addiction, rising crime — proliferate. The resulting anger and resentment have been brewing for decades.

Analysts of very different political complexions, from Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites (1994), Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen’s Mad as Hell (2010) to Charles Murray’s Coming Apart (2012), have charted the growing frustration with a neo-liberal order that has enriched a self-anointed elite while condemning much of the population to dead-end jobs or government dependency. This self-interested and self-mythologising elite has built a power structure sustained by open borders, military adventurism and a bureaucratic-commercial complex that profits from both. The consequence has been declining living standards for the many and the erosion of democratic accountability. So, when politicians speak of protecting ‘our democracy’, more and more people understand what they really mean: protecting their self-serving oligarchy.

Intriguingly in this regard, while both books predate Trump’s return to office in 2025, they inadvertently highlight the forces that propelled him back into power. In many ways, Trumpism is the inevitable culmination of ideas first championed by Pat Buchanan, the original prophet of America First, who warned over 30 years ago that the idea of America would perish the moment the United States ceased to be a republic and became an empire. The irony runs deeper still: Buchanan also argued that since World War II, Britain had traded much of its independence for American patronage. On both counts, were he alive today, he might just say: told you so.

Michael Rainsborough is a writer and academic based in Australia. His latest book is A Front Row at the End of History: The Untimely Essays of David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith, 1999-2024.