Daniel Hannan On War and the Anglo-American Alliance

Daniel Hannan, How We Invented Freedom & Why It Matters (2013).

‘Wars have a way of making kindred peoples forget their differences. The United Kingdom and the United States had not quarrelled since 1895, when the Cleveland administration intervened in a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana.

In reality, there had been no serious prospect of war between the two states since the 1820s.

The Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States rejected the interference of any European power in its hemisphere, had rested on the support of the Royal Navy, and both governments knew it.

 ‘Britain had tacitly backed the United States in its 1898 war against Spain, and Presidents McKinley and [Theodore] Roosevelt had returned the favour during the Boer War, despite opposition from Irish-American voters.

The two countries had been allies in the First World War: the Kaiser's government had taken it for granted that the “Anglo-Saxon” powers would stick together, and had invited Mexico to invade its northern neighbour, thereby prompting U.S. entry into the war.’

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