In Bed with an Elephant: Personal Observations on Coalition Operations in the Contemporary Operating Environment

...to develop a closer relationship between individual English and Americans, and a better understanding between the military forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, in order to contribute in large measure to the preservation of world peace. The objective of the Kermit Roosevelt Lecture as expressed by Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt in a letter to General George C. Marshall in June 1944. HAVING JUST RETURNED from Kabul it is particularly pertinent to be involved in an initiative which was set up 66 years ago. Mrs. Roosevelt was writing as the Second World War drew to its climax, at a time when exploiting the relationship between the United States and Britain would have been supported by the vast majority of people in both our countries. Since then we have won the Cold War, experiencing a transformation into an interconnected world where borders mean little, alliances ebb and flow, the relative strength and influence of countries have changed, and there is only one world superpower. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said in 1969 that sharing a land mass with a richer and more powerful neighbour was like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how even-tempered and friendly the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. Although this remark was made from an economic and social perspective, it is an entirely appropriate metaphor to describe the relationship that coalition partners have had with the United States over the past decade in security operations. How do we ensure that contemporary coalition operations are as effective as possible, particularly when one partner dominates so conspicuously in terms of mass or physical investment? A Special Relationship? Since World War II, Anglo-American relations have often been characterised as The shared cultural and historical inheritance of the two countries is seen by some as underpinning their close diplomatic and military co-operation. The term special relationship was first used by Winston Churchill during his Iron Curtain speech of March 1946. His reason was to guarantee a firm stance against the rise of Stalin's Soviet Union. It is not surprising that for the length of the Cold War, the common enemy; cultural and historical similarities; diplomatic consultation; and intelligence, defence, and nuclear co-operation meant that there was a particular closeness in Anglo-American relations. But some judge this to be a spurious mantra, to many it is irrelevant, and to some it is one-sided. The U.S. ambassador to Britain from 1991 to 1994, the anglophile Raymond Seitz, tried to remove the term from diplomatic dialogue all together. This is instructive since, at times of mutual crisis, there is a sense of common purpose, but when this is not so-in Seitz's case after the Cold War had ended and there were differences of interpretation of the Balkans conflict-the relationship can sometimes appear anything but special. However, current polling in the United States shows 36 percent of people consider the United Kingdom to be their most valuable ally, 29 percent identify Canada, 12 percent Japan, 10 percent Israel, and 5 percent Germany. Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt was clearly expressing a widely held sentiment in 1944 which has, to a degree, retained its currency until today. This is important, not because we have some special contract between us-we do not-but because there are channels of communication, understanding, mutual analysis, and shared problem solving that will continue to benefit us both if they are exploited. In the case of the United Kingdom and the United States, there is one obvious difference which I must highlight, and that is size, as the map shows (Figure 1). And then here are some statistics that elaborate this further (Figure 2). U.S. officers do not bat an eyelid at shifting huge amounts of stuff in very short order. Consider the 30,000 troop uplift in Afghanistan, announced by President Obama at West Point on 1 December 2009. …

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