Britain should accept the American bear hug

This article was first published in The Critic.

We hear a lot today about Britain’s “soft power”. 

Many talk this up as a suitable consolation prize for losing the empire. Britain may no longer be the world power it once was, but somewhere Queen Elizabeth II still dances with Kwame Nkrumah night after night, and the nation feels it has compensated well enough.

“Soft power” is a euphemism for good will. Paddington Bear, the Premier League, Mr Bean, the BBC, the queue of tourists at the telephone box by Big Ben—Brits imagine that all of this buys enough sentiment from other nations such that they will treat Britain in ways which may not be strictly in their best interests. 

With less developed countries, particularly the Commonwealth, this is assumed to mean an endless stream of hard-working migrant workers ready to play fair and fold gratefully into Britain’s island story. With peers, particularly in Europe, soft power supposedly means being given an equal say, a seat at the table — an [insert reassuring diplomatic cliché here]. With the new global superpowers, Britain hopes for a deferential respect to its diplomatic nous and military know-how.

Soft power is an especially big idea in the centre ground of British politics. There is now an official UK Soft Power Council, launched by then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy in January 2025. The Tories promised a “new Soft Power Strategy” in their 2024 manifesto, and the Lib Dems effectively have a whole policy paper on it.

Soft power isn’t nothing, as we will argue shortly. But when the centrists discuss it, it is often just a coping mechanism. It simply cannot make up for Britain’s rapidly diminishing hard power: hollow armed forces, catastrophic and self-inflicted collapse of business and industry due to Net Zero, a democracy compromised by rapid demographic change, and a perma-Suez Crisis as the shamefaced former empire gives away or wilfully neglects overseas territories such as the Chagos Islands and Gibraltar. 

Usually, all that “soft power” gets Britain is taken for a ride. Less developed countries largely use the warm welcome to exploit the country via mass immigration, draining British resources and showing little interest in integration. European peers, meanwhile, showed little enough affection for Britain when it was in the EU, and now show even less outside of it.

Yet soft power isn’t made up. It’s just that Britain constantly imagines it to be where it isn’t and increasingly ignores it where it can still actually be found and where its exercise might actually help rebuild British hard power: America.

Since his second inauguration, Donald Trump and his administration have made constant references to their love for Britain. Trump was given an unprecedented second state visit to the UK (and will reciprocate to the King in April) and spoke warmly of the country and his heritage here, a link maintained by his golf course in his mother’s native Scotland. The UK was given the most favourable tariffs possible by the US in the new Trump economic regime, far better than many comparable nations, as well as the Tech Prosperity Deal (though this is currently paused due to other trade negotiations). Yet the President has also spoken frankly about how compromised Britain has become due to mass immigration, weak defence, and braindead energy policy.

An early watershed moment in Trump 2.0 was the 2025 Munich Security Conference, in which J.D. Vance gave both barrels to Europe’s assembled leaders over “the threat from within” posed by free speech censorship, annulled elections, and suicidal immigration policies. Harsh words, yet ones Vance repeatedly insisted were delivered out of sincere concern for America’s civilisational confreres. He even said that the failures of “our very dear friends the United Kingdom” were the “most concerning”. Yet later in the year, Vance enjoyed a scenic holiday in the gloriously English Cotswolds.

More recently, Sarah Rogers, US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has been on a crusade against free speech censorship in Britain, speaking and posting zealously.

Then, this past weekend, Marco Rubio brought Trump 2.0 back to Munich. His substance was much the same as Vance’s last year, but his tone much less pugnacious. 

Rubio was clearly making a concerted effort, choosing every word carefully to convey Trump’s National Security Strategy of “America First, but not America Alone”. America does not want to relinquish its role of being a superpower or the global sheriff, but it will use interventionism more surgically and thoughtfully. The Americans understand that to maintain their position in the world they need allies and allied support. Rubio’s speech was a plea to the Europeans to not misunderstand or misinterpret their intentions. Thrown by the offence which Europe took at the NSS, Rubio crafted his Munich speech so that delegates could not re-orient the talking points to appeal to anti-American and anti-Trump domestic politics at home. 

Onlookers are debating whether EU-US and UK-US relations could have been better had Rubio’s speech been delivered a year ago; others see a helpful good cop-bad cop routine between Rubio and Vance. Either way, the point has been underscored yet again: although the administration is also responding to domestic pressure from voters to stop subsidising European defence, America is making a heartfelt plea to its Old World allies. “Under President Trump,”, Rubio said, “the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.”

Rubio did not address the UK directly, but it was certainly in view as well. And so here is the question: why does Britain waste its energy talking about soft power swaying Europe or the Commonwealth or hostile superpowers, when it so obviously has its greatest effect with its American allies? Old World snobbery dies hard. 

Some suggest Brits shouldn’t be fooled, and that the US’s apparent affection for is a cynical attempt to bend Britain to its will. Right-wing US-sceptics will even point out that America played a central role in diminishing the empire via the 1941 Atlantic Charter’s stipulations for the post-war settlement, and by siding against us over Suez. On this, sceptics are not wrong, and it should be a reminder that the interests of two sovereign nations, however allied or culturally proximate, will never be fully aligned.

Yet in a way this is all to the point: despite having asserted its dominance and done its bit to end the colonial era, America still goes out of its way to speak well of and extend benefits to Britain. Today, cynical international flattery is far more likely to come from Europe and the developing world, since they have far more to gain from Britain than Britain does from them or than America does from Britain.

It’s certainly not the case that Britain nothing to offer the US. An improved tariff-free trade deal would be highly beneficial for both countries, for instance. But by far the simplest explanation for why America makes such a big deal out of saving Britain is this: they really mean it. 

This may be an unsatisfactory conclusion for those who prefer speculative interpretations or have engaged extensively with the complexities of contemporary international relations. But it is easily the best explanation for why the current Western superpower continues to risk its own international political capital in attempting to rouse its predecessor from its stupor. 

This interpretation maps rather well onto how to understand Trump himself. The secret of the man is that, in general, he is either blustering and bullshitting (often strategically, it should be said) or being alarmingly sincere. The ratio is probably about 70-30, and in all honesty the sincerity proportion seems to be creeping up this time around if his increasing references to religion and his own mortality are anything to go by.

You may find them garish and loud, you may cringe at the way they say “London, ENGLAND!”, but the fact is that most Americans really do just love the UK and would hate to see it disappear. Recently, a politically engaged American friend who is sincerely concerned for Britain texted, unprompted, “Rewatching Harry Potter with my 10-year-old. You must protect England. It’s such a magical place. And truly a magical people.” Hardly a basis for an international alliance you might think—but if that’s not soft power, then what is? Britain needs to learn to accept the awkward American bear hug. 

Britain looks in vain to the French or Spanish or Germans for deep-seated affection, and even if it could be found the EU Member States act in their collective imperial interest, not out of organic good feeling between two sovereign nations. So too with the Commonwealth. Yes, you can find plenty of Africans and people from the sub-continent who think things were better when the British were in charge, but this simply cannot outweigh either the sheer number of postcolonial workers and shirkers seeking to raid the national coffers or the diplomatic pressure from the likes of Narendra Modi to force Britain to take them. The empire has struck back.

Yes, America’s genesis was in a revolutionary war against the British crown, and yes, Britain fought them again in the War of 1812, but that’s far fewer wars than the country has had with Europe or the rest of the world. Over 200 years on from the Revolutionary Era, the bond between the US and UK is stronger than anything Britain ever had with its neighbours or non-Anglosphere former colonies. The Trump administration may have often declined to mince its words towards Britain, but it is worth recalling the proverb of Solomon, a king great and wise: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful”. 

As Trump seeks an epochal shift in geopolitics, Britain faces a choice in the new corollary between aligning itself eastward (with the EU and therefore China, given the EU’s declining economic power) or westward (with the USA). Neither will align with all Britain’s interests perfectly. But in an age where the rules-based international order is passing away, rather than cynical realpolitik, the driving force of the US attitude toward Britain is more akin to a return to medieval honour and chivalry than anything we will find elsewhere. Though perhaps, if the continent heeds Rubio’s call, there could be hope for the chivalric tradition—famously French in its origins—to span the width of the English Channel once more.

This may sound fanciful. But much of Britain’s national self-image now hangs on a story in which it valiantly went to the defence of Poland in 1939 — not simply because it was in its interests or because it was under treaty, but because it was the right thing to do, and Englishmen believe in nothing if not good form. 

If Britain could believe that of itself then, why not America now? If British soft power matters in this new world order, it must be honest about where it really lies. Her American cousins stand ready to help Britannia restore her borders, reboot her energy policy, rebuild her military, and revive her economy. If only she would let them.