The US and its allies at 250: Forging a new transatlantic democratic alliance for the 21st century

The US and its allies at 250: Forging a new transatlantic democratic alliance for the 21st century

This Ditchley conference, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, will create space for Americans of differing political persuasions to discuss together with longstanding allies the trajectory of the world’s most important country. We will consider the future of the transatlantic alliance as we move into an era of truly global geopolitics, with the extension of China’s ambitions and reach. This is far from the first difficult patch that alliance has had, originally built through conversations in the late 1930s and early 1940s, including at Ditchley. The war years were characterised by deep division and argument amongst allies, not calm unity. The 1949 NATO alliance was a pragmatic grouping of those opposed to the Soviet Union, not a democratic alliance. The 1956 Suez Crisis saw the UK and France try to keep their influence in the Middle East in defiance of the US. The UK had supported the US in war in Korea but refused to participate in Vietnam, leaving the US deeply disappointed. And so the story goes, through the fall of the Soviet Union, past 9/11 and the invocation of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, the war in Iraq, and to contemporary challenges. The transatlantic alliance has faltered and reinvented itself multiple times. So how can we reinvent the alliance again now? What are the essential interests and responsibilities of the US and of its allies? And how will this alliance fit into what has become, like it or not, a global contest for power between China and the political West? Adjusted for purchasing power parity, China’s economy is now 1.4 times as big as that of the US, while the economic power of US and allies combined is roughly double that of China. The challenge for the US and allies is coordination underpinned by a shared vision for the world. If we allow fragmentation of our alliances to go too far, we may lose a contest for global leadership we should easily win. So what are the projects that can bring us back together and restore confidence in each other?