America spells trouble for Britain. That’s undoubtedly true in the age of Trump – but maybe it’s always been so. The White House’s undisguised contempt for loyal allies in the UK and Europe necessitates a robust reciprocal rethink. How healthy – and desirable – is this partnership? Has it caused more problems than it’s worth?

Those, myself included, who throughout their professional lives have taken close transatlantic ties for granted, face some awkward questions. Is the US-UK “special relationship” an embarrassment, even a strategic liability? Today’s America is evidently not a trustworthy, disinterested friend. Was it ever?

As I write my last foreign affairs commentary for the Observer, I look back over nearly 50 years and wonder, firstly, at the false narrative, not confined to Donald Trump, that American altruism is exploited by “freeloading” European Nato allies. What tosh! US troops and missiles are based here primarily to defend the US. Since 1945, Washington has viewed Europe as its first line of defence against Russia. Germany was the US’s preferred cold war battlefield, Britain its airfield. Perish the thought that Americans might actually fight on their own soil (except against each other). US wars are typically waged in faraway places. That’s why the 1962 Cuba missile crisis came as such a shock.

The trouble with America began at conception. The “war of independence” that started as a middle-class taxpayers’ revolt was a stab in the back for Europe’s struggle against Napoleon’s tyranny – the Vladimir Putin of his time. American resistance to British efforts to suppress the global slave trade perpetuated another evil.

Claims the US saved Britain in 1940 are overblown. Britain saved itself. Franklin Roosevelt steered clear until forced to fight by Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s 1941 declaration of war. Postwar Britain, devastated and penniless, watched as the US grabbed its global markets and military bases. Suez in 1956 cemented its fall. It was still paying off war loans in 2006. Americans may dispute these historical perspectives, yet they lend present-day context. The nuclear arms race, numerous cold war coups and proxy wars in Africa and Latin America, catastrophe in Vietnam, Nato’s 1980s Euro-missile crisis and the first Gulf war were all troublesome US storylines for which UK-Europe support was expected, indeed demanded.

More Uncle Sam craziness followed in the shape of the post-9/11 “global war on terror”, Guantánamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and the vengeful madness of “King” George (W Bush). Nato backed the invasion of Afghanistan. But then came Iraq, nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib, and all the ensuing democracy-damaging lies, misery and failures.

Out of Iraq came Islamic State; out of Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloodshed, came a resurgent, gloating Taliban. Barack Obama abandoned Syria. Now Trump, America’s burger-eating surrender monkey, sides with Russia, and betrays Ukraine and the west. For all these made-in-the-US calamities, a weak Europe shares some blame. But the high price paid by allies grows unaffordable.

Unquestioning US support for Israel and the mass murder of Palestinians fuels antisemitism, far-right nationalism and European instability. Emboldened by Trump, Putin’s threat to Poland and the Baltic republics intensifies. US foreign aid cuts and reckless climate and energy policies imperil millions, accelerating northwards migration from Africa. Trump threatens Iran with all-out war, pushing it towards nuclear weapons.

Are US policymakers innately incompetent, uninformed or simply unlucky? It scarcely matters as long as Britain and Europe feel locked in a toxic relationship from which there is no escape. Except Trump and his good ’ol boys, oozing online hillbilly hostility, unwittingly offer a chance of deliverance to those bold enough to take it.

The American hegemon has always exacted onerous tribute. Trump’s tariffs reflect abiding lust for loot and domination. US pharmaceutical companies, food and drink multinationals and tech and social media giants plunder the empire’s subject lands on favourable, ill-regulated terms.

The US connection imposes rising social and cultural costs, seen in the “Americanisation” of language, ubiquitous TV shows and streaming services, and pressure to lower food, environmental and online safety standards. Concepts of shared values and universal laws are fracturing as Trump targets “woke” and tears up the UN rulebook.

Billy-no-mates Britain faces a particular problem, post-Brexit. Its nuclear weapons, armed forces, security services, defence industries, financial markets and export businesses are inextricably in thrall to the US imperium. The UK clings desperately to a sense of “specialness” to sustain fading self-belief.

Yet Steve Witkoff, Trump’s useless Ukraine envoy, calls Keir Starmer’s plan a “pose”. Vice-president JD Vance, the intrepid Greenland explorer, mocks the UK as a “random country”. Some weird geezer named Hegseth claims we are “pathetic”. What depth of insult, what degree of disrespect, would convince Britain’s too-nice prime minister to stop propping up collapsing transatlantic bridges?

Such rudeness and condescension do not come out of nowhere. We British know; those ugly Americans learned their imperial arrogance from us. What’s new is Trump’s debasement and corruption of America’s constitutional and democratic tradition. Moral authority is being lost, and with it the right to lead.

Huge convulsions punctuate US history: the civil war, prohibition, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, Watergate, 9/11. The Trump-Maga spasm follows that pattern. It, too, will pass. Or will it? While the US prefers dictators to democrats, punishes its friends, and lies, bullies and plots to steal allies’ sovereign territory, there is no going back. Many, perhaps most, Americans abhor this vile behaviour – yet unaccountably fail to stop it.

Forget what Starmer says. Britain will have to choose. It has kowtowed to the US all our lives, and this is where it has got us. Gradual strategic disengagement from America, coupled with renewed integration in a reformed, revitalised Europe, is the only sane, safe path. Stop feeding the monster. He will devour us all.

Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator

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