The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 39 and on Capitol Hill. With our foreign policy teams, I worked with State on all the hot global challenges and many issues that didn’t make the headlines, as well—from Syria to Iran, from Russia and Ukraine to North Korea, and from nonproliferation to human rights. But more than that, our State Department colleagues helped us to understand the United States, too. Many British diplomats arrive in America unwittingly unpre- pared for the differences between the U.K. and U.S. systems. The closeness of the relationship and our shared history and language tend to lull us into a false sense of security. But the differences can be profound. I often turned to State Department colleagues to help navigate my way through the U.S. system or to explain what was happening in U.S. politics. Their help undoubt- edly made me better at my job. From all my experience of working with American colleagues, I have no doubt the United States has some of the best diplomats in the world, with an impressive capacity for hard work and dedication to service, an unbending commitment to tackling some of the world’s most difficult problems while advancing U.S. interests, and a profound belief in the value of working with allies. In the U.K., we can sometimes be more nimble in reaching an agreed government position on a particular foreign policy issue. Working across government departments is also arguably a stronger part of our DNA. Much of this is simply a matter of our smaller scale, which makes reaching agreement between departments easier and working across government essential to make the most of more limited resources. But no other Western country can match U.S. resources and capabilities when the administration mobilizes behind a chosen course of action to address a foreign policy problem. The “special relationship” isn’t without its challenges. Tony Blair’s decision to support George W. Bush in the 2003 inva- sion of Iraq set Britain on a collision course with its two largest European Union partners, France and Germany, who opposed the war. While the decision reinforced Britain’s position as the United States’ ally of choice, it set back Blair’s efforts to