Disentangling Britain from America

[Samdelila]

I know we are reliant on the USA for security and they are a major trading partner, but I would like to know what, if anything, could be done to disentangle us from the USA in the future. Does anybody have any ideas?

We aren’t reliant on them at all for security???

Well, like it or not, America is a 200+ year old former British colony, and there are a lot of cultural and political ties. I don't see any of them being severed any time soon. This is all because of Trump, imo. Had Biden won another term, most of the threads popping up about the USA wouldn't exist.

Of course we are. Have you seen the size of our military? It's tiny and pathetic. Lots of the defence tech we have is American-made, too. The whole of Europe is heavily reliant on America and NATO for national security.

Yeah we are.

We are, massively.

Nato protects Europe from Russia, and is largely the US.

Trident, our nuclear deterrent, depends on US technology and US-owned missiles.

Our conventional forces are quite patchy, eg we rely on US forces for long-range airlift, satellite surveillance.

What we do have is often reliant on US supply chains, eg our F-35s.

We rely on intelligence-sharing (we punch above our weight here, but still, our capabilities are dwarfed by the US’s).

Historically our nations are closely linked, and what’s happened in the past can never change, but it would be better for us to become more independent in the future, surely?

They are also part of Five Eyes along with UK, Canada, Australia and NZ. We cooperate with them for lots of security intelligence, warnings on terror attacks etc.
They are important to our Pharmaceutical and car industries. Any withdrawal by our government , or tariffs by the US will affect our GDP and job security. Our societies as mentioned above are intertwined: dual citizenship families etc.

Yes, but all the time we are dependent on the NHS, we can't be self-sufficient. We've chosen the welfare state (which includes the NHS), over the ability to protect the country. NHS spending dwarfs the defence budget by a hefty margin. When we shift our priorities, things will change.

£61.7bn is projected for defence in 25/26, the NHS, by comparison will be £217bn in the same year, ie 3.5 times the amount. The welfare budget alone will be £334bn, ie 5.5 times the defence spending budget.

It does look like we don't want to be independent, nor do we seem to care about protecting our country. At all.

So the best way for us to begin to reduce our reliance on America is to reduce the welfare state - leaving us more money to spend on defence? Ouch! I can’t see that going down too well.

Who would you rather ally with? China?

• Total Executions: China is believed to execute more people annually than all other countries combined. While estimates vary, some reports have indicated that over 8,000 people were executed per year as of 2022.
• Forced Organ Harvesting: Congressional testimony in August 2025 indicated that an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners—primarily Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghur/Muslim minorities—undergo forced organ transplantation annually, which is considered a form of state-sanctioned killing.
• Deaths in Detention: Reports throughout 2025 continued to document deaths of Uyghurs in detention, often due to torture, starvation, or denial of medical care. For instance, one 96-year-old imam, Abidin Ayup, was reported to have died in custody in early 2025 after being imprisoned in 2017.

There are very very few free democratic countries.

I think that was part of the reason for Brexit - to make us more reliant on the US, as well as weaken Europe and make Farage and co very rich, screw the UK over so our standard of living tanks and they can scapegoat migrants who are being assisted by Russia to come into Europe so the far right can sell us the Christian nationalist narrative.

If Trump decides that the US isn’t an ally, Europe is even weaker and it becomes harder for us to defend ourselves in the event of war

It seems to all make sense now. We’ve been royally fucked over.

I very much hope we remained allied with the US, whilst also, preferably, becoming less reliant on them.

So moving closer to Europe - perhaps rejoining the EU - would be one way of helping to reduce our reliance on America?

Overturning that BS Brexit would be a solid start.

Yes, I think so. We still need America. I think we’re at the point where we are so entangled there’s no going back, but the fact we left the EU has backed us into more of a corner as far as the US is concerned. We’re stronger together. We’d be stronger economically and militarily.

I think it is difficult to untangle because the First and Second World Wars would not have been won by the Allied side without the USA; and the Atlantic Charter (1941?) set the grounds for post-war co-operation, albeit with the USA politically and economically more powerful. All of this led to greater integration in terms of defence, intelligence and technology, but again with the USA more powerful for economic and demographic and geographical resource size reasons. In case of any war of such a scale again, Britain would again need the US support, and Britain is also important for the US strategically.

I don’t think it can be disentangled or we can be fully self-sufficient as we did not manage it in the two previous world wars, when the country was comparatively much stronger economically and globally. I think we just need to hope and pray this situation does not arise again.

[edited to add - obviously hope and prayer is not a solid defence strategy, I didn’t mean it that literally]

I agree that we can never completely disentangle ourselves, but I think it is defeatist to accept that we must always remain as reliant as we currently are. That amounts to saying we are prepared to let America have whatever it wants - for the rest of time.

I didn’t say we must always remain as reliant, nor that Britain should be prepared to let the USA have whatever it wants; as I said, Britain is strategically important to the US as well so there is room for negotiation and it’s a relationship, albeit an imbalanced one. However, I don’t think we can be isolated from the US.

We did the War Rooms tour today. They’ve got the text of the Atlantic Charter in the Churchill museum there. Idk if it’s still supposed to be in force in any way now but Trump certainly doesn’t seem to believe in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter

Then we are in agreement - it would be preferable if the relationship were more balanced. Even marginally more balanced would be better than nothing. The question is how?

”We” can’t do much, because “we” sold off most of our assets, so already don’t really own or control our own country. Our strings are being pulled from elsewhere. We are reliant on the rest of the world to feed us, clothe us, provide us with goods, help with our infrastructure and buy our services. We can’t upset the markets, we can’t upset China, we can’t upset the US, we chose to weaken the EU. We are incapable of being self-sufficient and could easily be starved into submission. More than half of us were even too fucking stupid to question their choices when the biggest cheerleaders for Brexit were Trump and Putin. If we had more time and money, we could do more, but, of course, our enemies and competitors waited until we were in a weak position and had also shot ourselves in the foot before they started their endgame. Whatever we do, I don’t think we can avoid an awful lot of pain and misery. Until we are willing to accept a lot of pain one way or the other, we are stuck, unable to make many choices at all, because none of them are palatable or have the luxury of much time.

UK military is about 137k. If you add up all the non US NATO countries, the combined forces are not far behind the US, in people anyway, but there is more.

Much of the global reach of the US is because of their allies. Their B1 and B2 bombers, although based in the US, need in flight refueling. And the air tankers are based in the UK and Germany. B52's are on Diego Garcia, a British base. 15% of the F35 is made in the UK. BAE systems is about the 4th largest arms company in the world, and a major US supplier.

The USA military, without it's allies, would be stuck in the USA. Even it's mighty carrier force needs allied bases for replenishment of food etc. The battle groups escorts need fuel.

The dependency on others works both ways.

i wonder if there isn’t a balance, in a grouping of say UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and NewZealand if we were to push back against the US.

Well, we certainly need an alliance that excludes the US, given that it is required to deal with the US. Countries have shown precious little sign of being capable of forming genuine alliances and agreements that aren’t wriggled out of due to short term self-interest in recent years, though, and the UK has had its head stuck so far up America’s arsehole for years, I’m not sure we know how to extract it, and Farage would rather we be the 51st state, anyway.

We can’t do much, but can we do anything? I genuinely want to know.
Eg can we trade more with other countries (not US), boycott US companies, team up with the EU to block them economically, cut spending (to increase money for defence)?