The longstanding “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain gave Washington a key confidant at the table in Brussels, as Obama stressed in his April referendum intervention in London. But a Europe without a United Kingdom doesn’t exactly leave Britain’s former colony out in the cold.
“On the big issues, we’ve seen the transition for years now where the first call has not been to London, where it used to be, but to Berlin,” said Damon Wilson, a former senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council under George W. Bush and who is currently executive vice president of the Atlantic Council. “That transition has already happened and the great recession really accelerated that with the magnification of German economic and political power.” [...]
Still, he said, “the U.K.’s diffidence towards the EU for so many years diminished their clout,” he says. “Increasingly, U.S. officials have seen if you want to get something done in Europe you work with the power that knows how to work with the EU.” And that, he says, is Germany.
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