ABSTRACT
The relationship between Germany and the United Kingdom is not as easy to categorise
when compared to other bilateral relationships. As something less than a partnership,
but more than ad hoc co-operation, political relations between the two governments
have always been both fluid and ambiguous, especially when viewed against the stan-
dard set by the Franco-German partnership or the British-American special relation-
ship. In the field of foreign and security policy, British and German positions have
arguably pulled apart more often that they have pulled together, dynamics which
have indelibly shaped developments in European and transatlantic security since the
end of the Cold War. It is arguably the case that, in contrast to other policy sectors,
in the area of foreign, security and defence policy there has been little in the way of
actual policy convergence between the UK and Germany. In fact, we argue that
policy divergence has, thus far, been the most pronounced characteristic in this bilateral
relationship – a factor which does not mitigate against the two states seeing eye to eye
on a range of contemporary foreign and security policy issues.1
