The Atlantic

Britain Is Holding Its Breath

The results of the U.S. election will pose existential questions in London.
Source: Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty

It is that time again, when the world outside the United States stops, when we foreigners hold our collective breath and look up from our own domestic concerns to discover whom the citizens of America have chosen as their new Caesar—and ours.

The outcome has always mattered, and mattered enormously, but has rarely affected an American ally’s core strategy: The U.S. was simply too important, its foreign policy too settled, for any other country’s policies to be tied to one particular candidate. A leader of a European state might dislike or disapprove of an American presidential hopeful’s politics, philosophy, or temperament, but this did

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