4 SO NEAR, YET SO FAR & The “Special” Relationship

This article is another excerpt from the book by Barrington Roy Schiller (#BarringtonRoySchiller) titled “ESPIONAGE, INTELLIGENCE, RUSSIA, AND ME.: Spies, Lies, and Russian Misinformation.?“

Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNR3ZTTN

Paperback https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CNS4VKDB

?4 SO NEAR, YET SO FAR & The “Special” Relationship

Just after dawn on 19th April 1775, the British attempted to disarm the Massachusetts militia. They failed, so on 4th July 1776, the Founding Fathers won the Revolutionary War and started a new country. They wrote the United States Declaration of Independence, signed the Constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1791. General George Washington, who had led the war, became its first president. However, ever since those times, the UK and the USA have had a special relationship and have been the leading Allies of what came to be known as the “West”.

Seldom have the two special Allies fought on the same side of any conflict or war as Russia, though. This juxtaposition has led many to believe that Russia and the USA were thousands of miles apart, ideologically and geographically.

The reality is that Russia and Alaska are only separated by the Bering Strait, and at its narrowest point, the Bering Strait measures only approximately 55 miles. Also, in the middle of the Strait, there are two Islands. The Islands are the Big Diomede, governed by the Russian Federation, and the Little Diomede Island, governed by the United States. The distance between the two Islands is just 3 miles (4.8 kilometres). These Islands shorten the geographical distance between Russia and Alaska even more.

Alaska once belonged to the Russian Empire, but they sold it to the USA, and? Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on 18 October 1867 through a treaty ratified by the United States Senate.

?However, rather than that being the end of the story, it was just the beginning of centuries of rivalry between the two once-great nations, with the British Empire watching from the sidelines in an age when colonial empires clashed as they slowly but surely shrank on the geopolitical stage with each vying to remain significant and bathing is their past glories.

This is the story of what happened to those three countries but not through the lens or level of analysis of the presidents, Kings, Queens and rulers, but from the perspective of those behind the scenes, providing the information for the rulers to base their decisions upon and the lengths they went to, to prevent others learning what their intentions were. This is the Machiavellian world of those countries’ backchannels, espionage, and counterespionage.

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