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UNIVERSITY 
OF  FLORIDA 
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BRITAIN  AND  THE  U.  S.  A. 
ERRATA: 

Page  18  — The  1960  Wheat  and  Meat  Production  figures  should  be 
printed: 

Wheat  Production  (thousand  metric  tons) 
UK  U.S.A. 

1960        3,040  36,750 

Meat  Production  (thousand  metric  tons) 
UK  U.S.A. 

1960         1,717  12,805 

Page  40  —  Fifth  line  should  read: 

Eventually  it  was  nothing  less  than  the  old  alliance  argument  which 

Page  49  —  Sixth  line  should  read: 

1.    Build  around  the  5  nation  .  .  .  pact. 


The  Albert  Shaw  L,ectures  on  Diplomatic  History 


The  liberality  of  Albert   Shaw,  Ph.D.   1884,  has 
made  it  possible  for  The  Johns  Hopkins  University 
to  provide  an  annual  course  of  lectures  on  diplomatic 
history.   This  volume  contains  the  lectures 
delivered  in  1961. 


The  Albert  Shaw  L,ectures  on  Diplomatic  History 


1899.  John  H.  Latane.  The  Diplomatic 
Relations  of  the  United  States  and 
Spanish  America.  1900.  (Out  of  print.) 

1900.  James  Morton  Callahan.  The  Dip- 
lomatic History  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy.  1901.  (Out  of  print.) 

1906.  Jesse  Siddall  Reeves.  American 
Diplomacy  under  Tyler  and  Polk. 
1907.  $1.75. 

1907.  Elbert  Jay  Benton.  International 
Law  and  Diplomacy  of  the  Spanish- 
American  War.  1908.  $1.75. 

1909.  Epbraim  Douglass  Adams.  British 
Interests  and  Activities  in  Texas, 
1838-1846.  1910.  (Out  of  print.) 

191 1.  Charles  Oscar  Paullin.  Diplo- 
matic Negotiations  of  American 
Naval  Officers,  1778-188  3.  1912. 
$2.25. 

1 91 2.  Isaac  J.  Cox.  The  West  Florida 
Controversy,  1798-1813.  1918. 
S3.00. 

191 3.  William  R.  Manning.  Early  Dip- 
lomatic Relations  between  the  United 
States  and  Mexico.  19 16.  $2.30. 

1 9 14.  Frank  A.  Updyke.  The  Diplo- 
macy of  the  War  of  1812.  191 5.  (Out 
of  print.) 

1917.  Pqyson  Jackson  Treat.  The  Early 
Diplomatic  Relations  between  the 
United  States  and  Japan,  1853-1865. 
1917.  $2.75.  _ 

192 1.  Percy  Alvin  Martin.  Latin  Amer- 
ica and  the  War.  1925.  $3.50. 

1923.  Henry  Merritt  Wriston.  Executive 
Agents  in  American  Foreign  Rela- 
tions. 1929.  S5.00. 

1926.  Samuel  Flagg  Bemis.  Pinckney's 
Treaty:  A  Study  of  America's  Advan- 
tage from  Europe's  Distress,  1783- 
1800.  1926.  Second  Printing  1941. 
$3.00. 

1927.  Bruce  Williams.  State  Security 
and  the  League  of  Nations.  1927. 
$2.75. 

1928.  /.  Fred  Kippy.  Rivalry  of  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain  over 
Latin  America,  1808-18  30.  1929. 
(Out  of  print.) 

1930.  Victor  Andres  Belaunde.  Bolivar 
and  the  Political  Thought  of  the 
Spanish- American  Revolution.  1938. 
$3.50. 


1931.  Charles  Callan  Tans  ill.  The  Pur- 
chase of  the  Danish  West  Indies, 
1932.  83,50. 

1932.  Dexter  Perkins.  The  Monroe 
Doctrine,  1826-1867.  1933.  (Out  of 
print.) 

1933.  Charles  Seymour.  American  Dip- 
lomacy during  the  World  War.  1934. 
Second  printing  1942.  S3. 00. 

1935.  Frank  H.  Simonds.  American 
Foreign  Policy  in  the  Post-war  Years. 
1935.  §2. 00. 

1936.  Julius  W.  Pratt.  Expansionists 
of  1898:  The  Acquisition  of  Hawaii 
and  the  Spanish  Islands.  1936.  (Out 
of  print.) 

1937.  Dexter  Perkins.  The  Monroe 
Doctrine,  1867-1907.  1937.   S3. 50. 

1938.  Arthur  Preston  W hi  taker.  The 
United  States  and  the  Independence  of 
Latin  America,  1800-1830.  1941. 
(Out  of  print.) 

1939.  William  Spence  Robertson.  France 
and  Latin-American  Independence. 
1939.  S3.75- 

1941.  Thomas  A.  Bailey.  The  Policy  of 
the  United  States  toward  the  Neutrals, 
1917-1918.     1942.      §3,50. 

1942.  Wilfrid  Hardy  Callcott.  The 
Caribbean  Policy  of  the  United 
States,  1890-1920.  1943.  S3. 50. 

1946.  Malbone  W.  Graham.  American 
Diplomacy  in  the  International  Com- 
munity. 1949.  S3. 25. 

1950.  Herbert  Feis.  The  Diplomacy  of 
the  Dollar,  First  Era,  1919-1932. 
1950.  $2.25. 

1951.  Edward  Halle tt  Carr.  German- 
Soviet  Relations  between  the  Two 
World  Wars,  1919-1939.  1951.  S3. 00. 

1953.  Howard  K.  Beale.  Theodore 
Roosevelt  and  the  Rise  of  America 
to  World  Power.  1956.  $6.00. 

1954.  Max  Beloff.  Foreign  Policy  and 
the  Democratic  Process.  1955.  S3. 00. 

1956.  Arthur  S.  Link.  Wilson  the 
Diplomatist:  A  Look  at  His  Major 
Foreign  Policies.  1937.  S4.00. 

1958.  Gordon  A .  Craig.  From  Bismarck 
to  Adenauer:  Aspects  of  German 
Statecraft.  1958.  S4.50. 

1961,  Herbert  Nicholas.  Britain  and 
the  U.S.A. 


The  Albert  Shaw  Lectures  on  Diplomatic  History,  1961 


BRITAIN   AND 
THE   U.S.A. 


Herbert  Nicholas 

St.  Antony's  College,  Oxford  University 


THE  JOHNS   HOPKINS   PRESS:   BALTIMORE 

1963 


Published  in  Great  Britain  by 

Chatto  &  Windus  Ltd. 

42  WiUiam  IV  Street 

London  W.C.2 


Library  of  Congress  Catalog  Card  Number:  63-10195 


©  H.  G.  Nicholas  1963 
Printed  in  Great  Britain 


IN  MEMORIAM 
R.  J.  C. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  witii  funding  from 

LYRASIS  IVIembers  and  Sloan  Foundation 


http://www.archive.org/details/britainusaOOnich 


CONTENTS 

Preface                                                            page  9 

'  1       The  Power  Relationship  11 

'  2      The  Axioms  of  British  Policy  22 

3  The  Wartime  Alliance  and  After  fe^-J  32 

4  The  Cold  War  AUiance  41 

5  The  Atom  58 

6  The  Far  East  70 

7  South-East  Asia  90 

8  The  Middle  East  104 
1 9  Europe:  Defence  122 
^10     European  Unification  140 

!  11     The  British  Economy  and  the  United  States  -U\%^-^i^^ 

!>  12     The  Partnership  /^  166 

Appendices 

A.  Principal  Treaties  and  Agreements  between 
the  British  and  United  States  Governments, 
June,  1945,  to  December,  1960  181 

B.  Meetings  of  British  Prime  Ministers  and 
United  States  Presidents  since  World  War  11  183 

C.  British  Ambassadors  to  the  United  States  and 
American  Ambassadors  to  the  United  PCing- 
dom  184 

Index  185 


PREFACE 

IT  is  a  measure  of  the  intimacy  that  exists  between  Britain  and 
the  U.S.A.  that  it  does  not  come  naturally  to  write  of  British 
foreign  policy  in  a  context  where  the  United  States  is  involved. 
Yet  that  is  what  this  book  is  about.  It  is  not  a  study  of  Anglo- 
American  relations,  nor  yet  of  British  public  opinion  in  relation 
to  the  U.S.A. ;  it  is  an  attempt  to  describe  and  analyse  the  dealings 
of  the  British  Government  with  the  American  Government  as 
they  have  been  affected  by  the  changes  wrought  by  the  war  and 
the  post-war  years.  It  is  not  a  history,  but  it  is  written  with  a 
conviction  that  &Y&ty  post  hoc  is  in  some  degree  2. propter  hoc;  con- 
sequently some  admixture  of  historical  narrative  has  been  judged 
indispensable  for  the  analysis.  It  is  highly  selective;  to  write  com- 
prehensively of  its  avowed  subject  is  little  less  than  to  write  a 
study  of  British  foreign  policy  in  all  its  aspects,  so  many  and  con- 
tinuous are  the  points  of  contact  between  the  two  Governments. 
Rather  than  attempt  the  impossible,  I  have  concentrated  on  certain 
topics  and  areas  that  seem  representative  and  important,  but  I 
am  very  conscious  that  it  is  often  a  hairbreadth  that  divides  the 
succinct  from  the  cursory. 

Too  many  kindnesses  lie  behind  the  preparation  and  execution 
of  this  book  for  me  to  thank  all  my  teachers  and  benefactors, 
conscious  and  unconscious,  British  and  American,  here.  But  I 
must  make  mention  of  my  debt  to  the  Leverhulme  Foundation 
and  St.  Antony's  College,  Oxford,  who  inspired  it,  to  the  Rocke- 
feller Foundation  who  encouraged  it,  and  to  the  John  Hopkins 
University  who  gave  it  a  most  hospitable  welcome  in  its  earUer 
dress  as  the  Albert  Shaw  L,ectures  in  Diplomatic  History  for  1961. 


I 

THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 

POLICY  involves  power.  The  fact  that  the  Anglo-American 
relationship  involves  a  great  deal  besides  does  not  alter  this 
primary  consideration.  Much  that  has  changed  in  British 
policy  towards  the  United  States  between  1938  and  I960  is  a  reflec- 
tion of  the  changing  power  ratio  of  the  two  countries  during  that 
period. 

A  country's  strength  can  be  expressed  in  many  ways,  and  the 
various  components  of  national  power  rise  or  fall  in  significance 
according  to  the  purpose  and  direction  in  which  they  are  applied. 
Thus  in  a  context  where  war  is  a  possibility  all  other  elements  of 
national  strength — natural  resources,  economic  potential,  etc. — are 
ultimately  reducible  to  one,  the  capacity  to  wage  war,  and  are  very 
properly  eliminated  from  calculation,  save  where  they  can  be  effect- 
ively mobilized  for  military  purposes.  However,  in  the  relations  of 
states  which  have  completely  foresworn  war  between  each  other  a 
somewhat  different  assessment  needs  to  be  made  of  the  elements  in 
tlie  power  complex.  (Not  wholly  different,  because  such  states  in 
relation  to  the  rest  of  the  world  will  still  operate  in  a  Hobbesian 
environment  and  this  fact  will  determine  much  even  of  their  mutual 
exchanges.)  Where  "brute"  force  is  ruled  out,  other  kinds  of  power 
and  influence  swell  proportionately.  Then,  almost  as  in  the  relation- 
ships of  social  groups  and  classes  within  one  law-abiding  country, 
assets  which  are  wholly  non-convertible  into  military  uses  will  have 
an  importance  and  ultimately  a  power  of  their  own — "mere"  riches, 
high  living  standards,  even  the  levels  of  cultural  accomplishment. 
These  are  tricky  elements  to  incorporate  in  any  calculus  and  the 
temptation  to  eliminate  or  demote  them  is  correspondingly  greater. 
But  since  war  is  as  little  conceivable  between  the  United  Kingdom 
and  the  United  States  as  between  any  states  in  the  world,  any  real- 
istic assessment  of  their  comparative  strengths  will  have  to  take 
some  account  even  of  these  strictly  civilian  elements. 

With  this  reminder,  let  us  begin  our  comparison  with  the  conven- 
tional items.  jThe  disparity  between  the  British  islands  and  the 
American  sub-continent  in  area  and  natural  resources  is  so  great  and 

11 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

so  familiar  as  not  to  require  any  statistical  demonstration  ^indeed, 
having  remained  virtually  unchanged  throughout  the  period  under 
review,  it  may  more  properly  be  regarded  as  in  the  province  of 
geography  than  of  history.  The  human  element  in  the  equation  has, 
however,  undergone  no  small  modification  since  1938;  though  in 
each  country  the  population  trend  has  been  continuously  upwards 
the  rates  of  growth  in  each  have  been  strikingly  discrepant : 

Population 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938         47,494,000  129,824,939 

I960         52,383,000  179,323,00a 

From  these  totals,  the  two  countries  at  various  times  put  the  fol- 
lowing numbers  into  the  uniform  of  their  armed  services: 

Service  Manpower 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  428  thousand  323  thousand 

(the  last  pre-war  year) 

1945         4,682  thousand  12,123*5  thousand 

(the  peak  year  of  World  War  II) 

I960  526  thousand-  2,502  thousand- 

Service  by  Service 

ARMY 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  226  thousand  185*5  thousand^ 

1945         2,931       „  8,268 

I960  264-3    „.  881 

NAVY 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  119thousand  119+    18  thousand  Marines 

1945  789        „  3,380-1-475 

I960  97-8     „  628  +  177 

1  Until  1947  the  U.S.  Air  Force  was  part  of  the  Army. 

12 


THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 
AIR   FORCE 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  83  thousand  ^ 

1945  963        „  2,282  thousand^ 

1960  163-5    „  816 

For  Britain,  as  a  sea-faring  island,  another  set  of  figures  has  an 
especial  relevance  here : 

MERCHANT   MARINE 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  I60,000seamen  51,000  seamen 

17,780,000  gross  tonnage       12,050,000  gross  tonnage 

1945  144,000  seamen  158,700  seamen 

17,702,000  gross  tonnage       38,500,000  gross  tonnage 

I960  I63,000seamen  49,153  seamen 

21,131,000  gross  tonnage       24,837,000  gross  tonnage 

It  is  not  easy  to  provide  figures  for  realistic  comparisons  of  fight- 
ing material  and  equipment  owing  to  rapid  technical  changes  in 
national  armaments,  but  a  few  items  may  be  of  some  significance : 


U.K. 

U.S.A. 

1938 
1960 

First-line  aircraft        2,000  approx. 
Strategic  bombers           180  approx. 

Destroyers 

1,500  approx. 
1,700  approx. 

U.K. 

U.S.A. 

1938 
I960 

149                                            206 
124                                              702 

^  Until  1947  the  U.S.  Air  Force  was  part  of  the  Army. 

13 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Submarines 
U.K.  U.S.A. 


1938 

54 

90 

1960 

48  (of  which  one,  the 

174  (of  which  17  are 

Dreadnought,  is 

nuclear-powered 

nuclear-powered) 

and  3  can  fire 
Polaris  nuclear 
missiles) 

The  budget  figures  of  armed  service  expenditures  undoubtedly 
need  to  be  read  in  the  light  of  the  higher  American  production  costs 
and  the  higher  rates  of  American  pay,  for  serviceman  and  civilian 
alike.  But  even  with  generous  allowance  made  for  these  discrep- 
ancies, the  figures  are  not  out  of  line  with  the  previous  tables  : 

Armed  Service  Budgets^ 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  £391  million  £231  million 

1 945         £4,184  million  £2  2,496  million 

1960         £l,6l6million  £16,295 million  . 

Defence  Budgets  as  Percentage  of  Gross  National  Product 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1% 

43% 

9% 

The  broad  picture  revealed  by  all  the  foregoing  military  statistics 
is  clear.  For  1938  it  is  of  a  Britain  whose  armed  strength,  all  round, 
is  at  least  equivalent  to  that  of  the  United  States,  and  in  its  im- 
mediate applicability  to  most  likely  trouble-spots  is  almost  certainly 
greater.  At  the  peak  of  their  respective  war  efforts  in  1945  Ameri- 
can military  power  far  outshone  the  British  in  all  branches 
though  not  by  so  much  as  population  differences  might  suggest. 

^  For  purposes  of  comparison,  in  these  and  aU  the  tables  which  follow 
I  have  converted  dollars  into  pounds  at  the  rates  of  $5.00  to  £{  in 
1938,  to  $4-00  to  £\  in  1945  and  |2-80  to  £\  in  1960. 

14 


1938 

15% 

1945 

50% 

I960 

7-2% 

THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 

But  whereas  for  Britain  this  represented  a  total  mobihzation  of  all 
resources,  human  and  natural,  such  as  could  not  possibly  be  sus- 
tained, unaided,  for  very  long,  the  United  States,  even  at  the  peak 
of  her  war  effort,  still  had  unused  resources  and  imperfectly  mobil- 
ized reserves;  she  was  a  giant  who  had  not  found  it  necessary  to 
exert  all  her  strength.  By  I960,  a  "normal"  cold  war  year  in  which 
each  country  was  seeking  to  preserve  a  balance  between  its  peaceful 
commitments  at  home,  its  peaceful  commitments  abroad  and  its  ex- 
penditure on  its  own  and  its  allies'  defence  all  over  the  world,  there 
was  a  formidable  discrepancy  in  the  military  might  which  each  of 
the  two  powers  mustered.  (In  every  branch,  by  every  criterion,  the 
gap  between  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  United  States  had 
widened  vastly  since  19387iAnd  in  fact  the  figures  understate  the 
case.  They  take  no  account  of  the  deadliest  weapons  of  all,  the 
niicie_&r,  and  of  the  means  of  delivering  them.  For  these  no  reliable 
figures  are  avanabfe/But  of  course  it  is  in  this  respect  more  than 
any  other  that  American  power  exceeds  British.')  And  when  one 
adds  to  offensive  potentiality  the  defensive  advantages  which  space 
alone  can  confer,  it  is  apparent  that  the  United  States,  in  this  sphere 
alone,  disposes  of  a  strength  not  only  vastly  greater  in  degree  but 
virtually  different  in  kind  from  that  which  Britain  can  command. 

If  one  looks  to  the  economy  behind  the  armaments  an  interesting 
contrast  emerges.  Traditionally  (i.e.  in  the  pre-atomic  age)  the  most 
reliable  indices  of  the  armaments  potential  of  any  economy  were  to 
be  found  in  its  steel  production  and  energy  consumption.  The  fol- 
lowing tables  give  the  main  figures  for  these : 


Crude  Steel  Production 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938         10,561,000  tons  28,805,000  tons 

1960         24,695,000  tons  -  90,067,000  tons 

Coal  Production 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938       226,993,000  tons  352,360,500  tons 

I960       193,604,000  tons-  384,892,900  tons 

15 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Petroleum  Consumption^  (thousand  metric  tons) 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  8,831  128,560  (approx.) 

1960         39,983  416,000  (      „     ) 

Electricity  Generated  (millions  of  kilowatt  hours) 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938         24,372  116,681 

1860        118,848  845,005 

For  the  United  Kingdom  virtually  the  whole  of  the  figures  for 
petroleum  and  a  sizeable  proportion  of  the  figures  for  electricity 
must  be  read  against  the  reminder  that  oil  is  an  imported  product, 
requiring  foreign  exchange  in  peace  and  exposed  to  every  hazard 
in  war.  Britain's  increased  reliance  on  it  is  therefore  an  index  of 
diminished  independence  as  well  as  of  increased  industrial  (and 
indeed  agricultural)  efficiency.  The  U.S.A.  by  contrast,  though  pre- 
ferring to  import  much  of  its  oil  from  cheaper  sources  of  supply, 
could  in  fact  live  off  its  domestic  reserves  for  an  indefinite  period  of 
time. 

In  this  connexion  the  high  and  increasing  oil  component  in  the 
United  Kingdom's  total  fuel  consumption  must  be  borne  in  mind 
when  considering  this  final  set  of  consumption  statistics : 

Energy  Consumption 
(in  millions  of  metric  tons  of  coal  equivalent) 

U.K.  U.S.A. 

1937  202-45  759-3 

I960  240-15  1,387-02 

Taking  these  statistics  as  a  whole,  the  most  striking  aspect  of 
them  is  the  way  in  which  the  known  and  obvious  discrepancies 
between  British  and  American  strength,  as  of  1938,  in  all  these 
traditional  components  of  a  war  potential  have  not  in  fact  so  greatly 
widened  by  I960.  The  ratios  of  each  item  are  roughly  as  follows : 

steel    coal  petroleum  electricity    total 

energy 
1938  1  :  2.75     1  :  1.5       1  :  15  1  :  4.8  1  :  3.75 

1960  1  :  3.5       1:2  1  :  14  1  :  6.5  1  :  5.75 

^  U.K.  figures  are  available  only  in  terms  of  weight,  U.S.  figures 
only  in  terms  of  volume.  Only  a  rough  conversion  is  therefore 
possible. 

16 


THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 

Making  allowance  for  the  much  greater  increase  in  the  population 
of  the  United  States,  it  would  be  tempting  to  conclude  that  at  least 
in  terms  of  war  potential  the  British  economy  had  kept  pace  with 
its  transatlantic  rival. 

But  if  this  were  so,  what  would  one  make  of  the  following 
figures  ? 

Gross  National  Product 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1938  £5,772  million  £17,045  million 

I960         £22,316-^    „  £179,727-       „ 

For  which  the  ratios  are  roughly 

1938       1:4  I960       1:8 

Even  when  all  possible  allowance  is  made  for  the  pre-war  over- 
valuation of  the  pound  and  a  possible  overvaluation  of  the  dollar, 
the  contrast  remains  too  great  to  be  explained  away.  Nor  can  we 
say  that  the  greater  American  product  is  made  up  of  frills  and 
furbelows,  while  the  smaller  British  one  consists  of  more  of  the 
hard  stuff  with  which  wars  are  waged.  The  observable  tastes  of  the 
Welfare  State  and  the  comparative  expenditures  of  the  two  coun- 
tries on  armaments  will  not  support  such  a  thesis.  The  truth,  in 
terms  of  comparative  British  and  American  power,  is  far  otherwise. 
It  is  that  the  revolution  since  1945  in  the  organization  of  mass 
destruction  has  made  the  old  criteria  almost  wholly  obsolete. 
Weight  of  steel  now  counts  for  less  than  the  precision  of  transistors; 
consumption  of  energy  (at  least  in  traditional  forms)  may  be  in 
inverse  proportion  to  total  productivity.  This  makes  more  difficult 
than  ever  the  distinction  in  an  economy  between  sword-making  and 
ploughshare  manufacture;  the  electronics  industry  provides  indis- 
criminately the  raw  materials  for  conspicuous  waste,  civilian  or 
military  style.  The  so-called  "higher"  American  standard  of  living 
does  truly  reflect  not  only  a  greater  production  of  consumer  goods 
of  an  acceptable  kind  but  also  an  economy  with  a  greater  military 
potential.  It  is  harder  to  measure  the  new  ingredients  in  this  poten- 
tial than  the  old,  if  only  because  the  tempo  of  technical  innovation 
is  so  prodigious.  All  the  same,  and  although  in  a  consumers'  society 
such  as  the  United  States  much  is  spent  which  by  any  and  every 
standard  is  waste,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  figures  for 

B  17 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

the  Gross  National  Product  are  a  broadly  reliable  index  to  com- 
parative British  and  American  war  potentials.  As  such,  they  rein- 
force the  evidence  of  the  purely  military  statistics,  of  a  widening 
gap  in  the  positions,  as  world  powers,  of  the  United  Kingdom  and 
the  United  States. 

To  this  one  should  add,  on  the  criterion  mentioned  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  chapter,  a  word  of  comparison  in  respect  of  the  purely 
pacific,  non-convertible  elements  in  the  economy.  The  most  obvious 
of  these  is  food  and  as  a  rough  indication  of  this  one  may  reason- 
ably take  the  figures  of  wheat  and  meat  production : 

Wheat  Production  (thousand  metric  tons) 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1934-8  (average  p.a.)  1,743  25,036 

1960 

Meat  Production  (thousand  metric  tons) 
U.K.  U.S.A. 

1936-9  (average  p.a.)  1,277        1935-9  (average  p.a.)  7,340 
I960 

In  a  world  in  which  the  problem  of  hunger  and  the  capacity  to  aid 
the  great  populations  of  backward  states  loom  so  large  the  contrasts 
here  expressed  are  of  considerable  significance.  British  dependence 
on  imported  food-stuffs  and  America's  agricultural  surplus  (cap- 
able, of  course,  of  enormous  expansion)  have  an  even  greater  im- 
portance for  their  relative  roles  in  world  politics  in  I960  than  they 
had  in  1938. 

To  the  discrepancies  so  far  observed  two  qualifications  need  to 
be  appended.  The  first  is  that  Britain  has  always  enjoyed  certain 
advantages  by  comparison  with  the  United  States  by  reason  of  the 
efficiencies  of  operation  open  to  her  small,  highly  integrated,  com- 
paratively well-disciplined  and  smooth-running  society.  She  may  be 
less  powerful,  but  what  power  she  has  she  can  more  easily  mobilize 
and  focus.  This  was  markedly  apparent  during  the  last  war  when  it 
was  possible  in  Britain  to  operate  and  win  almost  universal  accept- 
ance for  a  comprehensive  plan  for  maximizing  the  national  effort; 
the  U.S.A.'s  size,  heterogeneity  and  comparative  inexperience  in - 

18 


THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 

volved  her  in  much  greater  waste  and  duplication  of  effort.  This 
contrast  has  also  been  apparent  to  a  lesser  extent  in  some  aspects  of 
post-war  national  life,  e.g.  the  comparatively  lower  running  costs 
and  higher  efficiency  of  Whitehall.  Yet  too  much  must  not  be  made 
of  an  advantage  marginal  in  any  case  and  likely  to  prove  of  dimin- 
ishing value  with  every  year  that  passes.  Not  only  does  the  integra- 
tion of  American  life  proceed  apace,  but  against  the  diminishing 
economies  of  intimacy  have  to  be  set  the  ever-mounting  economies 
of  scale,  while  the  certain  gains  of  experience  are  likely  to  be  more 
and  more  offset,  in  a  revolutionary  world,  by  the  benefits  that 
probably  accrue  to  innovation  and  experiment. 

The  second  qualification  to  be  applied  to  the  statistical  com- 
parisons is  of  quite  another  order.  The  figures  as  they  stand  com- 
pletely fail  to  reflect  a  crucial  fact  about  the  United  Kingdom  past 
or  present,  namely  that  she  is  not  merely  an  island  group  moored 
off  the  north-east  coast  of  Europe  but  is  also  the  centre  of  a  world- 
wide Empire  and  Commonwealth.  Consequently  what  she  could 
mobilize  in  terms  of  men,  money,  natural  resources  and  industrial 
and  agricultural  potential  would  always  be  a  good  deal  more  than 
would  appear  from  these  merely  insular  statistics.  Perhaps  to  an 
American  observer  in  particular  this  consideration  requires  to  be 
mentioned,  since  the  elements  of  unity  in  the  Commonwealth  rela- 
tionship are  concealed  by  the  total  absence  of  any  Commonwealth 
constitution  and  by  the  wide  geographical  scattering  of  all  its  com- 
ponent members.  Furthermore  there  is  no  country  with  whom  the 
members  of  the  Commonwealth  are  more  concerned  to  establish  an 
independent,  bilateral  relationship  than  with  the  U.S.A.  Yet  even 
in  the  sphere  of  Anglo-American  relations  strictly  defined  they  are 
a  factor  to  be  included.  Lord  Franks  has  given  a  hint  of  the  way  in 
which  they  impinged  on  his  work  as  U.K.  ambassador  in  Wash- 
ington in  the  years  1948  to  1953  : 

"Every  fortnight  except  in  the  summer  the  eight  ambassadors  of 
the  Commonwealth  met  in  our  Embassy  to  exchange  views  and 
consult  informally  together.  We  discussed  everything,  the  move- 
ment of  affairs  in  the  world,  the  latest  phase  of  American  policy 
— and  the  opinions  of  our  different  countries  about  them.  We 
did  not  mince  words. "^ 

1  O.  Franks,  Britain  and  the  Tide  of  World  Affairs  (London,  New  York, 
1955),  p.  17. 

19 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

What  flows  from  such  a  relationship  is  clearly  incapable  of  ex- 
pression in  statistical  terms.  Certainly  there  is  an  obvious  sense  in 
which  the  Commonwealth  relationship  enhances  Britain's  own 
power.  With  the  Commonwealth  go  institutions  like  the  Sterling 
Area  and  preferential  arrangements  which  might  make  the  diifer- 
ence  between  life  and  death  for  a  trading  nation,  or  facilities,  like 
the  Woomera  rocket-range  or  Christmas  Island,  indispensable  to  a 
competitor  in  the  post-war  nuclear  weapons  race.  But  it  is  easier  to 
recognize  the  existence  of  such  factors  than  to  bring  them  into  any 
power  equation.  The  relevant  statistics  of  each  country's  power 
index  cannot  simply  be  added  to  the  United  Kingdom  total,  as  the 
steel  production  of  Illinois  might  be  added  to  that  of  Pennsylvania; 
whether  or  not  the  United  Kingdom  can  enhance  its  own  strength 
in  any  situation  which  involves  the  U.S.A.  depends  upon  a  range  of 
unpredictables  which  varies  from  issue  to  issue  and  Commonwealth 
member  to  Commonwealth  member.  Consequently  to  put  these 
factors  into  the  accounting  is  hardly  practicable;  moreover,  if  they 
are  to  be  inserted,  they  must  in  fairness  be  accompanied  by  some 
items  which  would  go  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  ledger.  If  the 
Commonwealth  brings  strength,  it  also  creates  responsibilities. 
There  are  outposts  to  be  defended,  backward  territories  clamouring 
for  capital,  a  huge  communications  network  to  be  maintained. 
There  has  to  be  a  Colonial  Development  Corporation.  There  is  a 
Colombo  Plan.  Here  again  one  is  moving  into  the  realm  of  incom- 
mensurables.  One  can  only  say  that  the  net  result  is  the  creation  of 
something  considerably  different  from,  and  larger  than,  the  mere 
insular  unit  which  is  the  British  Isles.  How  different  and  how  much 
larger  will  depend  upon  time  and  circumstance  and  will  vary  too, 
not  only  in  itself  but,  what  may  be  almost  as  important  in  this  con- 
text, according  to  the  estimate  Americans  have  of  it.  In  1938  the 
American  image  of  it  was  largely  an  imperial  image  already  in 
many  respects  out  of  date  and  tinged  with  more  than  a  shade  of 
suspicion  and  hostility;  by  I960  the  suspicion  and  hostilit)'  had 
waned,  to  be  replaced  generally  by  an  appreciation  of  the  Com- 
monwealth's stabilizing  influence  in  a  shaky  world,  but  with  the 
appreciation  went  more  scepticism  about  the  Commonwealth's  con- 
tinuing unity  and  less  disposition  to  see  the  Commonwealth  as 
necessarily  an  addition  to  Britain's  wealth  and  power. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  Commonwealth  must  remain  an  .v-factor 
in  these  statistical  comparisons.  What  it  adds  is  important  and  even 

20 


THE  POWER  RELATIONSHIP 

while  we  fail  to  measure  it  we  should  take  care  to  remember  that  it 
is  there.  But  not  only  is  its  contribution  uncertain  in  amount;  it  is 
also  variable  in  incidence.  The  Commonwealth  is  not  a  set  of  de- 
pendencies to  be  commanded;  it  is  a  set  of  associations  which  may 
or  may  not  be  invoked.  Its  members  have  their  own  relations  with 
the  United  States;  they  are  at  once  in  and  out  of  the  direct  Anglo- 
American  relationship.  For  these  reasons,  though  the  Common- 
wealth may  affect,  it  is  not  going  to  upset,  the  balance  of  power 
otherwise  existing  between  London  and  Washington. 
[JThus  when  due  account  is  taken  of  the  two  qualifications  men- 
tioned, the  main  conclusions  remain.  They  are  that  Britain  is  over- 
shadowed, in  respect  of  all  the  major  power  components  of  a 
modern  state,  by  the  United  States,  and  that  despite  the  increase  in 
British  economic  strength  since  1938  the  gap  between  British 
military  and  economic  capacities  and  those  of  the  United  States  has 
widened  continuously  from  then  until  now.  Why  this  is  not  a  matter 
for  alarm  or  despondency,  but  how  nonetheless  it  has  its  own  im- 
portance for  the  relations  of  the  two  countries,  is  in  part  the  subject- 
matter  of  the  pages  that  follow.! 


21 


2 

THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  [POLICY 

IT  is  not  practicable  to  say  exactly  when  it  became  an  axiom  of 
British  policy  that  war  against  the  United  States  was  out  of  the 
question.  It  may  have  been,  as  some  contend,  a  concomitant  of 
the  abandonment  of  "splendid  isolation"  at  the  turn  of  the  century; 
it  may  go  back  to  the  decision  to  arbitrate  the  Alabama  Claims  and 
to  abide  by  the  results  of  the  arbitration.  No  doubt  it  took  posses- 
sion of  the  public  and  the  bureaucratic  minds  by  degrees  and  almost, 
as  it  were,  insensibly.  It  never  took  form  as  a  promulgated 
"Doctrine";  the  most  lasting  amities  are  not  promulgated,  they  are 
lived,  and  their  birth  is  as  little  a  matter  of  record  as  their  growth. 
But  whenever  we  may  choose  to  regard  this  renunciation  of  war  as 
having  become  universally  accepted  in  Britain,  one  characteristic  of 
the  British-American  relation  has  been  that  at  all  times,  even  when 
the  two  Governments  were  official  enemies,  each  country's  course 
has  had  champions  in  the  other.  The  lines  of  disagreement  have 
always  run  within  as  much  as  between  us.  Or,  to  put  it  another  way, 
for  some  elements  in  each  country  at  all  times  war  with  the  other 
has  been  anathema;  the  history  of  Anglo-American  relations  down 
to  World  War  I  could  almost  be  written  in  terms  of  the  steady 
spread  of  the  idea  that'  no  disagreement  justified  a  war  between 
Britain  and  the  United  States. . 

This,  of  course,  is  a  reflection  of  the  obvious  fact  that  since  both 
countries  are  democracies  their  relations  are  ultimately  determined 
by  their  citizens  and  that  in  thinking  about  each  other's  country 
Britons  and  Americans  extend  the  idea  of  national  interest  to  cover 
a  host  of  intangible  elements  of  sentiment  and  affection.  So  much 
do  we  do  this  that  in  Britain  (and,  I  suspect,  in  the  U.S.A.  too)  it 
does  not  come  naturally  to  us  to  use  the  term  "foreign  policy"  in 
an  Anglo-American  context.  "Foreign  policy"  is  something  which 
Britain  has  in  relation  to  non-Engiish-speaking  countries,  in 
Europe,  Asia,  Latin  America,  etc.  What  we  have  in  relation  to  the 
United  States  is  something  somehow  different.  It  is  more  nearly 
analogous  to  our  relationship  with  the  independent  members  of  the 
Commonwealth,  particularly  those  of  European  stock.  It  is  com- 

22 


THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  POLICY 

posed,  for  various  people  in  varying  degrees,  of  the  identity  of  race, 
the  shared  inheritance,  the  common  speech  and,  since  1918  and 
again  since  1945,  the  alhance  in  arms.  The  elements  are  familiar 
and  do  not  require  recapitulation,  but  it  is  important  to  remember 
that  even  in  the  sharpest  clash  of  "national  interests",  as  conven- 
tional diplomacy  understands  the  term,  these  multiple  ties  and 
habitudes  constitute  a  unique  framework  within  which  the  diplomat 
has  to  resolve  the  differences  that  reach  him  without  resort  to  force. 
This  is  the  first,  and  iron,  law  of  British  policy  towards  the  U.S.A. 

The  negative  principle  that  war  with  the  U.S.A.  is  unthinkable 
has,  of  course,  a  positive  corollary.  Since  1775,  however,  this  has 
not  lent  itself  to  as  crisp  a  formulation.  The  advocates  of  amity 
with  the  U.S.A.  have  varied  in  number  and  enthusiasm  and,  above 
all,  in  the  type  and  degree  of  intimacy  which  they  have  urged. 
Since  the  divorce  so  painfully  made  absolute  at  Yorktown,  time  and 
circumstance  have  between  them  virtually  obliterated  both  the 
causes  of  the  quarrel  and  the  hard  feelings  it  occasioned.  But 
opinion  in  Britain  has  never  been  agreed  as  to  whether  the  ideal 
relationship  now  to  be  aimed  at  is  a  re-marriage  or  a  let-bygones-be- 
bygones  friendship.  It  only  knows  that  a  special  relationship  exists. 
The  level  of  the  U.S.A. 's  popularity  in  Britain  has  risen  and  sunk, 
but  public  attitudes  towards  the  U.S.A.,  whether  approbatory  or 
hostile,  have  always  been  tinged  with  a  set  of  expectations  different 
from  those  the  public  entertains  in  respect  of  any  "foreign"  country. 
Whether  the  U.S.A.  is  thought  to  be  acting  well  or  ill,  she  is  judged 
by  a  set  of  standards,  moral,  Anglo-Saxon,  and  familial  which  have 
more  in  common  with  those  that  would  be  applied  to  Canada, 
Australia,  or  New  Zealand  than  anything  else.  This  has  not  neces- 
sarily provided  British  Governments  with  helpful  directives  in  the 
framing  of  official  policy  where  the  U.S.A.  is  involved,  since  it  is 
notoriously  difficult  to  translate  family  attitudes  into  formal  state- 
ments. But  at  least/isince  World  War  I  British  governments  have 
given  the  highest  priority  to  establishing  and  maintaining  close 
understanding  with  the  U.S.A.  jand  this  has  been  accepted  by  the 
public  as,  ceteris  paribus,  a  self-justifying  explanation  of  any  act  of 
policy.  "Ceteris  paribus"  has  worn  different  meanings  according  to 
the  critic's  assessment  of  Britain's  needs  and  strength,  and  her  pre- 
cise degree  of  dependence  on  the  U.S.A.  for  the  attainment  of  her 
vital  national  objectives,  but  in  this  century  no  responsible  element 

23 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  British  opinion  has  ever  denied  the  high  value  of  close  amity 
with  the  U.S.A. 

But  while  the  level  of  co-operation  fluctuated  certain  principles 
about  its  style  won  common  acceptance.  The  first  was  the  desir- 
ability, wherever  possible,  of  avoiding  formal,  written  agreements. 
This  was  partly  an  expression  of  the  easy  intimacy  that  existed; 
written  alliances  are  made  with  strangers,  friends  have  no  need  of 
codified  pledges.  It  was  also  a  by-product  of  a  tough  folk  memory, 
particularly  strong  on  the  American  side,  which  regarded  all  diplo- 
matic agreements  as  the  entangling  wiles  not  merely  of  a  foreign 
power  but  of  a  positively  illiberal  ancien  regime,  wherever  located. 
The  corollary  of  this  was  a  tradition  of  frank  speaking  and  an  easy 
exchange  of  confidences  at  most  levels  of  government,  the  political 
and  the  bureaucratic.  Much  depended,  of  course,  on  the  person- 
alities involved,  the  topics  arising  and  the  mood  of  the  moment, 
but  there  existed  between  London  and  Washington  even  in  the 
heyday  of  American  inter-war  isolationism  a  freer  traffic  of  inform- 
ation and  consultation  than  regularly  obtained  with  any  other 
extra-Commonwealth  capital.  This  was  accompanied,  as  was  proper 
to  two  free  countries,  by  a  continuous  flow  of  unofficial  comment 
and  consultation  in  public  and  in  private  on  each  other's  affairs  so 
that  in  some  sense  there  always  existed  an  Anglo-American  com- 
munity of  discourse  which  powerfully  affected  the  behaviour  of 
each  Government  to  the  other  and  to  the  world  outside. 

There  was  a  recognition,  burnt  into  the  British  mind  by  the  Sack- 
ville-West  incident  if  by  nothing  else,  that  the  frank  exchange  of 
opinion  should  stop  short  of  any  suggestion  of  interference  in  each 
other's  internal  party  conflicts.  Yet  it  was  a  paradox  of  the  relation- 
ship that  its  working  efficiency  was  indubitably  affected  by  changes 
of  administration  in  each  country,  although  the  fiction  had  to  be 
preserved  that  this  was  none  of  either  country's  business.  To  a  con- 
siderable extent,  of  course,  the  common  interest  in  co-operation 
persisted  through  changing  presidencies  and  premierships  but  it 
was  undeniable  that  it  made  a  great  deal  of  difference  to  the  re- 
lationship whether  there  were  like-minded  regimes  in  London  and 
Washington  or  not. 

In  1938  like-mindedness  was  conspicuously  absent.  Though  the 
reforming  impulse  of  the  New  Deal  had  to  a  large  extent  spent 
itself  in  Washington  this  was  in  part  at  least  because  its  place  had 
been  taken  by  a  lively  concern  for  the  future  of  democracy  outside 

24 


THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  POLICY 

the  U.S.A.  Although  there  were  hesitancies  and  ambiguities  about 
Roosevelt's  foreign  policy  its  main  disposition  was  clear  enough,  to 
side  with  the  free  countries  against  the  rising  menace  of  the  Axis 
powers.  In  Britain,  on  the  other  hand,  there  persisted  in  office  a 
Conservative  administration,  nominally  national,  whose  reforming 
ambitions  at  home  had  always  been  extremely  modest  and  whose 
resistance  to  tyranny  abroad  had  been  spasmodic  and  inadequate. 
Between  the  confident,  progressive  temper  of  a  Roosevelt  who 
thought  he  had  a  "rendezvous  with  destiny"  which  he  could  shape 
to  his  own  purposes  and  the  cautious  conservative  disposition  of  a 
Chamberlain  there  was  a  gigantic  gulf  of  comprehension.  How 
wide  it  was  was  catastrophically  revealed  in  an  incident  in  January, 
1938. 

This  was  the  celebrated  proposal  which  Roosevelt  confidentially 
adumbrated  to  Chamberlain  to  call  an  international  conference  in 
Washington  to  discuss  the  underlying  causes  of  world  tension  and 
to  work  out  possible  bases  for  a  settlement.  In  view  of  the  hold  that 
isolationists  had  established  over  American  opinion  this  presi- 
dential initiative  was  a  courageous  move  such  as  might  have  been 
a  prelude  to  the  U.S.A.  taking  her  share  in  the  task  of  keeping  the 
peace.  Almost  any  British  prime  minister  at  any  time  since  Ver- 
sailles would  have  welcomed  it  with  open  arms.  To  Chamberlain 
however  it  appeared  as  a  "bomb"  which  would  explode  amidst  his 
own  neat  plans  for  European  appeasement;  or,  as  he  put  it  to 
Roosevelt,  there  would  be  "a  risk  of  his  proposal  cutting  across 
our  efforts  here".^  In  face  of  this  rebuff  Roosevelt's  initiative 
withered  on  the  vine,  Chamberlain  persisting  in  his  attitude  even 
after  Eden  had  made  clear  his  opposition  and  Sumner  Welles  had 
warned  the  British  ambassador,  Sir  Ronald  Lindsay,  that  "the 
silence  of  the  British  Government  (in  regard  to  the  plan)  might 
possibly  be  construed  as  an  indication  of  apathy  on  the  part  of  Great 
Britain".  2 

From  some  points  of  view  the  gap  in  the  thinking  of  the  two 
Governments  was  not  great.  As  the  leading  American  historians  of 
the  period  put  it,  "it  is  plain  that  the  President's  project  .  .  .  was 
intended  to  buttress  the  attempt  of  Britain  to  reach  agreement  with 
Germany.  Though  involving  no  approval  of  British  appeasement, 

1  K.  FeiUng,  Neville  Chamberlain  (London,  New  York,  1946),  p.  336. 

2  Foreign  Relations  of  the  United  States,  1938,  Vol.  I,  p.  125. 

25 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

it  certainly  implied  acceptance  of  it".^  Thus  the  obstacle  to  co- 
operation lay  not  in  a  clash  of  policies  but  in  a  clash  of  tempera- 
ments and  philosophies.  Had  Churchill  or  Eden  been  Prime  Min- 
ister, or  had  the  latter's  views  as  Foreign  Secretary  prevailed,  a 
positive  response  would  have  been  sent  with  consequences  which 
are  incalculable. 

The  incident  well  illustrates,  however,  the  sort  of  diastole  and 
systole  which  characterized  Anglo-American  relations  in  the  thirties. 
The  legacy  of  World  War  I  was  an  ever  more  powerful  America 
swinging  between  isolationism  and  an  acceptance  of  her  world 
commitments,  and  a  weakened  Britain  which  alternated  between 
seeking  allies  and  contracting  out  of  her  obligations.  Had  American 
policy  continued  on  a  Wilsonian  course  Britain's  task  would  have 
been  easy;  standing  firm  in  face  of  Axis  threats,  Britain  would  have 
made  the  task  of  the  Wilsonians  and  their  successors  a  great  deal 
simpler.  As  it  was,  British  appeasers  could  always  contend,  as 
Chamberlain  contended,  that  "it  is  always  best  and  safest  to  count 
on  nothing  from  the  Americans  but  words'';^  at  the  same  time 
every  surrender  by  British  appeasers  strengthened  the  hand  of 
American  isolationists  in  their  illogical  but  potent  contention  that 
the  United  States  must  not  become  involved  in  European  disputes 
in  which  all  the  values  they  cared  for  were  being  surrendered  with- 
out a  struggle.  In  such  a  situation  British  diplomacy  could  make 
little  or  no  use  of  the  existing  habits  of  consultation  and  co-opera- 
tion with  the  U.S.A.,  because  it  was  not  prepared  to  make  the 
initial  affirmation  of  purpose  around  which  sympathetic  Americans 
might  rally.  No  doubt  a  formidable  set  of  isolationist  barriers  had 
by  1938  been  erected  in  the  U.S.A. — the  Johnson  Act,  the  Neutral- 
ity Acts,  and  the  sort  of  mentality  which  shuddered  at  Roosevelt's 
"Quarantine"  speech  in  1937 — but  the  known  sympathies  of  the 
President  and  his  advisers  should  have  served  in  1938  as  they  did 
in  1940  to  give  British  policy  a  fixed  point  to  steer  by.  The  failure 
to  evolve  an  effective  Anglo-American  response  to  the  dictators  had 
its  roots  in  history,  in  the  disappointment  over  the  League,  the  dis- 
agreement over  War  Debts,  the  failures  of  economic  co-operation, 
the  rival  alibis  for  the  Manchurian  fiasco.  But  it  also  reflected  the 

^  W.  L.  Langer  and  S.  E.  Gleason,  The  Challenge  to  Isolation  (New 
York,  London,  1952),  p.  25. 

2  Felling,  op.  cit.,  p.  325. 

26 


THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  POLICY 

low  tone  of  British  democracy  in  the  thirties,  the  basically  negative 
and  timorous  style  of  British  public  policy  in  all  its  aspects  which 
found  it  had  less  in  common  with  the  bracing  affirmations  of  the 
New  Deal  than  with  the  decadence  of  the  French  Third  Republic. 

If  one  asks,  therefore,  what  was  the  place  held  by  the  United 
States  in  the  British  Government's  world  view  in  1938  the  answer 
must  be  that  while  in  principle  the  importance  of  American  co- 
operation was  recognized,  in  practice  British  policy  was  being 
directed  as  if,  as  a  world  power,  the  U.S.A.  did  not  exist.  In  Europe 
the  problem  was  to  find  a  way  of  getting  along  with  the  Axis 
powers,  on  the  assumption  that  their  demands  could  be  met  without 
war  and  a  general  settlement  reached  without  bringing  either  the 
U.S.A.  or  the  U.S.S.R.  into  the  picture.  (Though  of  course  if  the 
U.S.A.  could  be  induced  to  support  British  policy  its  endorsement 
was  welcome — cf.  Chamberlain's  attempt  in  January,  1938,  to  get 
the  U.S.A.  to  take  identical  action  in  recognizing  Italy's  conquest 
of  Ethiopia.  But  when,  as  in  this  case,  the  U.S.A.  would  not  con- 
form, and  indeed  was  sharply  critical,  the  United  Kingdom  went 
ahead  without  her.)  Outside  Europe  there  was  only  one  theatre  in 
which  British  policy  needed  to  take  serious  account  of  the  United 
States:  that  was  the  Far  East.  Here  indeed,  as  the  Brussels  Confer- 
ence of  1937  showed,  there  was  a  broad  identity  of  views,  a  general 
British  willingness  to  accept  an  American  initiative  and  a  marked 
reluctance  to  go  a  step  beyond  the  United  States.  As  Eden  put  it, 
according  to  Cordell  Hull,  "Britain  would  neither  attempt  to  take 
the  lead  .  .  .  nor  push  the  United  States  out  in  front,  but .  .  .  would 
base  her  policy  on  American  policy".^  Since  the  U.S.A.  was  deter- 
mined not  to  assume  any  commitments  which  would  arouse  isola- 
tionist suspicion,  no  joint  action  was  taken.  The  most  that  the 
United  States  would  ever  agree  to  was  action  "concurrently"  and 
"on  parallel  lines" — phrases  that  recur  again  and  again  in  this  con- 
text. In  a  crisis  even  this  could  not  be  guaranteed.  Thus  when  in 
December,  1937,  the  United  States  gunboat  Panay  was  sunk  by 
Japanese  planes  near  Nanking  the  United  States  protest  was  de- 
livered independently,  with  no  attempt  to  concert  with  Britain 
whose  gunboat,  the  Ladybird,  had  also  been  damaged  in  the  same 
attack. 

Perhaps  the  paradoxical  character  of  Anglo-American  relations 
at  this  time  is  best  expressed  in  the  messages  which  passed  between 

1  Cordell  Hull,  Memoirs,  Vol.  I  (New  York,  1948),  p.  553. 

27 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Chamberlain  and  Roosevelt  in  1937  about  a  possible  visit  by  the 
Prime  Minister  to  the  United  States.  The  proposal  appears  to  have 
originated  with  Roosevelt  in  July  that  Chamberlain  should  visit 
Washington  "as  soon  as  conditions  appear  to  warrant  your  doing 
so"  to  discuss  Anglo-American  "co-operation  in  the  promotion  of 
economic  stability  and  peace  in  the  world".  Chamberlain  appears  to 
have  accepted  in  principle,  but  to  have  stressed  the  importance  of 
"proper  preparation"  and  "timing".^  A  follow-up  letter  came  from 
Roosevelt  asking  for  further  suggestions  as  to  useful  preparator)' 
steps.  Then  six  weeks  seem  to  have  elapsed  while  Chamberlain, 
partly  on  holiday  and  partly  at  home,  ruminated  his  rejoinder; 
when  he  finally  replied  on  28  September  it  was  in  supremely  nega- 
tive terms:  "I  am  afraid  I  cannot  suggest  any  way  in  which  the 
meeting  between  us  could  be  expedited,  though  I  greatly  regret  this 
both  on  personal  and  official  grounds."  Most  extraordinary,  how- 
ever, was  the  reasoning  which  preceded  this  conclusion — that  while 
in  Europe  there  was  an  easing  of  tension,  in  the  Far  East  the  situa- 
tion "justified  our  worst  fears"  and  that  he  saw  "little  prospect  at 
the  present  time  of  being  able  to  improve  it  by  action  on  the  part  of 
the  Western  Powers".^  In  other  words,  whether  things  were  im- 
proving, as  in  Europe,  or  deteriorating,  as  in  the  Far  East,  the  con- 
clusion was  the  same — that  the  concerting  of  policy  with  the  U.S.A. 
was  not  a  serious  objective  of  British  statesmanship. 

Thus  amity  with  the  United  States  was  not  so  much  ignored  as 
taken  for  granted.  In  a  world  view  which  involved  a  kind  of  British 
isolationism  where  mainland  Europe  was  concerned  and  a  cultiva- 
tion of  her  extra-European  and  imperial  gardens,  American  acqui- 
escence in  such  a  policy  was  tacitly  assumed.  Thus  Mr.  Joseph 
Kennedy  (the  United  States  ambassador)  reported  to  Washington 
a  conversation  which  he  held  with  Lord  Halifax  on  12  October, 
1938:  "First  of  all,  Halifax  does  not  believe  that  Hitler  wants  to 
have  a  war  with  Great  Britain  and  he  does  not  think  there  is  any 
sense  in  Great  Britain  having  a  war  with  Hitler  unless  there  is 
direct  interference  with  England's  Dominions  [j"/V}.  The  future  of 
England,  as  he  sees  it,  is  to  strengthen  herself  in  the  air  .  .  .  Then 
after  that  to  let  Hitler  go  ahead  and  do  what  he  likes  in  Central 
Europe  .  .  .  Therefore  he  sees  the  future  of  England  lies  in  her 
maintaining  her  relations  in  the  Mediterranean,  keeping  friendly 

1  Foreign  Relations  of  the  United  States  1937,  Vol.  I,  p.  113. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  136-7. 

28 


THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  POLICY 

with  Portugal,  he  hopes  Spain,  Greece,  Turkey,  Egypt,  Palestine  . .  . 
plus  England's  connexions  in  the  Red  Sea,  fostering  the  Dominion 
connections,  and  staying  very  friendly  with  the  United  States,  and 
then,  as  far  as  everything  else  is  concerned.  Hitler  can  do  the  best 
he  can  for  himself."^ 

Fortunately  this  attitude  did  not  obtain  at  all  levels  in  the  Gov- 
ernment. Not  only  did  Eden,  as  his  resignation  in  1938  evinced, 
hold  a  different  opinion  about  the  imperative  necessity  of  working 
with  the  United  States,  but  Whitehall  at  the  official  levels  kept 
fairly  steadily  in  mind  the  importance  of  consultation  and,  wherever 
possible,  co-operation  with  their  American  opposite  numbers. 
Otherwise  the  prospect  of  effective  co-operation  when  the  hour  and 
the  will  were  propitious  would  have  been  slight  indeed. 

Rooted  as  it  was  in  the  conviction  that  appeasement  would  bring 
peace,  the  government's  policy  of  comparative  indifference  to  co- 
operation with  the  U.S.A.  underwent  a  marked  change  after 
Munich  when  appeasement  was  found  to  be  a  sham  and  war  began 
to  appear  inescapable.  If  there  was  to  be  a  war  in  Europe  it  was 
apparent  even  to  Chamberlain  that  American  aid  would  be  needed 
to  win  it.  Then  when,  on  4  January,  1939,  Roosevelt  frankly  warned 
that  "there  are  many  methods  short  of  war,  but  stronger  and  more 
effective  than  mere  words,  of  bringing  home  to  aggressor  Govern- 
ments the  aggregate  sentiments  of  our  people".  Chamberlain  told 
Kennedy  that  he  welcomed  the  pronouncement  as  having  brought 
about  Hitler's  "quieting  down".^  When,  so  far  from  having  quieted 
down,  Hitler  proceeded  to  seize  what  was  left  of  Czechoslovakia, 
and  Chamberlain  was  led  to  make  the  sudden  announcement  of 
Britain's  pledge  to  Poland,  his  stimulus  for  so  acting,  if  we  may 
believe  Kennedy,  derived  equally  from  popular  British  protests 
against  appeasement,  demand  for  an  effective  peace  front  and  fear 
of  American  criticisms.  At  about  the  same  time,  21  March,  Halifax 
suggested  to  Kennedy  that  if  the  United  States  Atlantic  fleet  could 
be  moved  back  to  San  Diego  it  would  lighten  the  pressure  of 
Pacific  policing  upon  the  British,  who  were  unable  to  spare  vessels 
from  the  Mediterranean  to  go  to  Singapore.  The  President  com- 
plied and  the  move  was  not  lost  on  the  Japanese. 

In  June  this  positive  soliciting  of  American  co-operation  was 

1  Op.  cit.,  1938,  Vol.  I,  pp.  85-86. 

2  Langer  and  Gleason,  op.  cit.,  p.  59. 

29 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

symbolized  in  the  visit  to  Washington  of  the  King  and  Queen  (the 
idea  had  originally  been  hatched  in  1937).  More  practically,  it  found 
expression  in  the  announcement  in  April  of  the  appointment  as 
British  ambassador  of  Philip  Kerr,  Lord  Lothian.  This  brought  to 
the  embassy  in  August  what  it  had  not  had  for  some  years,  a  public 
figure  in  his  own  right  who  had  a  deep  conviction  of  the  primacy 
of  Anglo-American  understanding  and  a  capacity  for  conveying 
this  beyond  mere  diplomatic  circles  to  the  American  press  and 
public  outside.  When,  by  the  summer,  war  in  Europe  was,  to  almost 
every  clear-sighted  eye,  inescapable,  Britain  responded  quickly  to 
the  President's  suggestion  that  in  order  to  enable  the  U.S.A.  in 
time  of  war  to  mount  a  neutrality  patrol  300  miles  out  to  sea  the 
American  navy  and  aircraft  should  be  allowed  to  use  the  harbour 
facilities  of  Trinidad,  Santa  Lucia  and  Bermuda.  In  all  this  there 
was  a  tacit  pro-ally  cast  to  the  "neutrality"  involved.  The  object  of 
the  patrol  was  to  be  the  collection  of  information  on  belligerent 
activities,  particularly  submarine  activities,  within  the  patrol  zone 
and  no  one  needed  to  be  told  whose  submarines  would  be  exposed 
to  detection  and  which  side  would  benefit  from  receipt  of  such 
information.  Unfortunately,  of  course,  there  were  limits  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  the  mantle  of  neutrality  could  be  stretched  in  the 
allies'  favour  and  the  Roosevelt  administration's  attempt  to  get  the 
Neutrality  Act  revised  to  permit  the  allies  to  obtain  arms  on  a  "cash 
and  carry"  basis  was  frustrated  by  a  group  of  Congressmen  who 
knew  better  than  the  President  that  there  would  be  no  war  in 
Europe  that  summer.  All  the  same  this  did  not  prevent  the  State 
and  War  Departments,  as  well  as  the  White  House,  giving  every 
encouragement  even  before  September,  1939,  to  the  proposal  for 
establishing  an  official  British  Purchasing  Agency  in  the  United 
States. 

The  outbreak  of  war  accelerated  the  drive  for  American  aid  and 
co-operation  rather  than  introducing  any  new  element  into  British 
policy  towards  the  U.S.A.  Before  decisive  shifts  in  the  scale  or 
degree  of  intimacy  could  occur  two  things  were  needed,  the  sub- 
stitution for  Chamberlain  of  a  British  leader  who  could  really  com- 
mand the  confidence  and  respect  of  the  American  President  and  his 
administration,  and  a  break-through  in  the  long  and,  as  it  seemed 
from  London,  painfully  slow  battle  against  the  forces  of  American 
isolationism.  As  it  turned  out,  the  two  developments  occurred 
virtually  simultaneously,  precipitated  by  the  success  of  the  German 

30 


THE  AXIOMS  OF  BRITISH  POLICY 

offensive  in  the  spring  of  1940.  The  German  triumph  in  Norway, 
in  bringing  Churchill  to  power  gave  the  shaping  of  British  policy 
to  a  man  who  had  always  held  co-operation  with  the  U.S.A.  to  be  a 
precondition  of  victory  in  war  or  success  in  peace.  The  sudden 
awareness  created  by  Dunkirk  of  what  a  British  defeat  might  mean 
for  the  U.S.A.  enabled  Roosevelt  to  effect  the  destroyer-bases  deal, 
and  initiate  lend-lease  and  the  policy  of  "all  aid  short  of  war" 
which  were  the  foundations  of  the  Anglo-American  wartime 
alliance. 


31 


I 


3 

THE   WARTIME  ALLIANCE  AND  AFTER 

N  a  notable  passage  in  his  Second  World  War  Churchill  de- 
scribes his  reaction  to  the  news  of  Pearl  Harbor : 

"So  we  had  won  after  all!  Yes,  after  Dunkirk;  after  the  fall  of 
France;  after  the  horrible  episode  of  Oran;  after  the  threat  of  in- 
vasion, when,  apart  from  the  Air  and  the  Navy,  we  were  an 
almost  unarmed  people;  after  the  deadly  struggle  of  the  U-boat 
war — the  Battle  of  the  Atlantic,  gained  by  a  hand's  breath;  after 
seventeen  months  of  lonely  fighting  and  nineteen  months  of  my 
responsibility  in  dire  stress,  we  had  won  the  war.  England  would 
live;  Britain  would  live;  the  Commonwealth  of  Nations  and  the 
Empire  would  live.  How  long  the  war  would  last  or  in  what 
fashion  it  would  end,  no  man  could  tell,  nor  did  I  at  this  moment 
care.  Once  again  in  our  long  island  history  we  should  emerge, 
however  mauled  or  mutilated,  safe  and  victorious.  We  should 
not  be  wiped  out.  Our  history  would  not  come  to  an  end.  We 
might  not  even  have  to  die  as  individuals.  Hitler's  fate  was 
sealed.  Mussolini's  fate  was  sealed.  As  for  the  Japanese,  they 
would  be  ground  to  powder.  All  the  rest  was  merely  the  proper 
application  of  overwhelming  force  .  .  .  Many  disasters,  im- 
measurable cost  and  tribulation  lay  ahead,  but  there  was  no  doubt 
about  the  end."^ 


/"pThe  assurance  of  American  aid  embodied  in  Lend-Lease  had 
perhaps  been  a  guarantee  that  in  this  worst  of  her  wars  Britain 
would  not  be  defeated,  but  only  America's  actual  entry  into  the 
fight  on  Britain's  side  provided  the  assurance  that  Britain  would 
actually  winXThe  awareness,  after  the  fall  of  France,  that  victory 
depended  on  the  U.S.A.  sank  deep  into  the  consciousness  of  every 
Briton  and  lay  behind  every  major  decision  that  the  Government 
took  from  that  time  onwardsj  To  secure  the  closest  possible  co- 

1  The  Second  World  War,  Vol.  Ill  (London,  1959)  pp.  539-40,  (New 
York,   1960)  pp.  606-7. 

32 


THE  WARTIME  ALLIANCE  AND  AFTER 

operation  of  the  U.S.A.  in  our  war  effort  became,  next  to  the  defeat 
of  Hitler  itself,  the  main  objective  of  British  policy.J 
/The  realization  of  this  objective  was  enormously  facilitated  by 

^i  the  profound  mutual  respect  and  strong  personal  attachment  that 

marked  the  relations  of  the  two  national  leaders,  Churchill  and 

Rooseyelty'  but  it  did  not  have  to  rely  upon  the  personalities  at  the 

top.  ^  profound  identity  of  thinking  about  the  nature  of  the 

Ustruggle  and  about  the  ultimate  issues  involved  underlay  the  policies 

Z''  of  both  Governments  at  most  levels  and  was  itself  a  reflection  of 
common  elements  in  the  habits  and  beliefs  of  the  two  nations'jThis 
made  possible  a  wartime  alliance  which  was  a  real  merging  of  two 
national  wills,  two  fighting  forces  and  two  economiesr)The  partner- 
ship in  arm.s  worked  not  through  an  agreed  division  of  labour  so 
much  as  through  a  sharing  of  burdens  and  a  genuirie  merging  of 
..national  identities  of  which  S.H.A.E.F.  (Su.preme  Headquarters 
■^Allied  Expeditionary  Force)  was  the  supreme  exemplification.  The 

^  joint  military  eff^ort  was  underpinned  by  a  wholly  unprecedented 
pooling  of  national  resources.  This  is  the  phenomenon  to  which 
Churchill  referred  when  he  spoke  of  "our  affairs  .  .  .  becoming 
rather  mixed  up".|Lt  was  exemplified  in  the  development  of  Lend- 
Lease  into  Mutual  Aid,  it  was  enshrined  in  the  institution  of  the 
Combined  Boards,  and  given  perhaps  its  most  explicit  expression 
in  the  terms  of  reference  of  the  Combined  Production  and  Re- 
sources Board:  'The  Board  shall  combine  the  production  pro- 
grammes of  the  United  States  and  the  United  Kingdom  into  a 
single  integrated  programme,  adjusted  to  the  strategic  requirements 
of  the  war."^  And  of  course  this  pooling  concept  extended  into  the 
realm  of  techniques  and  ideas,  of  which  radar,  atomic  energy, 
military  a^d  political  intelligence  are  only  the  most  obvious 
examples,  s^' 

The  pooling  involved  in  the  joint  war  effort  was  always  a  little 
more  real  for  Britain  than  for  the  U.S.A.  There  were  always  Ameri- 
can leaders  who  would  tolerate  no  British  interference  in  their 
theatres,  like  Admiral  King  in  the  Pacific;  British  generalissimi 
might  be  difficult,  like  Montgomery,  but  they  could  never  ignore 
their  yoke-fellows.  The  American  economy,  rich  and  sprawling, 
never  came  under  the  same  degree  of  effective  Government  direc- 
tion and  control  that  the  British  knew  from  1940  onwards;  conse- 
quently there  was  never  an  equivalent  degree  of  conversion  from 
1  Documents  on  A.mertcan  Foreign  delations,  1941-2,  p.  250. 
c  53 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

peacetime  to  wartime  requirements.  More  than  this,  the  U.S.A., 
who  in  many  fields  of  services  and  production  supplied  Britain's 
needs  as  well  as  her  own,  had  a  freedom  which  Britain  lacked  to 
decide  which  of  the  elements  of  her  contribution  should  go  into  the 
common  pool. 

Nevertheless  not  only  did  the  system  genuinely  work,  to  a  sur- 
prising degree;  it  was  also  in  Britain's  obvious  interest,  as  the 
weaker  and  poorer  partner,  both  to  preserve  the  system  and,  even 
where  it  cracked,  to  maintain  belief  in  it.  In  Britain  it  sank  deep 
roots  into  the  national  consciousness  where  it  intertwined  itself  in- 
extricably with  the  concept  of  "fair  shares"  on  which  increasingly 
the  morale  of  the  British  home  front  came  to  depend.  It  made 
smooth  a  partnership  with  a  rich  and  remote  ally  which  had,  in  the 
abstract,  all  the  elements  that  make  for  fratricidal  strife.  Personified 
in  Eisenhower,  it  was  immensely  popular  at  all  levels,  civilian  and 
military.  The  alliance,  so  conceived,  interpenetrated  the  national 
life  at  every  point;  it  was  civil  servants  learning  that  "restricted" 
was  the  American  for  "confidential";  it  was  Grosvenor  Square 
turning  into  Eisenhower  Platz;  it  was  G.I.s  in  the  village  pub;  it 
was  SPAM.  Like  the  war  itself,  it  was  all-pervasive.  Its  detailed 
history  does  not  require  telling  here;  it  was  indeed  in  large  part  the 
history  in  its  later  stages  of  the  war  itself. 

In  proportion  as  the  war  was  total,  so  the  transition  to  peace,  as 
far  as  Britain  was  concerned,  was  gradual.  Too  gradual  perhaps, 
but  circumstances  and  a  strong  demand  for  social  justice  combined 
to  make  it  so.  A  nation  whose  life,  in  all  its  aspects,  had  been 
dedicated  to  waging  war  could  no  more  revert  at  once  to  peacetime 
normality  than  a  man  whose  legs  have  been  tied  can  walk  the 
moment  his  cords  have  been  cut.  And  just  as  the  war  persisted  in 
British  thinking,  so  did  expectations  and  habits  bred  of  the  alliance. 
,  ,y^  To  preserve  the  essence  of  the  alliance  in  the  post-war  world  had 
^  become  a  major  British  war  aim^  As  the  hoped-for  intimacy  with 
the  U.S.S.R.  failed  to  materialize,  as  indeed  it  became  obvious  that 
Stalin  wanted  a  European  settlement  radically  different  from  that 
which  British  obligations  and  interests  dictated,  so  the  desire  to 
retain  American  strength  and  support  in  Europe  came  to  dominate 
British  thinking,fBy  1945  it  was  abundantly  true,  as  the  leading 
historian  of  the  alliance  put  it,  that  "Churchill's  greatest  fear  was 
that  the  United  States  would  abandon  Europe  after  the  war,  leaving 
Great  Britain  to  face  Soviet  Russia  alone  with  nothing  more  than 

34 


THE  WARTIME  ALLIANCE  AND  AFTER 

her  own  resources  and  whatever  Continental  allies  could  be 
created"/  To  avert  such  a  catastrophe  Britain  cheerfully  waived 
several  of  her  preferences  in  the  planning  of  a  world  organization  p  '^ 
and  accepted  at  all  important  points  the  American  design,  as  well 
as  an  American  site  for  the  United  Nations  once  it  had  been  created?] 
But  the  fear  of  a  revived  American  isolationism  did  not  end  with 
the  assurance  of  United  States  membership  in  the  United  Nations. 
The  premature  death  of  Roosevelt,  his  legacy  of  trust  in  Stalin's 
good  intentions,  the  alarming  indifference  of  the  American  military 
to  the  political  implications  of  their  actions  in  Central  Europe,  for 
example  over  the  determination  of  the  east-west  boundary  lines  in 
Germany  and  Austria — all  this  kept  British  anxieties  alive,  iTo 
retain  the  U.S.A.  as  a  close  partner  with  Britain  seemed  the  only 
way  to  avert  the  perils  which  post-war  Europe  seemed  to  present.  1 

In  the  U.S.A.,  unfortunately,  very  different  thinking  prevailed 
about  the  transition  from  war  to  peace  and  its  implications  for  the 
alliance.  The  overwhelming  majority  of  Americans,  whether  isola- 
tionists or  not,  were  agreed  on  making  a  clear-cut  distinction 
between  war  and  peace.  War  was  killing,  or  being  killed  by,  Ger- 
mans and  Japanese.  When  the  fighting  was  over  the  war  ceased,  the 
troops  came  back  home  and  the  other  abnormalities  associated  with 
war  came  to  an  end  too.  Mr.  Truman  was  only  speaking  the  truth 
about  his  fellow-countrymen  when  he  claimed  that  "no  people  in 
history  have  been  known  to  disengage  themselves  so  quickly  from 
the  ways  of  war".^  This  divergence  of  attitudes  and  expectations 
had  immediate  implications  for  the  alliance.  A  week  after  V-J 
Day  Mr.  Truman  announced  the  ending  of  Lend-Lease;  by  the  end 
of  the  war,  as  a  logical  corollary  of  the  bonfire  of  American  domes- 
tic controls,  the  whole  structure  of  Anglo-American  economic 
"pooling"  was  in  ruins;  the  Combined  Food  Board  alone  was  left 
going  until  December,  19462The  military  disintegration  was  a  little 
less  explicit,  but  no  less  real.  The  Combined  Chiefs  of  Staff  were 
not  indeed  formally  wound  up;  they  ceased  nonetheless  to  exist, 
except  for  dealing  with  Trieste  and  a  few  other  residual  side-issues. 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  to  the  British  as  if  all  the  firm  realities 
of  the  bilateral  alliance  were  being  washed  away  in  a  flood  of 
wishful  multilateralism.  For  the  intimate  political  consultations  of 

1  W.  H.  McNeill,  America,  Britain  and  R/tssia,  1941-1946  (London, 
NewYork,  1953),  p.  411. 

2  H.  S.  Truman,  Memoirs,  I  (New  York,  London,  1955),  p.  506. 

35 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

F.D.R.  and  the  "Former  Naval  Person"  would  be  substituted  the 
publicized  deadlocks  of  the  Foreign  Ministers'  Conference;  the 
solid  shield  of  the  Anglo-American  forces  would  be  replaced  by 
the  never-to-be-actualized  police  functions  of  the  United  Nations 
Security  Council;  instead  of  the  orderly  apparatus  of  economic 
pooling  and  planning  there  would  be  a  free  for  all  tempered  only 
by  the  aspirations  of  an  international  trade  convention  and  the 
charity  of  U.N.R.R.A.  To  make  matters  worse,  not  only  did  the 
Americans  appear  to  think  that  these  would  be  eflfective  substitutes 
for  the  alliance;  many  of  them,  inside  the  administration  as  well  as 
without,  had  come  to  regard  the  alliance  as  a  positive  obstacle  to 
the  novus  ordo  saeclarum.  To  think  in  terms  of  an  Anglo-American 
alliance  was,  in  the  view  of  a  good  many,  to  think  in  anti-Soviet 
terms,  to  be  impairing  the  harmony  of  American-Soviet  relations, 
on  which  the  real  hopes  of  future  peace  depended,  in  order  to  pre- 
serve a  fighting  partnership  whose  justification  was  now  ended. 
Was  there  not  even  some  support  for  this  view  to  be  constructed 
out  of  the  fragmentary  political  testament  of  the  late  Franklin 
Roosevelt  himself?  Thus  when  the  institutions  of  the  new  order 
failed  to  function  as  hoped  there  was  even  a  certain  disposition  to 
try  and  remedy  this  by  an  ostentatious  disavowal  of  the  old  alliance. 
The  battles  in  the  infant  United  Nations  in  early  1946  over  Iran, 
Indonesia,  Greece,  Lebanon  and  Syria  were  mainly  fought  out  by 
Bevin  and  Molotov  with  Byrnes  often  playing  the  role  of  mediator 
and  pacifier.  Even  after  President  Truman  himself  had  become 
tired,  as  he  put  it,  of  "babying  the  Soviets"  it  was  left  to  his  English 
visitor,  Winston  Churchill,  in  his  Fulton  speech  to  sound  the  call 
for  the  west  to  unite  and  face  the  full  measure  of  the  Soviet  threat. 
Moreover,  though  the  speech  received  private  encouragement  and 
applause  from  the  highest  circles  in  the  United  States,  public  official 
endorsement  was  still  thought  inadvisable. 

Some  of  the  British  alarm  of  1945  turned  out  to  be  exaggerated. 
The  ending  of  Lend-Lease  turned  out  in  fact  to  be  somewhat  less 
abrupt  than  Mr.  Truman's  staccato  announcement  made  it  appear. 
The  pipe-line  provided  time  in  which  to  negotiate  the  economic  aid 
from  North  America  which  was  embodied  in  the  Anglo-American 
and  the  Anglo-Canadian  Loan  Agreements  of  December,  1945. 
Securing  this  aid  was  an  imperative  for  Britain  hardly  less  pressing 
than  the  maintenance  of  American  co-operation  in  the  political  and 
diplomatic  spheres.  The  war  left  Britain  impoverished  and  at  many 

36 


THE  WARTIME  ALLIANCE  AND  AFTER 

points  crippled.  The  sheer  physical  destruction  she  had  sustained 
was  considerable — ^£1,500  million  on  shore  in  property  losses  and 
£700  million  at  sea  in  the  sinking  of  one-third  of  her  merchant 
fleet.  Of  her  overseas  investments  £1,118  million  had  been 
liquidated,  while  her  gold  and  dollar  reserves  had  dropped  from 
£864  million  in  1938  to  £453  million  in  1945.  Meanwhile  her  ex- 
ternal liabilities  in  the  form  of  debts  mainly  in  the  sterling  area  had 
risen  from  £760  million  to  £3,355  million/In  all  one  could  esti-  \,  o"- 
mate  that  about  one-quarter  (£7,300  million)  of  Britain's  pre-war 
national  wealth  had  been  lost  in  the  war.)  At  the  same  time  her 
export  trade  was  down  to  thirty  per  cent  of  its  1938  volume  in  a 
world  in  which  the  cost  of  imports  had  risen  by  fifty  per  cent.  (Only  ^  ^  \^ 
America  could  physically  provide  the  goods  and  raw  materials 
necessary  to  keep  life  going  and  rebuild  the  battered  industries; 
only  America  could  provide  the  economic  wherewithal.) 

Yet  here  again  the  tenacious  grip  of  wartime  experience  and  war- 
time ways  of  thinking  put  the  British  at  odds  with  an  America 
which  wanted  to  treat  the  war  as  a  closed  book,  indeed  a  closed 
ledger.  This  was  not  just  the  view  of  the  man  in  the  street;  it  was 
if  anything  even  more  the  blinkers  in  which  nearly  six  years  of  war 
had  fastened  the  best  minds  in  Whitehall.  It  was  that  restless 
innovator  and  fertile  genius  Lord  Keynes  who  wished  above  all  to 
rest  the  British  proposals  for  economic  aid  on  the  argument  of  what 
Britain  had  suffered  in  the  common  cause  and  what  the  principle 
of  equality  of  sacrifice  would  dictate  in  a  final  reckoning.  "Since," 
as  he  said,  "our  transitory  financial  difficulties  are  largely  due  to  the 
role  we  played  in  the  war,  and  to  the  costs  we  incurred  before  the 
United  States  entered  the  war,  we  here  in  London  feel  .  .  .  that  it 
might  not  be  asking  too  much  of  our  American  friends  that  they 
should  agree  to  see  us  through  the  transition  by  financial  aid  which 
approximated  to  a  grant. "^  In  relation  to  the  wartime  concept  of 
"pooling"  such  an  approach  could  be  justified.  One  major  reason 
for  Britain's  plight  in  1945,  was  that,  though  a  trading  nation,  she 
had,  as  part  of  the  mutually  agreed  production  plan,  switched  her 
export  industries  to  munitions  work  and  also  scrupulously  abstained 
from  using  any  Lend-Lease  materials  for  manufacturing  export 
goods.-It  could  be  shown,  insofar  indeed  as  figures  can  ever  demon- 
strate such  propositions,  that,  man  for  man,  the  British  had  suffered 
more  in  the  common  struggle  than  the  Americans;,  it  could  be 

1  H.  L.  Deb.  Vol.  138,  col.  779-780,  10  December,  1945. 

37 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

argued  that  much  was  due  in  respect  of  the  period  before  Pearl 
Harbor  when  Britain  "stood  alone". 

In  line  with  this  kind  of  reasoning  the  Treasury  prepared  a 
White  Paper  setting  out  what  Britain  had  done  and  suffered  in  the 
common  cause  and  for  three  days  in  the  Washington  negotiations 
Keynes  expounded  the  case  for  an  outright  grant  based  upon  it. 
But  what  seemed  obvious  and  fair  in  London  wore  a  different 
appearance  in  Washington.  As  Keynes  himself  put  it  on  his  return, 
justifying  the  financial  agreements  before  a  sceptical  House  of 
Lords:  "But  what  a  gulf  separates  us  from  the  climate  of  Washing- 
ton; and  what  a  depth  of  misunderstanding  there  will  be  as  to  what 
governs  relations  between  even  the  friendliest  and  most  like-minded 
nations  if  we  imagine  that  so  free  and  easy  an  arrangement  could 
commend  itself  to  the  complex  politics  of  Congress  or  to  the  im- 
measurably remote  public  opinion  of  the  United  States.  Neverthe- 
less, it  was  on  these  lines  that  we  opened  our  case.  For  three  days 
the  heads  of  the  American  delegation  heard  me  expound  the 
material.  .  .  .  Nevertheless,  it  was  not  very  long  before  the  British 
delegation  discovered  that  a  primary  emphasis  on  past  services  and 
past  sacrifices  would  not  be  fruitful.  The  American  Congress  and 
the  American  people  have  never  accepted  any  literal  principle  of 
equal  sacrifice,  financial  or  otherwise,  between  all  the  allied  partici- 
pants. .  .  .  We  soon  discovered,  therefore,  that  it  was  not  our  past 
performance  or  our  present  weakness  but  our  future  prospects  of 
recovery  and  our  intention  to  face  the  world  boldly  that  we  had  to 
demonstrate.  fOur  American  friends  were  interested  not  in  our 
wounds,  though  incurred  in  the  common  cause,  but  in  our  con- 
valescence.'}^ 

The  reassuring  implications  of  the  final  twist  of  Keynes's  closing 
epigram  were  not  fully  borne  out  by  the  financial  settlements  which 
were  eventually  concluded.  Even  Keynes  could  not  disguise  his 
disappointment  at  the  final  form  of  the  Agreements  and  it  was  less 
his  advocacy  than  inexorable  necessity — ^Britain  simply  had  to  have 
the  dollars — that  induced  Parliament  to  ratify  them  after  a  division 
in  which  169  M.P.s  abstained  from  voting,  Churchill  amongst 
them.  It  was  not  merely  that  the  Agreements  were  felt  to  be  un- 
generous (this,  after  all,  was  an  issue  on  which  the  British  judg- 
ment might  reasonably  be  thought  to  be  suspect);  what  most  worried 
their  critics  was  their  multilateralism.  Here,  in  the  convertibility 

1  Op.  cit.  col.  780-782. 

38 


THE  WARTIME  ALLIANCE  AND  AFTER 

clauses,  in  the  links  between  the  loan  and  the  acceptance  of  the 
Bretton  Woods  institutions,  in  the  whole  concept  of  Britain's 
problem  being  just  that  of  negotiating  a  quick  transition  to  full 
multilateralism — in  all  this  there  was  a  very  explicit  substitution  of 
the  new,  untried  world  of  international  institutions  for  the  familiar 
and  trusted  wartime  alliance.  The  economists  had  gone  even  farther 
than  the  diplomats  and  the  politicians  in  moving  Anglo-American 
relations  from  their  old  moorings.  There  were  many  who  argued, 
Keynes  amongst  them,  that  in  this  open  sea  lay  Britain's  truest 
safety,  that /Britain's  destiny  as  a  trading  nation  was  ultimately  , 
bound  up  with  the  maintenance  of  an  international  system  of  trade  ^ ' 
and  convertibility,  f  They  were  the  counterparts  of  the  positive 
champions  of  the  United  Nations  who  saw  the  organization  as  the 
natural  expression  of  the  interest  in  peace  and  international  order 
which  Britain  and  the  United  States  had  in  common.  But  just  as  the 
dry  powder  school  wished  to  maintain  within  the  United  Nations 
framework  the  working  mechanism  of  the  diplomatic  and  military 
Atlantic  alliance,  so  even  amongst  the  economic  liberals  there  was 
a  gloomy  conviction  that  the  new  international  economic  institu- 
tions could  not  sustain  the  weight  that  the  Anglo-American 
Financial  Agreements  imposed  on  them.  They  were  right;  it  was 
not  the  Bank  and  the  Fund  which  took  over  the  unfinished  business 
of  the  American  loan,  but  Marshall  Aid.  At  the  same  time,  by  a 
curious  paradox,  the  Financial  Agreements  did,  as  it  turned  out, 
provide  the  most  striking  demonstration  that  the  realities  of  the 
Anglo-American  alliance  had  in  fact  survived. 

The  passage  of  the  Agreements  through  the  British  Parliament 
was  not,  of  course,  sufficient  to  bring  them  into  operation.  To  be- 
come effective  they  had  to  be  approved  by  the  body  which  alone 
could  authorize  the  expenditure,  the  American  Congress.  And  in 
fact  their  passage  through  that  body  was,  for  different  reasons,  no 
less  painful  and  a  great  deal  more  prolonged  than  it  had  been  in 
Britain.  For  months  throughout  the  spring  and  early  summer  of 
1946  while  Britain,  the  proud  mendicant,  half  hoped,  half  feared 
that  Congress  would  reject  them,  the  debate  dragged  on,  generating 
its  inevitable  accompaniment  of  mutual  resentment  and  ill-feeling. 
The  arguments  of  its  supporters  in  the  executive  branch  about  the 
brave  new  world  of  multilateralism  and  free  convertibility  were 
poorly  received  in  a  chamber  whose  composition  gives  the  maxi- 
mum scope  to  every  advocate  of  economic  nationalism — so  poorly 

39 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

indeed  that  it  looked  as  if  its  prospects  would  founder.  Fortunately, 
as  the  months  dragged  on,  economic  nationalism  was  overborne, 
not  by  the  new  liberalism,  but  by  lively  fears  of  what  Russia  was 
doing  to  the  Western  world  on  the  diplomatic  and  political  fronts, 
cruciality  of  the  vote  Sam  Rayburn,  the  Speaker  of  the  House, 
carried  the  day.  Recognizing  the  strength  of  the  opposition  and  the 
cruciality  of  the  vote  Sam  Rayburn,  the  Speaker  of  the  House, 
left  the  chair  to  make  a  rare  personal  intervention.  His  argument 
was  simple  and,  as  it  proved,  decisive:  I'l  do  not  want  Western 
Europe,  England,  and  all  the  rest  pushed  toward  an  ideology  that.  ^^9 
I  despise.  I  fear  that  if  we  do  not  co-operate  with  this  great  natural  D  *" 
ally  of  ours  that  is  what  will  happen  ...  If  we  are  not  allied  with 
the  British  democracy  I  fear  someone  will  be  and  God  pity  us  when 
we  have  no  ally  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  God  pity  them  too."^ 


92  Congressional  Rscord  9040,  (12  July,  1946.) 


40 


4 

THE  COLD  WAR  ALLIANCE 

IT  could  be  said  at  the  end  of  1946  that  the  Anglo-American 
alliance  was  in  an  ambiguous  condition.  On  the  one  hand  its 
formal  structure  had  disintegrated  with  the  end  of  the  war;  on 
the  other  hand  a  good  deal  of  its  spirit  persisted,  exemplified  in  a 
resolute  British  endeavour  to  keep  the  U.S.  engage  and  in  an 
American  recognition  that  Britain  constituted,  for  practical  pur- 
poses, her  most  reliable  friend.  What  degree  of  American  commit- 
ment could  be  secured  and  what  mutual  obligations  the  friendship 
would  entail  were,  however,  still  uncertain.  The  resolution  of 
these  uncertainties  was  the  work  of  the  years  1947,  1948  and  1949. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  re-tell  the  whole  story  of  the  adoption  of 
the  Truman  Doctrine,  the  shaping  of  the  Marshall  Plan  and  the 
evolution  of  N.A.T.O.  But  some  features  of  the  story  are  necessary 
to  a  full  understanding  of  the  relationship  which  Britain  built  up 
with  the  U.S.  in  these  years.  When  in  late  February,  1947,  Britain 
formally  notified  the  U.S.A.  that  she  could  no  longer  continue  to 
be  the  reservoir  of  financial-military  support  for  Greece  and  Turkey 
it  is  doubtful  if  the  full  implications  of  the  act  were  as  clearly 
grasped  in  Whitehall  as  in  Washington.  Superficially  it  was  a  matter 
of  $250  million  which  Britain,  in  the  hard-pressed  winter  of  1947, 
could  no  longer  afford.  The  decision  to  place  the  last  straw  in 
America's  lap  seems  to  have  come,  like  so  many  fateful  British 
decisions,  from  the  Treasury.  The  news  of  the  decision  initially 
created  relatively  little  stir  in  Britain.  Indeed  it  was  not  until  5 
March  that  news  of  the  British  abdication  was  at  all  prominently 
displayed  to  British  readers,  and  then  only  in  the  form  of  a  dispatch 
from  Washington.  It  was  17  March  before  a  statement  was  made 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  excited  comparatively  little  comment. 
What  in  retrospect  may  appear  a  milestone  in  Anglo-American 
relations  was  generally  viewed  at  the  time  as  only  a  minor  adjust- 
ment in  the  load  of  British  post-war  commitments.  That  it  would 
result  in  a  'Truman  Doctrine"  seems  to  have  been  totally  unex- 
pected in  Britain.  Possibly  this  was  because  it  was  only  relatively, 
not  absolutely,  that  it  represented  a  lightening  of  that  load.  Only  a 

41 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

little  more  than  three  months  earlier,  on  6  November,  1946,  Mr. 
Attlee  had  announced  that  the  rate  of  demobilization  in  the  services 
would  be  slowed  down,  so  that  the  number  of  men  under  arms  at 
the  year's  end  would  be  1,427,000  instead  of  the  1,200,000  origin- 
ally planned.  And  on  the  same  day  that  Mr.  Truman  spoke  to 
Congress  the  British  Government  published  the  draft  of  their  bill 
to  perpetuate  conscription  on  the  basis  of  an  eighteen-month  period 
of  service. 

What  was  happening,  of  course,  was  that  the  Russians  were 
raising  the  pressure  on  the  British  defence  line  just  at  a  time  when 
all  economic  considerations  demanded  a  cutting  of  our  cloth.  Nine- 
teen forty-six  had  ended  with  deadlock  over  Germany  and  1947 
began  with  the  mockery  of  "free  elections"  in  Poland.  No  foreign 
minister  could  advise  his  colleagues  that  the  nation  could  relax  its 
guard,  but  in  view  of  the  rate  at  which  the  American  loan  was 
disappearing  and  the  imbalance  of  payments  worsening  there  had 
to  be  a  reduction  of  overseas  military  expenditure.  (Critics  pointed 
out  that  the  £300  million  spent  on  maintaining  our  overseas  re- 
sponsibilities, mostly  in  Germany  and  the  Middle  East,  exactly 
equalled  the  gap  in  the  balance  of  payments.)  The  solution  was 
not  so  much  to  reduce  as  to  shift  the  burden;  to  spend,  if  it  must  be, 
more  at  home,  but  to  unload  some  of  the  overseas  tasks  on  to  the 
U.S.A.  By  one  of  history's  pretty  ironies  the  first  burden  to  be 
transferred  to  Uncle  Sam's  shoulders  was  the  one  which,  two  or 
three  years  earlier,  John  Bull  had  been  most  severely  censured  for 
assuming — Greece,  where  Churchill's  anti-Communist  intervention 
had  won  sharp  "anti-imperialist"  rebukes  in  the  U.S.A.  in  1944 
and  1945. 

One  cannot  say  with  confidence  how  far  the  Government  at  this 
moment  was  working  on  the  assumption  that  the  alliance  a  trois 
with  the  U.S.S.R.  was  dead  and  that  an  outright,  explicit  Anglo- 
American  front  should  take  its  place.  As  late  as  22  December, 
1946,  Ernest  Bevin  had  depicted  Britain  as  "midway"  between  the 
U.S.A.  and  the  U.S.S.R.,  "not  tying  herself  to  anyone"  and,  when 
Stalin  alleged  that  this  meant  Britain  was  welshing  on  the  Anglo- 
Soviet  Treaty,  Bevin  agreed  to  "reaffirm"  the  Treaty  a  month  later. 
But  though  Bevin  undoubtedly  did  not  wish  to  close  the  door  on  a 
European  settlement  with  the  U.S.S.R.,  his  public  statements  have 
to  be  read  in  the  light  of  his  anxiety,  as  a  Labour  Foreign  Secretary, 
over  maintaining  unity  in  a  party  with  a  vociferous  left  wing. 

42 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  for  all  practical  purposes  the 
British  Government  had  given  up  hope  of  any  better  relationship 
with  the  U.S.S.R.  than  one  of  peaceful  containment  and  that  since 
the  war's  end  there  had  never  been  any  faltering  in  their  desire  to 
have  the  closest  possible  relationship  with  the  U.S.A.  At  the  same 
time  it  would  seem  that  British  official  circles  were  surprised  and  a 
little  taken  aback  at  the  challenging  tone  of  Mr.  Truman's  message; 
there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  no  one  expected  the  burden  which 
was  so  quietly  dropped  to  be  picked  up  quite  so  resoundingly. 

Despite  the  drama  of  12  March,  1947,  what  actually  happened 
was  very  much  less  than  a  substitution  of  Pax  Americana  for  Pax 
Britannka.  There  was  no  neat  and  swift  switch-over  from  British  to 
United  States  responsibility.  Far  from  it.  In  the  first  place  the 
United  States  was  by  no  means  in  a  position  to  assume  such  a  role. 
After  Mr.  Truman's  speech  there  ensued  over  two  months  of  Con- 
gressional debate.  Not  until  22  May  did  Mr.  Truman  sign  the 
Greco-Turkish  Aid  Bill  and  when  it  became  law  it  merely  pledged 
cash  for  military  and  economic  aid,  while  providing  for  missions, 
military  and  naval,  of  an  advisory  character.  There  was  no  provision 
for  the  dispatch  of  troops.  When  the  Greek  situation  reached  a 
crisis  in  June  and  July,  1947,  under  pressure  from  the  Yugoslavs, 
Bulgarians  and  Albanians,  the  line  had  to  be  held  without  any 
United  States  forces.  Indeed  the  first  shiploads  of  United  States 
military  material  did  not  arrive  until  14  August.  Meanwhile  Britain 
was  under  steady  pressure  from  the  United  States  administration 
not  to  withdraw  her  forces,  first  of  all  on  the  grounds  of  the  antici- 
pated delay  in  passing  the  Greco-Turkish  Aid  Bill,  and  subse- 
quently in  view  of  the  persistently  critical  situation  in  Greece. 
However,  the  dollar  drain  accelerated  alarmingly  in  the  summer, 
leading  Britain  to  make  renewed  announcements  of  the  withdrawal 
of  her  forces,  announcements  which  in  turn  provoked  a  critical 
reaction  in  Washington.  Forrestal's  diary  entry  for  4  August  indi- 
cates how  one  such  communication  was  received : 

"Lunch  today  with  Marshall,  Harriman,  Snyder.  Marshall  ex- 
pressed his  deep  concern  with  the  implications  that  might  be 
drawn  from  the  withdrawal  of  British  troops  from  Greece  and 
Italy.  He  has  wired  Bevin  in  strong  language,  protesting  against 
the  British  action  in  presenting  the  United  States  with  such  de- 
cisions as  the  one  of  last  February  advising  us  that  we  would 

43 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

have  to  accept  the  responsibility  for  Greece  and  this  most  recent 
one  of  complete  withdrawal  from  southern  Europe.  He  asked 
Douglas  to  inquire  of  Bevin  whether  this  indicates  a  fundamental 
change  in  British  policy.  Bevin  replied  to  this  in  the  negative."^ 

In  response  to  pressure  such  as  this,  but  with  great  reluctance, 
Britain  left  5,000  men  in  Greece  until  well  into  1948  and  3,000  or 
so  from  then  on.  The  last  British  troops  did  not  leave  Greece  until 
the  beginning  of  1950. 

The  fact  was  that,  quite  apart  from  the  political  difficulty  of 
sending  United  States  troops  to  Greece,  there  were  hardly  the 
troops  available  to  send.  With  the  expiry  of  the  Selective  Service 
Act  on  31  March,  1947,  Congress  allowed  the  last  relics  of  military 
conscription  to  disappear,  not  to  reappear  until  in  June  of  the  fol- 
lowing year,  1948,  a  fresh  Selective  Service  Act  was  passed. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  reduction  of  United  Kingdom  com- 
mitments went  on.  Although  in  November,  1946,  the  Government 
announced  their  intention  to  continue  conscription  from  1  January, 
1949  (when  it  was  due  to  expire),  in  April,  1947,  they  responded 
swiftly  to  pressure  from  their  back-benchers  and  cut  the  proposed 
duration  from  eighteen  months  to  twelve  months.  On  30  July, 
1947,  a  speed-up  in  demobilization  was  ordered  and  on  30  August, 

1947,  as  part  of  dollar  crisis  economies,  Attlee  announced  a  further 
cut  which  would  bring  the  army  down  to  1,007,000  by  31  March, 

1948.  This  was  further  cut  in  December,  1947,  to  937,000  by  the 
same  date,  while  defence  estimates  published  the  following  Febru- 
ary, 1948,  envisaged  a  further  reduction  of  220,000  within  the 
next  year,  and  a  cut  of  two-ninths  in  the  defence  budget,  equivalent 
to  £200  million.  The  retreat  from  omnicompetence  was  on. 

Undoubtedly  the  need  to  trim  commitments  also  had  a  good  deal 
to  do  at  about  the  same  time  with  the  decision  to  wind  up  the  costly 
and  thankless  Palestine  mandate.  The  United  States'  repeated  re- 
fusals (last  in  November,  1946),  to  accept  any  joint  responsibility 
there  led  to  the  British  Government's  decision  to  hand  the  problem 
over  to  the  United  Nations.  When  the  United  Nations  voted  for 
partition  in  November,  1947,  the  United  States  supported  it  but 
would  not  assist  in  enforcing  it.  The  United  Kingdom  took  the 
same  position,   announcing  it  would  withdraw  its  troops  by  1 

1  The  Forrestal Diaries  (London,  1952),  pp.  292-3;  (New  York,  1951), 
pp.  301-2. 

44 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

August,  1948.  In  fact,  the  first  withdrawals  occurred  on  16  Novem- 
ber, 1947;  in  January,  1948,  the  Government  announced  that 
Britain  would  terminate  its  mandate  on  15  May,  1948.  On  19 
March,  the  United  States  suddenly  announced  abandonment  of 
support  for  partition,  in  favour  of  United  Nations  trusteeship. 
When  the  question  was  raised  inside  the  U.S.  administration,  how 
far  the  United  States  would  or  could  implement  this,  it  turned  out 
that  there  simply  were  not  any  troops  available.  Forrestal  reports  a 
depressing  meeting  on  4  April  with  the  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  which 
ended  on  an  almost  pathetic  note:  "It  was  suggested  that  the  British 
might  undertake  to  hold  the  fort  alone  pending  the  augmentation 
of  our  forces,  following  the  adoption  of  Selective  Service."^  But 
the  United  Kingdom  was  not  to  be  turned  aside  from  its  course. 
The  mandate  ended,  the  Jewish  Agency  proclaimed  a  Jewish  State, 
eleven  minutes  later,  on  15  May,  Mr.  Truman  accorded  it  Ameri- 
can recognition,  and  on  30  June,  1948,  the  last  United  Kingdom 
troops  left. 

From  all  of  which  it  can  be  seen  that  if  Anglo-American  rela- 
tions had  simply  consisted  of  the  United  Kingdom  passing  the 
sceptre  of  world  responsibility  into  United  States  hands  the  process 
would  have  been  attended  with  a  good  deal  of  bitterness  and  re- 
crimination, and,  what  is  more,  the  sceptre  might  well  in  fact  have 
fallen  in  the  passing.  Fortunately  this  was  not  what  happened. 
Instead  a  new  basis  of  United  Kingdom-United  States  collabora- 
tion was  found  in  a  European,  or  to  be  more  accurate,  North 
Atlantic  and  Mediterranean,  context. 

In  retrospect  the  crucial  developments  of  1947-8  emerge  as 
logical  steps  in  the  evolution  of  an  anti-Russian  alliance.  And  as 
such  indeed  they  were  conceived — all  of  them  by  some  people,  and 
some  of  them  by  all  people,  but  not  every  one  by  everybody.  Even 
the  Truman  Doctrine,  though  immediately  provoked  by  blatant 
Communist  (even  if  not  overtly  Soviet)  hostilities  against  Greece 
and  by  Soviet  pressure  against  Turkey,  was  not  approved  by  the 
United  States  Senate  until  Senator  Vandenberg  had  inserted  his 
proviso  that  the  aid  should  cease  whenever  the  General  Assembly 
or  the  Security  Council  should  decide  that  action  taken  by  the 
United  Nations  rendered  United  States  aid  unnecessary  or  undesir- 
able— and  that,  in  a  Security  Council  vote  on  such  an  issue,  the 
United  States  should  waive  her  veto.  In  both  Britain  and  the  U.S.A. 

1  Ibid  (London),  pp.  292-3;  (New  York)  pp.  301-2. 

45 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

there  was  a  body  of  opinion,  not  necessarily  made  up  of  fellow 
travellers,  which  felt  uneasy  at  the  too  openly  anti-Russian  tone  of 
the  Doctrine  and  wished  to  stress  its  essentially  defensive  implica- 
tions. That  is  not  to  say  that  anyone  in  the  Government  or  any  but 
a  few  far  Leftists  disapproved  of  the  policy;  they  were  merely 
worried  lest  it  should  go  too  far  too  roughly.  In  line  with  this  fear 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  elaboration  of  a  distinction  of  which  more 
was  to  be  heard  later,  between  a  British  policy  allegedly  aimed  at 
curbing  Russian  imperialism  and  an  American  one  which  saw  the 
enemy  as  Communism  per  se. 

In  this  context  the  Marshall  Plan,  aired  at  Harvard  on  5  June, 
three  months  after  the  Truman  Doctrine  had  been  promulgated  on 
12  March,  was  especially  attractive  to  the  United  Kingdom.  In  the 
first  place  it  was  an  American  initiative  and  invitation.  In  the 
second  place  it  was  aid  that  took  an  economic,  not  a  military  form. 
"Reconstruction"  was  its  theme.  And  in  the  third  place  it  was  not 
overtly  anti-Russian:  "Any  Government  that  is  willing  to  assist  in 
the  task  of  recovery  will  find  full  co-operation  ...  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  Government."^  The  economic  emphasis  was  par- 
ticularly attractive  to  Ernest  Bevin  and  though  it  is  very  doubtful 
whether  he  ever  believed  the  Soviets  would  join  in  (except  perhaps 
to  wreck  it)^  their  inclusion  in  the  invitation  undoubtedly  helped  to 
solidify  Labour  support  for  the  plan. 

In  fact,  of  course,  the  Marshall  proposals  brought  not  peace  but 
a  sword.  Invited  to  confer  at  Paris,  Molotov  insisted  on  individual 
approaches  to  the  United  States  and  no  joint  European  effort.  He 
warned  France  and  Britain  against  an  action  which  "could  lead  to 
no  good".  Bevin  replied:  "My  country  has  faced  grave  consequences 
and  threats  before,  and  it  is  not  the  sort  of  prospect  which  will 
deter  us  from  doing  what  we  consider  to  be  our  duty."  Thus, 
ironically,  what  was  a  pacific  and  economic  offer  come  to  be  a 
touchstone  according  to  which  countries  were  identified  with  the 
American  or  the  Russian  camp.  Marshall  Aid  became,  under  this 
Russian  pressure,  a  first  but  quite  decisive  step  towards  the  unifica- 

iMr.  Marshall  at  Harvard.  U.S.  Dept.  of  State  Bulletiti,  Vol.  16, 
p.  1159. 

2  Though  he  did  say  in  a  speech  in  London  on  13  June  that  it 
would  "throw  a  bridge  to  link  East  and  West". 

46 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

tion  of  Western  Europe  under  British  leadership  as  a  pro- American 
bloc.'^ 

This  role  of  British  leadership  in  a  European  approach  to  the 
United  States  was  emphasized  when  the  sixteen  nations  conference 
met  at  Paris  on  1 2  July  by  Bevin  being  in  the  chair  and  later  by  Sir 
Oliver  Franks  becoming  chairman  of  the  Committee  of  European 
Economic  Co-operation  (C.E.E.C.)  which  met  and  produced  an 
outline  European  recovery  programme  by  22  September,^ 

While  the  future  of  the  Marshall  programme  was  thus  back  in 
the  lap  of  the  United  States,  and  more  specifically  of  the  American 
Congress,  the  Russians  were  making  clear  to  the  world  the  hostile 
interpretation  they  put  on  it.  While  Communist  Parties  in  Western 
Europe  were  trying  to  overthrow  pro-Marshall  Governments  the 
Cominform  was  formed  (announcement  on  5  October)  and  the 
Foreign  Ministers'  autumn  meeting  in  London,  like  all  its  prede- 
cessors, stalled  under  Soviet  intransigence.  In  the  middle  of  Decem- 
ber the  United  States  gave  interim  aid  to  France,  Italy  and  Austria 
and  by  a  new  agreement  with  the  United  Kingdom  relieved  her  of 
all  dollar  expenditure  in  Germany,  as  well  as  assuming  seventy-five 
per  cent  of  the  cost  of  both  zones. 

Thus  the  division  between  East  and  West  was  becoming  more 
and  more  explicit.  But  it  was  also  becoming  apparent  that  if 
Western  Europe  was  to  survive  its  collective  defence  would  have  to 
be  organized.  How  far  British  initiative  in  this  was  dove-tailed  with 
American  thinking  at  the  very  earliest  stages  we  do  not  know.  But 
by  13  January,  1948,  Bevin  was  airing  his  intentions  to  the  United 
States  in  terms  which  Mr.  Truman  describes  as  follows : 

"Ernest  Bevin,  the  British  Foreign  Secretary,  had  informed  Secre- 
tary of  State  Marshall  as  early  as  13  January,  1948,  that  England 
was  planning  to  approach  France  and  the  so-called  Benelux 
countries  (Belgium,  Netherlands,  Luxembourg)  with  a  proposal 
for  a  series  of  bilateral  defence  agreements.  The  pattern  he  had 

1  Incidentally  the  decision  to  incorporate  Western  Germany  in 
C.E.E.C.'s  plans  confirmed  the  de  facto  position  of  Germany. 

2  Without  any  overt  United  States  participation,  though  Clayton, 
Douglas  and  Caffery  were  in  the  wings  to  say  what  Congress  would  not 
stand — e.g.  to  scale  down  the  total  from  $29  biUion  over  four  years 
to  $22-4  (cut  by  the  Harriman  Committee  to  |17  billion)  and  add 
pledges  to  balance  budgets. 

47 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  mind  was  that  of  the  Dunkirk  Treaty,  a  post-war  agreement 
by  which  Great  Britain  and  France  had  agreed  to  come  to  each 
other's  defence  in  case  of  renewed  German  aggression. 

General  Marshall  brought  Bevin's  message  to  me.  I  thought  it 
was  a  good  beginning — a  step  in  the  right  direction.  If  the 
countries  of  Western  Europe  were  ready  to  organize  for  their 
joint  defence,  that  would  be  an  important  contribution  to  the 
peace  of  the  world. 

Bevin  in  his  message  had  asked  what  our  attitude  would  be 
toward  this  new  alliance.  I  authorized  Marshall  to  inform  the 
British  Foreign  Secretary  that  we  agreed  with  them  on  the  urgent 
need  for  concerted  measures  by  the  nations  of  Western  Europe. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  European  Recovery  Programme,  we  wel- 
comed European  initiative  and  would  give  their  undertaking  our 
whole-hearted  sympathy;  the  United  States  would  do  anything  it 
properly  could  to  assist  the  European  nations  to  bring  this  or  a 
similar  project  to  fulfilment. 

With  this  backing  from  the  United  States,  Bevin  approached 
the  French  and  the  Benelux  countries."^ 

On  22  January  Bevin  expounded  his  plan  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons: "I  believe  the  time  is  ripe  for  a  consolidation  of  Western 
Europe."  He  talked  about  "Western  Union"  and  said,  vaguely,  it 
"must  primarily  be  a  fusion  derived  from  the  basic  freedoms  and 
ethical  principles  for  which  we  all  stand  ...  It  is  more  of  a  brother- 
hood and  less  of  a  system."  What  emerged,  in  the  form  of  the 
Brussels  Treaty  signed  on  17  March,  1948,  was  a  good  deal  less 
than  any  union.  Although  the  preamble  talked  about  strengthening 
"the  economic,  social  and  cultural  ties"  of  the  signatories,  the  heart 
of  the  Treaty  was  in  the  pledge  to  afford  "all  military  and  other 
aid  and  assistance  in  their  power"  to  any  one  of  them  which  might 
be  attacked.  It  was  essentially  military;  the  signatories  were  the 
United  Kingdom,  France,  Holland,  Belgium  and  Luxembourg. 

Even  before  the  Treaty  was  signed  there  was  an  ominous  develop- 
ment. On  24  February  the  Communist  coup  occurred  in  Prague. 
On  26  February  Britain,  the  United  States  and  France  launched  a 
joint  protest  against  the  U.S.S.R. — a  step  without  precedent.  On 
5  March  General  Clay,  United  States  military  governor  in  Ger- 

1  Truman,  op.  cit..  Vol.  II  (New  York,  1956),  p.  243;  (London. 
1956),  p.  257. 

48 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

many,  warned  Washington  that  tension  had  reached  a  point  at 
which  war  might  "come  with  dramatic  suddenness".  A  few  days 
later  (12  March)  Bevin  made  what  appears  to  be  the  first  explicit 
suggestion  of  a  North  Atlantic  Pact.  Forrestal  reports  Marshall  as 
having  told  him  that  "Bevin  makes  three  proposals : 

1.  Build  around  the  51nation  ,  .  .  pact. 

2.  A  plan  for  Atlantic  security. 

3.  A  Mediterranean  system  of  security. 

Bevin  suggests  a  meeting  in  Washington  between  British  and 
American  representatives  early  next  week".^  The  Brussels  Pact,  in 
other  words,  had  in  fact  already  been  recognized  to  be  insufficient, 
in  face  of  a  "clear  and  present  danger".  Immediately,  all  the  United 
States  could  offer  was  Mr.  Truman's  call  to  Congress  on  17  March 
for  Universal  Military  Training  and  Selective  Service  and  his  refer- 
ence to  the  Brussels  Treaty  as  "deserving  our  full  support".  On  23 
April  Bevin  argued  further  for  his  Atlantic  Treaty  with  United 
States  membership  on  the  grounds  that  only  so  could  the  Russians 
be  deterred  from  war  and  only  so  could  the  French  agree  to  a 
rebuilding  of  Germany.  "He  expressed  the  opinion  that  it  would 
be  very  difficult  for  the  British,  or  other  free  nations,  to  stand  up  to 
new  acts  of  aggression  unless  there  was  a  definitely  worked-out 
arrangement,  which  included  the  United  States,  for  collective  resist- 
ance against  aggression."^ 

There  was  here  some  juggling  for  position.  Europe  (including 
not  least  Great  Britain)  was  very  anxious  not  to  launch  an  Atlantic 
Pact  which  the  U.S.S.R.  would  regard  as  hostile  before  they  had 
the  firm  promise  of  100  per  cent  United  States  support;  the  United 
States  was  very  anxious  (partly  for  Congressional  reasons)  to  use 
the  E.R.P.  analogy — Europe  "to  display  energy  and  competence  in 
the  perfection  of  their  own  plans  .  .  .  before  we  give  them  any 
indication  of  the  scope  or  degree  of  our  support".^  The  argument 
and  the  manoeuvring  went  on  throughout  the  summer,  Forrestal 
recording  as  late  as  1 2  November : 

1  Tbe  Forrestal  Diaries  (New  York,  1951),  pp.  301-2;  (London, 
1952),  pp.  372. 

2  Truman,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II  (New  York),  p.  245 ;  (London),  pp.  258-9, 

3  The  Forrestal  Diaries  (New  York),  p.  434;  (London),  p.  409,. 
D  49 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

"On  the  question  of  an  Atlantic  Pact,  'the  British  [Chiefs  of 
Staff]  made  it  very  clear  that  they  considered  it  essential  that  the 
United  States  should  sign  a  pact  to  support  the  Western  European 
powers  in  the  event  of  'hostilities'.  They  were  asked  what  the 
effect  would  be  if  the  United  States  failed  to  sign  a  pact  but 
made  substantial  military  shipments;  they  were  unanimous  in 
replying  that  this  would  be  better  than  nothing  but  still  'totally 
inadequate'."^ 

As  far  as  the  United  Kingdom  was  concerned  two  points  lay 
behind  all  this : 

1.  Britain's  desire  as  a  European  power  to  get  the  United  States 
as  far  into  a  European  commitment  as  possible,  because  of  her 
conviction  that  American  support  was  essential  for  European 
defence. 

2.  Her  determination  as  an  insular  power  with  wide  extra- 
European  responsibilities  not  to  accept  any  greater  commitment 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  than  the  United  States  would. 

How  far,  in  pursuit  of  the  first  aim,  the  United  Kingdom  would  go, 
was  strikingly  demonstrated  in  June-July,  1948,  at  the  height  of 
the  Berlin  crisis,  when  the  British  were  sounded  out  on  whether 
they  would  accept  two  squadrons  of  B-29s  stationed  in  England 
and  the  Foreign  Office's  reaction,  "somewhat  to  the  surprise  of  the 
Americans",  was  "prompt  and  in  the  affirmative".^  There  was  noth- 
ing in  the  British  response  that  should  have  surprised  anyone. 
Already  in  the  earlier  part  of  1947  the  Royal  Air  Force  and  the 
U.S.  Strategic  Air  Command  had  agreed  on  a  long-range  flight 
training  programme;  not  surprisingly  therefore,  agreement  on  the 
stationing  of  the  B-29s  had  already  been  reached  at  the  operational 
level  before  the  diplomats  and  politicians  endorsed  it.  The  decision 
to  accept  the  atomic  bombers,  crucial  though  it  was,  was  in  fact  in 
direct  line  with  the  kind  of  responsibilities  Britain  had  already 
assumed  and  the  kind  of  relationship  with  the  United  States  which 
she  had  all  along  been  seeking. 

Though  presented  publicly  as  a  temporary  arrangement,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  anyone  really  so  regarded  it  or,  if  they  did,  that 
they  imagined  that  this  subtracted  from  the  significance  of  the 

1  Ibid.  (New  York),  p.  525;  (London),  p.  490. 

2  Ibid.  (New  York),  pp.  454-5;  (London),  pp.  427-8. 

50 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

decision.  In  August,  1948,  another  thirty  B-29s  joined  the  initial 
sixty  and  by  the  end  of  the  year  the  number  of  American  air  force 
personnel  in  Britain  had  risen  to  6,000.  When  Sir  Stafford  Cripps, 
as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  visited  Washington  in  October  he 
told  Forrestal  that  "Britain  must  be  regarded  as  the  main  base  for 
the  deployment  of  American  power  and  the  chief  offensive  against 
Russia  must  be  by  air".^  Thus,  in  advance  of  agreement  on  the 
North  Atlantic  Treaty,  Britain  had  committed  herself  to  an  alliance 
in  arms  with  the  United  States  and  had  built  her  defence  strategy 
around  the  American  atomic  deterrent  wielded  from  bases  on 
British  soil.  Moreover,  this  was  done  without  any  formal  treaty 
agreement;  it  was  an  "arrangement",  an  "understanding"  between 
the  political  and  service  chiefs  on  each  side. 

The  bilateral  relationship  thus  established  in  air  defence  was 
not  suitable  for  application,  simply  and  directly,  to  the  economic 
problems  of  Britain  and  Europe.  Yet  one  may  trace  elements  of  the 
same  way  of  thinking  in  Britain's  attitude  to  the  evolution  of  the 
institutions  of  the  Marshall  Plan.  Thus  in  the  European  Recovery 
Programme  (E.R.P.)  Britain  had  thrown  her  weight  in  favour  of 
each  recipient  country  negotiating  a  bilateral  treaty  with  Washing- 
ton, rather  than  fusing  their  negotiating  personalities  into  one  and 
concluding  a  single  multilateral  treaty  with  the  United  States.  On 
this  she  got  her  way.  Similarly  when  the  French  "Europeanists" 
had  pressed  for  a  strong  international  secretariat  under  a  powerful 
chairman  for  the  Organization  for  European  Economic  Co-opera- 
tion (O.E.E.C.)  which  would  develop  a  vigorous  personality  of  its 
own  and,  as  such,  negotiate  directly  with  member  Governments — 
the  kind  of  structure  which  had  served  the  European  Coal  Com- 
munity— Britain  opposed  it.  Instead  she  advocated  the  establish- 
ment of  sixteen  national  delegations  at  Paris,  served  by  a  small 
secretariat  in  a  subordinate  role — a  kind  of  continuous  international 
conference.  Substantially  this  was  what  emerged  and,  fortuitously 
in  fact,  but  consequentially  as  it  appeared,  the  eminent  British 
chairman  of  the  C.E.E.C,  Sir  Oliver  Franks,  was  not  made  avail- 
able to  its  successor  organization,  O.E.E.C,  but  instead  was  dis- 
patched to  Washington  as  British  Ambassador.  That  no  slight  to 
the  new  organization  was  intended  ought  to  have  been  apparent 
by  the  selection  of  Sir  Edmund  Hall-Patch  to  be  Chairman  of  the 
Executive  Committee,  who  made  a  signal  contribution  to  the  sense 

1  Ibid.  (New  York),  p.  491;  (London),  p.  460. 

51 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  European  loyalty  that  became  O.E.E.C.'s  hall-mark.  To  the 
Americans,  however,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  appeared  that  way,  espec- 
ially since  Mr.  Truman  had  released  his  own  Secretary  of  Com- 
merce, Mr.  Harriman,  to  be  the  American  opposite  number  in 
Paris.  Finally,  in  line  with  these  restrictions  on  supra-nationalism 
and  this  determination  to  keep  open  direct  lines  of  communication 
with  Washington — indeed  to  give  priority  to  them — was  the  British 
desire  to  see  the  crucial  question  of  the  allocation  of  funds  handled 
in  Washington  and  not  in  Paris.  Here  Britain's  main  critics  were 
the  Americans  themselves,  who,  pressing  for  European  unification, 
suddenly  insisted  on  the  Europeans  doing  their  own  shareout,  at 
least  to  the  extent  of  making  their  own  recommendations  for  the 
division  of  aid.  In  fact  the  task  proved  too  much  for  so  large  a 
membership  and  a  Committee  of  "Four  Wise  Men"^  were  given 
the  task  of  making  recommendations  which  the  council  sub- 
stantially accepted.  In  fact  also  O.E.E.C.  recommendations  were 
only  recommendations.  The  Economic  Cooperation  Administra- 
tion, E.C.A.  in  Washington  always  retained  the  legal  power  to 
determine  the  size  of  aid  allotments  and  when  the  aid  total  was 
cut  at  the  end  of  the  first  two  years  E.C.A.  assumed  the  major 
responsibility  for  fixing  the  allocation. 

As  the  structure  of  N.A.T.O.  developed,  British  attitudes  to- 
wards it  could  be  seen  to  parallel  closely  previous  attitudes  to  the 
Marshall  Plan.  There  was  the  same  aversion  to  anything  suggestive 
of  a  supra-national  secretariat,  though  a  comparable  willingness  to 
second  an  eminent  English  public  servant,  in  this  case  Lord  Ismay, 
and  to  allow  him  to  develop  an  "international  personality".  In  the 
matter  of  the  allocation  of  American  aid  there  was  indeed  little 
question  of  choice  between  the  bilateral  and  the  multilateral  ap- 
proach. When  merely  economic  aid  stopped  and  the  new  Mutual 
Defence  Assistance  Programme,  part  economic  but  mainly  military, 
took  its  place,  the  United  States  naturally  preferred  to  decide  itself 
who  should  have  how  much.  To  Britain,  reasonably  confident  of 
her  ability  to  demonstrate  that  she  was  a  good  risk  and  no  mere 
crutch-lover,  this  arrangement  was  preferable  to  any  round-table 
haggling.  (N.A.T.O.  haggling,  as  in  the  Annual  Review  and  over 
the  costs  of  the  infrastructure,  proved  to  be  arduous  indeed.) 
Similarly,  in  strategic  planning,  the  structure  of  N.A.T.O.,  with  its 
location  of  the  Standing  Group  in  Washington,  was  highly  accept- 

^  From  Italy,  France,  Belgium  and  the  United  Kingdom. 

52 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

able/  Save  for  the  addition  of  France,  was  this  not  the  old  Com- 
bined Chiefs  of  Staff  Committee  of  World  War  II,  which  also  had 
met  in  Washington?  The  resemblance  of  S.H.A.P.E.  to  S.H.A.E.F. 
was  even  more  obvious,  while  the  selection  of  General  Eisenhower 
as  Supreme  Commander  put  the  organization  of  European  defence 
into  trusted  and  familiar  hands. 

Most  important  of  all  perhaps,  the  essential  power  structure  of 
N.A.T.O.  was  (indeed  still  is)  that  of  an  alliance  in  which  two 
members,  the  United  States  and  Britain,  disposed  of  a  strength 
different  not  merely  in  degree  but  also  in  kind  from  that  which  the 
rest  could  command,  namely  the  nuclear  deterrent.  The  British 
share  in  this  antedated  her  development  of  an  independent  deter- 
rent of  her  own  (if  indeed  the  V-bomber  force  can  properly  be  so 
described);  it  derived  essentially  from  the  facilities  which  as  "the 
unsinkable  aircraft  carrier"  she  afforded  to  U.S.  Strategic  Air  Com- 
mand (S.A.C.)  at  a  time  when  other  bases  were,  in  varying  degrees, 
impracticable  because  they  were  either  liable  to  be  overrun  by 
Soviet  ground  forces  or  were  only  leaseable  from  politically  un- 
stable ground  landlords.  But  all  along  S.A.C.  has  remained  outside 
N.A.T.O.,  an  arm  exclusively  and  directly  under  U.S.  control. 
There  was  thus  a  paradox  at  the  heart  of  N.A.T.O.  (and  still  is), 
that  as  an  alliance  it  never  controlled  forces  adequate  for  the  de- 
fence of  its  members;  owing  to  the  persistent  failure  in  the  build-up 
of  its  ground  troops,  it  depended  always  upon  the  two  air  forces 
which  it  did  not  control,  S.A.C.  and  Bomber  Command.  That  this 
was  an  element  of  weakness,  and  that  it  occasioned  jealousies  and 
anxieties  amongst  the  members  is  almost  certainly  true,  but  from 
the  British  point  of  view  this  feature  of  N.A.T.O.  was  not  the  least 
of  its  recommendations.  A  N.A.T.O.  which  sought  to  oppose  the 
Soviet  millions  by  an  equivalent  build-up  of  ground  forces  would 
have  drained  Britain  dry  of  man-power  and  left  her  nothing  with 
which  to  deal  with  the  "limited"  and  "brush-fire"  wars  which 
might  come  her  way  as  a  worldwide  power.  It  would  also  have  put 
Britain  very  much  on  a  par  with  all  the  continental  European  mem- 
bers, with  so  much  of  a  voice  (and  no  more)  as  the  numbers  of  her 
armed  forces  would  have  entitled  her  to.  The  balance  maintained 

1  The  Standing  Group's  prestige  declined  from  1953  onwards,  when 
the  Chairman  of  the  United  States  Chiefs  of  Staff  ceased  to  be  the 
day-to-day  American  representative  on  the  Group;  in  his  place  came 
another  senior  officer. 

53 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

between  the  conventional  forces  of  N.A.T.O.  and  the  nuclear  de- 
terrent was  essentially  what  enabled  Britain  to  continue  operating 
in  her  dual  capacity  as  a  European  and  an  Atlantic  power.  More- 
over, it  enabled  her  to  build  and  maintain  the  Anglo-American 
alliance  within  a  structure  of  Western  European  collective  security, 
thus  by-passing  many,  if  not  all,  the  problems  that  an  exclusively 
bilateral  arrangement  would  have  created,  both  in  Europe  and  in 
America.  Finally  it  put  her  on  a  par  with  the  United  States  in 
respect  of  an  issue  on  which  she  was  peculiarly  sensitive- — her 
degree  of  insularity  or  commitment.  She  was  able  to  hold  to  her 
contention  that  as  an  island  power  with  worldwide  obligations  she 
was  as  good  a  European  as  that  quasi-island  power  with  worldwide 
commitments,  the  United  States,  and  that  she  would  go  into  Europe 
as  far  as  America  would  go  (even  if  that  involved  greater  risks  for 
her  than  for  America,  as  a  more  vulnerable  and  contiguous  country) 
but  that  she  was  not  under  any  obligation  to  go  farther. 

The  testing  time  for  "thus  far  and  no  farther"  came  very  soon 
after  the  N.A.T.O.  structure  had  been  built.  When  the  Korean 
War  made  vivid  the  menace  of  Communism  on  the  march  and  at 
the  same  time  diverted  much  American  strength  towards  the 
Pacific,  the  inadequacy  of  N.A.T.O. s  forces  became  glaringly 
apparent.  The  demand  for  the  creation  of  a  German  army  to  help 
in  the  manning  of  the  European  ramparts  grew  proportionally.  It 
did  not  indeed  grow  at  an  equal  pace  in  Britain  and  America. 
Britain,  to  some  extent,  had  her  hand  forced  by  American  pressure. 
Left  to  herself,  she  would  certainly  have  preferred  to  wait  rather 
than  demand  from  a  defeated  enemy  a  contribution  to  an  anti- 
Russian  defence  force.  Britain  was  more  reluctant  than  the  U.S.A. 
to  believe  that  Germany's  "re-education"  in  democracy  and  non- 
aggression  was  complete  at  the  end  of  a  five-year  course.  She  was 
also  more  willing  to  credit  the  Soviet  argument  that  once  West 
Germany  was  re-armed  the  reunification  of  Germany  would  be  out 
of  the  question.  These  differences  apart,  no  one  disputed  that  the 
revival  of  a  German  instrument  of  war  would  be  only  tolerable  to 
her  old  enemies  and  victims  if  it  were  integrated  in  a  larger  whole 
which  it  could  never  hope  to  dominate.  Thus  arose  the  idea  of  a 
European  army,  to  which  indeed  even  so  robust  a  British  patriot  as 
Winston  Churchill  gave  his  endorsement  at  the  Council  of  Europe 
in  August,  1950.  What  perhaps  his  auditors  failed  to  notice  was 
his  proviso  that  such  a  force  should  act  "in  full  co-operation  witli 

54 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

the  United  States  and  Canada".  Even  so,  it  was  a  misleading  index 
of  Britain's  own  intentions.  The  Americans,  announcing  that  they 
would  send  more  troops  to  Europe  (Mr.  Truman  on  5  September, 
1950),  began  also  to  step  up  their  pressure  for  German  rearmament. 
The  French,  hating  the  idea  of  a  German  national  army,  hastily 
devised  the  Pleven  Plan  (national  contingents  integrated  at  the 
level  of  the  smallest  possible  unit  under  a  European  Defence  Min- 
ister, responsible  to  the  European  Assembly  with  a  European 
budget  and  Defence  Council).  But  when  it  came  to  working  out 
details  in  the  first  half  of  1951,  the  United  Kingdom  made  it  clear 
that  it  would  not  join  the  European  Army  and  to  the  meeting  held 
at  Paris  to  discuss  the  Plan  in  February,  1951,  Britain  sent  only  an 
observer.  However,  when  it  became  apparent  later  in  the  year  that 
a  direct  German  contribution  to  N.A.T.O.  would  not  be  acceptable 
and  that  the  European  Defence  Community  (E.D.C.)  was  the  only 
alternative,  the  United  Kingdom  joined  with  the  United  States  and 
France  in  giving  it  support.  Herbert  Morrison,  as  Foreign  Secretary, 
said  we  desired  to  establish  "the  closest  possible  association"  with 
it  "at  all  stages  of  its  development".  The  statement  was,  however, 
more  indicative  of  the  ambivalence  of  British  pronouncements  than 
of  any  change  of  policy. 

If,  when  Mr.  Churchill  took  over  from  Mr.  Attlee  in  October, 
1951,  the  Europeans  expected  the  great  proponent  of  a  European 
Army  to  lead  the  United  Kingdom  into  E.D.C,  they  were  quickly 
disillusioned.  Despite  keen  and  constant  American  pressure  the 
response  of  the  British  Government  was  cool.  Sir  David  Maxwell- 
Fyfe  was  sent  to  Strasbourg  to  say  that  Britain  would  "consider" 
the  best  way  of  "associating"  herself  with  a  European  army — a  far 
cry  from  integrating  her  forces  in  one.  In  other  words  the  British 
Government  was  for  a  European  army — but  from  outside;  Britain 
was  to  be  a  well-wisher,  not  a  participant.  We  have  Sir  Anthony 
Eden's  word  for  it^  that  this  policy  enjoyed,  from  November,  1951, 
onwards,  official  American  support  (though  he  admits  even  "well- 
informed"  Americans  still  blamed  us  for  not  going  in).  He  does 
not  say  what  considerations  led  to  this  change  in  the  American 
attitude  but  to  the  extent  to  which  it  took  place  it  was  certainly 
welcome  in  Britain.  As  the  E.D.C.  negotiations  proceeded  it  became 
more  and  more  apparent  that  the  British  relationship  with  any  such 
defence  community  would  not  be  any  more  intimate  than  the 

1  A.  Eden,  F////  O'u/e  (London,  Boston,  1960),  pp.  32-36. 

55 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

American,  In  pursuance  of  this  policy  it  was  a  joint  and  identical 
assurance  that  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  gave  on  the  morrow  of  the 
signing  of  the  E.D.C.  Treaty  that 

"If  any  action  from  whatever  quarter  threatens  the  integrity  or 
unity  of  the  Community,  the  two  Governments  will  regard  this 
as  a  threat  to  their  own  security.  They  will  act  in  accordance  with 
Article  4  of  the  North  Atlantic  Treaty." 

In  fact,  of  course,  this  assurance  was  not  enough  to  secure  the  rati- 
fication of  the  E.D.C.  Treaty.  For  nearly  two  years  the  E.D.C. 
debate  dragged  on  inconclusively  in  France.  In  face  of  this,  Ameri- 
can impatience  and  irritation  mounted.  In  October,  1953,  Dulles  as 
U.S.  Secretary  of  State  threatened  France  with  his  "agonizing  reap- 
praisal" and  the  threat  that  Congress  might  not  continue  to  support 
N.A.T.O.  Aimed  primarily  at  France  it  also  had  its  implications  for 
Britain.  This  was  the  time  when  Dulles  informed  Eden  that 

"If  things  went  wrong  the  United  States  might  swing  over  to  a 
policy  of  western  hemispheric  defence,  with  emphasis  on  the 
Far  East.  .  .  .  Mr.  Dulles  pointed  out  that  the  consequences  of  a 
swing  of  American  policy  towards  hemispheric  defence  were  of 
obvious  concern  to  Great  Britain.  He  hoped  therefore  that  they 
might  find  an  occasion  to  underline  the  warnings  which  he  had 
issued  in  his  statement  and  make  some  appeal  to  France."^ 

In  August,  1954,  nonetheless,  the  French  Assembly  rejected  E.D.C. 

The  situation  thus  precipitated  was  far  more  critical  than  any 
that  had  existed  before  E.D.C.  had  been  thought  of.  To  resolve  this 
crise  de  con  fiance,  even  though  in  the  strict  sense  it  was  none  of  her 
making,  and  to  make  possible  the  only  other  conceivable  solution, 
the  admission  of  Germany  into  N.A.T.O.,  Britain  gave  a  pledge 
"to  maintain  on  the  mainland  of  Europe  .  .  .  the  effective  strength 
of  the  United  Kingdom  forces  now  assigned  to  S.A.C.E.U.R.,  four 
divisions  and  the  Tactical  Air  Force,  or  whatever  S.A.C.E.U.R.  re- 
gards as  equivalent  fighting  capacity"  and  not  to  withdraw  them 
against  the  wishes  of  a  majority  of  the  Brussels  Powers.  For  the 
United  States  Dulles  also  gave  an  undertaking  but  it  was  in  a  less 
explicit  form — the  United  States  "to  maintain  in  Europe  .  ,  .  such 
units  ...  as  may  be  necessary  and  appropriate  to  contribute  its  fair 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  57-58. 

56 


THE  COLD  WAR  ALLLIANCE 

share  of  the  forces  needed  .  .  .  etc."  In  retrospect  the  discrepancy 
between  the  two  commitments  may  not  appear  unduly  significant; 
if  so,  it  is  because  the  British  Government  has  not  allowed  the  Paris 
Agreements  to  set  a  precedent  in  creating  such  discrepancies — in- 
deed, as  the  British  Defence  White  Paper  of  1957  soon  showed,  it 
has  not  interpreted  the  Agreements  themselves  as  constituting  quite 
as  rigid  a  commitment  as  at  first  appeared. 


57 


5 

THE  ATOM 

WITH  the  establishment  of  N.AT.O.  and  the  creation  of 
the  working  partnership  in  the  nuclear  deterrent  there 
came  into  being  again  an  informal  Anglo-American 
alliance  which,  mutatis  mutandis,  incorporated  most  of  the  essential 
features  of  the  wartime  relationship.  There  was,  however,  one  area 
of  activity  which  was  conspicuously  excluded  from  the  Anglo- 
American  partnership.  Anything  to  do  with  the  great  discovery 
with  which  the  war  ended,  the  management  of  the  annihilating 
energies  of  the  atom,  remained  a  jealously  guarded  national  secret. 
The  story,  fragmentary  and  at  many  points  obscure,  thanks  to  the 
technical  complexity  of  the  subject  matter  and  the  enveloping 
curtain  of  official  secrecy,  begins  with  the  outbreak  of  the  war  itself. 
Anglo-American  co-operation  in  the  field  of  government-spon- 
sored scientific  research  may  be  said  to  date  from  the  dispatch  to 
America  of  Sir  Henry  Tizard's  mission  in  August,  1940.  In  Tizard's 
own  words  the  policy  behind  his  mission  was  simply  "to  tell  them 
what  they  want  to  know".^  The  Americans  were  deeply  impressed 
by  such  openness  and  reciprocated  with  an  equal  generosity.  By  the 
beginning  of  1941  the  British  Government  had  committed  itself  to 
an  explicit  policy  of  disclosing  all  scientific  and  technical  secrets  to 
the  Americans,  withholding  only  those  which  might  involve  the 
security  of  imminent  operations  or  where  the  developments  being 
explored  were  still  immature.  This  applied,  by  no  means  least,  to 
British  researches  on  what  was  then  known  as  the  U-bomb;-  in 
October,  1941,  while  the  U.S.A.  was  still  at  peace,  Roosevelt  sug- 
gested to  Churchill  that  work  on  this  project  should  be  conducted 
jointly.  The  suggestion  was  not  adopted  in  that  form,  but  from  the 
autumn  of  1941  to  the  autumn  of  1942  frequent  visits  and  constant 
exchanges  of  papers  established  a  virtual  pooling  of  British  and 
American  findings.  By  June,  1942,  it  seemed  to  have  become  pos- 
sible— and  if  possible  then  indeed  imperative — to  proceed  from 

^  H.  Duncan  Hall  and  C.  C.  Wrigley,  Studies  of  Overseas  Supply,  pp. 
361,  368. 

2  Its  code  name  until  November,  1941,  was  Maud,  and  after  that  date 
Tube  Alloys. 

58 


THE  ATOM 

research  to  production  and  in  a  striking  passage  in  his  Second 
World  War  Sir  Winston  Churchill  describes  how  he  and  President 
Roosevelt,  sitting  in  "intense  heat"  in  a  "tiny  little  room"  at  Hyde 
Park  agreed  to  abandon  work  in  Britain,  and,  in  the  interests  of 
economy  and  security,  concentrate  research  and  production  in  the 
United  States. 

"I  strongly  urged  that  we  should  at  once  pool  all  our  informa- 
tion, work  together  on  equal  terms,  and  share  the  results,  if  any, 
equally  between  us.  The  question  then  arose  as  to  where  the 
research  plant  was  to  be  set  up.  We  were  already  aware  of  the 
enormous  expense  that  must  be  incurred,  with  all  the  consequent 
grave  diversion  of  resources  and  brain-power  from  other  forms 
of  war-effort.  Considering  that  Great  Britain  was  under  close 
bombing  attack  and  constant  enemy  air  reconnaissance,  it  seemed 
impossible  to  erect  in  the  island  the  vast  and  conspicuous  factories 
that  were  needed.  We  conceived  ourselves  at  least  as  far  advanced 
as  our  Ally,  and  there  was  of  course  the  alternative  of  Canada, 
who  had  a  vital  contribution  herself  to  make  through  the  supplies 
of  uranium  she  had  actively  gathered.  It  was  a  hard  decision  to 
spend  several  hundred  million  pounds  sterling,  not  so  much  of 
money  as  of  competing  forms  of  precious  war  energy,  upon  a 
project  the  success  of  which  no  scientist  on  either  side  of  the 
Atlantic  could  guarantee.  Nevertheless,  if  the  Americans  had 
not  been  willing  to  undertake  the  venture  we  should  certainly 
have  gone  forward  on  our  own  power  in  Canada,  or,  if  the 
Canadian  Government  demurred,  in  some  other  part  of  the 
Empire.  I  was,  however,  very  glad  when  the  President  said  he 
thought  the  United  States  would  have  to  do  it.  We  therefore  took 
this  decision  jointly,  and  settled  a  basis  of  agreement."^ 
However,  of  this  momentous  agreement  no  written  record  was 
made  and  by  the  time  subordinates  came  to  translate  the  generalities 
of  their  masters  into  specific  directives,  the  American  programme 
had  entered  a  new  phase.  In  August,  1942,  when  the  project  was 
ripe  for  transfer  from  laboratory  to  factory,  the  U.S.  Army  Corps 
of  Engineers  assumed  control  of  what  their  code  called  the  "Man- 
hattan District"  and  in  so  doing  brought  in  with  them  a  military 
concept  of  security.  The  signature  in  September  of  the  Anglo- 
Russian  agreement  for  the  exchange  of  weapons  seems  to  have  been 
1  ChurchiU,  The  Second  World  War,  Vol.  IV,  (London)  pp.  341-2, 
(New  York)  pp.  380-1. 

59 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

another  inhibiting  factor  for  the  American  administration.^  Soon  a 
new  doctrine  evolved  in  American  scientific-military  thinking,  that 
no  information  should  be  exchanged  even  with  their  closest  allies 
beyond  what  would  directly  benefit  the  war  effort.  As,  in  the  in- 
terests of  security,  work  on  the  bomb  became  increasingly  compart- 
mentalized, so  the  number  and  importance  of  the  compartments  to 
which  the  British  were  given  access  declined.  By  the  end  of  1942 
there  was  a  virtual  cessation  of  all  flow  of  information  to  the 
British. 

In  January,  1943,  Churchill  protested  about  this  to  Roosevelt  at 
the  Casablanca  Conference.  Receiving  hearty  assurances  but  no 
action  from  the  President,  Churchill  pressed  his  case  with  Harry 
Hopkins,  warning  him  that  if  the  Ameiicans  were  not  more  forth- 
coming Britain  would  be  compelled  to  go  ahead  separately.^  In  May 
at  Washington  Churchill  secured  Roosevelt's  agreement  "that  the 
exchange  of  information  on  tube  alloys  should  be  resumed,  and 
that  the  enterprise  should  be  considered  a  joint  one",  and  at  their 
Quebec  meeting  in  August,  1943,  a  specific  document  incorporating 
these  principles  was  drawn  up.^ 

Under  the  Quebec  Agreement  a  Combined  Policy  Committee  was 
established  consisting  of  three  Americans,  two  British  and  one 
Canadian  member  to  oversee  the  project  and  provide  a  channel 
through  which  information  could  be  exchanged.  The  clauses  which 
dealt  with  the  exchange  of  information  were,  as  Lord  Attlee  later 
remarked,  "loosely  worded";  the  first  spoke  of  "complete  inter- 
change of  information  and  ideas  on  all  sections  of  the  project", 
another  stipulated  that  "in  the  field  of  design,  construction  and 
operation  of  large-scale  plants"  interchange  would  be  regulated  by 
"such  ad  hoc  arrangements  as  may,  in  each  section  of  the  field, 
appear  to  be  necessary  or  desirable  if  the  project  is  to  be  brought  to 
fruition  at  the  earliest  moment.  Such  ad  hoc  arrangements  shall  be 
subject  to  the  approval  of  the  Policy  Committee". 

^  R.  G.  Hewlett  and  O.  E.  Anderson,  History  of  the  U.S.  Atomic 
'Energy  Commission,  Vol.  I,  pp.  267-8. 

2  R.  Sherwood,  Koosevelt  and  Hopkins,  pp.  700-1. 

3  Churchill,  The  Second  World  War,  Vol.  IV,  (London)  p.  723,  (New 
York)  p.  809,  telegram  to  Sir  John  Anderson,  and  Vol.  V,  (London)  p. 
83,  (New  York)  p.  93  telegram  to  Deputy  Prime  Minister  and  War 
Cabinet. 

60 


THE  ATOM 

Of  a  rather  different  order  were  four  politico-economic  clauses 
of  the  agreement;  these  were  mutual  undertakings  "that  we  will 
never  use  this  agency  against  each  other",  "that  we  will  not  use  it 
against  third  parties  without  each  other's  consent"  and  "that  we 
will  not  communicate  any  information  ...  to  third  parties  except 
by  mutual  consent";  finally,  in  order  to  quiet  the  American  sus- 
picions that  the  British  were  primarily  interested  in  securing  infor- 
mation which  would  give  them  a  commercial  advantage  after  the 
war,  the  following  clause  was  added:  "In  view  of  the  heavy  burden 
of  production  falling  upon  the  United  States  as  a  result  of  a  wise 
division  of  war  effort,  the  British  Government  recognize  that  any 
post-war  advantages  of  an  industrial  or  commercial  character  shall 
be  dealt  with  as  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  on 
terms  to  be  specified  by  the  President  of  the  United  States  to  the 
Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain,  The  Prime  Minister  expressly 
disclaims  any  interest  in  these  industrial  and  commercial  aspects 
beyond  what  may  be  considered  by  the  President  of  the  United 
States  to  be  fair  and  just  and  in  harmony  with  the  economic  welfare 
of  the  world.  "^ 

The  Quebec  Agreement  was  secret,  so  secret  that  in  Britain  even 
the  War  Cabinet  was  not  informed  of  its  provisions.  Mr.  Attlee 
learnt  them  for  the  first  time  only  when  he  took  over  as  Premier  in 
1945;  so,  presumably,  did  Mr.  Truman  in  the  same  way.  According 
to  Senator  McMahon,  neither  he  nor  any  of  his  Congressional  col- 
leagues knew  of  them  until  1947.  In  retrospect  this  appears  a  grave 
error.  Dr.  Conant,  who  had  a  major  role  in  drafting  the  Agreement 
and  was  a  founder  member  of  the  Combined  Policy  Committee, 
gave  it  as  his  opinion  in  1952  that 

"if  at  least  a  committee  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  had 
been  apprised  of  the  United  States-British  war-time  negotiations 
when  they  took  place,  the  Bill  that  set  up  the  Atomic  Energy 
Commission  of  the  United  States  might  have  taken  a  different 
form  and  Anglo-American  relations  after  a  rough  passage  might 
be  better  now.  As  a  very  humble  observer  from  a  distance  of 
what  occurred  at  high  levels  in  1943,  I  thought  then  and  I  still 
think  that  a  treaty  should  have  been  drawn  between  the  three 
nations  involved,  a  treaty  dealing  with  everything  even  distinctly 
related  to  atomic  energy.  I  for  one  certainly  regret  the  existence 
of  barriers  to  full  Anglo-American  co-operation  in  all  aspects  of 
1  Command  Paper  9123,  6  April,  1954. 

61 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

applied  nuclear  physics,  yet  the  events  of  the  last  few  years  have 
made  the  removal  of  these  barriers  difficult,  to  say  the  least,  "^ 

The  Quebec  Agreement,  even  during  the  war,  did  not  work 
without  some  creaking.  General  Groves,  head  of  the  Manhattan 
Project,  never  believed  in  interchange  and,  on  his  own  proud  ad- 
mission, worked  against  it.-  Nevertheless  the  Agreement  served  as 
the  basis  for  British  participation  in  the  later  stages  of  the  work  on 
the  bomb  and  in  general  co-operation  was  good.  Moreover,  in  June, 
1944,  the  Combined  Policy  Committee  was  supplemented  by  a 
Combined  Development  Trust.  This,  financed  jointly  by  Britain 
and  the  United  States,  was  established  to  buy  up  and  control  all 
available  supplies  of  uranium  and  thorium  ores. 

By  September,  1944,  the  time  was  ripe  for  thinking  about  the 
possible  post-war  implications  of  atomic  energy.  Visiting  Roosevelt 
then,  after  the  second  Quebec  Conference,  Churchill  agreed  with 
him  on  an  aide-7nemoire  which  looked  beyond  the  terms  of  the 
Quebec  Agreement;  this  document  stated  that  "full  collaboration 
between  the  United  States  and  the  British  Government  in  develop- 
ing Tube  Alloys  for  military  and  commercial  purposes  should  con- 
tinue after  the  defeat  of  Japan  unless  terminated  by  joint  agree- 
ment".^ More  confidential  even  than  the  Quebec  Agreement,  the 
aide-me?noire  was  not  even  disclosed  by  Roosevelt  at  the  time  to 
his  closest  "Tube  Alloys"  adviser,  Henry  Stimson,  and  the  only 
American  copy  of  it  was  lost  in  an  irrelevant  file  for  years.  Though 
its  intent  was  clear,  its  exact  legal  status  became  debatable  once 
Roosevelt's  death  and  Churchill's  resignation  removed  its  two 
signatories  from  power. 

When  the  bomb  came  alive  in  all  its  horrifying  actuality  at 
Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki  two  considerations  were  uppermost  in  the 
thinking  of  Mr.  Attlee's  Government.  The  first  was  the  need,  if 
possible,  to  establish  some  efi^ective  international  control  of  the  new 
scientific  monster.  The  second  was  the  need  to  consolidate  and 
extend  the  existing  arrangements  for  Anglo-American  partnership 
in  the  atomic  field.  In  the  eyes  of  the  British  Government  the  two 
objectives  were  not  thought  to  be  incompatible.  The  Americans,  or 

1  J.  B.  Conant,  Anglo-American  Kelations  in  the  Atomic  Age,  p.  33. 

2  U.S.  Atomic  Energy  Commission,  In  the  Matter  of  J.  Robert 
Oppenheimer  (Washington  1954),  pp.  174-5,  177. 

3  Hewlett  and  Anderson,  op.  cit.,  p.  327  and  pp.  457-8. 

62 


THE  ATOM 

many  of  them  at  any  rate,  were  not  so  sure.  Three  schools  could  be 
discerned;  the  out-and-out  internationalists;  the  Anglo-Ameri- 
canists; and  those  who  believed  that  the  "secrets"  of  the  bomb 
could  and  should  be  kept  by  the  United  States.  In  the  mind  of  Mr. 
Truman,  new  to  his  fearful  responsibilities,  elements  of  all  three 
attitudes  seem  to  have  co-existed.  Mr.  Attlee's  desire  for  an  early 
meeting  to  hammer  out  a  joint  approach  to  the  problems  of  the 
bomb  derived  urgency  in  October,  1945,  from  the  President's  re- 
marks at  a  press  conference  that  the  United  States  would  not  share 
the  "know-how"  of  the  bomb's  manufacture  with  its  allies.  The 
meeting,  at  which  Mackenzie  King  also  participated,  for  Canada, 
took  place  in  Washington  in  November. 

No  detailed  report  of  the  meeting  has  been  published,  but  from 
the  fullest  account  available'^  it  would  appear  that  the  main  item  of 
the  agenda  was  the  international  control  of  atomic  energy  and  that 
it  was  not  until  late  in  the  meetings  that  the  future  of  Anglo- 
American  co-operation  was  considered;  it  was  then  entrusted  by  the 
principals  to  their  subordinates,  working  wearily  against  time. 
What  came  out  was  the  "Agreed  Declaration"  of  16  November 
which  advocated  international  action  to  control  atomic  energy  and 
to  outlaw  weapons  of  mass  destruction,  with  effective  safeguards 
through  inspection.  To  this  was  appended  a  memorandum  that  read 
as  follows : 

"1.  We  desire  that  there  should  be  full  and  effective  co-operation 
in  the  field  of  atomic  energy  between  the  United  States,  the 
United  Kingdom  and  Canada. 

2.  We  agree  that  the  Combined  Policy  Committee  and  the  Com- 
bined Development  Trust  should  be  continued  in  a  suitable 
form. 

3.  We  request  the  Combined  Policy  Committee  to  consider  and 
recommend  to  us  appropriate  arrangements  for  this  purpose." 

Lord  Attlee  says  he  and  Sir  John  Anderson  came  away  from  the 
talks  thinking  they  had  obtained  "a  satisfactory  agreement  for 
future  co-operation  in  the  field  of  atomic  energy".  No  reference 
was  made  in  the  communique  to  the  Quebec  Agreement,  least  of  all 
to  the  politico-economic  clauses.  This  was  one  of  the  matters  on 
which  the  Combined  Policy  Committee  was  to  make  recommenda- 
tions. 

1  Hewlett  and  Anderson,  op.  cit.,  p.  455-81. 

63 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

When  the  Combined  'Policy  Committee  got  down  to  this  task  it 
found  that  at  the  operative  level  a  crucial  gap  existed  between 
British  and  American  thinking.  The  British  asked  for  the  imple- 
mentation of  the  "full  and  effective  co-operation"  of  the  Truman- 
Attlee-King  memorandum.  On  the  American  side,  however,  a 
paradoxical  alliance  emerged  of  the  nationalists  and  the  interna- 
tionalists, General  Groves  insisting  that  any  such  exchange  of  in- 
formation with  the  United  Kingdom  would  compromise  the 
attempts  to  set  up  international  control  of  the  bomb  through  the 
United  Nations.  As  a  result  nearly  six  months  went  by  without  any 
progress  at  all.  To  make  matters  worse,  the  American  administra- 
tion was  lending  its  support  in  Congress  to  the  McMahon  Bill 
which  proposed  a  number  of  sweeping  restrictions  on  the  disclosure 
or  exchange  of  information  in  the  atomic  energy  field,  reflecting 
the  pervasive  Congressional  conviction  that  the  U.S.A.  had  the 
"secret"  of  the  atom  bomb  and  that  she  ought  to  preserve  this  in  her 
exclusive  possession  even  from  her  closest  allies. 

In  face  of  this  Mr.  Attlee  "informed  the  United  States  ambas- 
sador in  London,  Mr.  Harriman,  that  if  the  McMahon  Bill  was 
passed  Britain  would  be  forced  to  build  her  own  plants  for  atomic 
energy  production  for  both  military  and  civil  purposes.  At  the 
same  time  he  instructed  Lord  Halifax  in  Washington  to  request 
detailed  information  on  the  construction  and  operation  of  atomic 
energy  plants  in  the  United  States  at  the  next  meeting  of  the  Com- 
bined Policy  Committee  in  order  that  Britain  should  have  the  neces- 
sary data  to  complete  the  work.  The  request  was  put  at  a  meeting  on 
15  April.  It  met  with  a  blank  refusal".^ 

There  then  ensued  a  sharply  worded  exchange  of  notes  between 
the  two  leaders,  an  outline  of  which  may  be  read  in  Mr.  Truman's 
Memoirs  and  Lord  Attlee's  recorded  reminiscences,  A  Prwie 
Minister  Remembers.  For  Britain,  of  course,  there  were  two  aspects 
to  the  problem,  both  of  which  appeared  equally  important  in  the 
context  of  conditions  in  1946.  Not  only  was  there  the  obvious  desire 
to  share  in  the  super-weapon,  but  also,  with  British  coal  production 
lagging  and  oil  constituting  a  large  element  in  our  import  bill,  the 
atom  as  a  source  of  fuel  and  power  had  a  special  appeal,  all  the 
greater  since  somewhat  optimistic  estimates  prevailed  about  the 
cheapness  of  atomic  power.  In  pressing  their  case  the  United  King- 
dom relied  mainly  on  the  "complete  interchange"  clause  of  the 

1  Francis  Williams,  A  Prime  Minister  Remembers  (1961),  p.  110. 

64 


THE  ATOM 

Quebec  Agreement  plus  the  moral  argument  of  the  United  King- 
dom's contribution  to  the  wartime  project;  the  United  States  in 
rebuttal  contended  that  Quebec  was  never  meant  to  cover  plant 
construction  and  also  that  while  a  plan  for  the  international  control 
of  atomic  energy  was  before  the  United  Nations  any  exclusive 
exchange  between  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  United  States 
would  be  improper. 

The  Attlee-Truman  exchanges  were  still  in  progress  on  1  August, 
1946,  when  the  McMahon  Bill  became  law.  No  reply  was  ever 
received  in  Britain  to  Mr.  Attlee's  last  and  fullest  exposition  of  the 
British  claims  and  no  doubt  any  reply  from  the  American  adminis- 
tration would  have  had  only  academic  interest  since,  with  the  enact- 
ment of  the  Bill,  an  immediate  ban  was  placed  on  all  conveyance  of 
information.  Already  in  January,  1946,  the  Government  had 
announced  the  establishment  of  an  organization  in  the  Ministry  of 
Supply  which  would  "be  responsible  for  the  production  of  fissile 
material"  and  would  develop  the  atomic  energy  programme  "as 
circumstances  may  require",  i.e.  to  make  both  atomic  power  and 
atomic  bombs. ^  The  imposition  of  the  American  ban  meant  that 
there  could  be  no  more  hope  of  division  of  labour  or  sharing  of 
expense  in  the  development  programme.  The  Government  had  now 
only  the  choice  of  turning  back  or  accelerating  and  expanding  the 
work  it  had  begun.  It  chose  the  latter.  As  soon  as  Parliament  re- 
assembled in  October  the  House  of  Commons  gave  a  second  read- 
ing to  the  Atomic  Energy  Bill  which  gave  the  Ministry  of  Supply  a 
monopoly  in  the  atomic  energy  field,  with  full  powers  of  develop- 
ment and  control. 

In  1947,  in  late  spring  or  early  summer,  certain  key  Republican 
Senators,  notably  Senator  Hickenlooper,  chairman  of  the  Atomic 
Energy  Commission,  and  Senator  Vandenberg,  chairman  of  the 
Foreign  Relations  Committee,  learnt  of  the  political  clauses  of  the 
Quebec  agreement  and  immediately  pressed  for  their  elimination. 
They  also  objected  to  the  fact  that  the  original  uranium  agreements, 
made  in  1944,  by  which  all  uranium  that  the  three  countries  could 
obtain  (including  the  Congo  supplies)  was  turned  over  to  the 
United  States,  had  been  modified  in  July,  1946,  to  provide  for  an 
approximate  equal  division  between  the  United  Kingdom  and  the 
United  States.  Vandenberg  said  he  thought  the  Hyde  Park  and 
Quebec  arrangements  "astounding"  and  "unthinkable"  and  said 

1  H.  C.  Deb.,  5th  series,  Vol.  418,  col.  682-3. 

E  65 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

that  "failure  to  revamp  the  agreements  would  have  a  disastrous 
effect  on  Congressional  consideration  of  the  Marshall  Plan  ...  a 
satisfactory  conclusion  must  be  reached  before  final  action  on  the 
Marshall  Plan  programme". '^  As  a  result,  on  8  January,  1948, 
agreement  was  reached — (the  so  called  modus  vivendi) 

(a)  to  remove  restrictions  on  the  use  of  the  bomb  (though  it  is 
generally  accepted  that  Mr.  Truman  gave  a  personal  pledge  that 
the  United  States  would  continue  to  work  in  the  spirit  of 
Quebec); 

{b)  to  give  the  United  States  more  ore;  e.g.  all  the  Congo 
uranium  produced  in  1948-9  to  go  to  the  United  States  and  the 
United  States  to  be  given  additional  allocations  from  the  British 
owned  stockpile  if  these  were  needed  to  maintain  the  minimum 
American  programme; 

(c)  in  return,  the  United  States  to  disclose  to  the  United  King- 
dom nuclear  data  in  nine  "areas  of  information  having  to  do 
with  health  and  safety  and  certain  other  things",  within  the 
limits  of  the  McMahon  Act,  military  information  specifically 
excluded. 

The  modus  vivendi  was  to  run  only  to  December,  1949,  and  Mr. 
Truman,  in  considering  its  renewal,  proposed  in  July,  1949,  to 
Congressional  leaders,  especially  Hickenlooper  and  Vandenberg, 
what  would  in  effect  have  been  something  of  a  revival  of  the  war- 
time intimacy.  (The  limited  evidence  suggests  that  the  British  were 
insisting  that  a  full  partnership  was  required  by  the  world  situa- 
tion.) Mr.  Truman,  reviving  the  argument  of  Britain's  wartime 
contribution  to  the  bomb,  proposed:  "a  full  partnership,  subject  to 
the  terms  of  the  Atomic  Energy  Act";  all  available  uranium  to  be 
brought  to  the  United  States  for  processing  and  storage;  British 
and  Canadian  scientists  to  come  to  the  United  States  to  work  with 
their  American  colleagues;  "to  overcome  any  complaints  the  British 
might  have  that  they  were  being  excluded  from  the  atomic  weapons 
field,  we  could  arrange  to  have  a  number  of  our  un-assembled 
bombs  placed  in  the  British  Isles". ^ 

^  The  Papers  of  Senator  Vandenberg  (Boston,  1952;  London,  1953), 
p.  361. 

2  Truman,  op.  cit..  Vol.  II  (New  York),  pp.  303-4;  (London),  pp. 
320-1. 

66 


THE  ATOM 

There  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  published  evidence  as  to  whether 
or  not  these  proposals  had  the  support  of  the  British  Government. 
They  represented,  in  effect,  a  re-creation  of  the  wartime  project, 
including  the  siting  of  the  whole  operation  in  the  United  States. 
Anxious  as  Britain  was  to  receive  access  to  all  information,  it  is 
possible  that  she  would  not  have  been  eager,  in  1949,  to  buy  it  at 
such  a  price;  moreover,  the  wartime  precedent  was  a  good  deal  less 
happy  in  the  atomic  field  than  in  others.  In  any  event  the  proposal 
came  to  nothing.  Senator  Vandenberg  opposed  it,  as  his  biographer 
states,  on  the  remarkable  grounds  that  "the  United  States  had  .  .  . 
continuously  extended  its  aid  to  Britain  and  without  any  over- 
whelming co-operation  in  return",  that  the  Atlantic  Pact  implied 
defence  specialization,  and  that  the  United  States  was  particularly 
equipped  to  carry  the  prime  responsibility  in  the  nuclear  field. 
Senator  Hickenlooper  also  objected  on  the  ground  of  "his  distrust 
of  British  security".^  In  August,  1949,  the  American  monopoly — - 
or,  one  should  more  truly  say,  their  imagined  monopoly — of  A- 
bomb  secrets  was  in  fact  brought  to  an  end — but  by  another  rival 
than  her  ally.  In  September  it  was  established  beyond  doubt  that 
the  Russians,  a  month  earlier,  had  exploded  an  atomic  "device". 

At  the  end  of  1949  the  modus  vivendi  did  run  out  and  even  the 
limited  exchange  possible  under  it  ceased  to  operate.  In  the  new 
year  the  British  Government  seems  to  have  submitted  new  pro- 
posals, but  on  4  February  Dr.  Klaus  Fuchs  was  prosecuted  in 
Britain  for  offences  against  the  Official  Secrets  Act.  In  the  next 
month  Senator  McCarthy  made  public  his  allegation  about  Com- 
munists in  the  State  Department.  On  1  March  it  was  announced 
that  talks  which  had  been  taking  place  in  Washington  about  co- 
operation in  the  atomic  field  would  be  discontinued  pending  a  re- 
view by  the  three  countries  concerned  of  all  aspects  of  their  security 
arrangements.  Thus  the  arrangements  in  the  modus  vivendi  came 
formally  to  an  end.  Contacts  indeed  continued  on  an  informal  basis, 
but  there  was  no  increase  in  the  exchange  of  information  on  the 
existing  restricted  level. 

This  frozen  posture  persisted  throughout  the  remainder  of  the 
Attlee  and  Truman  regimes.  The  resolute  American  refusal  to 
admit  her  partner  in  World  War  II  and  now  her  closest  ally  in 
N.A.T.O.  to  any  share  in  the  secrets,  military  or  industrial,  of  the 
invention  to  which  British  effort  had  so  signally  contributed  was 

^  Vandenberg,  op.  cit.,  p.  364. 

67 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

undoubtedly  the  biggest  flaw,  from  the  British  point  of  view,  in  the 
Anglo-American  partnership  during  these  years.  The  peculiarly 
charged  quality  of  the  subject,  coupled  with  its  technical  obscurity, 
damped  down  public  discussion  of  it  to  a  deceptively  low  level. 
The  desire  to  move  the  American  Congress  and  administration  by 
an  open  appeal  to  what  were  felt  to  be  their  moral  obligations, 
strove  unsuccessfully  with  the  dominant  disposition  to  go  easy  on 
public  protests  so  long  as  there  was  a  reasonable  prospect  that 
private  representations,  particularly  at  the  executive  level,  might 
modify  statutory  vetoes.  But  the  pent-up  frustration  thus  en- 
gendered occasionally  found  outlet  in  explosions  of  ill-temper  in 
Parliament  in  which  political  leaders,  unable  to  give  frank  ex- 
pression to  their  irritation  with  their  allies,  vented  their  feelings 
upon  the  opposite  front-bench.  The  deep  sense  of  mortification  and 
injustice  which  rankled  on  this  subject  can  be  detected  in  the  inter- 
mittent and  often  oblique  exchanges  during  this  period  between 
Churchill  and  Attlee  and  their  respective  lieutenants.  At  the  always 
silent  level  of  official  Whitehall  not  even  these  bubbles  of  exaspera- 
tion rose  to  the  surface,  but  it  was  perhaps  in  Whitehall  more  than 
anywhere  else  that  this  breakdown  of  a  looked-for  co-operation 
became  a  souring  element  in  a  relationship  otherwise  harmonious 
and  mutually  esteemed. 

There  is  every  indication  that  Mr.  Churchill  confidently  looked 
for  a  change  on  this  front  as  a  result  of  his  return  to  power  and  his 
Washington  visit  of  January,  1952.  Since  1948  the  British  case,  in 
his  view,  had  been  powerfully  reinforced  by  the  acceptance  of  East 
Anglia  of  those  S.A.C.  bomber  bases  which,  being  as  it  were  the 
spring  boards  of  American  atomic  might,  exposed  Britain  to  a 
peculiar  hazard  of  atomic  attack.  But  this,  though  it  might  be  a 
valid  debating-point,  was  not  a  bargaining  counter,  since  no  one 
save  British  isolationists  or  fellow-travellers  really  wished  to  see  the 
Americans  expelled  from  these  bases  and  British  atomic  bombs  and 
bombers  replace  American  ones.  In  fact  Mr.  Churchill  was  no  more 
effective  in  his  pleas  for  a  resumption  of  sharing  than  Attlee  had 
been.  He  obtained  the  limited,  and  indeed  debatable,  advantage  of 
getting  in  writing  the  hitherto  informal  agreement  that  tlie  atom 
bomb  should  not  be  loosed  from  American  bases  in  East  Anglia 
without  British  consent.  But  on  the  information  front,  he  obtained 
nothing.  Finally  on  3  October,  1952,  the  United  Kingdom  ex- 
ploded her  own  atom  bomb  on  the  Montebello  Islands.  How  much 

68 


THE  ATOM 

it  cost,  how  much  more  it  cost  as  a  result  of  Britain  having  to  "go 
it  alone" — no  meaningful  answers  to  these  questions  have  ever 
been  published,  Mr.  Churchill,  on  various  occasions,  spoke  of 
"many  scores  of  millions  of  pounds"  and  of  "well  over  £100 
million".  Such  estimates  certainly  do  not  err  on  the  side  of  over- 
statement, but  no  official  figures  have  ever  been  released. 

The  eventual  acquisition  by  Britain,  through  her  own  efforts,  of 
the  "secret"  of  the  atom  bomb  was,  of  course,  by  the  strange  logic 
which  governed  American  policy  on  this  subject,  the  most  powerful 
argument  for  the  readmission  of  Britain  to  the  atomic  partnership. 
But  about  the  same  time  other  factors  began  to  operate  to  produce 
a  certain  modification  of  American  policy.  The  Eisenhower  Admin- 
istration which  took  over  in  1953  enjoyed  a  somewhat  greater 
prestige  amongst  secrecy-minded  Congressmen  than  its  prede- 
cessor; this  coincided  with  the  need  to  make  some  response  to  the 
worldwide  shock  produced  by  hydrogen  bomb  explosion  at  Eniwe- 
tok  and  a  growing  realization  of  the  need  to  apprise  America's 
allies  of  the  military  implications  of  atomic  weapons.  The  decision 
in  September,  1952,  to  send  atomic  artillery  to  American  forces  in 
Europe  was  an  important  factor  in  this.  And  in  October,  1953, 
further  successful  British  atomic  test  explosions  were  conducted. 
Even  so  it  was  not  until  February,  1954,  that  the  President  asked 
Congress  to  amend  the  McMahon  Act  to  permit  the  exchange  of 
information  on  the  tactical  uses  of  atomic  energy.  At  the  end  of 
August  the  President  signed  amending  legislation  which  pretty 
well  gave  him  what  he  asked.  It  was  still  less  than  the  British 
wanted;  weapons  secrets  were  still  excluded.  British  expenditure  on 
making  her  own  bombs  still  ran  at  a  level  which  the  Manchester 
Guardian  estimated  at  more  than  £100  million  a  year,  and  when 
the  British  exploded  a  hydrogen  bomb  of  their  own  on  Christmas 
Island  in  1957  it  was  still  a  British  made  weapon.  Still  the  log-jam 
had  been  broken;  by  degrees  further  agreements  extended  the  area 
of  co-operation.  Most  important  perhaps  of  all,  the  interpretations 
given  to  the  agreements  by  officials  concerned  were  genuinely  liberal 
in  spirit.  The  worst  of  the  discriminatory  sting  was  drawn;  from 
the  British  point  of  view  a  notable  aberration  of  alliance  policy  was 
on  the  way  to  being  rectified. 


69 


6 

THE  FAR  EAST 

THE  basic  identity  of  policy  and  strategy  which  the  United 
Kingdom  developed  with  the  U.S.A.  in  Europe  was  not 
reproduced  in  the  Far  East.  In  the  ordinary  pattern  of  British 
and  American  thinking  about  Anglo-American  relations  the  Far 
East  occupied  only  a  marginal  place;  this  somewhat  obscured  from 
public  notice  the  full  nature  and  extent  of  the  disagreements  which 
marked  their  policies  in  this  area.  These  could  be  traced  back  at 
least  as  far  as  the  American  pressure  in  the  1920's  which  brought 
to  an  end  the  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance.  This  was  followed  by  the 
ragged  controversy  between  Sir  John  Simon  and  Mr.  Henry  Stimson 
over  how  to  deal  with  the  Japanese  aggression  in  Manchuria  in 
1931.  As  war  in  Europe  approached,  something  akin  to  a  surrender 
of  British  interests  in  the  Far  East  developed,  with  the  U.S.A. 
making  what  pace  there  was  in  the  race  against  Japan  for  local 
control.  But  once  the  conflict  in  Europe  was  joined,  the  Pacific  in 
British  eyes  became  an  ocean  of  menace  for  a  different  reason — 
the  fear  that  concern  for  American  interests  there  would  draw 
American  aid  (and  after  Pearl  Harbour,  men  and  arms)  away  from 
Europe  to  Asia.  'Tacific  Firstism"  was  the  great  British  bogey  of 
World  War  II;  in  British  eyes  American  leaders  were  marked  up  or 
down  in  proportion  as  they  resisted  or  succumbed  to  this  heresy. 
Inevitably,  in  a  war  which  began  with  a  Japanese  attack  on  Hawaii 
and  which  involved  a  constant  threat  to  the  U.S.A. 's  Pacific  flank, 
there  was  ample  scope,  even  within  a  surprisingly  ready  American 
acceptance  of  an  'Atlantic  First"  strategy,  for  a  considerable  crop 
of  jealousies  and  squabbles  about  policies  in  the  Far  East.  The 
rapid  collapse  of  Hong  Kong,  Singapore  and  Malaya  in  1941-2 
brought  American  criticisms  of  "decadent  colonialism".^  In  British 
eyes  Roosevelt's  resolute  adherence  to  the  pretence  that  Chiang 
Kai-shek  represented  a  great  power  constituted  an  extraordinary 
aberration  of  judgment.  But  even  Americans  like  Stilwell  who  did 
not  share  this  illusion  found  other  grounds  for  a  vinegarish  animos- 

^  Cf.  as  a  later  by-product  of  this,  Roosevelt's  private  proposal  to 
Stalin  at  Yalta  that  Hong  Kong  should  be  given  back  to  the  Chinese. 

70 


THE  FAR  EAST 

ity  to  the  British  "presence"  in  this  theatre  and  his  rivalry  with 
Wingate  became  in  British  eyes  a  crime  which  Hollywood  com- 
pounded by  its  demonstration  that  in  fact  it  was  Erroll  Flynn  who 
had  recaptured  Burma.  Finally  the  determination  of  Admiral  King 
not  only,  as  was  natural,  to  engross  for  his  theatre  all  the  men  and 
material  he  could  divert  from  anywhere  else,  but  also  to  resist  all 
control  by  the  Combined  Chiefs  of  Staff  and  to  reject  out  of  hand 
the  British  offer  in  September,  1944,  to  assist  in  the  central  Pacific 
operations — all  this  was  something  which  the  British  found  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  basic  harmony  which  prevailed  with  the 
U.S.A.  in  all  the  other  theatres  of  war. 

The  explanation  of  these  divergencies  was  to  be  found  in 
geography  and  history.  To  Britain,  the  Far  East,  though  of  genuine 
and  long-standing  interest  was,  so  to  say,  the  last  station  on  the 
imperial  line.  Britain  had  come  into  Asia  by  way  of  India  and  the 
Indian  Ocean,  with  Singapore  the  "gate"  to  the  "Far"  East  which 
lay  beyond.  The  area  was  thus  found  to  have  the  lowest  priority  in 
the  British  scheme  of  things;  it  was,  literally,  the  opposite  side  of 
the  world,  and  a  side  moreover  where  (unlike  the  Antipodes)  there 
were  no  settlements  of  British  blood  to  beckon  across  the  inter- 
vening immensities.  For  the  United  States,  though  ancestry  and 
habit  bound  her  to  Europe,  the  Far  East  was  only  a  logical  extension 
of  that  "westward  movement"  which  she  had  long  felt  to  be  her 
"manifest  destiny".  The  moment  she  had  established  herself  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  she  had  a  direct  concern  for  the  policing  of  that  ocean 
and  a  direct  interest  in  what  power  dominated  even  its  further 
shores.  Indeed,  with  the  acquisition  of  Alaska,  Hawaii  and  the 
Philippines,  she  became  closer  to  Asia  than  to  Europe. 

Out  of  the  facts  of  geography  grew  considerations  of  strategy. 
The  Pacific  only  comes  alive  strategically  to  the  United  Kingdom 
when  a  threat  looks  like  developing  there  to  her  communications 
with  Australia  and  New  Zealand.  But  to  Americans  it  is  a  Pacific 
power  which  comes  nearest  to  their  own  shores;  Asiatic  Russia  is 
closer  than  anywhere  in  Europe;  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  after  all, 
was  in  part  a  response  to  the  Tsar's  claim  to  the  Pacific  litoral  as  far 
south  as  the  51st  parallel.  The  development  of  modern  navies  and 
air  forces  stimulated  the  American  desire  to  push  her  protective 
bases  as  far  forward  as  possible,  until,  with  the  defeat  of  Japan  in 
1945,  her  strategic  frontier  ran  as  far  East  as  a  line  through  the 

71 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Aleutians,  Japan  and  the  Philippines.  Here  was  the  Pacific  counter- 
part to  the  N.A.T.O.  line  from  Norway  to  Turkey,  the  paling 
within  which  any  adequate  containment  of  Communist  power 
should  take  place.^ 

The  geographical  and  strategical  priorities  were  reinforced  by 
powerful  sentimental  ones.  The  sort  of  politico-cultural  investment 
which  the  British  felt  themselves  to  have  in  India,  the  Americans 
felt  themselves  to  have  in  China  and,  of  course,  in  the  Philippines, 
the  legacy  in  each  case  of  administrators,  teachers  and  missionaries. 
For  the  British,  the  circumstances  in  which  a  Labour  Government 
granted  independence  to  India  gave  Labour  almost  more  than  the 
Conservatives  a  kind  of  proprietary  sympathy  for  the  newly 
emergent  India  of  Nehru  and  guaranteed  that  a  sense  of  mutual 
concern  would  survive  the  liquidation  of  British  rule.  For  the 
Americans  the  circumstances  in  which  the  Kuomintang,  enjoying 
American  support,  was  overthrown  in  China  by  a  rising  tide  of 
Communism  made  it  possible  to  believe  that  any  Chinese  hostility 
to  the  U.S.A.  was  ephemeral  or  at  any  rate  manufactured.  In  Japan, 
of  course,  the  easy  assumption  by  MacArthur  of  the  powers  of  the 
Shogunate  and  the  ready  acquiescence  by  the  Japanese  in  the  regime 
of  their  conquerors  invested  the  American  occupation  with  an  air  of 
Platonic  "guardianship"  which  was  naturally  pleasing  to  any  coun- 
try with  a  sense  of  mission.  Small  wonder  that  the  American  disposi- 
tion to  be  exclusive  in  this  role  was  a  powerful  one.  Though  a  Far 
Eastern  Commission  of  eleven  nations  taking  part  in  the  war  in  the 
Pacific  had  been  set  up  in  Washington  in  1945  and  though  there 
was  an  Allied  Council  in  Tokio  with  a  representative  each  for  the 
U.S.A.,  the  British  Commonwealth,  the  U.S.S.R.  and  China,  neither 
body  seriously  encroached  on  the  American  monopoly  of  admin- 
istration in  post-war  Japan. 

Thus,  though  there  were  certain  discrepancies  between  the  British 
and  the  American  assessments  of  how  a  defeated  Japan  ought  to  be 
run,  the  very  exclusiveness  of  the  MacArthur  principate  prevented 
this  becoming  an  area  of  friction.  The  real  disagreement  developed 
over  China.  Here  American  policy  assumed  an  almost  febrile  char- 
acter which  reflected  the  internal  arguments  and  disputes  that  had 
gone  into  its  making  and  which  undoubtedly  greatly  complicated  for 

1  For  an  incisive  analysis  of  this  see  G.  F.  Hudson,  WiJl  Britain  and 
America  Split  in  Asia?  in  "Foreign  Affairs",  June,  1953. 

72 


THE  FAR  EAST 

Britain  the  task  of  co-ordinating  policies  with  America  in  the  Far 
East.  In  1949  when  the  Chinese  Communists  completed  their 
victory  by  expelling  the  Kuomintang  from  mainland  China  a 
furious  controversy  over  what  was  significantly  called  the  "loss"  of 
China  broke  out  both  in  the  American  administration  and  through- 
out the  country.  Into  the  argument  about  the  respective  merits  of 
the  two  Chinese  groupings  was  injected  a  bitter  party  feeling  de- 
rived from  the  rivalries  of  the  Republicans  with  a  Democratic  party 
which  had  excluded  them  from  office  for  almost  twenty  years. 
Nothing  remotely  approaching  the  bipartisan  policy  towards  Europe 
existed  in  respect  of  the  Far  East.  But  although  the  differences  in 
the  debate  were  real  and  from  the  British  point  of  view  important, 
even  the  Democrats  (or  most  of  them)  began  their  argument  from 
a  point  which  was,  so  to  say,  a  good  deal  to  the  right  of  the  British 
view.  Even  where  the  belief  in  the  Kuomintang's  virtue  had  been 
shattered  beyond  repair,  even  where  the  fact  of  Communist  ascend- 
ancy was  accepted  and  outside  intervention  excluded,  there  was  no 
abatement  in  the  conviction  that  the  Communist  regime  was  the 
enemy. 

In  Britain,  on  the  other  hand,  for  various  reasons,  a  far  more 
indulgent  view  prevailed.  In  the  absence  of  any  paternalistic  fond- 
ness for  Chiang  Kai-shek,  the  venalities  and  inadequacies  of  the 
Kuomintang  had  been  earlier  perceived  and  more  brutally  enunc- 
iated. This  had  encouraged  an  earlier  credence  for  the  Chinese 
Communist  claims  that  they  were  only  a  movement  of  national 
purification.  The  image  developed  of  the  "People's  Republic"  as 
an  austere,  high-minded,  egalitarian  society  of  undernourished 
peasants  whose  Marxism  was  a  mere  tool  for  overthrowing  age-old 
superstitions  and  who  only  asked  to  be  left  alone  to  build  a  new 
China  in  peace.  This  pleasing  mirage  undoubtedly  exercised  a 
powerful  influence  over  elements  in  the  post-war  Labour  Govern- 
ment. 

The  first  open  disagreement  between  London  and  Washington 
came  over  the  issue  of  recognition.  Mr.  Acheson,  as  Secretary  of 
State,  proposed  three  tests  which  the  new  regime  in  China  would 
have  to  pass  before  the  U.S.A.  would  recognize  it.  It  must  be  in 
effective  control  of  the  country,  it  must  recognize  and  carry  out  its 
international  obligations,  it  must  rule  with  the  acquiescence  of  the 
ruled.  The  moral  criteria  involved  in  the  second  and  third  of  these 

73 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

principles  were,  of  course,  such  as  the  government  of  Mao  Tse- 
tung  was  ill-equipped  to  satisfy.  The  British,  here  as  in  general 
elsewhere,  adhered  to  a  morally  neutral  theory  of  recognition,  that 
it  should  be  an  acknowledgement  of  fact,  not  a  mark  of  approba- 
tion. But  the  Acheson  test,  however  open  to  criticism  as  importing 
unassimilable  elements  into  the  relations  of  peaceful  states,  was  in 
the  direct  line  of  earlier,  moralistic  policies  in  this  same  area;  it  was, 
after  all,  in  relation  to  the  Japanese  conquests  in  Manchukuo  that 
the  Hoover- Stimson  doctrine  of  non-recognition  of  territories 
acquired  by  force  had  been  enunciated.  Moreover  it  was  a  doctrine 
which  in  1932  the  League  of  Nations  Assembly  emphatically  en- 
dorsed at  the  instance  of  Sir  John  Simon.  There  was,  therefore, 
material  here  for  a  fairly  charged  dispute  between  the  two  countries. 
We  know  little  about  the  preliminary  discussions  between  the 
United  Kingdom  and  the  United  States  on  this  subject,  except  that 
they  produced  no  agreement.  The  British  decision  to  accord  recogni- 
tion was  prompted,  it  seems  fairly  clear,  by  three  principal  con- 
siderations. British  commercial  interests  in  China  were  considerable; 
in  1950  their  value  was  estimated  at  £110  million,  much  greater 
than  those  of  the  United  States.  In  Hong  Kong  we  had  another 
very  valuable  outpost  of  trade  and  investment,  highly  vulnerable, 
should  China  ever  decide  to  move  in  on  it.  (On  12  August,  1949, 
Mr.  Acheson  had  denied  that  there  was  any  American  commitment 
to  defend  Hong  Kong.)  Whatever  views  one  held  of  the  intentions 
of  the  Chinese  Communist  regime  there  was  some  reason  to  suppose 
that  some  of  its  hostility  might  be  drawn  by  a  de  jure  recognition 
of  a  rule  which  de  facto  was  certainly  absolute,  and  in  some  British 
circles  this  went  so  far  as  to  encourage  the  hope  that  Mao  Tse-tung 
might  be  weaned  from  his  dependence  on  Moscow  and  become  the 
Tito  of  the  Far  East.  The  error  of  this  hypothesis  may  now  be 
plain  to  see  but  one  reason  in  Britain  for  embracing  it  was  that  it 
was  firmly  held  in  India  where  Nehru  was  pressing  for  early 
recognition.  Undoubtedly  the  desire  to  keep  in  step  with  the 
Asiatic  parts  of  the  Commonwealth  was  a  powerful  factor  in 
accelerating  British  recognition.  Thus  Indian  recognition  was 
accorded  on  30  December,  Pakistan's  on  4  January,  Ceylon's  on 
6  January  and  Britain's  on  the  same  day.  Within  a  week,  the 
U.S.S.R.  raised  in  the  United  Nations  the  question  of  the  Peking 
Government's  right  to  China's  seat.  This  brought  the  disaccord 

74 


THE  FAR  EAST 

between  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  even  more  embarrassingly  into  the 
open;  Britain's  first  reaction  was  to  abstain  from  voting,^ 

It  may  be — though  one  certainly  cannot  be  sure — that  the  U.S.A. 
might  have  come  around  to  recognition  of  Communist  China  had 
no  aggravating  circumstance  developed.  But  Senator  McCarthy  and 
the  Korean  War  between  them  made  any  change  in  the  American 
administration's  position  impossible  and  the  issue  remained  an 
irritant  that  grew  more  aggravating  with  time. 

However,  none  of  this  affected  Britain's  attitude  to  Mr.  Truman's 
initial  action  over  Korea  in  June,  1950,  which  Britain  warmly  ap- 
plauded and,  of  course,  actively  supported.  Indeed,  though  the 
British  role  in  Korea  was  a  modest  one,  it  far  exceeded  that  of  any 
other  American  ally,  save  Turkey.  By  the  end  of  1950,  the  Turks 
excepted,  the  only  foreign  units  fighting  by  the  Americans'  side  in 
Korea  were  from  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  Commonwealth. 
From  the  first  the  war  was  seen  in  Britain  as  a  necessary  United 
Nations  war,  the  product  of  deliberate  aggression  which,  if  un- 
checked, would  infect  any  area  in  the  world  where  Communism 
was  pressing  against  the  status  quo.  But  it  also  became  early  ap- 
parent that  the  Korean  conflict  and  the  Chinese  dispute  were  not 
going  to  remain  uninfected  each  by  the  other.  When  on  27  June, 
1950,  Mr.  Truman  ordered  the  United  States  Seventh  Fleet  to 
neutralize  Formosa  it  became  apparent  that,  whatever  the  pros  and 
cons  of  the  action,  it  supplied  a  link  between  Chiang's  struggle  and 
Syngman  Rhee's  and  meant  an  indefinite  endorsement  by  the  U.S.A. 
of  the  Formosa  regime.  Moreover,  from  the  first  moment,  when 
General  MacArthur  was  appointed  as  both  the  United  States  and 
the  United  Nations  Commander-in-Chief  in  Korea,  it  could  be  fore- 
seen that  the  waging  of  this  United  Nations  war  would  create  many 
problems. 

However,  as  long  as  success  attended  allied  arms,  and  the  only 
enemy  appeared  to  be  the  North  Koreans,  this  hardly  mattered.  It 
was  when  the  going  got  tougher  and  Chinese  contingents  began  to 
appear,  with  all  that  they  implied  about  extending  the  war,  that 
the  disagreements  and  prejudices  over  how  to  handle  Mao  and 
Chiang  began  to  manifest  themselves  in  this  new  context  of  an 

^  China's  intervention  in  the  Korean  War  brought  a  certain  harmony 
into  British  and  American  attitudes  in  the  United  Nations;  in  June 
1951  the  United  Kingdom  supported  a  United  States  resolution  to 
defer  indefinitely  the  question  of  Chinese  representation. 

75 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

unequal  Anglo-American  partnership  in  arms.  When,  after  the 
catastrophe  on  the  Yalu  River,  Mr.  Truman  at  a  press  conference 
on  30  November,  1950,  appeared  to  be  saying  that  the  United 
States  might  order  MacArthur  to  use  the  A-bomb  at  his  discretion, 
a  deep  concern  flared  up  not  only  in  London  but  also  in  other  West 
European  capitals.  MacArthur's  discretion  was  not  a  quality  the 
British  found  it  easy  to  believe  in.  In  the  House  of  Commons  a 
debate  ensued  which  the  American  ambassador,  Mr.  Gilford, 
thought  to  be  "the  most  serious,  anxious  and  responsible  debate  on 
foreign  affairs  conducted  .  .  .  since  the  Labour  Party  came  to  power 
in  1945".^  Mr.  Attlee,  after  conferring  with  the  French,  flew  im- 
mediately to  Washington  for  a  conference  to  which  circumstances 
certainly  lent  an  appearance  of  panic  hardly  appropriate  for  a  con- 
cert of  allies. 

That  Mr.  Truman  was  in  fact  proposing  to  authorize  the  use  of 
the  bomb  seems  in  retrospect  unlikely.  What  comes  out  very  clearly 
from  the  reports  of  the  meeting  which  he  and  Mr.  Attlee  have 
provided^  is  that  divergence  of  emphasis,  more  than  plain  con- 
trariety of  policy,  marked  the  British  and  American  positions.  This 
was,  of  course,  the  consequence  of  those  historical  and  geographical 
differences  mentioned  earlier.  The  great  British  anxieties  reflected 
Britain's  situation  and  connexions.  The  British  anxiety  was  that 
large  forces  would  get  drawn  into  an  Asiatic  war  and  so  leave 
Europe  open  to  Russian  invasions;  this  was  a  clear  reflection  of 
Britain's  role  as  a  European  off-shore  island.  Her  second  was  that 
either  by  use  of  the  bomb  or  otherwise  the  war  would  develop  ex- 
clusively the  appearance  of  a  war  between  "Europeans"  and 
Asiatics;  this  undoubtedly  reflected  strong  representations  which 
Britain  had  received  from  the  Asiatic  members  of  the  Common- 
wealth. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Mr.  Attlee  would  secure  from  Mr. 
Truman  any  modification  of  the  United  States  attitude  towards  the 
recognition  of  Peking  and  the  seating  of  her  representatives  at  the 
United  Nations.  What  he  did  get  was  agreement  on  the  importance 
of  avoiding  a  general  war  in  the  East  and  on  the  continuing  priority, 
in  American  planning,  of  Europe.  His  advocacy  of  negotiations  in 
Korea,  with  its  implication  of  a  withdrawal  to  the  38th  parallel,  did 

1  Truman,  op.  cit..  Vol.  II  (New  York),  p.  392;  (London),  p.  420. 

2  Ibid.,  Vol.  II  (New  York),  pp.  394-413;  (London),  pp.  418-38  and 
Francis  Williams,  op.  cit.,  236-240. 

76 


THE  FAR  EAST 

not  win  direct  acceptance;  it  was  an  easier  policy  for  a  British  Prime 
Minister  to  urge  from  Whitehall  than  for  a  Democratic  United 
States  President  to  impose  on  Congress,  on  MacArthur  and — it  may 
be  added — on  the  North  Koreans  and  their  allies.  Indeed  there  is 
no  particular  reason  to  suppose  that  MacArthur' s  dismissal  four 
months  later  and  the  U.S.S.R.'s  proposal  of  truce  talks  six  weeks 
after  that  owed  anything  to  British  representations,  acceptable  as 
both  events  were  in  British  eyes. 

In  retrospect  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  later  stages  of  the 
Korean  War,  so  protracted,  so  indeterminate,  should  have  imposed 
peculiar  strains  upon  the  alliance.  No  one  had  imagined  that  the 
war  would  prove  so  long  and  so  costly.  (Plenty  of  pessimists,  of 
course,  had  predicted  that  it  would  develop  into  World  War  III; 
no  one  had  anticipated  that  while  still  staying  within  its  Korean 
confines  it  would  prove  such  a  running  sore  and  nervous  drain.) 
The  longer  the  war  continued  the  less  clear  became  its  objectives; 
the  United  Nations  element  seemed  to  recede  and  its  place  was 
largely  taken  by  a  vague  concept  of  the  war  as  an  anti-Communist 
crusade.  While  some  British  opinion  accepted  this  and  almost  all 
British  opinion  recognized  that  in  some  sense  this  was  true,  hardly 
anyone  found  this  an  adequate  basis  for  continuing  the  war.  For  a 
policy  of  "containing"  communism  there  was  general  support;  for  a 
"crusade"  against  it — especially  one  launched  in  the  Far  East — 
there  was  almost  none.  Indeed  the  American  experience  at  this 
time  with  such  self-appointed  anti-Communist  crusaders  as  Senator 
McCarthy  was  producing  a  tremendous  backwash  of  suspicion  and 
antipathy  in  Britain,  heightened  of  course  by  the  known  "Asiala- 
tionist"  tendencies  of  such  rabble-rousers. 

The  Korean  conflict  in  fact  brought  out  very  clearly  one  of  the 
problems  which  is  attendant  upon  partnership  in  arms  between  two 
powers  of  unequal  strength.  In  a  sense  (the  sense  which  was  almost 
always  most  vividly  present  to  British  minds)  Britain  had  as  much 
at  stake  in  Korea  as  the  U.S.A.:  if  anything  went  wrong  with  the 
calculations  and  a  limited  war  was  turned  into  a  global  one,  Britain's 
chances  of  survival  in  any  recognizable  form  were  less  even  than 
those  of  the  United  States.  Yet  Britain's  contribution  to  the  common 
cause  was  almost  negligible  beside  the  Americans'.  Exactly  com- 
parable figures  are  not  easy  to  come  by  but  the  scale  of  the  two  war 
efforts  is  pretty  well  represented  by  the  fact  that  in  1951  while  the 

77 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

U.S.A.  had  between  160,000  and  200,000  troops  in  Korea,  the 
British  had  only  12,000.^  As  for  casualties,  the  comparative  figures, 
up  to  19  August,  1953,  the  date  of  the  armistice,  were: 

U.S.A.         United  Kingdom     Other  Commonwealth 

Dead  22,731         Dead  or  missing  Dead  or  missing 

believed  dead  958        believed  dead  521 
Wounded    105,961  2,556  1,190 

(also  United  States  missing  13,585,  which  helps  to  explain  that  by 
1954  the  total  United  States  official  figures  of  dead  had  risen  to 
33,629). 

There  were  many  good  reasons  why  the  British  and  the  Com- 
monwealth contribution  should  have  been  so  modest;  there  were 
over  20,000  British  troops  actively  engaged  by  themselves  on  a  not 
wholly  dissimilar  war  in  Malaya  and  of  course  the  whole  Korean 
incident  increased  the  tension  in  Europe  and  called  for  a  general 
manning  of  the  ramparts  there.  Nor  indeed  at  any  time  did  any 
responsible  American  soldier  or  official  complain  of  Britain  not 
pulling  her  weight.  This,  however,  did  not  alter  the  fact  that  with 
so  small  a  contribution  Britain  could  not  hope  to  have  any  real  voice 
in  any  of  the  on-the-spot  decisions.  She  had  to  accept  a  local  leader- 
ship which  was  a  hundred  per  cent  American  and  rely  on  the  slow, 
remote  and  inadequate  processes  of  diplomatic  representation  to 
ensure  that  the  local  commanders  would  not  authorize  moves  whose 
ultimate  implications  might  be  global. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  United  Nations  auspices  under  which 
the  war  was  formally  fought  were  a  doubtful  blessing.  Even  if 
there  had  been  no  MacArthur  there  would  have  been  a  problem  of 
co-ordination, 2  arising  from  a  clash  between  the  form  and  substance 
of  the  war.  In  form  it  was  a  United  Nations  war  to  which  all  mem- 
bers should  have  contributed  and  for  which  the  United  Nations 
should  have  been,  if  not  the  directing,  at  any  rate  the  co-ordinating 
agency.  In  fact  it  was  the  Americans  who  supplied  nine-tenths  of 

1  Owing  to  the  American  practice  of  rotating  tours  of  duty  the 
Korean  war  made  an  even  greater  impact  on  American  opinion  at 
home  than  the  numbers  in  Korea  at  any  one  time  would  suggest.  The 
fact  is  the  risk  of  Korea  was  real  for  every  American  household  with 
a  male  of  military  age. 

2  As  indeed  there  was  when  MacArthur  had  been  succeeded  by 

Ridgway. 

78 


THE  FAR  EAST 

the  troops  and  did  nine-tenths  of  the  fighting  (apart,  of  course, 
from  the  South  Koreans  themselves)  and  MacArthur  as  the  U.S./ 
U.N.  Supreme  Commander  reported  to  the  United  Nations  only 
through  the  U.S.  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff.  Though  weekly  conferences 
were  held  by  the  U.N.  "Committee  of  Sixteen",  consisting  of 
member  governments  who  supplied  forces  for  the  Korean  opera- 
tion, all  the  military  decisions  were  made  outside  the  United 
Nations  and  in  secret,  as  their  nature  dictated.  The  only  formal 
framework  for  co-ordination  was  thus  an  unreal  one,  yet  it  served 
as  an  excuse  to  prevent  anything  more  realistic  being  constructed. 
Most  of  the  time  there  was  only  a  very  intermittent  diplomatico- 
military  liaison.  The  inadequacies  of  all  Anglo-American  military 
liaison  in  a  Pacific  setting  were  fortunately  in  part  offset  by  the 
generally  good  relations  which  existed  at  the  diplomatic  level.  Sir 
Anthony  Eden  recounts  an  example  in  his  Memoirs,  illustrating  the 
ready  responsiveness  of  Mr.  Acheson : 

"On  one  occasion  I  showed  him  a  telegram  from  Mr,  Selwyn 
Lloyd,  the  Minister  of  State,  giving  an  account  of  feeling  in  the 
House  of  Commons  with  regard  to  Korea.  After  reading  the 
telegram,  Mr.  Acheson  said:  'In  fact,  you  would  like  us  to  make 
fewer  mistakes,  and  to  keep  you  better  informed  when  we  do 
make  them.'  He  went  on  to  welcome  the  visit  of  Lord  Alexander, 
then  Minister  of  Defence,  with  Mr.  Lloyd  to  Korea.  'I  under- 
stand,' he  said,  'the  anxieties  which  the  British  public  must  be 
feeling,  and  I  hope  that  this  will  do  something  to  dispel  them.'  "^ 

Nothing  could  better  oil  the  wheels  of  an  alliance  than  this  ready 
sympathy,  and  nothing  could  serve  as  a  substitute  were  it  lacking, 
yet  the  Anglo-American  experience  during  the  Korean  War  leaves 
one  with  a  strong  impression  that  such  personal  and  ad  hoc  re- 
ceptiveness  was  not  enough.  The  advantages  of  the  direct,  informal 
approach,  of  working  through  a  trusty  friend  at  court,  do  not 
appear  to  have  been  a  substitute  for  the  kind  of  regular,  committee 
type  of  consultation  which  predominated  at  all  levels  in  World 
War  IL  The  difficulties  of  establishing  such  a  system  in  relation  to 
Korea  were  obviously  great;  perhaps,  having  regard  to  the  disparity 
of  the  forces  involved  and  the  peculiar  personal  and  national 
tensions  and  strains  attendant  on  the  whole  enterprise,  they  were 

1  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  21. 

79 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

insuperable.  The  fact  remains  that  their  absence  was  not  adequately 
made  up  in  any  other  way.^  Thus  even  as  late  as  June,  1952,  there 
could  be  a  major  flurry  over  the  American  action  in  bombing 
targets  on  the  Yalu  River,  without  informing  Britain  in  advance, 
though  there  was  an  agreement  to  consult  before  any  attack  was 
made.  The  explanation  was  that  what  to  the  British  appeared  a 
development  fraught  with  grave  implications,  to  the  Americans 
appeared  a  merely  tactical  measure,  not  covered  by  the  agreement. 
The  incident  did  indeed  stimulate  a  new  experiment  in  allied  co- 
operation. On  28  July,  1952,  the  appointment  was  announced  of 
Major-General  S.  N.  Shoosmith  of  the  British  army  to  be  Deputy 
Chief  of  Staff  at  General  Clark's  (the  U.N./U.S.  Commander-in- 
Chief's)  Headquarters.  His  function  was  not  to  be  a  secret  channel 
of  information  with  London  but,  as  a  knowledgeable  British  repre- 
sentative, to  be  on  the  spot  to  advise  General  Clark  about  the 
probable  British  reactions  to  some  proposed  course  of  action. 

However,  there  were  disagreements  between  Britain  and  the 
U.S.A.  on  Far  Eastern  issues  which  persisted  despite  all  consulta- 
tion. In  this  category  the  long  train  of  differences  which  flowed 
from  the  initial  dispute  over  recognizing  Red  China  was  of  con- 
spicuous importance.  The  same  concern  for  Hong  Kong  and  trade 
which  had  been  a  factor  in  stimulating  British  recognition  con- 
tinued to  operate  throughout  the  Korean  War  to  a  degree  which 
the  Americans  thought  deplorable.  (It  was  the  old  difference 
between  a  nation  which  must  trade  in  order  to  live  and  one  which 
lives  in  order,  inter  alia,  to  trade.)  The  total  volume  of  British  trade 
with  China  was  small,  but  to  Hong  Kong  it  was  vital;  without  it 
the  colony  could  not  survive  and  to  forbid  it  might  provoke  China 
to  move  in  and  take  over.  Britain,  like  a  good  shopkeeper,  was  also 
concerned  with  keeping  her  connexion.  Red  China  might  be  a  poor 
customer,  might  even  chivvy  British  firms  and  businessmen  un- 
mercifully; even  so,  it  was  better  to  hold  on  and  maintain  the  con- 
nection than  to  let  it  go  to  competitors  whom  she  would  never 

^  Cf.  Mr.  Shinwell,  former  Minister  of  Defence,  complaining  re- 
miniscently  on  25  June,  1952,  that  the  Labour  government  "were 
never  satisfied  with  the  consultation  and  co-operation  that  had  been 
going  on.  We  always  pressed  for  more  consultation  but  for  some 
reason  or  other  the  United  States  administration  resisted  the  pressure 
and  we  never  received  the  satisfaction  we  desired."  H.C.  Deb.,  5th 
Series,  Vol.  502,  col.  2356. 

80 


THE  FAR  EAST 

afterwards  succeed  in  ousting.  Consequently,  though  at  the  out- 
break of  the  Korean  War  the  Government  prohibited  the  export  of 
many  strategic  materials  to  China,  it  was  not  prepared  to  go  as  far 
as  the  U.S.A.  and  ban  everything  (just  as  the  U.S.A.  did  not  try  to 
ban  all  Japanese  trade  with  the  Chinese  mainland).  However,  as 
Chinese  participation  in  the  war  became  more  blatant,  American 
pressure  on  Britain  mounted  and  indeed  even  in  Britain  there  was 
a  sense  of  shock  when  it  was  revealed  that  77,624  tons  of  rubber 
had  gone  from  Malaya  and  Singapore  to  China  in  1950  and  that  in 
the  first  quarter  of  1951  alone  this  had  risen  to  46,500  tons.  In 
May  a  strict  limit  of  2,500  tons  a  month  was  initially  imposed  and 
later,  in  view  of  the  stocks  China  might  be  supposed  to  have 
accumulated,  a  total  ban  on  rubber  exports  was  imposed  for  the  rest 
of  the  war. 

There  was  nothing  here  which  had  been  kept  secret  from  the 
U.S.A.  Indeed  every  fortnight  the  Hong  Kong  Government  sup- 
plied the  American  authorities  with  a  detailed  list  of  commodities 
exported  to  China.^  But  in  the  inflamed  condition  of  American 
opinion  the  superficial  impression  of  Britain  as  a  reluctant  ally 
trading  with  the  enemy  proved  very  nearly  ineffaceable,  and  greatly 
complicated  the  task  of  obtaining  an  American  hearing  for  the 
British  case  on  the  many  Far  Eastern  issues  over  which  there  was 
disagreement.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  British  case  for  continuing 
trade  with  China  ever  got  across  to  Americans.  Paradoxically  it  was 
harder  to  get  a  hearing  for  it  after  the  cessation  of  general  Korean 
fighting  than  before.  The  new  Republican  administration  seemed 
alarmingly  responsive  to  the  pressures  of  McCarthyite  congressional 
opinion,  which  now  was  demanding  a  blockade  of  the  China  coast. 
Such  a  blockade  was  doubly  distasteful  to  Britain;  not  only  would 
it  affect  trade;  worse  still,  it  would  provoke  incidents  which  might 
easily  result  in  open  confiict  with  China.  To  avert  such  a  develop- 
ment and  appease  the  American  demand,  the  United  Kingdom 
introduced  in  March,  1953,  a  strict  licensing  system  for  vessels 
journeying  to  Chinese  ports.  As  appeasement  this  hardly  worked; 
within  a  few  months  it  was  followed  by  a  set  of  restrictive  moves 
by  the  United  States  Government  against  foreign  shipping  designed 
apparently  to  make  any  trading  with  China  unprofitable,  however 

^  This  was  the  list  from  which  General  MacArthur  read  out  to  the 
Senate  Committee  the  alarming  catalogue  of  critical  items,  omitting 
only  to  indicate  that  in  each  case  the  quantities  supplied  were  niL 

F  81 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

non-strategic  the  materials.  Even  after  the  armistice  was  signed  on 
27  June,  1953,  there  was  little  improvement.  Sir  Winston  Churchill 
told  Parliament  on  1 7  December  that  trade  with  China  was  among 
the  topics  he  discussed  with  the  President  in  their  meeting  at  Ber- 
muda but  evidently  no  progress  was  made.  In  the  absence  of  a  peace 
settlement  the  United  Nations  embargo  on  strategic  exports  re- 
mained in  force,  and  the  480  items  which  the  United  Kingdom 
bound  itself  not  to  export  to  China  were  almost  twice  as  many  as 
those  on  the  embargo  list  for  the  U.S.S.R.  and  its  satellites  in 
Europe. 

Meanwhile  in  Japan  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  worked  on  a  rather 
different  problem,  the  making  of  a  peace  treaty,  and  the  status  and 
powers  which  an  ex-enemy  country  should  enjoy  under  it.  The 
U.S.A.,  mentor  of  a  "westernized"  Japan,  felt  a  certain  pride  of 
sponsorship  in  presenting  this  Far  Eastern  Eliza  Doolittle  for  ad- 
mission to  democratic  society.  No  such  sentiments  sweetened  the 
natural  sourness  of  Australian  and  New  Zealand  feelings  towards 
a  former  bitter  combatant  and  Britain,  though  somewhat  less  anti- 
pathetic herself,  had  to  take  note  of  the  sentiments  of  those  Com- 
monwealth members  whom  she  had  not  been  able  to  protect  in 
1942  and  who  had  lived  so  much  closer  to  the  Japanese  menace 
than  she  had  herself.  For  her  own  part,  her  major  concern,  once 
again,  was  with  trade;  what  were  the  implications  for  British  in- 
dustry of  a  sovereign  Japan,  able  to  indulge  in  unregulated,  under- 
cutting competition  ? 

The  Truman  administration  had  entrusted  the  negotiations  over 
the  treaty  to  that  eminent  representative  of  the  opposition  party, 
John  Foster  Dulles.  Mr.  Dulles  pursued  his  consultations  not  only 
with  the  relevant  allied  embassies  in  Washington  but  also  in  a  series 
of  visits  to  allied  capitals.  But  consultation  itself  raised  a  familiar 
problem.  What  about  China?  Mr.  Dulles  sent  a  copy  of  the  draft 
treaty  to  the  tenants  of  Formosa;  the  British  Government  proposed 
that  it  should  be  submitted  to  the  Communist  Government  in 
Peking.  Once  Britain  had  recognized  Peking  this  was  a  logical 
enough  corollary  to  the  argument  that  all  the  anti-Japanese  allies  of 
World  War  II  should  be  consulted.  Britain  was  supported  in  her 
position  by  India  and  the  other  states  which  had  also  granted 
recognition — including,  of  course,  the  U.S.S.R.  Nothing,  however, 
could  better  illustrate  the  sterile  controversy  into  which  the  recogni- 
tion dispute  plunged  the  allies,  since  it  was  perfectly  evident  that 

82 


THE  FAR  EAST 

on  this  issue  nothing  but  obstruction  could  possibly  come  from 
Peking.  Moreover,  there  was,  of  course,  a  good  deal  more  at  stake 
than  "mere"  recognition.  Amongst  the  rights  which  Japan  was  re- 
nouncing under  the  treaty  were  her  claims  to  Formosa  and  the 
Pescadores.  Who  was  she  renouncing  them  to?  To  Chiang  Kai- 
shek  or  to  Mao  Tse-tung?  The  Americans,  as  might  be  expected, 
were  adamant  in  their  refusal  to  let  the  Peking  Government  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  treaty  and  for  two  months  a  brisk  con- 
troversy ran  its  course.  At  first  the  British  seem  seriously  to  have 
considered  delaying  the  treaty  until  the  question  of  the  two  Chinas 
should  have  been  settled,  but  sensibly  they  concluded  that  delay 
would  be  a  worse  alternative.  But  the  near  deadlock  which  had 
developed  on  the  China  question  could  only  be  resolved  by  a 
negative  compromise;  it  was  agreed  that  neither  of  the  Chinas 
should  be  invited  to  the  Peace  Conference  or  asked  to  comment 
upon  the  treaty.  The  result  cost  both  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  some 
support  from  their  friends;  the  Indians  and  Burmese,  supporters  of 
Peking,  declined  to  be  parties  to  the  treaty;  the  Formosan  Govern- 
ment presented  an  indignant  protest  and  the  Generalissimo  com- 
plained to  Mr,  Dewey  of  the  U.S.A.'s  "total  abandonment"  of  her 
wartime  ally. 

The  consequential  bad  blood  did  not  end  there.  The  compromise 
which  Mr.  Herbert  Morrison,  as  British  Foreign  Secretary,  had 
arranged  with  Mr.  Dulles  meant,  of  course,  that  it  would  be  left  to 
Japan  herself  to  decide,  after  the  treaty  was  signed,  what  relations 
with  which  China  she  would  adopt.  In  line  with  this,  at  the  San 
Francisco  Peace  Conference  in  September,  at  which  the  treaty  was 
signed,  Mr.  Dulles  explicitly  ruled  out  the  exertion  of  "a  com- 
pulsion in  this  matter  which  would  create  resentment  in  Japan  and 
.  .  .  activate  and  aggravate  Allied  division".  For  Britain  more  was 
at  stake  than  the  mere  desire  to  get  backing  for  her  recognition 
policy.  There  was  also  an  important  commercial  interest  involved. 
In  one  region  of  Britain  the  Japanese  Treaty  had  been  received  with 
nothing  but  dislike  and  apprehension.  Lancashire  saw  the  full  re- 
sumption by  Japan  of  her  sovereignty  as  a  sign  that  her  old  com- 
petitor in  the  cotton  markets  of  the  world  would  start  price-cutting, 
copyright  infringement,  false  labelling  and  "unfair"  labour 
practices  again.  But  since  no  effective  controls  could  possibly  be 
written  into  the  treaty  it  became  all  important  whether  Japan  would 
again  find  an  outlet,  as  before  the  war,  in  the  mainland  of  China 

83 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

or  whether,  excluded  from  there,  she  would  be  fighting  Britain  for 
markets  throughout  the  rest  of  the  East.  Obviously  her  decision 
about  which  government  to  recognize  would  have  a  crucial  bearing 
on  this. 

It  is  not  enough,  however,  for  treaties  to  be  drafted  and  signed; 
they  have  also  to  be  ratified.  Under  the  American  constitution  this 
can  become  a  convenient  opportunity  for  the  Senate  to  introduce 
modifications,  express  or  implied,  to  the  agreements  which  her  own 
and  other  executives  have  approved.  That  something  of  this  kind 
might  occur  over  the  Japanese  treaty  was  already  being  rumoured 
by  the  autumn  of  1951,  provoking  from  Mr.  Kenneth  Younger 
who,  as  Labour  Minister  of  State,  had  been  associated  with  the 
treaty-making,  a  reminder  and  a  warning : 

"I  sincerely  trust  that  no  such  situation  will  arise.  I  am  quite  sure 
that  it  would  not  be  the  wish  of  any  of  those  engaged  on  behalf 
of  the  United  States  in  negotiating  this  Treaty,  and  I  know  it 
would  be  regarded,  not  only  by  them,  but  certainly  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  many  of  the  nations  who  signed  the  Treaty,  as  a 
clear  departure  from  the  understanding  upon  which  this  question 
was  left  on  one  side  by  the  signatories  at  San  Francisco."^ 

To  supplement  this,  in  Mr.  Eden's  words,  we  made  "our  views 
absolutely  plain  to  the  United  States  Government  on  a  considerable 
number  of  occasions".^  Nonetheless,  in  December,  1951,  while 
ratification  was  still  pending  in  the  U.S.A.  Mr.  Dulles  and  two 
members  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations  visited 
Tokio  and  there  did  their  "best  to  make  known  to  the  Japanese 
Government  and  the  Japanese  people"  "the  wish  of  the  United 
States  Government"^  that  Japan  should  recognize  the  Formosa 
Government.  As  a  result  Mr.  Yoshida,  the  Prime  Minister,  gave  an 
undertaking  that  his  Government  would  as  soon  as  possible  con- 
clude a  treaty  which  would  recognize  the  Nationalist  regime  in 
Formosa  as  the  government  of  China.  There  was  a  splutter  of 
impotent  indignation  in  Britain  over  what  was  universally  regarded 
as  a  piece  of  sharp  practice  and  Mr.  Eden's  sour  comment  to  the 

1  HC  Deb.,  5th  series.  Vol.  494,  col.  895-6,  26  November,  1951. 

2  Ibid.,  Vol.  495,  col.  166,  30  January,  1952. 

^  Statement  by  Senator  Sparkman,  Congressional  Kecord,  16 
January,  1952.  (Vol.  98,  p.  219) 

84 


THE  FAR  EAST 

House  of  Commons  on  the  episode  was  that  ""fortunately  there  are 
not  many  such  topics  between  us  and  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment".^ 

Another  by-product  of  the  Japanese  Treaty  was  the  A.N.Z.U.S. 
Pact  which  had  important  consequences  for  the  balance  of  power, 
as  between  Britain  and  the  United  States,  in  the  Pacific.  If  Japan 
was  to  be  restored  to  her  sovereign  status,  she  must  be  given  the 
right  to  re-arm.  How  then  were  Australia  and  New  Zealand  to  be 
protected  against  the  menace  of  a  revival  of  aggressive  Japanese 
militarism?  Their  lively  fears  on  this  score  were  pressed  through- 
out all  the  treaty  negotiations  and  at  the  request  of  Australia  and 
New  Zealand  the  U.S.A.  simultaneously  explored  arrangements  for 
a  Pacific  security  pact.  By  April,  1951,  matters  were  far  enough 
advanced  for  Mr.  Truman  to  announce  broad  lines  of  agreement 
and  on  1  September  a  three-power  treaty  was  signed  at  San  Fran- 
cisco. 

In  British  eyes  the  A.N.Z.U.S.  pact,  as  it  became  known,  was 
open  to  two  objections.  It  isolated  the  defence  of  the  South-West 
Pacific  from  the  defence  needs  of  the  whole  area,  particularly 
Malaya  and  Singapore,  and  it  pointedly  excluded  Britain  from 
membership.  Though  kept  informed  by  Australia  and  New  Zealand 
throughout  the  negotiations,  Britain  had  not  been  invited  to  par- 
ticipate in  them.  For  the  first  time  in  history  member  states  of  the 
Commonwealth^  had  entered  into  defence  arrangements  with 
another  power  from  which  the  mother  country  was  excluded;  this, 
despite  the  fact  that  Britain's  Commonwealth  commitments  would 
of  course  immediately  involve  her  on  their  side  if  they  were 
attacked.  The  fact  that  their  chosen  protector  was  the  U.S.A.  re- 
duced, but  by  no  means  obliterated,  the  mortification  involved.  The 
Conservative  opposition  attacked  the  Labour  Government  for  not 
having  represented  Britain's  claims  to  A.N.Z.U.S.  membership 
strongly  enough,  but  when  his  turn  came  to  assume  the  reins  of 
government  Mr.  Churchill  could  not  do  any  better  than  his  prede- 
cessor. When  the  Pacific  Council  set  up  by  the  A.N.Z.U.S.  Pact 
was  due  to  hold  its  first  meeting  in  Hawaii  in  August,  1952, 
Britain  made  a  request  to  be  allowed  to  send  an  observer;  even  this 
was  refused  at  the  insistence,  it  was  generally  believed,  of  the 

1 HC  Deb.,  5th  series.  Vol.  495,  col.  166. 

^  Apart  from  Canada,  whose  contiguity  to  the  United  States  was 
always  judged  to  put  her  in  a  special  position. 

85 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

United  States.  The  reason  given  was  that  to  admit  Britain  would 
entail  admitting  France,  the  Philippines  and  other  powers  with 
Pacific  interests,  even  perhaps  Japan.  In  British  ears  this  hardly 
sounded  convincing,  in  view  of  Britain's  special  relations  with 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  and  the  fact  that  she  maintained  a  navy 
in  the  area  and  controlled  its  western  approaches  through  her  base 
at  Singapore.  In  American  eyes,  however,  this  last  argument  worked 
the  other  way  round  since  they  were  anxious  not  to  have  to  extend 
the  pact  to  involve  any  commitment  to  the  defence  of  Singapore, 
much  less  Malaya. 

All  this  might  or  might  not  be  true.  What  was  painfully  certain 
was  that  it  reflected  a  decline  in  United  Kingdom  potency  in  the 
Pacific  area.  Indeed  it  was  precisely  this  decline  which  was  the 
basic  reason  for  A.N.Z.U.S.  coming  into  being  at  all.  Nor  was  it 
an  entirely  new  phenomenon.  It  went  back  to  the  situation  in  the 
late  30's  when  the  United  Kingdom  had,  in  efi^ect,  abdicated  as  a 
Pacific  policeman  in  favour  of  the  U.S.A.,  reluctant  as  America 
was  to  assume  that  role.  War  intensified  this.  When  France  fell, 
Britain  had  to  warn  Australia  and  New  Zealand  that  if  Japan  came 
into  the  war  no  British  fleet  could  be  sent  to  the  Far  East  and  they 
would  have  to  rely  on  the  United  States.  When  Japan  did  come  in, 
this  was  what  did  happen,  and  the  fact  that  Singapore  was  British 
did  not  prevent  its  collapse.  It  was  the  United  States  which  filled 
the  defence  vacuum  and  the  move  of  General  MacArthur  from  the 
Philippines  to  Australia  in  1942  was  symbolic.  The  presence  of 
American  sailors,  soldiers  and  marines  in  Australia  literally  brought 
home  the  fact  of  American  preponderance.  The  return  of  peace  did 
not  change  any  of  these  power  relationships;  it  merely  glossed  them 
over  for  a  while  until  the  restoration  of  Japanese  sovereignty  forced 
them  to  the  surface  once  again.  In  a  sense  it  was  only  another  logical 
consequence  of  the  growing-up  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  attain- 
ment by  Australia  and  New  Zealand  of  that  direct  relationship 
with  the  U.S.A.  which  Canada  had  so  long  enjoyed.  In  that  sense 
it  was  true,  as  Mr.  Menzies  said,  that  the  treaty  was  "only  a  local 
manifestation  of  closer  British- American  relations".^  But  the  firm 
exclusion  of  Britain  from  that  relationship  had  no  real  parallel  in 
the  Canadian  case;  it  was  in  no  sense  contributory  to  the  purposes 
of  the  pact;  it  was,  in  fact,  an  institutionalized  expression  in  peace 
of  the  Pacific  exclusiveness  which  the  U.S.A.  had  practised  in  war. 

1  Annual  Register,  1952,  p.  81. 

86 


THE  FAR  EAST 

The  disagreements  between  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  over  Far 
Eastern  questions  did  not  much  diminish  as  the  fifties  wore  on. 
There  was,  however,  a  slow  but  noticeable  diminution  in  the  heat 
of  their  altercations.  There  were  good  reasons  for  this.  McCarthyism 
and  its  ally,  the  China  Lobby,  lost  ground  in  the  United  States. 
Opinion  there,  at  all  levels,  learnt  a  new  patience  from  the  final 
frustrations  of  the  Korean  War.  Awareness  spread  of  the  imperfec- 
tions of  America's  staunchest,  but  also  most  embarrassing,  allies, 
Chiang  Kai-shek  and  Syngman  Rhee.  Japan's  gradual  rediscovery 
of  her  own  personality  brought  with  it  (as  in  the  anti- American 
demonstrations  which  led  President  Eisenhower  to  cancel  his  Tokio 
visit  in  I960)  some  sobering  re-assessments  of  America's  mission  in 
the  Far  East.  On  the  British  side  the  obstinate  refusal  of  the  Com- 
munist Government  of  China  to  respond  with  civility  to  British 
recognition,  the  irrefutable  demonstrations  of  its  aggressiveness, 
towards  Tibet  and  towards  India — quite  apart  from  Korea  and 
Laos — left  fewer  illusions  about  the  amenability  of  Peking  to  fair 
words  and  soft  treatment. 

When  President  Eisenhower  took  over  from  Mr.  Truman  the 
initial  disposition  in  Britain  was  to  fear  that  a  new  "forward" 
policy  would  be  launched  against  the  Chinese  Communists,  in 
response  to  all  the  "China  Lobby"  elements  in  the  Republican 
Party,  The  decision  in  February,  1953,  to  use  the  Seventh  Fleet  as 
a  "one-way  shield"  (i.e.  to  revoke  its  orders  to  restrain  a  Nationalist 
attack  on  the  Communist  mainland)  lent  colour  to  this  view  and 
excited  proportionate  alarm  in  Britain.  This  was  indeed  a  trying 
time  for  the  alliance  in  the  Far  East,  when  an  inherently  tricky 
situation  seemed  often  to  be  aggravated  by  the  sabre-rattling  of 
American  military  spokesmen  and  the  application  of  the  principles 
of  "brinkmanship"  by  Mr.  John  Foster  Dulles.  A  fuller  treatment 
of  that  technique  is  reserved  for  the  following  chapter,  but  what- 
ever may  be  thought  about  its  employment  in  general  and  the 
strains  it  imposed  upon  America's  European  allies  in  particular, 
one  result  certainly  was  to  impose  a  kind  of  Pax  Americana  upon 
the  Far  East  during  President  Eisenhower's  first  term  and  for  a 
while  after.  There  was  no  war;  Communist  Chinese  aggression 
against  Korea,  Japan,  Formosa  and  other  island  areas  was,  if 
seriously  intended,  not  carried  out. 

The  price,  in  terms  of  British  nerves,  was  at  times  certainly  high. 
When  after  the  first  shelling  of  Quemoy  and  Matsu  the  United 

87 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

States  in  1954  negotiated  the  mutual  defence  treaty  with  Formosa 
it  seemed  a  risky  hostage  that  she  was  giving  to  fortune.  And  even 
though  it  was  followed  by  a  Nationalist  undertaking  not  to  attack 
the  mainland  without  American  approval,  the  President  at  the 
same  time  secured  from  Congress  authority  to  protect  not  only 
Formosa  but  also  the  "related  positions" — i.e.  if  he  chose  so  to 
regard  them,  the  off-shore  islands.  The  elements  of  ambiguity 
which  Mr.  Dulles  claimed  to  constitute  the  strength  of  this  policy 
were,  in  British  eyes,  its  most  serious  weakness.  Yet,  looking  back, 
one  has  to  admit  that  in  some  sense,  as  a  temporary  measure,  it 
worked.  Tension  fell;  in  April,  1955,  Chou  En-lai  proposed 
bilateral  talks.  A  certain  detente  ensued;  begun  at  Geneva  in 
August,  the  talks  dragged  on  inconclusively  until  1958.  The  trouble 
was  that  they  settled  nothing  and  "tension",  with  its  concomitant 
of  Chinese  shelling  of  the  islands,  began  again,  to  persist  intermit- 
tently down  to  the  present  day.  The  prospect  is  not  a  reassuring 
one.  As  China's  strength  grows,  and  the  Seventh  Fleet  remains  in 
situ  and  American  commitments  to  Formosa  are  unchanged,  the 
inherent  dangers  of  the  situation  are  likely  to  increase. 

Directly,  of  course,  none  of  this  has  involved  Britain  as  an  active 
partner  to  the  United  States.  Her  interest  has  been  more  negative 
than  positive — to  prevent  the  outbreak  of  a  war  which  would  do 
her  no  good  and  might  easily  prove  catastrophic.  Consequently  her 
most  overt  concern  has  always  been  to  reduce  tension  in  the  area 
and  diminish  the  risk  of  an  unplanned  explosion.  Yet  it  would  be 
less  than  honest  to  ignore  a  subordinate  but  very  tangible  interest 
which  she  has  always  had  in  the  preservation  of  Formosan  inde- 
pendence. Hong  Kong  too  is  an  off-shore  island.  It  has  existed 
under  British  rule,  on  Chinese  sufferance,  because  no  doubt  it  has 
been  to  mutual  advantage  that  such  a  status  should  continue.  Yet 
how  long,  one  must  ask,  if  American  power  were  withdrawn  and 
if  Formosa  fell  into  Communist  hands,  would  Hong  Kong  remain 
a  British  possession  and  a  bastion  of  capitalist  enterprise  upon  Com- 
munist shores?  To  that  extent  whether  she  likes  it  or  not  Britain 
too  has  her  investment  in  the  Far  East  status  quo. 

To  say  Hong  Kong  is,  of  course,  to  say  "trade  with  China"  and 
on  this  issue  the  divergent  points  of  view  described  earlier  also 
persisted  throughout  the  fifties.  At  length  indeed,  in  the  calmer 
conditions  of  President  Eisenhower's  second  term  and  the  Mac- 
millan-Eisenhower  post-Suez  rapprochement,  some  agreement  was 

88 


THE  FAR  EAST 

contrived.  But  it  was  an  agreement  to  differ.  The  long-pressed 
British  claim  that  China  should  be  put  on  all  fours  with  the  U.S.S.R. 
in  respect  of  the  goods  which  she  could  buy  from  the  West  still 
made  no  converts  in  Washington.  But  at  least  it  proved  possible  in 
June,  1957,  to  obtain  indulgence  for  a  British  decision  to  abolish  the 
"Chinese  differential"  and  adopt  the  same  embargo  list  for  China 
and  the  U.S.S.R.  The  results  were  not,  in  fact,  striking  but  they 
were  a  step  towards  normalization  of  relations  between  China  and 
theWest.i 

Normalization  indeed  remained  the  goal  of  British  policy,  how- 
ever hard  it  might  be  to  attain.  For  the  U.S.A.,  as  long  as  the 
Republicans  remained  in  power,  even  Eisenhower  Republicans,  it 
was  unthinkable.  But  time,  the  United  Nations  and  the  pragmatism 
of  Mr.  Kennedy  might,  if  combined,  effect  some  gradual  change. 
The  steady  erosion  of  support  for  America's  policy  of  preventing 
Peking  from  occupying  the  Chinese  seat  at  the  U.N.  led  in  1961  to 
some  fresh  thinking  in  Washington.  Britain,  after  a  long  period  of 
abstention,  now  went  on  record  as  publicly  affirming  her  long-held 
conviction  that  the  government  she  recognized  in  China  should  be 
the  government  she  would  recognize  in  the  U.N.  The  United 
States  Government  did  not  change  its  public  professions,  nor  yet  its 
private  preferences,  but  in  conceding,  however  reluctantly,  that 
the  General  Assembly  might  consider  the  question  of  Chinese  repre- 
sentation it  was  beginning  the  painful  process  of  realigning  desire 
and  reality. 


1  Cf.  Mr.  Maudling  speaking  to  the  press  in  Washington  on  14  June, 
1960,  as  reported  by  Reuter:  "Britain's  trade  with  Communist  China 
was  small  but  useful,  and  was  limited  by  China's  inability  to  pay. 
Britain  believed  in  maintaining  restrictions  on  exports  of  strategic 
goods,  but  on  the  whole  the  flow  of  trade  between  countries  tends 
to  break  down  barriers  and  to  make  it  a  little  easier  to  achieve  success- 
ful human  relations." 

89 


7 

SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

IN  South-East  Asia  many  of  the  factors  which  operated  in  Far 
East  poHtics  turned  up  again,  to  determine,  and  often  to  com- 
plicate, relations  between  Britain  and  the  United  States.  Prior- 
ities, however,  were  somewhat  different.  Here  was  a  region  largely 
permeated,  historically,  by  British  rule,  influence  or  trade.  It 
bordered,  for  the  most  part,  on  waters  such  as  the  Indian  Ocean 
and  the  Straits  of  Sumatra  still  dominated,  strategically,  by  the 
British  navy.  These  same  waters  (and  the  air  above  them)  still  con- 
stituted a  vital  communications  area  for  the  Commonwealth,  both 
for  the  immediately  contiguous  members  such  as  Pakistan,  India, 
Ceylon  and  Malaya  and  for  the  more  remote  territories  of  Austra- 
lasia. For  the  U.S.A.  these  same  factors  of  history  and  geography 
worked  to  remove  the  area  from  the  centre  of  American  interest. 
It  owed  little  to  American  enterprise,  had  meant  little  for  American 
strategy,^  and  exercised  little  or  no  sway  over  American  sentiment. 
But  one  complicating  factor  was  common  to  both  South-East 
Asia  and  to  the  Far  East,  the  pressing  threat  of  Communism,  incor- 
porated largely  in  the  mass  of  mainland  China,  whose  great  bulk 
bordered  the  whole  area  on  its  eastern  and  northern  flanks  and 
whose  agents  infiltrated  it  at  a  thousand  points.  In  the  military 
resistance  to  this  pressure  Britain  and  France,  in  Malaya  and  in 
Indo-China,  filled  much  the  same  role  as  the  U.S.A.  filled  in  North 
Korea,  though  with  subtly  different  attitudes  and  expectations.  In 
the  ideological  defence,  the  main  British  reliance  was  on  the  Com- 
monwealth tie  and  the  blend  of  local  nationalisms  and  western 
democracy  and  administration.  Economically,  the  area  looked  for 
aid  first  to  the  Commonwealth  but  also,  since  that  of  itself  did  not 
begin  to  be  adequate,  to  the  U.S.A.  as  well. 

Save  in  Malaya,  the  general  philosophy  animating  British  atti- 

^  At  least  until  the  "domino"  theory  was  elaborated  in  Eisenhower's 
first  presidency  by  which  Indo-China  was  likened  to  the  first  of  a  row 
of  standing  dominoes  whose  fall  would  bring  down  in  succession 
Burma,  Thailand,  Malaya,  Indonesia,  the  Philippines,  Formosa  and 
Japan. 

90 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

tudes  to  Communism  in  the  area  was  one  of  containment.  If  the 
Malayan  struggle  against  the  guerrillas  had  about  it  an  element  of 
the  crusade,  this  was  partly  because  Communism  here  directly 
menaced  a  major  British  economic  (and  quasi-strategic)  interest, 
the  rubber  crop  and  the  tin  mines,  but  just  as  much  because  it  could 
fairly  easily  be  identified  with  alien  exploitation  of  the  territory 
and  turned  back  by  an  intensive  effort  which  relied  on  local  sup- 
port. Here  an  all-out  drive  against  the  Communist  guerillas  bore 
little  or  no  aspect  of  "West"  against  "East"  or  "colonialists"  against 
native  "liberators";  moreover,  it  could  be  fully  self-contained, 
carrying  virtually  no  risk  of  involvement  with  the  great  reservoir  of 
Communist  power,  China  herself.  In  Malaya  it  was  the  Communists 
who  were  over-extended,  not  their  extirpators.  Elsewhere,  however, 
different  conditions  prevailed.  No  such  secure  base,  either  in 
geography  or  in  local  psychology  or  economics,  existed  for  a  com- 
parable drive  by  the  French  in  Indo-China;  here  the  dice  were 
loaded  against  a  colonial  occupying  power,  even  in  the  phase  of 
abdication  and  transfer  of  authority.  The  drain  which  the  unequal 
struggle  imposed  on  France  was  formidable.  The  Indo-China  war 
not  only  prevented  her  making  her  proporationate  contribution  to 
N.A.T.O.;  it  ate  at  the  vitals  of  the  Fourth  Republic  itself,  en- 
feebling its  will  and  bringing  the  institutions  into  contempt. 

In  retrospect  it  seems  fairly  obvious  that  there  was  a  basic  identity 
of  British  and  American  objectives  in  this  area;  both  powers  wanted 
to  contain  Communism  without  extending  the  conflict  to  a  point 
which  involved  an  open  war  with  China.  However  in  the  attempt 
to  evolve  a  joint  diplomacy  which  would  realize  these  objectives 
they  were  doubtfully  successful.  This  was  partly  their  own  fault, 
partly  that  of  the  French,  who  were  divided  in  their  purposes  and 
leadership,  wishing  at  one  time  for  a  massive  Anglo-American 
military  intervention  and  at  another  for  a  negotiated  settlement 
which  would  enable  them  to  contract  out  of  the  whole  impossible 
business.  This  division  in  French  attitudes  corresponded  in  a  con- 
siderable degree  to  the  schizophrenia  which  the  Chinese  issue  had 
created  in  American  opinion,  between  the  desire  to  settle  scores 
with  the  Communists  once  and  for  all  and  the  wish  to  end  the 
Korean  war  and  bring  the  boys  back  home.  Splits  in  a  national 
psyche,  when  they  are  as  profound  as  this,  almost  always  reveal 
themselves  in  the  make-up  of  the  individual  national  leaders  as 

91 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

well;  they  were  certainly  reflected  in  1950—4  in  the  public  pro- 
nouncements of  American  leaders  on  the  Indo-China  problem  (as 
on  the  Korean  issue).  At  the  same  time  it  now  seems  reasonably 
certain  that  neither  Mr.  Eisenhower  nor  even  Mr.  Dulles  (nor  their 
predecessors,  Mr.  Truman  and  Mr.  Acheson)  had  any  intention  of 
taking  any  action  in  Indo-China  such  as  would  involve  the  U.S.A. 
in  an  open  war  with  China.  Since  this  was  at  all  times  the  aim  of 
British  diplomacy  how  did  it  come  about  that  we  so  often  and  so 
painfully  appeared  to  be  at  cross  purposes  in  this  part  of  the  world? 
The  answers  to  this  question  have  an  importance  which  transcends 
the  local  and  historical  situation  in  Indo-China  in  the  early  1950's. 

Some  of  the  tactical  divergencies  between  London  and  Wash- 
ington could  be  explained  by  the  different  assessments  of  the  local 
situation  reaching  the  policy-makers  from  the  men  on  the  spot.  In 
areas  as  confused  as  Indo-China  it  was  easy  for  discrepant  rumours 
and  rationalizations  to  arise,  and  hard  to  ground  any  intelligence 
report  in  an  unassailable  basis  of  fact.  From  a  welter  of  conflicting 
estimates  each  side  could  and  almost  inevitably  did  select  those 
which  best  corresponded  to  its  own  preferred  course  of  action. 
Even  when,  as  often  happened,  the  British  and  the  Americans 
pooled  their  intelligence,  this  consequence  was  not  averted. 

The  prepared  policies  then  owed  more,  in  the  last  resort,  to  the 
officials  at  home  than  to  the  men  on  the  spot.  As  such  they  reflected, 
inevitably,  the  whole  complex  of  national  interests  and  attitudes 
towards  the  area  such  as  were  touched  on  at  the  opening  of  this 
chapter.  The  paradox  was  that  seemingly  Britain,  with  more  at 
stake  in  South-East  Asia  than  the  U.S.A.,  was  yet  the  more  reluctant 
to  countenance  any  deeper  local  involvement.  When  on  29  Decem- 
ber, 1953,  Mr.  Dulles  announced  that  in  the  event  of  an  invasion 
of  Indo-China,  the  American  reaction  "would  not  necessarily  be 
confined  to  the  particular  theatre  chosen  by  the  Communists  for 
their  operations"  and  when  on  12  January,  1954,  he  warned  that 
Chinese  intervention  would  have  "grave  consequences  which  might 
not  be  confined  to  Indo-China",  both  pronouncements  aroused 
grave  concern  in  the  United  Kingdom — far  graver  than  in  the 
U.S.A.  When  they  were  followed  up  in  April,  1954,  by  American 
proposals  of  a  joint  allied  warning  to  the  Chinese  against  continued 
interference  in  Indo-China,  the  British  contention  was  that  the 
threat  would  be  ineffective  by  itself,  and  if  made  real  by  military 
action  would  involve  the  allies  in  an  outright  Chinese  war.  When 

92 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

Mr.  Dulles  and  Admiral  Radford  urged  Anglo-American  interven- 
tion to  save  Dien-Bien-Phu,  or  to  rally  morale  after  its  collapse, 
Sir  Winston  Churchill's  comment,  according  to  Sir  Anthony  Eden, 
was  that  "what  we  were  being  asked  to  do  was  to  assist  in  mislead- 
ing Congress  into  approving  a  military  operation,  which  would  in 
itself  be  ineffective,  and  might  well  bring  the  world  to  the  verge 
of  a  major  war"/  On  the  basis  of  this  reasoning  the  United  King- 
dom declined  any  participation  in  such  a  venture. 

Behind  this  disharmony  lay  a  good  deal  of  sheer  diplomatic 
ineptness,  intensified  by  the  tendency  of  the  American  Government 
to  speak  with  more  than  one  voice.  But  when  all  this  has  been 
ironed  away  there  remain,  as  can  now  be  clearly  seen,  certain  basic 
reasons  for  the  failure  of  the  two  allies  to  evolve  an  agreed  Indo- 
China  policy  in  1954,  Since  the  Americans  were  making  most  of 
the  running,  these  reasons  can  best  be  observed  initially  in  a  study 
of  their  proposed  policies. 

The  technique  of  "brinkmanship"  which  they  embodied  and 
which  came  to  be  associated  with  the  diplomacy  of  Mr.  Dulles  was 
in  essence  no  more  than  an  attempt  to  use  against  the  Communists 
the  technique  which  the  Communists  often  used  against  the  West, 
namely  to  threaten  vague  but  ominous  armed  retaliation  in  an  en- 
deavour to  deter  or  dissuade  the  other  side  from  some  contemplated 
course  of  action.  It  is  a  technique  as  old  as  diplomacy  itself  but  the 
diplomat  who  would  employ  it  successfully  must  be  able  to  rely 
upon  unanimity  within  the  government  for  which  he  speaks,  perfect 
liaison  with  his  allies  and  complete  mutual  trust  between  himself 
and  his  allied  colleagues.  Unfortunately  the  government  in  which 
Mr.  Dulles  served  was  habitually  given  to  thinking  its  diverse 
thoughts  aloud  in  public,  the  machinery  of  liaison  between  it  and 
its  allies  was  intermittent  and  unreliable  in  its  day-to-day  workings, 
and  Mr.  Dulles  himself  had  not  established  a  relationship  of  mutual 
confidence  with  his  fellow  Foreign  Secretaries  in  the  allied  camp. 
Moreover,  as  the  spokesman  for  a  democracy  which  had  foresworn 
the  employment  of  war  as  an  instrument  of  national  policy,  Mr. 
Dulles  was  at  a  continuous  disadvantage  in  using  the  "brinkman- 
ship" ploy  in  a  manner  which  would  be  both  convincing  to  the 
enemy  and  acceptable  to  his  publics  at  home  and  abroad.  If,  with 
all  these  drawbacks,  this  device  continued  to  be  a  feature  of  his 
diplomacy,  particularly  vts-a-vis  Communist  China,  the  reasons 

1  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  105. 

93 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

must  be  sought  in  a  set  of  considerations  which  were  peculiarly 
American. 

The  American  administration  was  under  continuous  and  heavy 
pressure  at  home  from  Congressmen,  Senators  and  others  whose 
epousal  of  a  crusading  policy  in  Asia  was  unrestrained  by  any  con- 
sideration for  America's  obligations  in  Europe  or  any  realistic 
appraisal  of  the  prospects  of  military  success  in  Asia.  They  were  the 
one-idea  men  of  the  "China  Lobby",  whose  advice  the  President 
hardly  ever  took,  but  whose  importance  in  the  Republican  Party 
obliged  him  to  make  gestures  and  pronouncements  which  were 
often  embarrassing  for  American  policy  and  to  outsiders  often 
appeared  truly  alarming.  The  "China  Lobby's"  advocacy  of  forth- 
right military  action  did,  moreover,  evoke  a  good  deal  of  popular 
support  because  it  rested  on  the  inviting  assumption  that  no  large, 
Korean-like  operation  by  ground  troops  would  be  needed  to  effect 
it.  Their  talk  was  always  of  an  air  strike  or  of  naval  action,  reviving 
memories  of  the  easy  successes  of  the  air  raids  on  Japan  or  the 
memorable  triumphs  of  the  Leyte  Gulf  in  the  late  war.  "The  bomb" 
would  once  again  do  it  all;  it  was  the  "Maxim  gun"  mentality  over 
again.  The  easy,  even,  as  it  seemed,  hubristic  self-confidence  of  the 
air  and  naval  spokesman  of  this  school  reflected  the  esprit  de  corps 
of  the  two  most  pampered  elements  in  the  American  armed  ser- 
vices, the  Strategic  Air  Command  and  the  Pacific  Fleet.  In  Wash- 
ington they  constituted  powerful  lobbies  in  their  own  right;  Con- 
gressmen vied  with  each  other  to  anticipate  their  demands  for 
funds.  Finally,  behind  the  "China  Lobby"  and  the  pressures  of 
certain  strategists,  was  a  pervasive  public  mood  particularly  re- 
ceptive to  simple  solutions  of  Asiatic  problems,  a  mood  powerfully 
affected  by  the  unaccustomed,  frustrating,  even  humiliating  "non- 
success"  of  the  Korean  enterprise.  Although  basically  pacific, 
Americans  in  such  a  mood  were  indulgent  to  any  advocates  of  a 
short  way  with  Asiatic  Communism,  and  very  suspicious  of  any 
diplomatic  or  other  dealings  with  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness. 
Negotiation  and  neutralism  were  thus  equally  heretical;  in  par- 
ticular if  advocated  by  European  spokesmen,  they  were  likely  to  be 
regarded  as  signs  of  the  guilty  conscience  of  colonialism  seeking  to 
appease  the  Lucifer  of  Communism. 

Not  only  were  almost  all  these  attitudes  alien  to  the  viewpoint  of 
British  administration,  of  whatever  party  complexion.  They  had  not 
even  any  counterpart  in  any  substantial  section  of  British  public 

94 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

opinion.  In  Britain  there  was  no  China  Lobby,  there  was  no  Korea 
or  post-Korea  mood.  The  Malaya  operation  was  as  protracted  as 
Korea  and,  to  its  participants,  no  less  wearing.  But  it  was,  by  com- 
parison a  clear  success  and,  in  any  case,  its  reverberations  on  the 
home  front  were  faint  and  few  compared  with  those  of  Korea  on 
the  U.S.A.;  few  British  soldiers  were  involved  and,  to  a  nation 
long  accustomed  to  having  some  part  of  its  forces  soldiering  in 
partibus  infdeUum,  the  operation  had  nothing  especially  abnormal 
about  it. 

But  if  the  United  Kingdom  minded  less  about  what  Asian  fight- 
ing there  was,  it  minded  a  good  deal  more  about  what  fighting 
there  might  be — or  perhaps  one  should  more  strictly  say,  was  more 
vividly  aware  of  the  dangers  inherent  in  any  extension  of  the  fight- 
ing. No  one  can  know  for  certain  how  much  Mr.  Dulles's  "brink- 
manship" frightened  the  enemy,  but  it  was  very  apparent  how 
much  it  frightened  us.  This  is  a  likely  risk  in  any  alliance  in  any 
part  of  the  world — that  what  seems  a  safe  hazard  to  the  leader 
whose  finger  is  on  the  trigger  will  seem  a  mad  gamble  to  those  who 
line  up  behind  him.  But  in  South-East  Asia,  as  in  Korea,  the 
United  Kingdom  had  special  reasons  for  deploring  and  resisting 
"brinkmanship".  It  feared  a  war  in  Asia  not  merely  for  what  it 
would  be  in  itself,  but  for  the  diversion  it  would  be  bound  to  cause 
in  Europe;  all  the  familiar  "Atlantic  First"  arguments  were  just  as 
operative  in  the  1950's  as  in  the  1940's.  It  had  also  what  probably 
was  a  truer  assessment  of  the  psychological  hazards  of  "brandishing 
the  bomb"  in  Asia.  Though  not  lacking  a  certain  vein  of  self- 
righteousness,  the  arguments  put  forward  by  British  spokesmen  on 
this  issue  were  probably  valid — that  since  the  atom  bomb  had  so 
far  been  used  exclusively  by  the  "whites"  against  the  "yellows" 
Asiatics  regarded  it  as  more  than  just  a  super- weapon;  to  them  it 
appeared  as  an  instrument  of  genocide,  the  super-symbol  of  race 
war.  To  the  extent  to  which  this  was  so,  even  threats  of  the  bomb's 
employment,  it  could  be  argued,  harmed  the  cause  of  the  West 
amongst  the  "uncommitted"  elements  in  Asia.  This  did  not  mean 
that  the  British  favoured  any  kind  of  nuclear  disarmament  in  the 
East.  We  have  Eden's  word  for  it  that  British  diplomacy  relied 
hardly  less  than  the  Americans  on  "the  deterrent  power  of  the 
hydrogen  bomb.  I  was  grateful  for  it.  I  do  not  believe  that  we 
should  have  got  through  the  Geneva  Conference  and  avoided  a 

95 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

major  war  without  it".^  The  disagreement  was  largely  over  diplo- 
matic technique.  How  did  you  use  the  deterrent?  By  brandishing  it 
publicly?  Or  by  invoking  it  discreetly?  It  corresponded,  almost,  to 
the  difference  between  old  world  diplomacy  and  new. 

Time  and  time  again  it  was  a  solicitude  for  the  "uncommitted" 
elements  that  characterized  British  as  opposed  to  United  States 
policy  in  South-East  Asia.  To  leaders  such  as  Dulles  the  condition 
of  being  "uncommitted"  was  itself  deplorable;  by  British  policy 
throughout  all  the  post-war  period  it  was  generally  accepted  as  a 
tolerable  substitute  for  positive  alignment  with  the  West.  Some- 
times this  was  because  Britain  took  an  unduly  rosy  view  of  Asiatic 
Communism,  as  in  the  early  days  of  Mao  Tse-tung,  but  also  it  was 
a  by-product  of  the  British  relationship  with  India.  Indeed  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  Britain's  whole  view  of  Asia  was  coloured  by 
her  Indian  experiences.  The  one  great  post-war  venture  which  had 
turned  out  better  than  was  feared  was  the  granting  of  independence 
to  the  Indian  sub-continent;  the  great  pleasant  surprise  of  a  decade 
which  was  generally  marked  by  a  decline  of  British  power  and 
influence  was  the  decision  of  India  and  Pakistan  to  remain  within 
the  Commonwealth.  And  this  not  only  established  a  gratifying 
relationship;  it  also  created  a  new  set  of  obligations  and  attitudes. 
For  the  first  time  the  Commonwealth  family  became  multi-racial, 
with  the  Asiatic  voice  entitled  to  a  large  share  in  its  councils.  And 
when  the  spokesman  for  that  voice  was  the  persuasive  Mr.  Nehru 
it  was  seldom  that  Whitehall  failed  to  listen.  Whitehall  did  not 
always  agree  with  what  he  said,  but  it  always  took  him  seriously 
and  always  insisted,  when  dealing  with  Washington,  that  he  was 
important  not  only  in  his  own  right  as  spokesman  for  India  but  also 
as  a  representative  voice,  sometimes  even  the  representative  voice 
of  Asia. 

The  Americans  were  by  no  means  always  ready  to  accept  this. 
In  accordance  with  that  basic  moral  law  of  Anglo-American  rela- 
tions by  which  we  each  deplore  the  other's  transgressions  and 
champion  the  cause  of  each  other's  underdogs,  American  opinion 
had  been  very  pro-Indian  during  the  long  years  of  waning  British 
rule.  Mr.  Roosevelt  himself  had  not  been  above  offering  Mr. 
Churchill  recurrent  advice  on  the  subject.  But  India  independent 
seemed  to  lose  for  Americans  much  of  the  charm  of  India  strug- 
gling to  be  free  and  Mr.  Nehru  seemed  a  poor  reincarnation  of 

^  Eden>  op.  cit.,  p.  123. 

96 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

Mahatma  Gandhi.  It  was  partly  that  the  war  promoted  General 
and  Mrs.  Chiang  Kai-shek  into  a  first  place  in  America's  Asiatic 
affections  from  which  no  rival  could  hope  to  dislodge  them,  but  it 
was  also  a  result  of  the  policies  which  the  newly  independent  India 
chose  to  pursue — something  very  like  socialism  at  home  and 
neutralism  abroad.  The  first  was  venial,  the  second  much  less  so, 
particularly  when  it  involved  not  only  the  recognition  of  Com- 
munist China  but  also  a  good  deal  of  (as  it  turned  out)  optimistic 
assessments  of  the  new  China's  course  and  attitudes.  Incarnated  in 
Mr.  Krishna  Menon's  performances  at  the  United  Nations,  the 
Indian  disposition  to  lecture  both  sides  impartially,  or  worse  still, 
as  it  often  seemed,  partially,  grated  sharply  on  the  American  con- 
sciousness. By  contrast,  Americans  found  Pakistan  sympathetic  and 
responsive.  The  Moslem  mood  was  closer  to  North  American 
activism  than  the  Hindu — at  least  where  anti-Communism  was  the 
issue.  And  there  was  no  Pakistani  Menon  to  behave  like  a  moraliz- 
ing Mephistopheles  in  New  York. 

In  Whitehall,  the  Foreign  Office  constantly  endeavoured  to 
associate  India  whenever  possible  with  any  diplomatic  negotiations 
or  arrangements  involving  the  Far  East  or  South-East  Asia,  even 
at  the  risk  of  provoking  from  Mr.  Dulles  his  oft-quoted  complaint 
that  British  policy  was  subject  to  a  veto  from  Delhi.  Apart  from 
their  solicitude  for  the  Commonwealth  connexion,  the  British  de- 
fended this  deference  to  the  Indian  viewpoint  on  the  dual  grounds 
that  India  constituted  a  certain  link,  or  channel  of  communication 
with  Peking  and  that  she  had  an  interest  of  her  own  in  securing 
the  stability  of  the  area.  The  first  argument  cut  both  ways  in  Wash- 
ington; it  would  only  work  where  some  agreement  or  modus 
Vivendi  with  Peking  was  accepted  as  desirable,  as  in  the  negotiation 
of  a  Korean  armistice,  though  even  so  the  Indian  role  as  mediator 
was  liable  to  prove,  in  American  eyes,  a  suspect  one,  as  in  the  dis- 
putes over  the  repatriation  of  prisoners.  The  second  argument 
hardly  admitted  of  rebuttal,  but  was  liable  to  evoke  a  corollary  not 
very  acceptable  to  Britain — that  if  the  United  Kingdom  put  for- 
ward India,  the  U.S.A.  would  advance  the  claims  of  Chiang  Kai- 
shek.  This  was  the  American  contention  even  in  a  context  as  un- 
suitable as  the  formation  of  the  South-East  Treaty  Organization. 
Mr.  Dulles,  according  to  Sir  Anthony  Eden,  "explained  that  if 
there  was  any  question  of  extending  the  security  arrangements  west- 
wards to  include  India,  there  would  be  a  'strong  demand'  in  the 

G  97 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

United  States  to  extend  it  eastwards  as  well,  to  include  Nationalist 
China  and  Japan  ...  I  did  not  like  (said  Sir  Anthony)  this  balanc- 
ing of  India  against  Formosa.  The  two  did  not  seem  to  me  com- 
parable."^ The  State  Department  however  persisted  in  the  attitude 
assumed  by  its  chief  and  "repeated  its  warning  that  any  attempt  to 
include  India  would  be  countered  by  the  inclusion  of  Formosa". ^ 

Whether  indeed  any  more  accommodating  American  attitude 
would  have  affected  Indian  policy  on  this  particular  issue  remains 
doubtful.  India  in  1954  was  too  deeply  committed  to  a  thorough- 
going neutralism:  even  the  Chinese  takeover  of  Tibet  had  not  yet 
affected  India's  public  stand.  Paradoxically  indeed,  any  overt  shift 
in  India's  position  would  probably  have  destroyed  her  value  to  the 
democracies  no  less  than  to  the  Communists  as  a  viable  and  reliable 
neutral,  whose  services  at  Panmunjon  and  later  as  Chairman  of  the 
three-power  supervisory  commission  for  the  Indo-China  settlement 
were  almost  indispensable.  In  that  sense,  though  she  was  not  a 
member  of  the  Geneva  Conference,  India's  support  for  its  solutions 
was  a  pre-condition  of  its  success. 

Ironically,  almost  the  same  could  be  said  of  the  U.S.A.  The 
American  dislike  of  the  whole  Geneva  operation  was  intense,  in- 
volving as  it  did  sitting  down  at  the  same  table  with  the  Chinese 
Communists  and  bargaining  about  the  precise  extent  to  which  they 
should  be  allowed  to  retain  gains  which  they  had  no  right  to  in 
the  first  place.  Moreover  the  Americans  could  claim  with  some 
justice  that  they  had  been  put  into  this  position  as  a  result  of  the 
failure  of  one  of  their  major  allies,  the  French,  to  make  their 
colonialist  regime  in  Indo-China  acceptable  or  to  construct  a  viable 
local  administration  on  their  colonialist  foundations.  Thus  grumbles 
about  "colonialism"  were  uttered  in  the  same  breath  as  dire  threats 
about  air  strikes  in  defence  of  Dien  Bien  Phu,  and  Mr.  Dulles 
absented  himself  from  almost  the  whole  of  the  Geneva  proceedings 
even  though  the  U.S.A.  was  a  major  participant  in  the  conference. 
Indeed  there  was  the  supreme  and  especially  painful  irony  that  in  a 
real  sense  the  success  of  the  conference  was  due  to  the  U.S.A.; 
Eden's  patient  diplomacy  may  have  been  the  efficient  cause  of  the 
agreements  on  the  cease-fire  and  the  partition  of  Vietnam,  but  it 
was  the  knowledge  of  American  atomic  might  which  made  the 
Communist  powers  want  an  agreement  at  all.  Yet,  since  the  agree- 

1  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  97. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  98. 

98 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

ments  presented  concessions  to  the  enemy,  not  only  of  territory  but 
also  of  human  beings  (the  armistice  line  legalized  the  passing 
under  the  Viet  Minh  of  over  twelve  million  people),  they  were  too 
distasteful  to  be  openly  endorsed  by  the  American  Government. 
Mr.  Dulles  told  Mr.  Eden  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  "persuade 
Congress  to  guarantee,  in  effect,  the  Communist  domination  of 
North  Vietnam"  and  so  the  U.S.A.  did  not  in  fact  associate  them- 
selves with  the  final  declaration  of  the  conference.  Instead  in  a 
unilateral  statement  the  United  States  Government  announced  that 
it  would  refrain  from  disturbmg  the  cease-fire  agreements  by  force 
or  by  the  threat  of  force  and  would  view  any  forcible  violation  of 
them  with  grave  concern.  It  is  hardly  profitable  to  inquire  how  far 
this  was  a  moral  concession  by  Mr.  Dulles's  right  hand  to  his  left, 
and  how  far  it  was  a  political  concession  by  the  American  executive 
to  the  American  legislature  and  to  the  intransigent  elements  in  the 
Republican  Party.^  For  our  purpose  it  is  more  important  to  note  the 
severe  strain  which  the  unequal  sharing  of  the  Geneva  burden 
placed  on  Anglo-American  relations  and  particularly  on  the  per- 
sonal relations  of  Mr.  Dulles  and  Mr.  Eden,  each  regarding  the 
other  as  making  up  his  own  rules  for  playing  what  was  supposed  to 
be  a  common  game. 

Thus  the  Geneva  Conference  displayed  with  painful  clarity  the 
difficulties  of  the  alliance  in  executing  a  tactical  retreat  from  an 
untenable  position.  And  after  the  retreat  there  was  still  the  re- 
grouping. To  get  a  settlement  and  to  make  the  settlement  stick,  it 
was  almost  certainly  necessary  at  the  same  time  to  be  affirming  a 
collective  will  to  stand  firm  on  the  positions  newly  taken  up.  But 
however  necessary,  it  was  a  ticklish  operation  to  combine  the  pacific 
motions  of  the  conference  table  with  the  belligerent  gestures 
associated  with  building  up  an  alliance.  Here  too  the  Eden-Dulles 
partnership  proved  barely  equal  to  the  strain  which  tactical  neces- 
sity imposed  upon  it.  In  Europe,  thanks  mainly  to  the  clear  and 
firm  boundary  line  between  east  and  west  and  the  overwhelming 
and  unmistakable  effectiveness  of  American  atomic  power,  there 
had  been  the  time  and  assurance  necessary  to  build  the  N.A.T.O. 

1  Mr.  Dulles  might  perhaps  have  claimed  that  this  sort  of  "moral" 
stand  over  the  whole  Geneva  operation  was  an  indispensable  pre- 
condition of  his  securing  from  Congress  the  large  slice  of  economic 
aid  for  India  for  which  he  successfully  pleaded  while  the  Geneva  agree- 
ments were  being  concluded. 

99 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

structure  with  adequate  deliberation,  stage  by  stage.  Moreover, 
although  American  support  had  been  absolutely  crucial,  the 
organization  had  sprung  from  local  initiative  and  rested  on  a  firm 
local  will  to  resist.  In  South-East  Asia,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
boundary  line  between  Communists  and  anti-Communists  was 
neither  clear  nor  firm  and  although  American  atomic  power  was  an 
ever-present  asset  the  whole  allied  experience  in  Korea  had  shown 
that  it  was  in  no  sense  a  substitute  for  conventional  forces  on  the 
ground  and  that  too  crude  an  exploitation  of  the  psychology  of  the 
deterrent  could  easily  boomerang.  The  greatest  obstacle,  however,  to 
the  speedy  construction  of  an  anti-Communist  "shield"  was  the 
weakness  of  the  South-East  Asian  polities  themselves;  local  initia- 
tive hardly  existed;  local  wills  to  resist  had  to  be  carefully  fostered 
and  sustained;  there  was  only  the  most  embryonic  common  regional 
feeling.  From  this  it  was  possible  to  draw  either  of  two  opposite 
conclusions.  To  the  Americans,  shocked  by  the  Vietnam  collapse, 
these  local  weaknesses  only  made  the  more  urgent  the  throwing  up 
of  some  system  of  collective  defence,  however  imperfect.  If  Indo- 
China  was  the  first  domino  even  its  partial  fall  made  remedial 
action  imperative.  To  the  British,  however,  the  argument  worked 
the  other  way;  not  only  were  they  anxious  to  get  the  Geneva  Con- 
ference over  first,  but  in  addition  they  were  very  conscious  of  the 
need  for  conciliatory  diplomatic  groundwork  designed  to  secure 
the  participation,  if  possible,  of  India  and  her  neighbours  or,  if 
active  participation  could  not  be  secured,  at  any  rate  their  passive 
benevolence.  We  wanted  a  pact,  not  only  because  we  wished  to 
secure  an  American  commitment  to  the  safeguarding  of  such  pos- 
sessions as  Malaya  and  Hong  Kong,  but  also  because  we  hoped  to 
repair  thereby  some  of  the  damage  done  to  our  Pacific  position  by 
our  exclusion  from  A.N.Z.U.S.^  This  made  it  difficult  for  us  to 
insist  as  much  as  we  should  have  wished  on  comprehensive  advance 
preparation.  Nevertheless  the  United  Kingdom  did  secure  a  very 
reluctant  United  States  agreement  to  approaching  the  five  Colombo 
powers,  India,  Pakistan,  Ceylon,  Burma  and  Indonesia  while  the 
pact  was  still  in  the  planning  stage.  It  was  no  use.  With  varying 
degrees  of  coolness  all  except  Pakistan  announced  their  non-partici- 

1  Meeting  in  Washington  on  30  June,  1954,  the  representatives  of  the 
A.N.Z.U.S.  powers  had  announced  their  "vital  concern"  with  the  S.E. 
Asia  area  and  their  agreement  on  the  need  for  "immediate  action"  on 
setting  up  collective  defence  there. 

100 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

pation.  Plainly,  had  they  come  in,  it  could  only  have  been  into  a 
broader,  less  pugnacious  type  of  organization  that  would  not  be 
focused  on  the  menace  of  Chinese  aggression  which  obsessed  the 
United  States. 

Consequently  when  the  organizing  conference  met  in  September, 
1954,  it  was  at  Manila,  capital  of  a  country  which  only  a  year 
before  had  negotiated  a  mutual  defence  treaty  with  the  United 
States,  and  of  the  eight  powers  represented  only  three  were  properly 
Asiatic — ^the  Philippines,  Thailand  and  Pakistan;  the  other  five 
were  the  U.S.A.,  Britain,  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  France.  What 
emerged  was  largely,  but  not  exclusively,  an  American  document; 
in  form  at  least  the  pact  is  for  mutual  defence  against  attack  from 
any  quarter.  But  the  omission  from  its  text  of  any  reference  to 
Communism  provoked  an  American  caveat  that  the  only  form  of 
aggression  against  which  it  would  pledge  itself  to  take  immediate 
action  was  Communist  aggression.  Hong  Kong  and  Formosa  are 
areas  specifically  excluded  from  the  benefits  of  the  treaty  but  other 
countries  such  as  Indonesia  not  parties  to  the  agreement  may  be 
designated  for  protection  if  they  so  desire  and  all  the  signatories 
agree.  The  commitments  to  action  are  much  looser  than  under 
N.A.T.O.  and  leave  the  signatories,  in  effect,  free  to  determine 
what  action  they  will  take  in  the  light  of  the  circumstances  obtain- 
ing at  the  time  the  treaty  is  invoked.  The  British  Government, 
significantly,  was  responsible  for  the  insertion  of  the  proviso  that 
"designated"  territories  should  only  be  protected  at  their  own  re- 
quest. 

So  S.E.A.T.O.  began  its  life  in  vagueness  and  ambiguity,  under 
American  stimulus  and  with  British  acquiescence  rather  than 
positive  enthusiasm.  Its  subsequent  history  has  done  little  to  increase 
its  popularity  in  Britain.  It  has  not  sunk  appreciably  deeper  roots 
in  the  life  of  the  area;  Siam,  its  most  enthusiastic  Asiatic  member, 
has  provided  Bangkok  for  the  headquarters  of  its  Council  but  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  Council  and  Secretariat  have  been  bodies 
with  much  organic  vitality.  The  alliance  has  not  developed  military 
forces  of  its  own;  relying  at  first  on  Dulles's  doctrine  of  "retalia- 
tion" by  the  "striking  power"  of  American  air  and  sea  forces,  it 
was  a  N.A.T.O.  with  no  S.H.A.P.E.  and  all  S.A.C.  Initially,  when 
the  Laos  crisis  broke  out  again  in  1959,  it  was  to  the  U.N.  rather 
than  S.E.A.T.O.  that  the  United  States  turned.  Throughout,  the 
only  operative  bases  available  to  the  alliance  within  the  area  have 

101 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

been  the  British  base  at  Singapore  and  the  American  naval  and  air 
bases  in  the  Philippines.  The  Americans  have  all  along  been  firm 
in  their  refusal  to  commit  land  forces;  the  British  and  the  other 
Commonwealth  members  have  not  been  willing  to  station  their 
forces  outside  the  British  territories  in  the  area.  Worse,  S.E.A.T.O. 
has  not  been  able  to  organize  itself  effectively  against  the  Com- 
munist threat  which  is  so  much  more  pressing  than  outright  war, 
namely  subversion.  It  has  frankly  admitted  that  this  was  primarily 
a  job  for  member  governments  themselves  and  that  S.E.A.T.O. 
could  only  play  a  "supplementary"  role.  Since  Malaya  attained 
independence  in  1957  she  has  evinced  no  desire  to  participate  in 
S.E.A.T.O.,  though  she  accepted  British  responsibility  for  her  ex- 
ternal defence  by  a  separate  treaty,  and  she  has  made  plain  her 
desire  that  when  Singapore  joins  Malaya  S.E.A.T.O.  should 
abandon  use  of  the  Singapore  base. 

All  this  has  provoked  a  growing  disenchantment  with  S.E.A.T.O. 
in  Britain.  Glad  though  the  British  Government  may  be  to  have  an 
American  "presence"  in  the  area  which  throws  a  mantle  of  military 
protection  over  her  remaining  possessions  and  Commonwealth  con- 
nections there,  doubt  has  increased  as  to  whether  the  form  given  to 
this  American  assistance  is  not  more  harmful  than  helpful.  Some 
of  the  American  aid  given  bilaterally  to  individual  members  has 
been  used  to  feed  local  rivalries;  it  has  intensified  the  ill-feeling 
between  Pakistan  and  India  over  the  Kashmir  dispute.  Much  of  the 
aid  seems,  even  militarily,  to  have  been  wasted;  worse,  dollars 
spent  on  arms  have  not  been  available  for  the  economic  develop- 
ment which  many  people  think  should  have  the  highest  priority.^ 
Though  no  one  in  the  British  Government  has  claimed  a  right  to 
tell  Washington  how  it  should  allocate  its  Asian  aid,  the  poor  re- 
turns on  American  investment  in  countries  like  Cambodia  and  Laos 
have  not  heightened  respect  for  American  policy. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  time  seemed  ripe  when  the  Kennedy 
administration  took  over  from  President  Eisenhower  for  a  re- 
examination of  American  policy  in  the  area.  There  was  concern  at 
the  high  cost  of  American  aid  for  the  seemingly  low  returns  ob- 
tained, there  was  a  waning  of  belief  in  massive  retaliation  and  a 
heightened  awareness  of  the  challenge  of  subversion.  There  was 
even  some  willingness  to  accept  the  validity  of  neutralism  as  a 

^  For  an  incisive  American  statement  of  this  position  see  W.  W. 
Rostow,  The  U.S.  in  the  World  Arena,  pp.  326-8. 

102 


SOUTH-EAST  ASIA 

posture  for  South-East  Asian  states.  But  there  was  also  a  powerful 
sense  of  frustration  and  a  growing  feeling  of  concern  that  the  Com- 
munists were  on  the  point  of  scoring  a  break-through.  These  diverse 
elements  were  fused  by  the  sharpening  of  the  Laos  crisis  in  the  early 
months  of  1961  which  provoked  the  urgent  meeting  of  President 
Kennedy  and  Mr.  Macmillan  at  Key  West  in  March.  There  were 
relics  here  of  the  disagreements  of  seven  years  before.  The  British 
favoured  the  revival  of  the  Geneva  International  Control  Com- 
mission; the  Americans  were  more  sceptical.  The  British  believed 
in  the  practicability  and  desirability  of  a  neutral  Laos;  the  American 
emphasis  fell  on  the  value  of  a  tough  warning  to  Moscow  and 
Peking.  At  the  S.E.A.T.O.  Council  meeting  which  immediately 
followed  argument  seemed  to  run  along  these  lines  and  the  com- 
munique which  emerged,  hinting  at  "whatever  action  [the  members 
deemed]  appropriate"  if  effort  at  an  acceptable  settlement  failed, 
was  said  to  represent  a  compromise  between  the  "tough"  and  the 
"mild"  approaches.  But  beneath  these  surface  appearances  there 
seems  to  have  been  a  ground  swell  which  was  producing  a  real 
modification  of  American  policy.  When  Kennedy  and  Khruschev 
met  at  Vienna  in  June  the  neutralization  of  Laos  was,  apparently, 
the  one  tangible  agreement  to  be  registered  between  them,  although 
by  the  early  months  of  1962  Americans  were  complaining  with 
some  justice  that  the  Pathet  Lao  treated  "neutralization"  as  a  cloak 
for  infiltration.  Even  so,  the  Geneva  Conference  was  re-animated 
in  July  and  the  "three  Princes"  of  Laos  did  conclude  an  agreement 
which  gave  some  promise  of  stability.  It  is  a  matter  for  speculation 
whether  this  could  have  come  about  had  there  not  been  a  simul- 
taneous show  of  allied  strength  in  Siam.  Actually  the  strength  dis- 
played was  mainly  American;  when  Siam  in  May,  1962,  requested 
S.E.A.T.O.  assistance  it  was  the  United  States  which  responded 
with  5,000  troops;  New  Zealand  and  Australia  sent  only  token 
contingents  and  the  United  Kingdom  only  a  squadron  of  jet 
fighters.  Even  less  was  Britain  involved  when  in  the  autumn  of 
1961  the  decision  was  taken  in  Washington  to  commit  American 
strength  to  South  Vietnam.  The  process  of  stiffening  local  resistance 
by  economic  aid,  the  provision  of  arms  and  instructors  and  finally 
by  the  establishment  in  February,  1962,  of  an  outright  U.S. 
Military  Command  was  as  exclusively  American  in  Vietnam  as 
similar  action  in  Malaya  had  been  British. 


103 


8 

THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

THERE  is  perhaps  no  region  of  the  world  in  which  the  posi- 
tion and  interests  of  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  vis-a-vis  each 
other  have  so  changed  as  in  the  Middle  East.  In  1938 
Britain  dominated  the  area;  she  held  mandates  in  Palestine  and 
Transjordan  and  effective  control  of  Egypt,  Iraq,  the  Red  Sea  and 
the  Persian  Gulf.  The  U.S.A.  not  only  had  no  military  position  in 
the  area;  she  had  no  political  position  there  either.  Her  presence 
was  either  philanthropic,  as  in  the  field  of  missionary  activity  or 
the  analogous  field  of  higher  education,  or  else  economic. 
"Economic"  here  principally  meant  the  development  of  the  oil 
resources  of  the  region,  where  American  private  enterprise  had 
taken  the  dual  form  of  securing  a  share  in  British  or  European 
dominated  concerns,  like  the  Iraq  Petroleum  Company,  or  of  secur- 
ing separate  concessions  such  as  those  enjoyed  by  the  Arabian - 
American  Oil  Company  and  the  Bahrain  Petroleum  Company  in 
the  Persian  Gulf. 

As  a  corollary  of  this  the  Middle  East  was  essentially  a  British 
theatre  in  World  War  II.  The  role  played  there  by  British  arms  re- 
flected alike  the  importance  of  the  area  in  British  strategy  and  the 
dominance  there  of  the  existing  British  military  and  political  estab- 
lishment. Only  in  Persia,  where  the  traditional  expertize  of  the 
United  States  Army  Corps  of  Engineers  gave  a  virtuoso  display  of 
its  abilities  in  the  construction  of  the  supply  route  from  the  Gulf  to 
Russia,  did  the  U.S.A.  have  much  of  a  part  to  play. 

But  by  I960  the  national  roles  had  been  strikingly  reversed. 
British  political  control  was  confined  to  the  small  group  of  Trucial 
sheikdoms  which  bordered  the  Persian  Gulf  and,  of  course,  to 
Aden.  Only  two  British  military  bases  remained  in  the  area — those 
in  Cyprus  and  Aden.  (There  is  also  a  small  garrison  at  Bahrain.) 
The  U.S.A.  meanwhile  had  advanced  to  a  position  of  eminence 
throughout  the  Middle  East.  True,  she  had  no  territorial  possessions 
and  was  nowhere  accorded  any  formal  position  as  a  protecting 
power.  But  she  had  acquired  bases  in  Turkey,  Libya  and  Saudi 

;o4 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

Arabia  for  the  use  of  her  Strategic  Air  Command/  while  her  Sixth 
Fleet  in  the  Mediterranean  made  it  possible  for  her  to  deploy 
marines  and  carrier  planes  in  the  Levant.  Her  position  as  a  Middle 
East  military  power  was  formally  recognized  by  her  membership  in 
the  Military  Committee  of  the  Central  Treaty  Organization 
(C.E.N.T.O.)  and  by  the  bilateral  defence  agreements  which  she 
signed  in  1959  with  Iran,  Pakistan  and  Turkey.  Above  all  her 
economic  power  was  felt  throughout  the  region,  not  merely  in  the 
normal  processes  of  trade  and  investment,  but  even  more  directly 
through  extensive  programmes  of  economic  and  military  aid. 

This  reversal  of  roles  by  Britain  and  the  United  States  was  not 
the  result  of  any  sustained  design  on  either  side.  Nor  was  it  accom- 
plished with  much  grace  or  suavity.  Indeed,  over  the  Suez  issue  in 
1956  it  precipitated  the  sharpest  break  in  the  history  of  the  Anglo- 
American  alliance.  It  represented  on  one  side  the  reluctant  sur- 
render of  a  historic  suzerainty  and  on  the  other  the  reluctant  assump- 
tion of  an  uncertain  responsibility.  Within  each  country  opinion 
was  sharply  divided  about  the  course  which  national  policy  in  the 
Middle  East  ought  to  follow  and  in  the  taking  of  many  of  the 
principal  decisions  passion  and  sentiment  played  a  dangerous  part. 
As  a  result  the  path  of  Anglo-American  relations  in  the  Middle 
East  has  been  thickly  strewn  with  paradoxes.  When  the  war  ended 
the  British  were  sponsors  of  Arab  unity,  criticized  by  American 
Jewry  for  their  resistance  to  the  full  realization  of  Zionist  aspira- 
tions in  Palestine.  By  1956  they  were  accomplices  after,  if  not 
before,  the  fact  in  the  Israeli  attack  on  Egypt,  while  the  United 
States  was  supporting  Egypt  and  the  Arab  world  against  the  almost 
isolated  trio  of  Britain,  France  and  Israel.  When  British  ascendancy 
in  Jordan  ended  in  1956  with  the  dismissal  of  General  Glubb  from 
his  command  of  the  Arab  Legion  this  was  generally  regarded  in  the 
U.S.A.  as  the  overdue  termination  of  a  colonialist  anomaly.  Yet 
little  more  than  twelve  months  later  British  parachute  troops  re- 
turned to  Jordan  under  the  auspices  of  the  Sixth  Fleet  and  the 
Eisenhower  Doctrine. 

Contradictions  of  this  sort  flowed  naturally,  of  course,  from  the 
internal  chaos  of  the  Middle  East  itself,  from  its  lack  not  merely 
of  any  unity  but  even  of  clear  internal  lines  of  division.  Where  so 
much  was  fluid,  where  the  units  of  government  were  so  numerous 

1  Though  one  of  these,  Dhahran,  in  Saudi  Arabia  was  due  to  be  given 
up  when  its  lease  expired  in  1962. 

105 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  so  arbitrary,  where  the  social  structure  was  so  precarious  and 
the  administrative  structure  so  fragile,  alignments  were  inevitably 
shifty  and  changeable  and  to  some  extent  great  external  powers 
could  be  excused  if  their  policies  within  the  area  also  lacked  con- 
tinuity and  consistency.  They  could  less  easily  be  excused  for  not 
making  up  their  own  minds  about  what  they  wanted  and  for  not 
co-ordinating  their  policies  each  with  the  other.  The  history  of 
Anglo-American  relations  in  the  Middle  East  is  a  history  of  two 
great  powers  educating  themselves  the  hard  way,  by  making  costly 
mistakes  and  by  allowing  pride  and  prejudice  to  become  substitutes 
for  reason  and  enlightened  self-interest.  It  is  not  our  purpose  to 
follow  that  history  through  all  its  involutions,  but  since  the  present 
position  of  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  United  States  in  the 
Middle  East  is  largely  a  product  of  the  past,  something  must  be 
said  of  it. 

Although  the  Middle  East  has  changed  a  good  deal  in  the  last 
two  degades,  enough  has  remained  the  same  to  enable  one  to  speak 
of  certain  continuing  British  and  American  interests  in  the  area. 
The  oldest  British  interest  in  the  Middle  East  arose  from  its  posi- 
tion athwart  the  line  of  communication  to  India  and  other  British 
possessions  on  the  Indian  and  Pacific  Oceans.  Of  this  the  classic 
expression  was  the  British  interest  in  and  part  ownership  of  the 
Suez  Canal.  With  the  emancipation  of  India,  Burma  and  Ceylon 
and  the  development  of  air  transport  it  might  be  thought  that  the 
traditional  interconnexion  of  British  world  power  and  control  of 
the  Canal  was  largely  outmoded.  This  might  be  so,  were  it  not 
that  in  the  twentieth  century  a  new  British  (and  indeed  European) 
dependence  developed  upon  oil  supplies  from  the  Middle  East. 
For  economical  delivery  the  Canal  route  was  virtually  indispensable 
— at  least  until  the  development  of  pipe  lines  from  the  Persian 
Gulf  to  the  Mediterranean,  arteries  which,  however,  had  a  special 
vulnerability  of  their  own.  And  just  as  the  importance  of  the  Canal 
made  it  necessary  for  Britain  to  maintain  a  close  concern  in  the 
politics  of  Egypt,  so  the  importance  of  Middle  East  oil  supplies 
gave  her  a  similar  concern  in  the  politics  of  the  great  oil  producing 
countries  of  Iran,  Iraq  and  the  Persian  Gulf  and  Saudi  Arabian 
areas.  As  far  as  Britain  was  concerned,  the  stability  of  all  these 
states,  in  varying  proportions,  was  menaced  from  two  directions — 
from  without  and  within.  The  great  external  threat  came  from  the 
U.S.S.R.;  it  was  consequently  her  historic  and  continuing  endeavour 

106 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

to  keep  Russia  from  expanding  beyond  the  Black  Sea,  the  Caucasus 
and  the  Caspian  and  to  maintain  in  the  states  which  were  the 
legatees  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  a  firm  front  against  Russian 
pressure.  Internally,  the  same  weaknesses,  political  and  economic, 
which  had  made  it  possible  for  the  West,  in  the  first  instance,  to 
dominate  the  Middle  Eastern  states,  made  them  unstable  and  rest- 
less, wracked  by  mutual  rivalries  and  a  prey  to  powerful  nationalist 
jealousies  and  aspirations.  Britain's  aim  here  was  always  the  same 
— a  friendly  stability,  but  the  preferred  devices  for  securing 
stability  varied  from  place  to  place  and  from  time  to  time.  They 
might  involve  a  direct  assumption  of  British  political  control,  they 
might  take  the  form  of  bolstering  a  traditional  and  conservative 
regime,  they  might  seek  to  forestall  revolutionary  upheavals  by 
aiding  local  programmes  of  reform  and  economic  betterment.  By 
the  1940's  and  1950's  the  third  alternative  was  most  generally  pre- 
ferred, but  often  almost  unavoidable  recourse  continued  to  be  had 
also  to  the  second,  generally  in  conjunction  with  it;  the  first  sur- 
vived, only  to  a  very  limited  degree,  in  the  Trucial  states  of  the  Gulf. 

There  was  nothing  in  these  Middle  East  interests  of  Britain 
which  the  United  States  could  not  reasonably  endorse.  So  as  long 
as  the  strength  of  her  European  allies  was  important  to  the  United 
States,  Britain's  concern  with  maintaining  access  to  Middle  East  oil 
supplies  might  be  said  to  be  identical  with  America's  own.  The 
U.S.A.  had  no  interest  in  expanding  exports  of  American  oil  to 
Europe;  individual  oil  firms  might  be  glad  to  do  so,  but  the  national 
interest  as  a  whole  was  better  served  by  conserving  the  U.S.A. 's 
indigenous  oil  resources  and  investing  American  dollars  in  the 
ownership  of  oil  wells  in  the  Middle  East,  where  the  costs  of  ex- 
traction and  refining  were  so  much  lower  than  in  the  United  States. 
So  although  over  individual  concessions  and  upon  certain  occasions 
commercial  rivalry  might  develop  between  British  and  American 
oil  concerns — rivalry  which  might  even  extend  to  the  backstairs  of 
local  politics — there  was  no  clash  of  basic  national  interests  here. 
Still  less  was  it  true,  as  conspiracy-mongers  sometimes  liked  to  make 
out,  that  there  was  an  unholy  alliance  of  State  Department  and 
American  oil  interests  to  undermine  the  British  position  in  the 
Middle  East. 

Similarly  the  U.S.A.'s  acute  concern  about  the  world-wide 
menace  of  Russian  communism  gave  her  every  reason  to  support 
the  British  policy  of  keeping  Russia  out  of  the  whole  Middle 

107 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Eastern  area.  Indeed  it  was,  in  a  sense,  in  this  area — at  least  in  the 
important  Turkish  sector  of  it — that  she  had  first  tried  out  her  role 
as  inheritor  of  the  Pax  Britannica,  by  the  Truman  Doctrine  of  1947. 
And  the  U.S.A.,  no  less  than  Britain,  recognized  the  need  for 
stability  in  the  Middle  East  and  the  dual  set  of  threats,  internal  and 
external,  which  the  area  had  to  meet. 

These  basic  identities  of  interest  have  provided  and  still  provide 
the  foundation  for  a  vital  Anglo-American  partnership  in  this  part 
of  the  world.  Yet  they  have  not  prevented  recurrent  and  serious 
divergencies — and  even  outright  clashes — between  Britain  and  the 
U.S.A.  in  the  Middle  East.  To  what  are  these  due? 

The  explanation  must  be  sought  on  several  planes.  In  the  first 
place  there  is  what  one  might  call  the  different  intensity  of  involve- 
ment. Though  British  and  American  interests  here  are  broadly 
identical,  the  British  are  rooted  in  a  deeper  and,  to  them,  more  vital 
historical  experience  while  at  the  same  time  coming  closer  to  their 
day  to  day  concerns  as  a  nation.  For  nearly  two  hundred  years  the 
Middle  East  has  taken  prime  place  in  the  thinking  of  British  policy- 
makers. In  the  crucial  year  of  1940  when  invasion  directly  threat- 
ened Britain's  island  security  it  was  to  the  Middle  East  that  the 
Cabinet,  without  one  dissenting  voice,  had  decided  to  dispatch 
nearly  half  the  army's  best  available  tanks;  the  frontiers  of  Britain, 
not  for  the  first  time,  were  felt  to  rest  upon  the  Nile.  Here  was,  so 
to  say,  Britain's  Panama.  To  the  U.S.A.,  by  contrast,  the  Middle 
East  meant  nothing;  even  the  United  States  Marines,  ranging  from 
"the  halls  of  Montezuma",  had  only  reached  as  far  as  "the  shores 
of  Tripolee".  The  American  gateway  to  the  East  was  by  way  of  her 
own  west;  more  nearly  perhaps  than  any  other  patch  on  the  map, 
the  area  between  Suez  and  Karachi  was  to  an  American  the  other 
side  of  the  world.  Thus  territories  which  to  British  politicians  were 
soused  in  the  dangerous  imponderables  of  national  tradition,  pride 
and  sentiment,  were  to  American  policy-makers  arid  deserts  over 
which  "area  specialists"  manipulated  their  divining  wands.  For  one 
component  element  in  the  American  "nation  of  nations"  and  for 
one  only  did  the  Middle  East  have  a  powerful  emotional  signi- 
ficance, the  Jews. 

The  support  for  the  Zionist  cause  amongst  American  Jewry, 
though  by  no  means  universal,  was  sufficiently  sustained,  intense 
and  focused  to  guarantee  that  ceteris  paribus  the  Jewish  case  in 
Palestine  would  take  priority  over  all  other  considerations  in  the 

108 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

framing  of  American  Middle  Eastern  policy,  A  peculiarly  explosive 
force  was  lent  to  Zionist  propaganda  by  the  ghastly  fate  of  Euro- 
pean Jewry  before  and  during  World  War  II,  and  also,  though 
sometimes  subconsciously,  by  their  anomalous  position  in  American 
life,  half  assimilated,  half  rejected,  at  once  keepers  of  the  American 
conscience  and  strangers  within  the  gate.  The  pressure  thus 
generated  was  crucial  at  certain  stages  in  American  Middle  Eastern 
policy,  as  in  the  refusal  to  implement  the  recommendations  of  the 
Anglo-American  Palestine  Committee  of  1946  and  the  lightning 
recognition  by  Mr.  Truman  of  the  new  State  of  Israel  in  1948. 
Even  so,  it  did  not  succeed  in  introducing  a  consistency  or  con- 
tinuity, however  partisan,  into  American  policy;  the  net  product, 
rather,  was  conspicuous  for  erraticism  and  contradiction,  as  when 
the  U.S.A.  in  1948  suddenly  and  belatedly  abandoned  partition  in 
favour  of  a  United  Nations  trusteeship  which  she  would  do  nothing 
to  implement.  Whether  any  harmony  between  an  American-sup- 
ported Zionism  and  a  Bevin-directed  British  mandate  could  ever 
have  been  attained  is  doubtful,  but  certainly  the  oscillations  and 
reversals  in  American  policy,  as  first  one  consideration  and  now 
another  assumed  dominance,  created  a  maximum  of  friction  and 
confusion. 

In  a  sense  it  was  true,  as  American  Zionists  claimed,  that  it  was 
the  inherent  justice  of  their  cause,  the  validity  of  their  claims  to 
"self-determination",  to  a  "homeland",  to  become  a  nation  like 
other  nations,  which  won  them  their  American  support.  Yet  it  was 
also  true  that  this  support  was  not  able  to  grow  roots  in  any  soil  of 
American  national  interest;  American  support  for  Zionism  was  the 
generous  (even  sometimes  the  guiltily  conscientious)  supererogatory 
action  of  a  rich  and  powerful  nation.  As  such,  it  had  about  it  some 
of  the  irresponsibility  that  attaches  to  a  whim;  the  unpredictability 
also,  as  became  apparent  when  in  1953  the  Democratic  administra- 
tions which  had  fostered  Israel  were  succeeded  by  a  Republican  one 
which  was  cooler  to  the  arguments  and  pressures  of  American  and 
world  Jewry.  The  result  within  less  than  four  years  was  an  astonish- 
ing reversal  of  roles — a  Britain  which  aided  (if  it  did  not  inspire) 
an  Israeli  assault  on  Egypt  and  a  U.S.A.  which  denounced  its  oldest 
allies  and  its  youngest  foster-child  amidst  the  plaudits  of  the  Arab 
world. 

For  the  full  explanation  of  this  paradox  we  must  however  look 
less  to  Washington  than  to  London.  The  intensity  of  involvement 

109 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

which  Britain  felt  in  the  Middle  East  led  her  to  an  unquestioning 
persistence  in  certain  beliefs  and  attitudes  that  no  longer  made  sense 
there.  From  the  point  of  view  of  her  own  national  interest  she 
greatly  over-estimated  the  importance  of  maintaining  physical  con- 
trol of  the  area.  In  the  abstract,  no  doubt,  it  was  still  good  to  have 
bases  from  which  British  strength  and  influence  could  radiate.  In 
practice,  however,  if  those  bases  proved  so  unpopular  to  the  coun- 
tries in  which  they  were  situated  that  their  maintenance  taxed 
British  strength  and  stimulated  hostility  to  British  influence,  their 
existence  became  self-defeating.  Moreover,  with  the  abdication  of 
the  British  Raj  the  great  historic  justification  for  Middle  East 
bases,  the  maintenance  of  the  lines  of  control  to  India,  disappeared. 
There  remained,  of  course,  the  two  other  tasks — the  continued  ex- 
clusion of  Russsia  from  the  area  and  the  continuance  of  access  to 
Middle  East  oil.  For  both  of  these  a  British  military  "presence" 
was  certainly  helpful — but  only  if  it  could  be  maintained  without 
alienating  local  sentiment,  a  consideration  repeatedly  overlooked  in 
country  after  country.  Moreover,  it  was  too  readily  assumed  that  in 
order  to  obtain  Middle  East  oil  it  was  necessary  to  own  the  con- 
cessions and  even  to  control  the  countries  from  which  it  was  ob- 
tained; by  the  fifties  there  were  already  signs  of  that  world  surplus 
of  oil  which  afforded  the  best  guarantee  that  the  Middle  East  would 
continue  to  supply  what  Europe  would  continue  to  require — ample 
oil  at  reasonable  prices. 

It  cannot  be  contended  that  the  United  States  was  entirely  free 
of  these  illusions  or  entirely  innocent  of  such  assumptions.  It  was 
President  Eisenhower  who  assured  Sir  Anthony  Eden  in  March, 
1953,  that  it  was  essential  for  Britain  to  maintain  the  base  in  Egypt 
and  that  if  Britain  were  to  evacuate  the  Canal  Zone  before  making 
a  Middle  East  defence  arrangement  she  would  be  exposing  herself 
to  Egyptian  blackmail.^  In  certain  areas,  for  example  Saudi  Arabia, 
she  judged  it  every  bit  as  much  in  her  own  interests  to  lend  her 
support  to  autocratic  regimes  that  hardly  represented  the  wave  of 
the  Arab  future.  Her  especial  concern  as  the  arch-organizer  of  the 
anti-Communist  front  the  world  over  sometimes  led  her  to  see 
Middle  East  countries,  factions  and  policies  exclusively  in  terms  of 
a  pro-  or  anti-Communist  alignment.  But  in  general  she  was  free  in 
the  Middle  East  of  the  particular  historic  illusions  of  imperialism. 
In  principle,  at  least,  she  was  sympathetic  to  the  rising  tide  of 

1  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  249. 

110 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

nationalism.  In  specific  situations  this  did  not  necessarily  result, 
unfortunately,  in  her  being  able  to  offer  helpful  assistance  or  pro- 
pound a  practicable  solution,  since  the  disinterestedness  which  gave 
her  a  ready  enough  grasp  of  general  principles  was  the  reverse  side 
of  the  coin  of  non-involvement  which  denied  her,  in  many  cases,  a 
sound  empirical  judgement  of  actual  situations.  (This,  for  example, 
was  painfully  apparent  over  the  whole  Suez  affair  in  1956.)  Si 
jeunesse  pouvait,  si  vieillesse  savatt.  Moreover  even  when  she  had 
the  sympathies,  she  lacked  in  this  area,  time  and  time  again,  the 
sense  of  responsibility,  the  willingness  to  see  through  the  conse- 
quences of  her  own  recommendations  and  actions.  The  United 
Kingdom,  by  contrast,  charged  with  a  responsibility  which  on  the 
whole  she  seldom  tried  to  evade,  all  too  often  found  herself  inex- 
tricably tangled  in  the  toils  of  her  own  historic  but  now  erroneously 
conceived  self-interests. 

At  an  early  stage — as  early  indeed  as  the  establishment  of  the 
Middle  Eastern  Supply  Centre  during  the  war — some  reliance  began 
to  be  placed  on  economic  and  technical  aid  as  the  solvent  which 
would  melt  the  age-old  enmities,  the  internecine  rivalries  and  the 
nationalist  suspicions  of  the  Middle  East.  If  only  an  improved 
economy  could  be  established,  the  instabilities  of  the  social  order 
would  be  reduced  and  so  the  reliance  of  local  governments  on  fraud 
and  corruption,  their  susceptibility  to  every  gust  of  popular  passion 
or  every  touch  of  internal  or  external  intrigue  and  subversion  might 
be  ended.  Then  political  problems  which  had  proved  intractable  in 
themselves  might  be  solved  indirectly  by  the  removal  of  the 
economic  and  social  evils  which  had  provoked  them. 

British  in  origin,  such  an  approach  was  no  less  attractive  to  the 
United  States.  It  accorded  with  long-established  American  philan- 
thropic interests  in  the  Levant  and  appealed  to  every  American 
policy-planner  who  wished  to  improve  the  stability  of  the  area 
without  having  to  incur  the  odium  and  the  hazards  of  establishing 
an  American  political  or  military  presence  there.  In  Israel  Ameri- 
can capital  showed  what  could  be  done  to  raise  the  productivity  of 
one  of  the  most  arid  Middle  Eastern  territories;  if  the  Arab  states 
could  be  aided  to  do  half  as  much,  the  improvement  in  their  living 
standards  would  be  phenomenal.  Between  1951  and  1956  the 
United  States  provided  $250  million  for  development  and  technical 
co-operation  to  Israel  and  $86  million  divided  between  Egypt, 
Iraq,  Jordan,  Lebanon  and  Saudi  Arabia. 

Ill 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Unfortunately  the  sheer  scale  of  Middle  East  under-development 
made  any  duplication  of  the  Israeli  scale  of  investment  impossible. 
Outside  Palestine,  there  were  two  types  of  underdeveloped  terri- 
tory, each  presenting  problems  of  their  own.  Superficially  more 
fortunate  were  those  states  whose  oil  revenues  afforded  a  consider- 
able investment  surplus,  either  in  sterling  or  dollars.  Here  the 
problem  was  not  one  of  providing  the  funds,  but  of  inducing  the 
local  governments  to  employ  them  productively  rather  than  in  con- 
tributing to  the  conspicuous  waste  of  their  ruling  families  or  the 
military  under-pinning  of  a  reactionary  dynasty  or,  worst  of  all,  the 
financing  of  feuds  with  neighbour  states.  In  curbing  such  intemper- 
ances the  representatives  of  what  was  known  to  be  the  richest 
power  on  earth  were  not  always  at  an  advantage. 

The  other  Middle  East  states  whose  subsoil  lacked  these  fluid 
riches  were  more  straightforwardly  dependent  upon  the  U.S.A.  or 
Britain  for  the  wherewithal  of  their  economic  development.  Here 
in  theory  the  donor  could  dictate  the  uses  of  his  gift  and  see  that  it 
was  not  wasted,  nor  politically  perverted,  nor  reconverted  from 
ploughshares  into  machine  guns,  or  from  tractors  into  tanks. 
Practice,  however,  often  made  nonsense  of  theory  and  local  ineffi- 
ciency, corruption  or  political  necessity  often  made  hay  of  the 
planners'  hopes.  In  any  case  to  secure  a  good  return  upon  the  in- 
vestment of  economic  and  technical  aid  it  was  necessary  to  have 
available  a  far  larger  number  of  skilled  administrators  with  local 
knowledge  than  the  U.S.A.  could  possibly  supply. 

Partly  because  of  the  difficulties  of  administering  the  programme 
efficiently  in  purely  economic  terms,  partly  because  of  the  need  to 
have  something  to  show  to  Congress  for  its  annual  appropriations, 
the  temptation  became  irresistible  to  conceive  the  economic  aid  pro- 
gramme in  narrowly  anti-Communist  terms — i.e.  to  shift  from  a 
concern  for  Middle  East  development  per  se  to  an  urgent  desire  to 
build  up  the  Middle  East  against  Communism.  The  result  was  two- 
fold— first,  to  lend  a  readier  ear  to  requests  for  military,  as  opposed 
to  economic,  aid  from  those  who  could  present  themselves  as 
staunchly  anti-Communist,  even  though  this  aid,  when  obtained, 
often  increased  the  armaments  competition  and  so  the  internal 
instability  of  the  area;  secondly,  to  require  of  would-be  recipients 
of  economic  aid  a  positively  pro-western  proclivity  which  seldom 
accorded  with  their  real  desire,  which  was  to  stay  out  of  the 
Moscow-Free  World  conflict  and  cultivate  their  national  identities. 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

For  all  these  reasons  Britain  found  that,  invaluable  as  American 
economic  aid  was,  time  and  time  again,  in  turning  the  tricky  poli- 
tical corners  of  the  Middle  East,  it  was  almost  as  much  a  source  of 
problems  as  a  solvent  of  them.  The  United  States'  failure  to  evolve 
a  consistent  philosophy  of  economic  aid  meant  that  its  biggest  asset 
in  the  struggle  to  achieve  its  purposes  in  the  Middle  East  was  not 
only  often  wasted  but  sometimes  even  recoiled  upon  itself. 

To  sum  up  then,  three  main  factors  underlay  Anglo-American 
differences  and  difficulties  in  the  Middle  East — the  different  in- 
tensities of  interest  in  the  area,  the  persistence  in  Britain  of  outworn 
attitudes  towards  it,  and  the  lack  of  any  sustained  philosophy  of 
economic  aid.  Diplomacy,  however,  is  not  made  up  of  general 
principles  but  of  actions,  often  cumulative,  in  particular  situations 
and  to  see  how  Britain  and  the  United  States  could  in  one  case 
succeed  and  in  another  fail  to  maximize  their  common  interests  and 
transcend  their  mutual  Middle  Eastern  suspicions  and  miscalcula- 
tions it  may  be  helpful  to  look  at  two  concrete  instances — the 
Anglo-Iranian  oil  dispute  and  the  Suez  affair.  The  story  of  each  is 
sufficiently  well  known  to  make  a  re-telling  unnecessary;  my  object 
is  merely  to  analyse  some  aspects  of  it  from  the  distinctive  point  of 
view  of  their  significance  for  the  Anglo-American  relationship. 

The  two  cases  had  a  good  deal  in  common.  In  each  the  major 
interest  involved  was  British  (or  Anglo-French),  but  in  each  the 
American  role  was  vital.  In  each  the  dynamic  element  was  provided 
by  the  explosive  force  of  a  local  nationalism  and  it  was  on  an  ex- 
ternal and  so-called  ""imperialist"  preserve  that  it  vented  itself. 
Over  each  affair  loomed  the  presence  of  the  U.S.S.R.,  not  as  an 
active  but  as  a  potential  participant.  On  both  occasions  the  issue 
was  brought  to  the  bar  of  world  judgment,  in  the  first  case  through 
the  Security  Council  and  the  World  Court,  in  the  second  through 
the  Security  Council  and  General  Assembly. 

But  there  were  differences  too  and  it  was  these,  as  will  become 
apparent,  which  accounted  for  the  divergent  outcome.  To  take  the 
Anglo-Iranian  dispute  first : 

At  the  outset,  in  1951,  there  was  not  much  in  common  between 
the  British  and  the  American  view  of  the  issues.  An  affronted  and 
expropriated  Britain  was  convinced  that  she  was  entitled  to  full 
American  support  in  her  conflict  with  Mosaddeq  both  because  her 
cause  was  just  and  because  both  countries  had  a  common  interest 
in  maintaining  the  flow  of  Iranian  oil,   in  resisting  what  was 

H  113 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

variously  called  "theft"  or  "unilateral  denunciation",  and  in  pre- 
venting Iran's  domination  by  a  nationalist  figure  or  faction  strongly 
hostile  to  the  west.  In  fact  the  American  attitude  was  initially  cool 
and  even  critical;  no  direct  American  interest  was  threatened  by  the 
seizure  of  Anglo-Iranian;  a  different  on-the-spot  assessment  was 
made  of  Mossadeq's  brand  of  nationalism,  with  the  result  that  a 
major  American  fear  was  that  being  tough  with  his  movement 
would  open  the  door  to  Communism  in  Iran/  finally,  even  where 
the  legal  merits  of  the  British  case  won  acceptance,  there  was  a 
certain  distrust  of  the  plaintiff  based  upon  his  numerous  previous 
convictions  for  colonial  and  imperialist  malpractices.  The  result 
was  that  not  only  did  the  U.S.A.  make  strong  representations  just 
before  the  withdrawal  from  Abadan  against  any  reclamation  of 
British  property  by  force;  even  two  years  later,  in  September,  1953, 
it  was  reported  that  the  State  Department  had  been  urging  Ameri- 
can oil  companies  to  combine  to  buy  out  Anglo-Iranian.^  From  all 
this  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  the  prospects  of  Anglo- 
American  co-operation  in  an  agreed  solution  were  slender.  Yet  in 
fact  thesis  and  antithesis  worked  themselves  out  to  a  harmonious 
synthesis.  Why? 

In  the  first  place  the  United  States  came  by  degrees  to  recognize 
that  Britain  had  a  good  case,  especially  after  the  United  Kingdom 
had  appealed  both  to  the  Security  Council  and  to  the  World  Court; 
though  both  bodies  declined  to  accept  jurisdiction  in  the  dispute, 
the  result  of  appearing  before  them  was  in  each  case  to  present  the 
United  Kingdom  in  the  light  of  one  seeking  justice  and  Iran  as  one 
reluctant  even  to  allow  the  case  to  be  heard.  Secondly,  the  United 
Kingdom  did  eventually  succeed  in  persuading  first  the  Truman 
and  then  the  Eisenhower  administration  that  Mossadeq  was  not  the 
only  alternative  to  Communism  in  Iran.  In  this  no  doubt  they  were 
assisted  by  his  own  unreasonable  behaviour  but  also  ultimately  by 
the  demonstration  provided  by  General  Zahedi  and  the  Shah  that 
Mossadeq's  overthrow  was  not  the  prelude  to  a  popular  wave  of 
Communism.  Thirdly,  Britain  abstained,  despite  severe  temptation, 
from  the  use  of  force  to  settle  the  dispute,  and  made  a  continuous 
effort,  despite  intermittent  friction  and  changes  of  government  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  to  work  closely  with  the  United  States. 

^  Cf.  President  Eisenhower's  remark  to  Eden  that  "he  regarded  him 
as  the  only  hope  for  the  West  in  Iran":  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  212. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  214. 

114 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

Fourthly,  the  United  States  was  willing  to  accept  a  considerable 
role  not  merely  in  the  negotiations  but  also  in  the  settlement,  both 
by  participating  in  an  Anglo-American  marketing  consortium  for 
Iranian  oil  and,  hardly  less  important,  by  "sweetening"  the  final 
stages  of  the  negotiations  with  substantial  dollar  aid;  over  127 
million  dollars  of  grants  and  loans  were  provided  for  the  interim 
period  before  oil  revenues  from  the  new  consortium  became  avail- 
able. Finally,  in  the  later  phases  of  the  dispute  there  was  intimate 
co-operation  between  the  men  on  the  spot,  the  British  and  American 
ambassadors  in  Teheran,  Sir  Roger  Stevens  and  Mr.  Loy  Henderson. 

The  result  was  thus  the  translation  of  the  Anglo-American  com- 
munity of  Middle  Eastern  interests  into  concrete  terms.  The  supply 
and  flow  of  oil  to  Europe  were  preserved.  The  independence  of 
Iran  as  a  bastion  against  the  U.S.S.R.  was  maintained  without  any 
semblance  of  a  diktat  at  the  hands  of  a  browbeating  Western  im- 
perialism. Her  economy,  so  utterly  dependent  on  oil  revenues,  was 
sustained  even  if  it  was  not  properly  stabilized  (an  operation  neces- 
sarily the  work  not  of  a  year  but  of  decades). 

The  Suez  affair  was  both  shorter  and  sharper  than  the  Anglo- 
Iranian  dispute,  but  it  was  in  fact  (if  not  in  form)  the  culmination 
of  an  Anglo-Egyptian  tension  which  had  been  mounting  at  least 
since  the  war.  So  axiomatic  was  the  British  assumption  that  a  base 
in  Egypt  was  necessary  to  guard  the  Canal  that  the  United  States  at 
various  times  came  almost  to  the  point  of  believing  it  too.  Especially 
since  the  Truman  Doctrine  in  1947  London  had  pressed  on 
Washington  the  argument  that  the  United  States  and  the  United 
Kingdom  had  a  joint  defence  responsibility  for  the  Eastern  Mediter- 
ranean and  that  for  its  proper  discharge  this  responsibility  required 
a  base  that  safeguarded  the  Canal.  But  the  American  policy  which 
issued  in  the  Truman  Doctrine  stopped  at  the  boundaries  of  Turkey. 
The  U.S.A.  was  not  willing  to  enter  into  binding  mainland  com- 
mitments beyond;  the  air  bases  at  Wheelus  and  Dhahran  were  con- 
ceived of  exclusively  in  S.A.C.  terms,  as  springboards  for  retaliatory 
attacks  on  the  U.S.S.R.  And  although  an  Eisenhower  might  make 
private  expressions  of  endorsement  of  the  British  strategical 
assumptions  over  Suez,  as  in  his  remarks  to  Sir  Anthony  Eden 
quoted  on  p.  11 0,  these  were  not  translated  into  public  statements 
of  United  States  policy.  Rather  the  reverse:  not  only  was  Mr.  Dulles, 
as  Sir  Anthony  Eden  remarks,  much  less  "clear  and  firm"  on  this 
point,  but  when  at  a  certain  stage  a  plan  was  put  forward  for 

115 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

American  participation  in  an  Egyptian  defence  base  it  broke  down 
because  of  Egyptian  refusal  to  have  American  participation,  Ameri- 
can refusal  to  take  part  unless  with  Egyptian  agreement  and  finally, 
as  Sir  Anthony  Eden  puts  it,  American  reluctance  "to  put  any 
pressure  upon  the  Egyptians"  to  negotiate.'^ 

Before  1956,  of  course,  the  vexed  question  of  a  base  on  Egyptian 
soil  had  been  settled — on  Egyptian  terms.  The  reluctance  of  the 
Americans  to  press  British  claims  against  Egyptian  wishes  meant 
that  all  hope  of  maintaining  an  unpopular  foothold  had  to  be 
abandoned  and  undoubtedly  the  gradual  withdrawal  of  British 
troops  from  the  base  by  the  treaty  of  1954  was  generally  welcomed 
in  the  U.S.A.  as  a  wise  winding  up  of  an  imperialist  legacy.  To  that 
extent  Britain  entered  on  the  Suez  dispute,  in  American  eyes,  with 
clean  hands.  If  the  odour  of  "colonialism"  was  harder  to  eliminate 
from  Britain's  dealings  with  Egypt  than  with  Iran,  she  had,  how- 
ever belatedly,  withdrawn  an  unwelcome  presence  and  the  Egypt 
which  chose  to  expropriate  British  and  French  property  in  the 
Canal  was  a  sovereign  power  with  whom  both  the  United  Kingdom 
and  the  United  States  treated  on  terms  of  equality.  Compared  with 
the  Iranian  seizure,  the  nationalization  of  the  Canal  came  nearer  to 
touching  American  interests — directly  because  some  American  oil 
also  flowed  through  its  banks  and  indirectly  by  reason  of  the  painful 
analogy  to  the  position  of  Panama.  Moreover  the  act  of  nationaliza- 
tion bore  every  evidence  of  having  been  precipitated,  not  by  any 
British  or  French  misdemeanour  but  mainly  by  a  reversal  of  Ameri- 
can policy,  the  withdrawal  of  the  promised  aid  for  the  Aswan  Dam. 

Thus  far,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  dispute,  the  omens  for  a  har- 
monious Anglo-American  response  were,  if  anything,  more  pro- 
pitious than  they  had  been  at  Abadan  in  1950.  But  two  countering 
factors  were  also  present  from  the  start.  The  first  was  that  long 
historic  residue  of  involvement  in  the  Canal  which  made  its  seizure 
such  a  peculiarly  sensitive  matter  for  British  national  pride.  Every- 
thing associated  with  the  area  from  Disraeli  to  the  recollections  of 
every  ex-serviceman  who  wore  an  Africa  Star  guaranteed  that 
Nasser's  action  would  provoke  an  especially  prickly  response.  And 
it  was  an  exclusive  response.  Owing  something  to  Lord  Cromer 
and  perhaps  even  more  to  that  long  line  of  Englishmen  who  have 
written  enormous  volumes  of  beautiful  prose  bound  in  golden 
buckram  about  their  spiritual  adventures  in  the  Levant,  the  convic- 

^  Eden,  op.  cit.,  p.  253. 

116 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

tion  was  general  that  "we  could  handle  this"— i.e.  handle  it  best 
alone.  A  dangerous  illusion  at  any  time,  this  operated  with  par- 
ticularly harmful  consequences  in  1956  by  reason  of  the  second 
element  present  at  Suez,  which  had  been  absent  at  Abadan.  This 
was  the  deterioration  in  the  personal  relationships  of  the  principal 
managers  of  the  Anglo-American  alliance,  Mr.  Dulles  and  Sir 
Anthony  Eden.  At  Suez  the  antipathy  and  irritation  generated  by 
their  disagreements  over  the  Japanese  Treaty,  the  Chinese  question, 
Indo-China  and  Geneva,  E.D.C.  and  Western  European  Union  had 
accumulated  to  a  point  where  mutual  distrust  was  a  normal  char- 
acteristic of  their  relationship.  The  retirement  in  Britain  of  Sir 
Winston  Churchill,  with  his  sensitive  over-riding  awareness  of  the 
primacy  of  the  Anglo-American  relationship,  and  President  Eisen- 
hower's increasing  willingness  to  confide  in  the  wisdom  of  his 
Secretary  of  State  left  no  effective  restraints  upon  the  free  and 
baneful  play  of  temperament  on  temperament.  As  Mr.  James 
Reston  remarked  in  this  connexion :  "There  has  seldom  been  a 
period  in  modern  history  when  personality  has  played  so  large  a 
part  in  so  many  unhappy  world  events." 

All  the  same,  one  thought  at  the  time,  whatever  the  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  Anglo-American  agreement,  the  over-arching  im- 
portance of  presenting  a  combined  front  to  Russian  pretensions 
would  surely,  as  in  Iran,  enforce  co-operation.  It  should  have.  Why 
did  it  fail  to?  Largely  because  the  U.S.A.  did  not  accept  the  British 
assessment  of  the  Soviet  threat  latent  in  the  Nasser  operation. 
Relying  on  the  Northern  tier  of  anti-Soviet  defences,  from  Istanbul 
to  Karachi,  the  Americans  were  a  good  deal  less  disturbed  about 
what  the  Russians  might  do  through  Nasser  than  they  had  been 
about  what  they  might  do  in  Iran.  The  British  could  not  succeed  in 
persuading  Washington  that  Nasser  was  a  mere  Soviet  stooge,  or 
even  that  like  Mossadeq  he  was  an  absurd,  unrepresentative  figure 
who  could  be  replaced  by  a  more  Western-like  leader  equally  if  not 
more  acceptable  to  Egyptian  taste.  Nasser  was  no  Mossadeq,  Farouk 
had  been  shown  to  be  no  Reza,  and  no  Zahedi  was  in  sight.  Thus 
the  "Nasser  must  go"  refrain  in  British  policy  fell  on  understand- 
ably deaf  ears  in  Washington,  however  much  at  moments  they  had 
shared  British  feelings  of  irritation  at  his  behaviour. 

At  Teheran  the  later  stages  of  negotiations  had  been  consider- 
ably smoothed  and  the  forces  of  Iranian  moderation  strengthened 
by  the  wise  application  of  American  economic  aid.  Over  Suez 

117 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

negotiations  never  reached  the  point  where  any  similar  emollient  or 
buttress  might  be  invoked.  On  the  contrary.  The  efficient  cause  of 
the  whole  imbroglio  had  been  the  abrupt  withdrawal  of  proferred 
American  aid  in  circumstances  which  could  be  regarded,  reasonably 
or  not,  as  a  rebuff  to  national  pride.  A  clearer  concept  of  what 
economic  aid  could  achieve  and  a  more  consistent  policy  in  its  de- 
ployment might  have  averted  the  whole  crisis  and  would  at  least 
have  given  the  West  an  advantageous  position  for  negotiation. 

Although  over  Suez,  as  over  Abadan,  the  British  had  taken  their 
case  before  the  United  Nations,  it  had  profited  them  less  as  far  as 
the  United  States  was  concerned.  To  some  extent  this  may  have 
been  because  the  employment  of  other  machinery,  such  as  the  Users' 
Conference  (at  American  instigation),  had  to  some  extent  obfus- 
cated the  issue.  But  basically  it  was  because  before  her  appeal  to  the 
Security  Council,  as  after  it,  British  was  insistent  upon  her  right  to 
resort  to  force  if  she  could  not  get  an  acceptable  remedy  for  her 
grievances  by  any  other  way.  If  at  certain  early  stages  in  the  dispute 
the  President  or  his  Secretary  of  State  might  have  appeared  to  con- 
done this,  there  could  be  no  room  for  any  illusions  remaining  in 
Britain  about  the  deep  repugnance  this  would  arouse  in  Washing- 
ton once  Sir  Anthony  had  received  President  Eisenhower's  message 
of  3  September.  The  failure  to  heed  this  as  marking  the  ne  plus 
ultra  of  American  co-operation  was  perhaps  the  turning-point  in 
the  diplomacy  of  the  alliance.  From  then  on,  in  place  of  the  close 
consultation  and  co-operation  that  had  marked  the  Iranian  negotia- 
tions, there  was  an  increasing  breakdown  of  communications,  in 
Cairo,  Washington  and  London — not  to  mention  Paris  and  Jeru- 
salem. If  in  the  early  stages  heavy  blame  attached  to  Mr.  Dulles 
for  deviousness,  uncertain  counsel,  inopportune  and  ill-considered 
statements — in  general  for  that  something-less-than-frankness 
which  throughout  marred  his  diplomacy — it  is  certain  that  from 
this  time  onwards  the  United  Kingdom,  under  Sir  Anthony  Eden, 
embarked  upon  a  conspiracy  with  one  ally,  France,  to  the  deliberate 
exclusion  and  deception  of  the  other,  the  United  States.  Such  a 
conspiracy  when  it  erupted  in  violence  and  war  would  inevitably 
lead  to  an  open  breach  between  London  and  Washington. 

So  irrational  is  this  cross-channel  conspiracy  in  the  context  of 
the  transatlantic  community  that  even  when  all  the  known  explana- 
tions are  to  hand  they  still  seem  inadequate  to  explain  it.  Ultimately 
they  boil  down  to  one,  that  the  leaders  of  France  and  Britain  at  the 

118 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

time  believed  that  there  were  vital  national  interests  at  stake  which 
their  partner  in  the  transatlantic  alliance  was  refusing  to  treat 
seriously.  In  their  assessments  of  those  interests  they  were  largely 
wrong,  as  their  critics  told  them  at  the  time  and  as  subsequent 
events  have  largely  proved.  But  right  or  wrong,  what  seems  most 
incredible  of  all  is  their  belief  that  by  acting  as  they  did  they  would 
advance  those  interests  more  than  they  would  harm  them.  The 
basis  for  this  illusion  was  a  series  of  gross  miscalculations.  They 
miscalculated  their  own  military  effectiveness  and  they  miscalcu- 
lated the  reaction  of  the  United  States.  Injured  innocence  is  a  de- 
ceptive counsellor;  statesmen  who  rely  on  its  exclusive  advice 
seldom  remedy  their  injuries  and  frequently  impair  their  innocence. 

It  is  hardly  possible  for  a  British  observer,  even  an  opponent  of 
Suez,  to  provide  an  objective  assessment  of  whether  the  American 
administration  went  too  far  in  the  "sanctions"  which  they  applied 
to  the  United  Kingdom  after  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  in  Egypt. 
Their  reported  insistence  at  the  United  Nations  upon  the  least 
accommodating  resolutions  and  the  most  exacting  compliance,  the 
Vice-President,  Mr.  Nixon's,  boast  of  an  American  "declaration  of 
independence"  from  "colonialism",  the  pressure  against  sterling  in 
the  American  market,  the  delays  in  the  provision  of  emergency  oil 
supplies  for  the  western  hemisphere,  the  suspension  of  all  diplo- 
matic contacts  in  Washington,  the  President's  refusal,  however  re- 
luctant, to  entertain  a  visit  from  Eden  until  after  the  withdrawal  of 
British  troops  from  Egyptian  soil — whether  the  line  of  policy  thus 
exemplified  represented  the  truest  wisdom  must  be  left  to  others  to 
judge.  It  certainly  represented  the  lowest  point  in  Anglo-American 
relations  of  the  whole  post-war  period. 

That  the  Suez  falling-out  should  so  quickly  have  been  followed 
by  the  promulgation  in  January,  1957,  of  the  Eisenhower  Doctrine 
was  logical  enough.  Once  the  Franco-British  venture  had  failed,  a 
vacuum  of  power  became  apparent  in  the  Middle  East  which  had 
to  be  filled  by  the  U.S.A.  if  it  was  not  to  be  filled  by  the  U.S.S.R. 
As  such,  the  Doctrine  was  welcomed  in  London,  though  the  joy 
there  was  rather  of  the  kind  that  is  reserved  for  the  sinner  who  has 
repented.  Ever  since  the  idea  of  a  Middle  East  defence  system  had 
been  first  mooted  in  1951  there  had  been  expectations;  hitherto 
always  frustrated,  of  American  participation.  Visiting  the  area  in 
1953  Dulles  had  aired  the  concept  of  a  "northern  tier"  system  to 
embrace  the  countries  directly  bordering  on  the  U.S.S.R.  But  when, 

119 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

from  this  inspiration,  the  Baghdad  Pact  developed  apace,  Britain 
found  that  her  American  partner  was  not  prepared  to  follow 
through.  There  was  in  this  matter  a  significant  reversal  of  the  atti- 
tudes which  had  prevailed  over  S.E.A.T.O.  Now  it  was  the  British 
who  were  pressing  for  an  anti-Communist  pact,  even  if  it  meant 
leaving  out  many  countries  of  the  region,  and  it  was  the  Americans 
who  were  most  worried  about  the  effects  on  local  neutrals,  in  this 
case  particularly  Egypt  and  Saudi  Arabia.  The  Americans  did  not 
oppose  it,  any  more  than  the  British  had  opposed  S.E.A.T.O.; 
indeed  they  gave  arms  to  Pakistan  and  Iraq  in  an  encouraging  way. 
But  they  felt  none  of  the  urgency  which  Britain  derived  from  the 
loss  of  the  Suez  base  and  the  fear  that,  without  the  Pact,  she  might 
lose  her  military  footing  in  Iraq  when  the  Treaty  of  1930  ran  out 
in  1957.  So,  despite  the  persuasions  that  Sir  Anthony  Eden  exer- 
cised on  President  Eisenhower  when  he  visited  Washington  in 
January,  1956,  the  most  that  the  U.S.A.  would  do,  before  Suez,  was 
to  join  the  economic  and  anti-subversion  committees  of  the  alliance. 
Now,  in  place  of  this  detachment,  the  Eisenhower  Doctrine 
offered,  on  request,  to  use  American  forces  to  assist  any  Middle 
Eastern  country  which  might  be  the  victim  of  armed  aggression  by 
a  state  controlled  by  International  Communism,  and  made  this 
effective  by  offers  of  aid  to  responsive  countries  in  the  area.  In 
Britain  the  way  was  clear  for  a  fresh  harmonization  of  policies. 
After  the  Macmillan-Eisenhower  meeting  at  Bermuda  in  March. 
1957,  American  participation  in  the  military  committee  of  the 
Baghdad  Pact  was  announced.  In  April  the  swift  American  response 
to  the  Jordanian  crisis,  upholding  King  Hussein  with  the  Marines 
and  $30  million's  worth  of  aid,  showed  the  U.S.A.  as  the  lineal 
inheritor  of  British  policy.  In  the  following  year  after  the  revolu- 
tion in  Iraq  which  represented  a  collapse  of  the  British  position 
there,  there  was  the  swift  and  co-ordinated  landing  of  U.S.  marines 
in  the  Lebanon  and  of  British  parachutists  in  Jordan.  Whatever  the 
wisdom  or  otherwise  of  these  demonstrations  in  the  classic  style, 
they  certainly  represented  an  improvement  in  Anglo-American  co- 
ordination since  Suez.  In  1959  the  United  States  signed  bilateral 
agreements  with  Turkey,  Iran  and  Pakistan  which  embodied  the 
pledges  of  the  Eisenhower  Doctrine,  in  rather  S.E.A.T.O.-ish 
language,  and  when  later  in  the  year  the  Americans  played  host  to 
the  alliance,  now  renamed  C.E.N.T.O.,  they  agreed  to  accept  the 
chairmanship  of  the  military  committee  for  I960. 

120 


THE  MIDDLE  EAST 

All  this  met  with  warm  British  approval  as  an  indication  that  at 
last  the  United  States  was  accepting  firm  responsibilities  in  a  region 
so  important  to  Britain  and  to  the  Commonwealth.  If  at  Suez  and 
immediately  after  there  had  been  a  suspicion  that  the  United  States 
was  taking  advantage  of  Britain's  misfortunes  to  elbow  her  out  of 
her  position  in  the  Middle  East,  this  soon  passed.  It  was  now  recog- 
nized that  whoever  was  to  blame  in  the  past  American  strength  was 
indispensable;  moreover  it  gradually  became  apparent  that  Suez  did 
not  signify  that  extinction  of  British  potency  in  the  area  which 
pessimists  had  at  first  supposed.  As  something  of  a  normalization 
of  relations  even  with  Egypt  was  gradually  restored,  it  was  realized 
that  there  was  still  an  active  role  for  Britain  to  play  in  the  life  of 
the  Middle  East.  It  could  not  be  played  without  the  co-operation  of 
the  United  States;  but  neither  could  it  be  played  without  the  co- 
operation of  the  peoples  who  lived  there.  The  problem  was  to  find 
a  way  of  securing  both. 


121 


9 

EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

ONE  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  Suez  was  the  absence 
of  any  official  post-mortem  on  the  debacle.  By  any  normal 
standards — of  the  right  or  of  the  left,  diplomatic,  economic 
or  military — it  was  a  major  national  disaster.  On  similar  occasions 
in  the  nation's  past,  demand  for  an  inquest  had  been  insistent  and 
the  resulting  investigation  had  generally  been  searching.  The  mis- 
management of  the  Crimean  War  had  produced  the  Roebuck  Com- 
mittee, the  bungled  conspiracy  of  the  Jameson  Raid  had  been  in- 
vestigated by  a  select  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the 
tragedy  of  the  Dardanelles  had  been  reviewed  by  a  Royal  Com- 
mission. After  Suez  no  inquiry  was  held. 

This  was  certainly  not  because  all  the  facts  were  known.  One  of 
the  most  extraordinary  aspects  of  the  affair  was  the  secrecy  which 
attended  its  preparation  and  the  mystery  which  hung  about  it  after- 
wards. Never  in  modern  British  history  has  so  large  an  enterprise 
been  launched  in  peacetime  with  the  connivance  of  so  few  and 
seldom,  if  ever,  have  the  lacunae  in  the  written  records  been  so 
meagrely  supplemented  by  the  oral  tradition  of  the  well-informed. 
Now  as  then,  certain  crucial  features  of  the  Suez  imbroglio  remain 
baffling  and  unprobed,  and  the  publication  by  the  principal  actor  of 
an  apologia  for  his  ill-starred  enterprise  adds  substantially  nothing 
to  our  knowledge  of  what  occurred. 

Not  only  was  no  inquest  held.  None  was  seriously  demanded, 
from  any  responsible  quarter  of  organized  opinion.  The  Opposition 
went  through  the  motions  of  calling  for  one,  but  not  as  men  de- 
termined to  get  it.  The  reason  was  indeed  only  too  obvious.  The 
nation  had  been  brought  to  the  brink  of  a  major  disaster,  of  a 
rupture  with  the  Commonwealth  and  a  total  alienation  from  the 
United  States.  A  chasm  had  opened  up  at  the  country's  feet;  Britain 
had  seen  the  peril  of  the  position  just  in  time  and  had  instinctively 
drawn  back  from  the  abyss.  To  ask  how  she  had  got  there  and  to 
arraign  the  guilty  men  would  be  to  weaken  her  position  still  further. 
It  would  reveal  blame  and  dissension  not  only  within  the  Cabinet 
but  also  within  the  alliance;  in  the  recriminations  which  would 

122 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

assuredly  follow  the  position  of  persons  indispensable  for  con- 
tinued leadership  in  Britain  would  be  weakened;  worse  still,  rela- 
tions between  Britain  and  the  Eisenhower  administration — an  ad- 
ministration just  about  to  embark  on  a  second  four-year  term — 
would  be  wrecked  in  a  cross-fire  of  charge  and  counter-charge.  So 
when  the  physical  collapse  of  Sir  Anthony  removed  both  the 
principal  architect  of  the  nation's  misfortunes  and  the  central  wit- 
ness for  any  inquisition,  the  public  mood  readily  accepted  chivalry 
as  a  substitute  for  justice  and  gratefully  turned  its  gaze  away  from 
the  blotted  page  of  Suez  to  the  new  leaf  being  turned  over  by  Mr. 
Harold  Macmillan. 

The  new  Prime  Minister,  nonetheless,  had  a  difficult  task  to 
hand.  He  had  to  retreat  without  turning  round,  to  reverse  a  policy 
without  admitting  that  he  was  changing  course,  to  repair  an  alliance 
without  officially  recognizing  a  rent.  Never  was  the  boasted 
empiricism  of  British  conservatism  given  a  better  opportunity  to 
show  its  paces.  Here,  however,  our  concern  is  not  with  his  parlia- 
mentary and  political  management  but  with  the  substance  of  his 
policy.  The  heart  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  a  reassertion  of  priorities; 
the  unity  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  maintenance  of  the  Anglo- 
American  alliance  were  to  be  given  priority  over  the  entente  with 
France  and  even  over  the  assertion  of  our  rights  and  interests  in 
traditional  areas  of  British  influence  and  control,  like  the  Middle 
East.  Fortunately — it  was  the  saving  grace  of  the  whole  Suez  affair 
— no  choice  had  to  be  made  between  the  first  two  priorities; 
Britain's  relations  with  the  Commonwealth  dove-tailed  with,  indeed 
supported,  her  relations  with  the  United  States.  (Never  was  this 
more  conspicuously  displayed  than  in  those  lonely  days  after  the 
Anglo-French  landings  when,  both  in  Washington  and  in  the 
United  Nations,  it  was  only  the  other  members  of  the  Common- 
wealth who  kept  open  lines  of  communication  which,  as  far  as 
direct  contact  between  London  and  Washington  was  concerned,  had 
been  cut.)  The  importance  which  Mr.  Macmillan  attached  to 
strengthening  those  Commonwealth  bonds  which  Suez  had  so 
severely  strained  was  exemplified  not  only  at  the  routine  Common- 
wealth Prime  Ministers'  Conference  in  1957  but  also  by  his  own 
20,000-mile  tour  of  the  Commonwealth  in  1958,  the  first  ever  to 
be  undertaken  by  a  British  Prime  Minister  while  in  office.  The 
restoration  of  relations  with  the  United  States  was  conveniently 
symbolized  in  the  popular  image  of  Macmillan  and  Eisenhower 

123 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

renewing  an  old  comradeship  which  went  back  to  their  wartime 
association  in  North  Africa.  A  symbol,  however,  is  all  that  it  was. 
After  all,  the  personal  amity  of  old  comrades-in-arms  had  been 
even  more  impressively  symbolized  in  the  Churchill-Eisenhower 
relationship  which  lasted  from  1953  to  1955,  yet  these  were  the 
years  in  which  the  unity  of  the  alliance  most  notably  began  to 
deteriorate.  The  test  was  whether,  behind  the  symbolism,  they 
could  make  a  reality  of  partnership.  A  precondition  of  this  was  that 
Britain  on  her  part  should  make  a  realistic  assessment  of  her  in- 
terests and  potentialities  and  that  the  U.S.A.,  on  hers,  should 
remember  that  it  was  an  alliance  she  was  leading  and  should  accept 
her  consequential  responsibilities  for  both  consultation  and  decision. 
Suez  illuminated  more  than  just  the  failure  of  British  Middle 
East  policy  and  the  breakdown  of  her  relations  with  her  major 
ally.  It  showed  up  the  inadequacy  of  her  whole  defence  poliq'  and 
called  into  question  the  scale  and  diversity  of  the  commitments 
which  the  nation  had  been  trying  to  shoulder.  Although  Britain  had 
spent  £7,000  million  in  five  years  on  defence,  it  was  now  revealed 
that  her  forces  were  still  not  equipped  for  a  comparatively  simple 
operation  and  that  what  equipment  they  had  was  not  what  they 
needed.  (It  might  also  have  been  observed  that  the  most  costly  of 
her  armaments,  the  nuclear  weapon,  could  not  for  political  reasons 
be  deployed  at  all.)  The  strain  put  by  the  Suez  operations  upon  the 
national  finances  was  a  reminder  that  the  nation  was  like  a  man 
with  weak  lungs  whom  the  least  over-exertion  would  find  short  of 
breath;  the  limits  of  its  politico-military  endeavours  were  set  by  the 
weakness  of  its  monetary  reserves,  the  least  overstrain  producing  a 
run  on  the  pound.  Thus,  as  time  and  time  again  after  World  War 
II,  the  country's  foreign  and  defence  policy  had  to  be  re-examined 
in  the  light  of  what  the  economy  could  support.  (Since,  in  such  a 
plight,  the  only  possible  source  of  succour  was  from  the  dollar 
world,  since  in  fact  the  financial  crisis  required  the  invocation  of  the 
waiver  in  the  Anglo-American  loan  agreements,  even  this  recutting 
of  the  national  cloth  involved  harmonizing  British  policy  with  that 
of  the  U.S.A.)  A  glance  at  the  nation's  accounts  revealed  that  if 
there  had  to  be  cuts  the  defence  budget  was  a  particularly  inviting 
place  to  make  them.  This  was  for  the  double  reason  that  so  much 
defence  expenditure  took  place  overseas  and  that  so  much  even  of 
what  was  spent  at  home  consumed  the  products  and  manpower  of 
those  industries,  notably  engineering  and  electronics,  which  were 

124 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

particularly  needed  for  the  export  trade.  It  was  not  difficult  to  argue 
that  the  heavy  burden  of  defence  which  Britain  had  carried  during 
and  since  the  Korean  war  had  substantially  contributed  to  the  infla- 
tion which  had  undoubtedly  diminished  her  effectiveness  as  a  world 
power. 

This  was  the  thinking  which  was  made  explicit  in  the  revolu- 
tionary Defence  White  Paper  of  5  April,  1957,  and  which  was 
invoked  to  justify  its  programme  of  cuts,  switches  and  revised  com- 
mitments. The  White  Paper  virtually  assumed  that  it  was  defence 
which  would  have  to  bear  the  brunt;  it  did  not  consider  the  possi- 
bility of  cutting  investment  or  consumption,  no  doubt  because  the 
first  would  have  imperilled  an  already  inadequate  rate  of  economic 
growth  and  the  second  would  have  disappointed  expectations 
nursed  by  both  Government  and  Opposition.  In  any  case  the  New 
Year  that  saw  the  withdrawal  from  Suez  under  the  cover  of  a 
United  Nations  expeditionary  force  was  not  a  season  for  invoking 
the  heroic  mood.  The  national  disposition  was  rather  to  explore, 
with  some  avidity,  the  compensations  of  "leaving  it  to  Dag", 

Ten  years  earlier  and  in  a  related  part  of  the  world  Britain  had 
once  before  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  her  reach  had  exceeded 
her  grasp.  In  the  Greco-Turkish  crisis  of  1947,  a  similar  retrench- 
ment having  been  forced  upon  her,  she  turned  to  the  United  States 
and  persuaded  her  to  move  in  in  her  place.  Her  case  then  for  relief 
as  a  war-weary,  austerity-ridden  partner  was  in  many  ways  better 
founded  in  1947  than  it  was  in  1957  when  she  was  floundering  in 
difficulties  largely  of  her  own  making.  Yet  paradoxically  the  Britain 
of  Macmillan  and  Selwyn  Lloyd  seems  to  have  found  in  Washing- 
ton a  readier  acceptance  of  her  desire  to  cut  commitments  than  did 
the  Britain  of  Attlee  and  Ernest  Bevin.  By  1957,  without  doubt, 
the  United  States  had  become  only  too  painfully  cognisant  of  the 
recurrent  problem  of  Britain's  balance  of  payments  and  hardly 
needed  much  convincing  as  to  the  limitations  set  by  our  inflation- 
prone  economy.  Moreover  if  the  "New  Look"  in  British  defence 
policy  was  at  any  time  queried  in  Washington  its  British  advocates 
could  claim  with  some  justice  that  they  were  only  following  a  pre- 
cedent which  the  Eisenhower  administration  had  laid  down. 

The  Eisenhower  new  look  had  its  basis  in  the  contention — almost 
identical  with  that  of  the  British  White  Paper — that,  as  the  Presi- 
dent insisted  in  his  State  of  the  Union  message  in  January,  1953, 
"adequate  military  strength"  must  be  achieved  "within  the  limits 

125 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

of  an  endurable  strain"  on  the  economy.  Rooted  in  this  conviction 
of  the  dependence  of  military  power  on  a  balanced  budget,  the 
disposition  to  cut  the  United  States  defence  expenditure  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  sunnier  international  prospect  that  opened  with  the 
death  of  Stalin  and  the  ending  of  the  Korean  War.  Technolog- 
ically, the  demonstration  of  the  annihilating  power  of  the  hydrogen 
bomb  at  the  Eniwetok  explosion  in  November,  1952,  encouraged 
the  belief  that  the  immense  destructive  power  of  nuclear  weapons 
would  provide  the  all-purpose  answer  to  the  needs  of  defence.  The 
result  was  the  emergence,  at  the  point  where  defence  and  diplomacy 
meet,  of  the  doctrine  of  "massive  retaliation"  which  received  its 
most  challenging  enunciation  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Dulles  on  12 
January,  1954 : 

"Before  military  planning  could  be  changed,  the  President  and 
his  advisers  in  the  National  Security  Council  had  to  take  some 
basic  policy  decisions.  This  has  been  done.  The  basic  decision 
was  to  depend  primarily  upon  a  great  capacity  to  retaliate, 
instantly,  by  means  and  at  places  of  our  choosing.  Now  the 
Department  of  Defence  and  the  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  can  shape 
our  military  establishment  to  meet  the  enemy's  many  choices. 
That  permits  a  selection  of  military  means  instead  of  a  multi- 
plication of  means. "^ 

The  re-shaped  "military  establishment"  that  this  implied  was  re- 
vealed in  the  President's  1954  budget  message  with  its  proposals 
to  expand  the  Air  Force  from  106  wings  to  137  by  mid- 195 7  and 
to  reduce  the  Army  from  3 '4  million  men  in  1954  to  3*2  million 
in  1955  (further  cut  to  2-85  million  in  1956);  funds  were  re- 
allocated between  the  services  in  proportion  and  the  1953  expendi- 
ture of  43"6  billion  dollars  was  to  be  cut  to  41-5  billion  in  1954 
and  37'6  billion  in  1955  respectively. 

Some  of  the  problems  which  this  "new  look"  implied  for  the 
alliance  have  already  been  mentioned.  The  increased  reliance  upon 
nuclear  striking  power  seemed  to  imply  a  set  of  exclusively 
American  decisions  about  intervention  around  the  globe — or,  to 
put  it  another  way,  about  when  and  where  to  turn  a  local  "con- 
ventional" conflict  into  a  global,  atomic  one.  The  shift  from 
conventional  to  atomic  forces  if  persisted  in  seemed  also  to  imply 

^  Documents  on  American  Foreign  Kelations,  1954,  pp.  7-15 

126 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

a  re-allocation  of  burdens  in  the  alliance,  with  the  U.S.A.  making 
her  contribution  mainly  through  the  atomic  deterrent  plus  a  reserve 
possibly  stationed  in  a  "garrison  America",  while  her  allies  manned 
the  local  ramparts  and  provided  the  bulk  of  manpower.  Much  of 
the  alarm  this  aroused  in  Britain  was  based  upon  the  all  too  ready 
assumption  that  every  tendency  will  be  developed  to  its  logical 
conclusion;  as  a  result,  revolutionary  implications  were  read  into 
what  was  often  only  a  shift  of  emphasis.  But  indisputably  the  effect 
of  the  new  strategical  posture  was,  as  we  have  seen,  to  weaken  the 
bonds  of  alliance  both  by  reducing  confidence  in  American  leader- 
ship and  by  inciting  similar  strategies  "of  their  own  choosing" 
amongst  other  members  of  the  alliance  who  thought  they  could 
afford  them. 

In  Britain  indeed  a  mild  dose  of  infection  had  already  been 
caught  well  before  1957.  The  1954  White  Paper  envisaged  a 
"gradual  change"  in  the  defence  effort  with  a  "tendency"  to  a 
declining  expenditure  on  the  army  and  "greater  emphasis"  on  the 
R.A.F.;  accordingly,  it  announced  the  decision  to  begin  construc- 
tion of  the  V-bomber  force.  The  decision  in  1955  to  build  a  British 
hydrogen  bomb  marked  a  further  stage  in  the  same  direction.  The 
1957  White  Paper  is  however  properly  regarded  as  a  new  departure 
with  its  abolition  of  conscription  by  I960  (thus  cutting  the  army 
strength  by  50  per  cent),  its  immediate  cut  in  the  Rhine  Army  by 
13,000  men  with  more  to  follow,  the  demotion  of  the  Navy,  and, 
above  all,  the  reliance  on  nuclear  weapons.  Though  its  progress  was 
to  be  spread  over  five  years,  its  impact  made  itself  felt  immediately. 
Nowhere  was  it  greater,  or  more  painful,  than  in  N.A.T.O. 

Though  the  White  Paper  envisaged  a  strategy  which  rested 
almost  entirely  upon  collective  action,  renouncing  isolated  British 
action  in  all  except  the  most  "brushfire"  of  operations,  its  immedi- 
ate effect  appeared  to  be  a  reduction  in  the  British  contribution  to 
the  various  alliances  she  supported,  and  particularly  to  N.A.T.O. 
The  decision  to  stop  conscription,  the  reduction  in  the  naval 
contribution  to  N.A.T.O.  forces,  the  halving  of  the  tactical  air 
force  in  Germany,  and,  above  all,  the  cut  in  the  British  Army  of 
the  Rhine — these  all  seemed  to  point  to  a  weakening  zeal  for  the 
North  Atlantic  alliance.  The  cut  in  the  Rhine  Army  caused  par- 
ticular unease;  only  two  and  a  half  years  earlier  Sir  Anthony  Eden 
had  secured  French  consent  to  a  German  army  with  the  pledge  to 
maintain  on  the  continent  four  divisions  and  the  tactical  air  force 

127 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  not  to  withdraw  them  "against  the  wishes  of  the  majority  of 
the  Brussels  Treaty  powers".  The  powers  concerned  did  not 
formally  set  themselves  against  the  British  decision — though  they 
prevailed  on  the  British  government  to  effect  a  smaller  reduction 
than  that  originally  desired — but  they  made  no  secret  of  their 
dislike  of  it.  For  this  and  the  other  economies  in  their  overseas 
defence  expenditure  the  British  could  indeed  produce  a  strong 
debating  argument  over  and  above  the  over-ruling  claim  of  neces- 
sity. This  was  that  throughout  the  fifties  the  United  Kingdom  had 
contributed  to  defence  a  higher  proportion  of  her  national  income 
than  any  other  West  European  country,  except  France,  and  in  hav- 
ing to  contribute  most  of  it  abroad  carried  its  burden  in  a  peculiarly 
onerous  form.  Nor,  it  was  said,  could  France  complain  so  long  as 
the  mass  migration  of  the  French  army  to  Algeria  left  only  one 
shadowy  French  division  in  N.A.T.O.  But  this  kind  of  retort  did 
nothing  to  ease  N.A.T.O. 's  problem  as  an  alliance  less  than  half 
equipped  with  even  the  thirty  divisions  which  its  supreme  Com- 
mander had  reluctantly  accepted  as  a  reduced  target  two  years 
earlier.  The  fact  of  the  matter  was  that  the  1957  White  Paper 
represented  a  further  shift  in  the  balance  of  N.A.T.O.,  with  less 
emphasis  on  the  conventional  shield  and  more  reliance  on  the 
nuclear  sword.  The  White  Paper  claimed  that  it  would  be  in  her 
provision  of  a  nuclear  deterrent — the  V-bomber  force,  missiles,  the 
arming  even  of  her  conventional  forces  with  nuclear  weapons — 
that  the  main  British  contribution  to  collective  defence  would  be 
made. 

When  N.A.T.O.  was  first  established  the  sword  on  which  it 
relied  was  an  exclusively  American  one — the  atom  bomb,  to  be  de- 
livered by  S.A.C.  The  manufacture  of  the  weapon  and  the  main- 
tenance of  a  means  of  delivery  were  both  immensely  costly.  Why 
did  Britain  seek  to  duplicate  them?  The  answer,  of  course,  has  little 
to  do  with  N.A.T.O.,  though  much  with  the  United  Kingdom's 
position  vis-a-vis  the  rest  of  the  world:  possession  of  the  super- 
weapon  seemed  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of  her  position 
as  a  world  power.  (And  of  course  possession  of  the  weapon  de- 
manded as  a  corollary  capacity  to  deliver  it.)  But  paradoxically  the 
American  refusal  to  share  her  own  atomic  secrets  with  the  ally  who 
had  contributed  most  to  her  own  atomic  programme  provided  a 
supplementary  stimulus,  since  access  to  American  atomic  secrets 
was  restricted  by  the  McMahon  Act  to  allies  who  were  also  atomic 

128 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

powers.  Thus  to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  association  we  had  first  of  all 
to  demonstrate  that  we  "could  go  it  alone". 

This  was  the  first  great  raison  d'etre  for  the  British  deterrent. 
But  from  the  outset  there  were  supplementary  ones  too.  From  the 
outset  of  the  alliance  there  was  always  the  problem  of  maintaining 
Britain's  voice  in  its  councils  when  one  member,  the  U.S.A.  dis- 
posed of  a  strength  not  merely  so  much  greater  but  of  a  wholly 
different  order  from  that  of  all  the  rest.  If  this  power  were  aug- 
mented by  a  monopoly  of  the  super-weapon,  Britain's  voice  might 
dwindle  to  a  whisper.  To  be  heard,  she  had  to  be  able  to  make  a 
big  bang  too.  In  a  double  sense  this  was  felt  to  be  wise.  Vis-a-vis 
America  Britain  had  to  establish  her  right  to  be  consulted  in  all 
decisions  which  might  involve  the  use  of  the  bomb.  Vis-a-vis  the 
U.S.S.R.  her  possession  of  an  independent  deterrent  entitled  her  to 
an  independent  voice  at  Moscow  and  guaranteed  that  she  would  be 
respected  in  any  bilateral  controversy  and  also  gain  admission  to 
any  East- West  exercises  in  summitry.  The  logic  behind  these  argu- 
ments was  something  less  than  water-tight;  the  U.S.A.  had  a  moral 
obligation  to  consider  any  ally  who  might  be  involved  in  a  decision 
to  use  the  ultimate  weapon;  if  the  U.S.S.R.  decided  to  strike,  the 
smaller  British  sting  would  add  little  to  the  U.S.A.'s  large  one  and 
if  the  U.S.S.R.  insisted  on  a  two-man  summit  Britain's  bomb  would 
not  guarantee  her  a  third  seat.  But  the  logic  of  these  counter- 
arguments was  not  quite  water-tight  either.  In  a  world  where  reason 
counted  for  less  than  the  vague  penumbra  of  respect  inspired  by 
power  the  British  deterrent  seems  to  have  secured  her  certain  ad- 
vantages in  both  Washington  and  Moscow.  In  Washington  in  par- 
ticular it  was  Britain's  status  as  a  nuclear  power  which  was  largely 
responsible  for  her  retaining,  on  an  informal  basis,  that  right  to 
"pre-annihilation"  consultation  originally  formally  embodied  in  the 
Quebec  Agreements.  More  certainly,  this  status  admitted  Britain  to 
consultation  with  the  Americans  on  contingency  planning,  on 
target  selection  and  the  like  from  which  she  would  otherwise 
almost  certainly  have  been  excluded.  Finally  in  all  the  East- West 
negotiations,  including  particularly  those  on  disarmament  and 
nuclear  testing,  it  secured  her  a  voice  which  she  would  otherwise 
have  been  denied.  This  whole  intangible  or  "prestige"  value  of  the 
deterrent  found  as  explicit  assessment  as  any  in  statements  con- 
secutively made  by  Opposition  and  Government  leaders  in  the 
House  of  Commons  debate  on  the  manufacture  of  the  British 

I  129 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

hydrogen  bomb  on  2  March,   1955.  Mr.  Attlee,  supporting  the 
Government's  decision,  said : 

"I  think  that  we  have  influence  in  the  world.  That  influence 
does  not  depend  solely  upon  the  possession  of  weapons,  although 
I  have  found,  in  practical  conversations,  that  the  fact  that  we  do 
possess  these  weapons  does  have  an  effect  upon  the  rulers  of 
other  countries.  It  is  quite  an  illusion  to  think  that  it  does  not 
have  an  effect.  I  am  quite  sure  that  we  should  not  have  had  the 
influence  we  did  have  upon  the  events  in  Korea  if  we  had  not 
had  the  Commonwealth  Division  there. "^ 

Mr.  Macmillan,  as  Defence  Minister,  defended  the  decision  in 
these  terms : 

"It  may  be  argued  that  because  the  main  deterrent  force  is  Ameri- 
can there  need  be  and  there  ought  to  be  no  British  contribution. 
I  think  that  is  a  very  dangerous  doctrine. 

It  is  doubly  dangerous  on  two  levels  of  thought.  Politically,  it 
surrenders  our  power  to  influence  American  policy  and  then, 
strategically  and  tactically,  it  equally  deprives  us  of  any  influence 
over  the  selection  of  targets  and  use  of  our  vital  striking  forces. 
The  one,  therefore,  weakens  our  prestige  and  our  influence  in 
the  world  and  the  other  might  imperil  our  safety."^ 

But  to  these  arguments,  as  "New  Look"  thinking  developed  on 
each  side  of  the  Atlantic,  there  was  added  another,  which  strikingly 
revealed  the  grim  logic,  the  self-multiplying  potency  of  weapons  of 
destruction.  In  the  May  Day  parade  of  1954  Russians  displayed  the 
rudiments,  at  least,  of  a  S.A.C.  of  their  own;  in  November,  1956, 
they  boasted  in  their  anti-Suez  note  to  Britain  of  their  ability  to 
bomb  London  with  rockets  with  nuclear  warheads.  Thus  was 
ushered  in  a  new  phase  of  strategic  thinking — and  worrying — in 
Britain,  based  upon  the  fact  that  the  U.S.S.R.  could  wield  a  nuclear 
deterrent  of  its  own.  In  the  event  of  war  would  S.A.C.  give  the 
same  priority  to  attacks  on  Soviet  bases  which  directly  threatened 
Britain  as  the  V-force  would?  And,  looking  beyond  this  to  the 
I.C.B.M.,  the  Intercontinental  Ballistic  Missile,  with  its  5,000-mile 

1  HC  Deb.,  5th  series.  Vol.  537,  col.  2175. 

2  Ibid.,  col.  2181-2. 

1^0 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

range,  what  would  happen  when  the  U.S.A.  and  the  U.S.S.R. 
could  fire  at  each  other  direct?  When  United  States  bases  were  no 
longer  needed  in  Britain  would  the  U.S.A.  still  regard  a  threat  to 
Britain  as  a  threat  to  herself.'^  Against  such  a  day  Britain  must  have 
a  deterrent  of  her  own.^  The  trouble  about  this  argument  was  that 
it  proved  too  much.  It  envisaged  the  collapse  of  N.A.T.O.  and  all 
hope  of  a  collective  defence  based  on  collective  guarantees.  If  it  was 
valid  for  the  United  Kingdom  vis-a-vis  the  U.S.A.  it  was  valid  for 
every  western  European  country  against  both  the  United  Kingdom 
and  the  U.S.A.  That  way  total  disintegration  of  the  alliance  lay. 

None  of  this  reasoning,  it  will  be  readily  apparent,  could  have 
recommended  the  new  White  Paper  policy  to  Washington.  Yet  the 
policy  itself  required  and  obtained  not  merely  acquiescence  but 
even  positive  support  from  the  U.S.A.  Mr.  Duncan  Sandys'  Janu- 
ary 1957  mission  to  Washington  was  an  indispensable  precursor 
of  his  April  manifesto.  With  the  V-bomber  forces  still  on  the  draw- 
ing boards  the  whole  policy  of  a  British  deterrent  was  dependent 
on  the  provision  by  the  U.S.A.  of  the  I.R.B.M.s,  Intermediate 
Range  Ballistic  Missiles,  which  was  first  negotiated  by  Mr,  Sandys 
and  finally  clinched  by  Mr.  Macmillan  in  his  Bermuda  talks  in 
March.  The  considerations  which  persuaded  President  Eisenhower 
to  facilitate  the  British  "New  Look"  by  this  extra-N.A.T.O.  pro- 
vision have  not  been  made  public.  No  doubt  the  logic  of  his  own 
"New  Look"  precedent  counted  for  a  good  deal  and  the  force  of 
the  "economy"  argument  would  not  have  been  lost  on  the  Presi- 
dent. There  was  also  a  general  desire  to  do  everything  reasonable 
to  make  up  the  dissensions  of  Suez  and  to  accede  to  any  reasonable 
British  request.  There  was  almost  certainly,  on  the  American  ad- 
ministration's part,  a  certain  feeling  of  guilty  conscience  at  having 
failed  to  make  good  on  its  intentions  about  atomic  secret-sharing. 
Basically,  however,  one  suspects  there  was  a  kind  of  live  and  let 
live  philosophy  not  untypical  of  the  President,  which  rested  the 
alliance  rather  on  a  free  co-operation  of  individual  efforts  than  upon 
any  universally  accepted  and  rigorously  worked-out  strategy  and 
allocation  of  functions.  In  a  relationship  so  conceived  something 

^  Thus  Mr.  Sandys  to  the  House  of  Commons  on  16  April,  1957: 
"When  they  have  developed  the  5,000  mile  intercontinental  ballistic 
rocket  can  we  really  be  sure  that  every  American  administration  will 
go  on  looking  at  things  in  quite  the  same  way?"  Ibid,  Vol.  568,  col.: 
1761. 

131 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

like  the  British  "New  Look"  was  a  logical  consequence  of  the  posi- 
tion in  which  the  United  Kingdom  found  herself  in  1957,  with  its 
blend  of  dependence  and  independence  of  the  U.S.A.  She  was 
dependent,  as  Suez  had  demonstrated,  in  her  inability  to  wage  a 
war  of  which  the  United  States  disapproved,  or  to  stand  up  to 
Soviet  threats  alone.  She  was  independent  in  having  manufactured, 
in  her  ally's  despite,  a  considerable  range  of  nuclear  weapons  (the 
British  hydrogen  bomb  was  exploded  in  May,  1957).  She  was 
desperately  anxious  to  avoid  economic  dependence  on  United  States 
aid  (hence  the  economic  motive  for  the  defence  reductions)  and 
equally  anxious  to  restore,  as  soon  as  possible,  the  broken  intimacy 
of  the  alliance.  Finally  she  was  as  determined  as  ever  not  to  go 
farther  into  Europe  than  her  transatlantic  ally.  These  were  the  in- 
gredients which,  given  the  American  policies  of  the  last  few  years, 
almost  dictated  the  British  White  Paper  of  1957. 

This  was  the  situation  when,  on  4  October,  1957,  the  Russian 
sputnik  shook  the  West.  On  British-American  relations  this  mani- 
festation of  Soviet  spacemanship  had  two  important  effects.  Just  as 
the  British  crisis  of  1948  made  British  bases  highly  desirable  for 
the  United  States  strategic  bombing  force,  so  sputnik  made  British 
bases  almost  indispensable  for  United  States  missile  strategy.  The 
missile  offer  of  the  Bermuda  talks  now  took  on  a  new  meaning  as 
a  strengthening  not  only  of  Britain's  nuclear  deterrent  but  also  of 
America's  nuclear  defences.  But,  more  than  this,  the  natural  desire 
of  the  Pentagon  not  to  put  all  their  nuclear  eggs  in  one  basket  led 
to  the  attempt,  at  the  N.A.T.O.  meeting  in  December,  to  secure 
agreements  with  other  European  allies  about  the  deployment  of 
Intermediate  Range  Ballistic  Missiles  on  their  territories.  Here, 
however,  a  further  consequence  of  sputnik  revealed  itself — a  new 
distrust  in  continental  Europe  of  American  leadership  and  an 
enhanced  desire  to  negotiate  with  Moscow  before  incurring  the 
peculiar  odium  which  Moscow  professed  to  reserve  for  countries 
that  accepted  American  missile  bases.  The  United  States  proposal 
was  shelved  until  1958. 

Two  months  before  the  inconclusive  N.A.T.O.  meeting  of 
December  Mr.  Macmillan  had  met  President  Eisenhower  in  Wash- 
ington for  what  was,  in  effect,  a  sequel  to  the  Bermuda  meeting  of 
March.  The  atmosphere  of  renewed  amity  created  at  Bermuda  was 
intensified  at  Washington.  The  Times  reported  that  "in  terms  of 
the  Anglo-American  alliance  participants  in  the  talks  have  known 

132 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

nothing  like  them  since  the  wartime  conferences  at  Cairo  and 
Casablanca".^  The  conversations  concluded  with  a  "Declaration  of 
Common  Purpose",  a  somewhat  wordy  communique  which  for 
British  readers  contained  as  its  most  significant  item  an  undertaking 
by  the  President  that  he  would  ask  Congress  to  amend  the  Atomic 
Energy  Act  to  permit  collaboration  "between  Great  Britain,  the 
United  States  and  other  friendly  countries".  The  emphasis  through- 
out fell  indeed  on  "interdependence";  "national  self-sufficiency" 
was  recognized  as  being  out  of  date  and  was  to  be  replaced  by 
"genuine  partnership".  Care  was  taken  to  stress  that  this  was  not 
just  an  Anglo-American  commitment,  that  in  fact  "the  understand- 
ings .  .  .  reached  will  be  increasingly  effective  as  they  became  more 
widespread  between  the  free  nations".  As  if  to  symbolize  this,  M. 
Spaak,  as  Secretary-General  of  N.A.T.O.,  was  invited  to  attend  the 
final  session  of  the  conference.  From  the  British  point  of  view, 
however,  the  importance  of  the  Washington  meeting  was  as  a  mile- 
stone in  the  restored  and  growing  intimacy  of  the  Anglo-American 
relationship.  As  such  it  was  hailed  in  London  with  applause  which 
was  almost  more  heartfelt  for  being  determinedly  unobstreperous. 
At  last,  it  was  felt,  the  ravages  of  Suez  had  really  been  erased  and 
the  easy,  informal,  frank  Anglo-American  "intercom."  was  fully  in 
operation  again. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  particularly  in  France,  "inter- 
dependence" was  translated  as  "the  Anglo-American  directorate" 
and  was  proportionately  ill-conceived.  This  was  reflected  in  a  de- 
mand at  the  N.A.T.O.  meeting  for  a  strengthening  of  political 
consultation  within  N.A.T.O.,  a  demand  for  which  France,  how- 
ever, failed  to  get  significant  support — -largely  because  she  inter- 
preted consultation  to  mean  endorsement  of  French  policies  on  the 
N.A.T.O.  periphery,  Algeria  in  particular.  But  there  was  an  in- 
dubitable drawing  together  of  France,  Germany  and,  to  a  lesser 
degree  Italy,  symbolized  and  fortified,  immediately  after  the  meet- 
ing, by  the  coming  into  force  on  New  Year's  Day,  1958,  of  the 
European  Common  Market.  The  political  overtones  of  this  economic 
alliance  rang  loud  for  all  to  hear.  They  were  ringing  even  louder 
at  the  end  of  1958  when  France  rejected  the  United  Kingdom's 
proposal  to  establish  instead  a  free  trade  area  for  the  whole  of 
Western  Europe. 

In  February,  1958,  the  British- American  missile  agreement  was 

1  The  Times,  26  October,  1957. 

133 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

made  effective,  with  the  U.S.A.  supplying  sixty  "Thor"  missiles  for 
installation  on  fixed  sites  in  eastern  Britain.  No  other  N.A.T.O. 
ally  offered  America  a  comparably  prompt  response.  Indeed  by  the 
end  of  1958  only  Italy  had  become  fully  committed  to  an  accept- 
ance of  these  hazardous  imports.  (Turkey  came  in  soon  after.) 
France,  now  fortified  in  her  angularity  by  General  de  Gaulle's 
assumption  of  power,  most  conspicuously  declined  to  accept  them 
except  on  terms  which  guaranteed  an  exclusively  French  control  of 
the  nuclear  warheads.  In  the  abstract  terms  of  "principle"  which 
generally  only  serve  to  advertise  a  plaintiff's  weak  position,  the 
General  was  no  doubt  right  to  assert  that  it  was  a  derogation  of 
national  self-respect  to  provide  housing  for  the  missiles  of  a  country 
which  would  not  even  trust  its  allies  with  the  key  to  their  warheads. 
But  the  contrast  between  British  indifference  and  French  sensitivity 
on  this  score  probably  represented  not  different  degrees  of  national 
pride  so  much  as  the  different  psychologies  of  an  atomic  and  a 
not-yet-atomic  power.  As  an  atomically  "have"  nation,  the  British 
sympathized  with  the  American  concern  about  the  dispersal  of  these 
"ultimate"  weapons  even  to  the  length  of  being  willing  to  forgo 
some  of  her  own  undoubted  "rights"  in  their  control.  Unfor- 
tunately other  events  in  1958  contributed  further  to  French  stand- 
offishness. 

On  3  July  announcement  was  made  of  an  Anglo-American  agree- 
ment on  nuclear  weapons  which  at  last  represented  that  frank 
sharing  of  atomic  secrets  which  Britain  had  long  claimed  as  a  right 
and  sought  as  an  ally.  It  provided  for  a  full  exchange  of  informa- 
tion about  both  atomic  weapons  themselves  and  about  their  delivery, 
thus  making  the  United  Kingdom  at  all  points  an  equal  partner 
with  the  U.S.A.  in  the  atomic  field. ^  France,  working  hard  to  make 
an  atomic  bomb  of  her  own,  was  by  contrast  left  still  in  the  position 
of  total  exclusion  which  Britain  had  occupied  down  to  1954.  On 
top  of  this  a  few  days  later  came  the  Anglo-American  landings  in 
Lebanon  and  Syria,  conducted  without  even  token  French  participa- 
tion. It  would  be  hard  to  think  of  any  type  of  action  in  any  other 
area  which  would  have  so  emphatically  demonstrated  Britain's 

^  The  coping-stone  was  set  on  this  revived  atomic  alliance  in 
February  1962,  with  the  joint  announcement  that  a  British  nuclear 
device  would  be  tested  underground  in  Nevada  and  American  atmos- 
pheric tests  would  be  conducted  on  Christmas  Island. 

134 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

change  of  priorities  within  the  alliance  and  the  revival  of  Anglo- 
American  intimacy. 

The  result  was  a  strong  Gaullist  demand  for  the  recognition  of 
France  by  the  U.S.A.  as  an  alliance  partner  at  least  equivalent  to 
Britain  and  for  the  creation  of  a  political  triumvirate  within 
N.A.T.O.  which  would  deal  with  all  problems  of  common  concern, 
inside  Europe  or  without.  The  proposal  won  little  support  in  Wash- 
ington, especially  since  the  first  fruits  of  any  such  trinitarian  policy- 
planning  would  surely  be  a  French  demand  for  full  support  in 
Algeria.  Moreover,  how  deny  to  Adenauer,  whose  country  after  all 
was  contributing  seven  N.A.T.O.  divisions  to  France's  one,  what 
would  be  conceded  to  De  Gaulle?  For  these  and  other  reasons 
Washington  was  unresponsive.  In  return  De  Gaulle  became  more 
unco-operative.  He  declined  to  allow  any  of  the  French  air  force 
to  be  integrated  within  a  West  European  air  command  and  in 
March,  1959,  withdrew  from  N.A.T.O.  that  portion  of  the  French 
Mediterranean  fleet  (approximately  one-third  of  the  total)  which 
had  previously  been  under  the  operational  control  of  N.A.T.O. 's 
C.-in-C.  Africa-Mediterranean.  This  was  followed  in  midsummer 
by  a  refusal  to  allow  N.A.T.O.  to  station  on  French  soil  American 
fighter-bombers  which  were  armed  with  tactical  nuclear  weapons. 

The  immediate  result  of  such  a  policy  was  only  to  reinforce  the 
links  between  London  and  Washington.  Closely  on  the  heels  of 
the  French  refusal  came  the  announcement  of  a  N.A.T.O. -United 
Kingdom  agreement  providing  for  the  transfer  of  the  bulk  of  the 
two  hundred  fighter-bombers  concerned  to  airfields  in  East  Anglia 
(the  rest  being  accepted  by  Western  Germany).  The  promptness  of 
the  British  acceptance  spoke  for  itself.  Thus  even  within  N.A.T.O., 
where  the  1957  White  Paper  had  undoubtedly  done  more  harm 
than  good,  British  conduct  appeared  co-operative  when  contrasted 
with  the  stubborn  self-centredness  of  the  French. 

Meanwhile  the  British  role  in  the  basic  American  strategy  of  her 
own  nuclear  deterrent  remained.  Technical  development,  though 
proceeding  at  an  over-accelerating  tempo,  had  still  not  eliminated 
the  advantages  that  attached  to  an  advanced  island  base.  As  the 
missile  replaced  the  bomber  the  day  might  come  when  Moscow  and 
Washington  would  think  (and  aim)  only  for  each  other,  but  in 
i960  that  day  had  not  yet  come.  Indeed  the  first  result  of  the  de- 
velopment of  a  Russian  I.C.B.M.  was  the  creation  of  a  new  function 
for  Britain  in  American  defence  planning;  while  she  was  still 

W 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

passing  from  being  the  unsinkable  aircraft-carrier  to  being  tlie 
short-range  missile  base  she  was  also  asked  to  become  the  early 
warning  screen  of  the  west.  In  February,  I960,  agreement  was 
reached  on  the  construction  at  Fylingdales  in  Yorkshire  of  a  huge 
radar  screen  which  would  detect  missiles  launched  against  Britain 
or,  over  Britain,  against  America.  It  was  to  be  a  joint  Anglo- 
American  project  with  the  United  Kingdom  contributing  £8  million 
of  its  cost  to  the  U.S.A.'s  £35  million — a  division  roughly  pro- 
portionate to  the  warning  times  it  would  provide,  four  minutes  to 
the  United  Kingdom,  and  fifteen  minutes  to  the  United  States.^ 

Meanwhile  the  conviction  was  belatedly  growing  in  Britain  that 
the  search  for  a  British  I.R.B.M. — "Bluestreak" — ^which  would 
ultimately  replace  the  V-bomber  force  was  costing  more  than  it  was 
worth.  On  13  April,  I960,  Mr.  Watkinson,  Minister  of  Defence, 
announced  its  abandonment.  Instead  it  was  decided  to  lengthen  the 
life  of  the  V-bombers  by  equipping  them  with  the  air-borne  missile 
"Skybolt",  under  design  in  the  U.S.A.  In  June,  on  Mr.  Watkinson's 
visit  to  Washington,  the  Americans  agreed  to  furnish  "Skybolt" 
when  developed  and  to  accept  British  participation  in  its  develop- 
ment, testing  and  production. 

The  search  for  the  invulnerable  deterrent  led  inevitably  to  the 
sea.  The  development  of  the  nuclear-powered,  nuclear-armed  sub- 
marine followed  a  familiar  course — first  the  U.S.A.,  then  the 
U.S.S.R.  and  then,  in  order  of  aspiration,  the  United  Kingdom  and 
France.  Thanks  however  to  the  1958  Agreement  the  British  did 
not  have  to  wait  as  long  for  American  assistance  over  this  as  over 
the  atomic  bomb.  Nautilus,  the  first  American  nuclear-powered 
submarine,  was  launched  in  January,  1954.  In  June,  1959,  it  was 
followed  by  the  George  Washington,  the  first  such  vessel  designed 
to  fire  ballistic  missiles.  Offers  of  an  atomic  reactor  suitable  for 
driving  a  submarine  were  made  to  Britain  as  early  as  July,  1957, 
and  France  as  early  as  July,  1958,  but  the  restrictions  of  Ameri- 
can law  forbade  the  administration  to  follow  through  on  the 
promise  to  France.  All  that  she  received  (by  an  agreement  signed 
on  7  May,  1959)  was  a  promise  of  enriched  uranium,  spread  over  a 
ten-year  period,  for  experimental  work.  By  contrast  the  sale  to 

1  A  year  later  in  July  1961  this  kind  of  co-operation  was  taken  a  stage 
further  by  the  agreement  to  establish  a  ground  station  in  Cumberland 
which  would  take  in  information  on  missile  attacks  received  from 
satellites  orbiting  at  an  altitude  of  300  miles. 

1?^ 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

Britain  of  a  complete  nuclear  propulsion  plant  was  authorized  on 
3  July,  1958,  an  arrangement  which  materially  accelerated  the  con- 
struction of  Britain's  first  atomic-powered  submarine,  the  Dread- 
nought, launched  on  21  October,  I960,  Meanwhile  for  the  Ameri- 
can George  Washington  type  of  submarine,  whose  "Polaris" 
atomic  missiles  had  a  range  of  only  some  1,250  miles,  a  base  in 
British  waters  was,  though  not  essential,  certainly  extremely  ad- 
vantageous. In  November,  I960,  the  agreement  was  announced  by 
which  a  submarine  would  be  based  on  Holy  Loch  in  the  Clyde, 
serviced  by  a  depot  ship  of  18,500  tons  and  a  small  shore  establish- 
ment. Thus  a  facility  for  sea,  comparable  to  the  earlier  facilities  for 
the  air,  became  a  feature  of  the  Anglo-American  partnership  in 
nuclear  deterrence. 

From  the  beginning  British  governments  had  fully  realized — 
and  had  often  made  public — the  implications  that  the  harbouring 
of  the  American  deterrent  had  for  British  security  and  British 
relations  with  the  iron  curtain  world.  In  I960,  however,  these 
implications  became  explicit  in  a  form  which,  though  it  left  British 
policy  unchanged,  yet  temporarily  jolted  the  smooth  working  of  the 
alliance  and  demonstrated  the  need  for  constant  vigilance  and  the 
utmost  clarity  in  the  allocation  of  spheres  of  responsibility.  The 
catastrophe  of  Captain  Powers's  U-2  flight  which  brought  down 
in  its  wake  the  summit  meeting  of  May,  I960,  was  nowhere  felt 
more  sharply  than  in  Britain.  No  country  had  invested  more  hope 
or  more  effort  in  the  long-contrived  and  quickly-concluded  en- 
counter of  East  and  West;  more  practically,  the  secretive  inde- 
pendence of  the  United  States  Central  Intelligence  Agency  was 
suddenly  realized  as  something  that  threatened  the  whole  structure 
of  consultation  and  collaboration  on  which  the  alliance  rested. 
True,  it  was  neither  from  nor  to  a  British  base  that  Captain 
Powers's  plane  had  flown,  but  such  comfort  as  could  be  derived 
from  this  fact  was  largely  erased  in  July  by  the  Russian  claim  to 
have  shot  down  an  RB  47  which  was  based  in  Oxfordshire.  The 
RB  47  was  almost  certainly  innocent  of  any  violation  of  Soviet  air 
space,  but  put  together  the  two  incidents  added  up  to  a  compre- 
hensive reminder  of  the  inescapable  hazards  of  the  cold  war  and 
also  of  the  imperative  necessity  of  mutual  trust  and  intimate  con- 
sultation for  the  successful  working  of  the  alliance. 

The  presence  and  functioning  of  the  United  States  air  force  in 
Britain  was  indeed  a  classic  exemplification  of  the  Anglo-American 

137 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

alliance  at  its  most  informal.  Accepted  in  1948,  in  immediate 
response  to  the  Berlin  alarm  but  ultimately  in  relation  to  the  whole 
growing  challenge  of  the  U.S.S.R.,  the  S.A.C.  striking  force 
operated  from  its  British  bases  under  what  the  Secretary  of  Air  de- 
scribed to  the  House  of  Commons  in  March,  1951,  as  "informal 
arrangements"/  Though  of  course  for  some  matters,  such  as  finance 
and  the  legal  status  of  the  forces,  there  were  written  agreements, 
the  great  political  and  strategic  implications  of  their  presence  were 
not  explored  in  any  written  document.  This  seems  to  have  been  the 
position  until  18  October,  1951,  when  what  was  variously  described 
as  a  "formula"  and  an  "understanding"  was  arrived  at  between  Mr. 
Attlee  and  President  Truman  "under  which  the  use  in  emergency 
of  bases  in  this  country  by  United  States  forces  was  accepted  to  be  a 
matter  for  joint  decision  in  the  light  of  circumstances  prevailing  at 
the  time".  But  even  this  "depended  on  no  formal  document.  It  was 
accepted  as  a  mutually  satisfactory  arrangement  which  was  subse- 
quently confirmed  in  the  joint  statement  issued  on  9  January, 
1952", 2  by  Mr.  Churchill  and  Mr.  Truman;  this  simply  made 
public  the  Attlee-Truman  formula  in  the  terms  quoted. 

These  agreements  were  of  course  in  essence,  as  we  have  seen,  an 
application  to  changed  circumstances  of  the  wartime  Quebec  Agree- 
ment about  the  use  of  the  atomic  bomb.  As  such  they  did  indeed 
provide  an  essential  safeguard  for  the  tenants  of  the  unsinkable 
aircraft-carrier  in  the  event  of  war  or  imminent  risk  of  war.  They 
served  also  as  the  model  for  the  subsequent  agreements  about  the 
missile  bases  and  the  custody  of  the  nuclear  warheads.  They  were 
not,  however,  applicable  to  the  other  "non-emergency"  operations 
of  American  aircraft  based  in  Britain;  these  were  left,  in  exactly 
the  spirit  of  the  1948  agreement,  to  be  regulated,  in  writing  or  not, 
by  the  joint  decisions  of  the  services  concerned.  There  were  ad- 
vantages and  drawbacks  to  such  a  system.  As  long  as  there  was 
American  hypersensitiveness  about  any  infringement  of  the  Mc- 
Mahon  Act  there  was  obviously  much  to  be  said  for  local  arrange- 
ments, in  a  spirit  of  intra-service  amity,  which  did  not  put  too  much 
down  in  black  and  white.  Yet,  as  the  U-2  and  RB  47  incidents 
illustrated,  this  might  lead  either  or  both  services  to  excesses  of 
adventurous  zeal  and  lead  the  political  heads  in  either  or  both 

1  HC  Deb.  5th  series,  Vol.  485,  col.  277,  21  March,  1951. 

2  Quotations  from  statements  by  Mr.  Macmillan  to  House  of 
Commons:  ibid.,  Vol.  626,  col.  1176-7,  12  July,  1960. 

138 


EUROPE:  DEFENCE 

countries  into  trouble  for  themselves  and  for  the  alliance.  Some 
tightening  up  was  obviously  necessary  and  Mr.  Macmillan  re- 
sponded to  a  widespread  British  demand  by  taking  the  matter  up 
with  Mr.  Eisenhower  before  and  during  his  visit  to  Washington  in 
October,  I960.  Security  forbade  any  publication  of  the  arrange- 
ments made  but  Mr.  Macmillan  reported  to  the  House  of  Commons 
on  his  return  that  he  was  satisfied  that  they  were  satisfactory.  "I 
think  I  can  say  that  we  are  fully  informed  on  both  sides  of  every- 
thing that  is  proposed  to  be  done."^ 

1  Ibid.,  Vol.  627,  col.  2146-7,  25  October,  1960.  The  continued  val- 
idity of  the  Quebec  agreements  and  their  world-wide  applicability  were 
also  affirmed  by  Mr.  Macmillan  in  a  statement  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  26  June,  1962:  "There  is  an  understanding  which  I  had  with  Presi- 
dent Eisenhower  and  now  have  with  President  Kennedy  that  neither  of 
us  in  any  part  of  the  world  would  think  of  using  power  of  this  kind 
without  consultation  with  each  other." 


139 


10 

EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

SEEN  from  Downing  Street  there  are  two  Europes.  There  is 
the  Europe  of  defence,  which  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
whole  North  Atlantic  region  and  finds  its  natural  expression 
in  NAT.O.,  and  there  is  the  Europe  of  everything  else,  but  prin- 
cipally of  economics — of  trade,  finance,  communications  and 
cultural  exchanges — which  has  found  many  partial  expressions  but 
as  yet  none  which  is  adequate.  To  Britons  the  distinction  has  seemed 
as  natural  as  that  between  geography  and  history.  In  determining 
their  relations  with  the  first  Europe  the  arguments  of  proximity 
have  taken  precedence  over  all  others  and  bound  them  to  a  main- 
land only  20  miles  away.  In  all  else  the  bonds  of  Commonwealth, 
race,  language,  culture,  trading  habits  and  investment  have  linked 
them  so  strongly  with  other  continents  as  to  leave  Europe  as  only 
one  competitor,  and  that  not  the  strongest,  for  their  island  affec- 
tions and  attachments. 

To  a  high  degree  Washington  has  accepted  this  dual  view  and 
has  operated,  in  its  dealings  with  Britain  on  European  matters, 
upon  a  roughly  similar  distinction.  It  too  has  viewed  European 
defence  as  sui  generis  and  in  general,  where  practical  issues  are 
concerned,  has  found  the  tempo  and  degree  of  Britain's  fusion  with 
the  continent  fully  acceptable^ — indeed  for  many  purposes  it  has 
found  British  insularity  a  positive  advantage.  But  though  it  has 
accepted  the  pigeon-holes,  it  has  been  less  satisfied  with  the  policy 
it  has  found  in  them — or  at  least  in  the  one  labelled  variously 
European  "union",  "unification"  or  "integration".  To  Britons  it 
has  never  been  easy  to  understand  why,  just  because  the  Channel  is 
narrower  than  the  Atlantic,  Americans  should  expect  them  to  have 
an  attitude  to  European  integration  so  different  from  their  own. 
To  Americans  it  has  always  been  puzzling  that  a  country  so  close  to 
Europe  should  on  so  many  issues  persistently  remain  aloof  from  it. 
The  explanation  can,  in  the  main,  be  found  in  three  factors. 

1  With  the  possible  exception  of  the  British  attitude  to  E.D.C.,  for 
which  see  pp.  55  ft'. 

140 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

Where  defence  has  been  concerned  Britain  has  been,  since  1941 
(and  before),  a  consistently  reliable  ally  to  the  United  States.  In- 
deed in  the  organization  of  West  European  defence  British  initia- 
tive has  counted  for  as  much  as  American.  Though  no  N.A.T.O. 
member  has  a  perfect  record,  Britain's  role  in  the  alliance  has  been 
that  of  a  strong,  self-reliant  partner  able  to  contribute  at  least  as 
much  as  she  receives.  In  other  words  in  American  eyes  Britain's 
assessment  of  her  place  in  the  defence  of  Europe  has  been  justified 
by  results;  she  has  pursued  policies  which  she  has  been  able  to 
sustain  and  which  in  the  main  have  worked.  By  contrast,  in  the 
economic  field  Britain  has  been  a  good  deal  less  strong  and  reliable. 
If  she  was  a  promoter  of  European  co-operation  in  O.E.E.C.  and 
E.P.U.,  her  own  persisting  inflationary  pressures  and  balance  of 
payments  deficits  have  weakened  her  role  in  European  recovery 
and  obliged  her  to  lean,  time  and  time  again,  upon  the  economic 
crutch  of  dollar  aid.  Thus  a  European  role  which  has  seemed 
adequate  where  defence  is  concerned  has  not  seemed  adequate  in 
the  economic  and  related  fields.  The  same  applies  to  the  British 
insistence  on  a  "special  relationship"  with  Washington.  Around  the 
provision  for  S.A.C.'s  use  of  reliable  British  bases  was  built  both  a 
defence  for  America  and  the  N.A.T.O.  shield.  But  the  hopes  of 
Washington  planners  that  the  Anglo-American  loan  agreement  of 
1946  would  equally  quickly  establish  an  economically  viable  Britain 
which  in  partnership  with  the  U.S.A.  would  reconstruct  world 
trade  and  with  it  the  economies  of  the  free  nations  were  shown  to 
be  illusory.  When  Britain  was  found  unequal  to  this  role  the 
bilateral  partnership  had  to  be  replaced  by  the  European- American 
venture  of  the  Marshall  Plan. 

In  explaining  their  reluctance  to  enter  an  "integrated"  Europe 
no  factor  was  more  often  invoked  by  British  spokesmen  than  the 
ties  between  Britain  and  the  Commonwealth.  Where  European 
defence  was  concerned  the  Americans  had  little  difficulty  in  recog- 
nizing the  Commonwealth  connexion  as  a  source  of  British  strength. 
Not  only  was  Canada  one  of  the  pillars  of  N.A.T.O.  but  even 
countries  like  Australia  and  New  Zealand  which  accepted  no  ex- 
plicit commitments  to  defend  Western  Europe  were  likely,  if  the 
worst  came  to  the  worst,  to  stand  by  the  United  Kingdom  as  they 
had  done  before.  True,  Britain  was  obliged,  upon  occasion,  to 
restrict  her  N.A.T.O.  commitments  because  of  the  calls  made  upon 

141 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

her  by  Commonwealth  defence,  and  to  this  extent  the  Common- 
wealth connexion  was  a  European  liability,  but  Americans  recog- 
nized the  Commonwealth  as  a  stabilizing  element  in  the  world  and 
consequently  in  general  accepted  this  as  merely  the  inevitable  price 
of  Britain  being  a  world  power.  However,  when  the  issue  at  stake 
was  economic  the  Americans  viewed  the  Commonwealth  connexion 
with  more  scepticism.  Long  before  the  war  they  had  resented 
imperial  preference  as  only  a  country  with  a  long  protectionist  tradi- 
tion could;  the  British  refusal  in  all  the  1944-6  financial  negotia- 
tions to  dismantle  this  structure  had  been  generally  regarded  as  a 
perverse  reluctance  to  join  the  forces  of  light.  Even  the  sterling 
area,  for  all  its  efficacy  as  a  trading  unit,  was  often  regarded  with 
suspicion  as  a  device  for  insulating  the  City  of  London  against  the 
healthy  blasts  of  financial  competition.  When  therefore  the  claims 
of  Commonwealth  trade  were  invoked  as  a  reason  for  staying  out 
of  Europe  the  argument  seldom  struck  a  really  responsive  chord  in 
the  United  States. 

Finally,  if  the  British  attitude  towards  European  "integration" 
won  little  support  in  Washington,  the  contradictoriness  and 
gaucherie  of  British  public  pronouncements  must  carry  a  lot  of  the 
blame.  It  was  after  all  a  British  leader  (in  American  eyes  the  British 
leader),  Winston  Churchill,  who  in  1946  gave  the  first  resounding 
expression  to  the  ideal  of  European  unity  in  his  Zurich  speech 
advocating  a  "kind  of  United  States  of  Europe".  Two  years  later  it 
was  a  British  Foreign  Secretary,  Ernest  Bevin,  who  announced  his 
belief  that  the  time  was  "ripe  for  a  consolidation  of  Western 
Europe"  and  talked  about  "Western  Union".  No  doubt,  as  events 
showed,  the  British  Government  attached  its  own  qualified  signi- 
ficance to  this  term,  but  they  ought  to  have  known  that  read  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic  the  phrase  could  bear  only  two  meanings; 
it  was  either  the  name  of  a  private  company  engaged  in  the  tele- 
graph business  or  it  stood  for  a  federal  government  on  an  American 
model.  How  little  the  United  Kingdom  meant  the  latter  was 
quickly  shown  by  the  Labour  Party's  refusal  to  send  any  repre- 
sentative to  the  "Congress  of  Europe"  launched  in  1948  as  the  fore- 
runner of  the  Council  of  Europe.  This  was  underlined  by  the  Bevin 
sneer  in  the  House  of  Commons:  "I  amalgamated  a  lot  of  unions 
into  one  union  but  the  first  thing  I  looked  at  was  the  assets."  When 
in  1950  the  Schuman  plan  was  proposed  the  British  refusal  to  co- 
operate was  given  a  needlessly  arrogant  and  doctrinaire  twist  by 

142 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

the  coincidental  publication  of  the  Labour  Executive's  pamphlet  on 
"European  Unity";  this  manifesto  of  British  isolationism,  though 
not  a  Government  statement,  was  sufficiently  close  to  one  to  neces- 
sitate the  British  ambassador  in  Washington  proffering  an  official 
apologia  to  the  Senate  Foreign  Relations  Committee.  Finally  the 
hopes  raised  by  Conservative  Party  spokesmen  when  in  opposition 
were  rudely  dashed  when  Churchill  came  to  power  in  1951  and 
revealed  himself  on  this  issue  as  no  more  co-operative  in  practice 
(and  not  much  more  mollifying  in  manner)  than  his  Labour  pre- 
decessors. Small  wonder  that  when  the  European  idea  revived  in 
the  later  fifties  and  was  accorded  a  much  more  serious  consideration 
in  Britain  the  United  States  remained  sceptical  of  Britain  doing 
anything  much  of  her  own  volition  and  consequently  took  it  upon 
herself  again  to  be  a  persistent  gadfly  in  the  cause. 

In  Britain  the  depth  and  intensity  of  American  commitment  to 
this  cause  were  often  not  appreciated  or,  when  felt,  not  understood. 
Facile  explanations  about  the  United  States  being  a  federation  and 
so  regarding  federalism  as  the  only  wear  do  less  than  justice  to  the 
impulses  behind  the  American  attitude.  The  Americans  were  not 
hawking  a  nostrum  of  political  science  but  projecting  their  whole 
national  experience — indeed  their  raison  d'etre  as  a  nation. 
America  is  a  united  Europe,  a  society  and  culture,  as  well  as  a 
government,  within  which  all  the  peoples  of  Europe  (and  some 
others  as  well)  have  found  it  possible  to  live  and  let  live.  To  recom- 
mend this  achievement  of  the  New  World  for  the  emulation  of  the 
Old  was  therefore  not  a  disinterested  act  of  benevolence  or  a 
gratuitous  piece  of  impertinence,  according  to  taste,  but  a  preach- 
ment which  America  could  no  more  forego  than  she  could  abandon 
the  reason  for  her  own  being  or  dissolve  the  glue  of  her  own 
nationhood.  If  this  causa  causans  had  been  understood  then  many 
of  the  anomalies  of  American  support  for  European  union  would 
have  been  seen  to  be  illusory. 

Within  this  consistent  American  movement  of  support  for 
European  integration  three  rough  phases  can  be  distinguished.  The 
first  i?>  the  period  of  active  pressure  on  Western  Europe  and  par- 
ticularly on  Britain,  as  the  most  sluggish  member  of  the  side.  This 
is  linked  to  America's  role  in  the  creation  of  the  American- 
European  institutions  such  as  N.A.T.O.  and  O.E.E.C.  on  which 
Europe  depended.  The  second  phase,  beginning  with  the  establish- 
ment of  the  European  Coal  and  Steel  Community  and  synchronizing 

143 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

roughly  with  the  change-over  from  Truman  to  Eisenhower,  sees  an 
abatement  of  American  pressure  on  the  United  Kingdom  to  go  into 
Europe  and  a  certain  wilHngness  to  accept  the  unification  of  the  Six 
as  a  substitute  for  anything  more  comprehensive.  The  third  phase 
begins  with  the  effective  estabhshment  of  the  Common  Market  and 
is  dominated  by  a  complex  blend  of  American  reactions — support 
for  the  new  venture  combined  with  a  new  concern  about  its  impli- 
cations for  American  economic  and  diplomatic  interests. 

In  the  first  phase  the  disposition  in  the  United  States  was  strong 
to  demand  some  European  integration  as  a  return  for  American  aid, 
the  demand  being  justified  on  the  grounds  that  so  long  as  the 
national  economies  of  Europe  remained  unintegrated  they  would 
continue  to  be  non-viable  and  so  become  recurrent  charges  on  the 
American  tax-payer.  It  was  in  these  terms  that  the  preamble  to  the 
European  Co-operation  Act  (E.C.A.)  in  June,  1948,  formulated 
American  intentions  and  expectations : 

"Mindful  of  the  advantages  which  the  United  States  has  en- 
joyed through  the  existence  of  a  large  domestic  market  with  no 
internal  barriers  to  trade  or  to  the  free  movement  of  persons, 
and  believing  that  similar  advantages  can  accrue  to  the  countries 
of  Europe,  it  is  declared  to  be  the  policy  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  to  encourage  these  countries  through  their  joint 
organization  to  exert  sustained  common  efforts  to  achieve 
speedily  that  economic  co-operation  in  Europe  which  is  essential 
for  lasting  peace  and  prosperity." 

The  following  year's  Act  repeated  these  sentiments  and  added:  "It 
is  further  declared  to  be  the  policy  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States  to  encourage  the  unification  of  Europe."  When  Mutual 
Security  replaced  Marshall  Aid  the  same  objectives  of  "economic 
unification  and  political  federation"  were  avowed  in  the  authorizing 
legislation.  And  the  Republican  opposition  was  every  bit  as  vocal 
in  these  sentiments  as  the  Democratic  administration.  It  was  Mr. 
Dewey  campaigning  for  the  Presidency  who  announced  in  Salt 
Lake  City  on  30  September,  1948:  "We  shall  use  [the  programme 
of  aid  to  Europe]  as  the  means  for  pushing,  prodding  and  encour- 
aging the  nations  of  Western  Europe  towards  the  goal  of  European 
union." 

Wisely,  for  all  the  fervour  of  their  advocacy,  American  integra- 
tionists  stopped  short  of  actually  requiring  from  any  European  state 

144 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

any  surrender  of  powers  to  a  supra-national  organization.  In  resist- 
ing specific  movements  in  this  direction  the  British  were  un- 
doubtedly foremost  and  they  shaped  the  institutions  of  the  Marshall 
Plan,  such  as  the  weak  O.E.E.C.  secretariat,  with  a  determination 
to  prevent  any  such  development.  Within  these  limits,  however,  the 
British  were  at  least  as  active  as  other  recipient  states  in  promoting 
co-operation  amongst  the  European  economies.  As  one  close  Ameri- 
can observer  of  O.E.E.C.  later  wrote,  the  British  "provided  first- 
class  personnel  and  a  quality  of  diplomatic  leadership  which  played 
a  major  role  in  developing  common  European  attitudes  towards  the 
recovery  problems  and  a  willingness  to  subordinate  particular 
interests  to  the  wider  needs''.^  In  the  labours  of  E.P.U.  in  making 
multilateral  payments  possible  and  in  the  application  of  its  Code  of 
Trade  Liberalization  the  British  were  as  active  as  anyone — and,  it 
may  fairly  be  claimed,  as  co-operative. 

As  the  European  Recovery  Programme  realized  its  initial  ob- 
jective of  salvaging  Western  European  economies  and  liberalizing 
Western  European  trade,  and  as  the  Korean  War  stimulated  the 
demand  for  German  rearmament,  the  second  phase  of  American 
policy  towards  European  unity  began  to  develop.  The  emphasis 
switched  from  the  economic  to  the  military  and  it  was  the  future 
of  the  European  Defence  Community  which  most  exercised  Wash- 
ington— and  indeed  London.  On  the  economic  front  there  was,  if 
not  a  greater  agreement  with  the  British  position,  at  least  a  readier 
acceptance  of  it,  partly  no  doubt  because  the  continental  powers 
were  now  going  ahead  on  their  own;  American  policy  stimulated 
and  assisted  the  Europeanists  on  the  continent  rather  than  any 
longer  goading  the  reluctant  British  into  joining  an  operation  for 
which  they  felt  no  enthusiasm.  The  assistance  took  sometimes  a 
direct  form,  like  the  1954  loan  of  $100  million  to  E.C.S.C.  or  the 
1958  credit  of  $135  million  to  Euratom,  together  with  the  20-years 
supply  of  enriched  uranium  fuel  and  American  participation  in  a 
$100  million  joint  research  and  development  programme.  The 
stimulation  was  sometimes  indirect  and  unintentional;  thus  para- 
doxically the  experience  of  Suez,  driving  home  the  impotence  of 
France  and  the  insufiiciency  of  Europe's  fuel  resources,  stimulated 
the  "Third  Force"  advocates  of  European  union  and  the  believers 
in  Euratom  as  a  short  cut  to  plentiful  supplies  of  fuel  and  power. 

For  Britain  these  were  years  when  neither  type  of  inducement 

1  l^incolnGotdon  onO.'E.^.C.^inlnternational  Organisation,  1956,  p.  3. 

K  145 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

counted  for  much.  Returning  prosperity,  despite  recurrent  weak- 
nesses in  the  balance  of  payments,  encouraged  the  belief  that  there 
was  no  need,  economically,  to  go  into  Europe.  Consequently  when 
all  other  considerations  pointed  in  the  direction  of  cultivating  a 
bilateral  relationship  with  the  U.S.A.,  the  disposition  was  general, 
in  economic  as  in  military  policy,  to  adopt  towards  Europe  a  kind 
of  British  variant  of  the  American  line — i.e.  to  support  European 
unification  from  outside,  to  offer  all  aid  short  of  coming  in.  Even 
during  the  year  of  estrangement,  1956,  the  Anglo-French  alliance 
on  the  Middle  East  had  no  counterpart  on  the  European  front,  and 
from  the  collapse  of  the  Suez  venture,  as  we  have  seen,  a  very 
different  moral  was  drawn  in  London  from  that  which  gained 
acceptance  in  Paris. 

Thus  down  to  the  ratification  of  the  Rome  Treaties  by  France 
and  Germany  in  July,  1957,  Britain  did  not  feel  that  the  progressive 
consolidation  of  the  Six  constituted  a  serious  problem  for  her,  nor 
that  the  admitted  difference  of  views  between  London  and  Wash- 
ington over  Britain's  role  in  Europe  was  anything  more  than  an 
amicable  agreement  to  differ.  The  Americans  had  dropped  their 
forcing  policy;  the  implications  of  the  Six  had  yet  to  emerge.  The 
painful  British  awakening  came  first  with  the  dawning  realization 
of  what  the  European  Economic  Community  (E.E.C.)  could  mean 
to  her.  Her  first  response  took  the  form  of  exploring  the  idea  of  a 
European  free  trade  area,  co-extensive  with  O.E.E.C.,  an  abortive 
enterprise  in  which  she  may  have  been  encouraged  (whether  ad- 
visedly or  no)  by  the  expression  of  occasional  American  anxieties 
about  E.E.C.'s  possible  discrimination  against  non-members.  How- 
ever, as  1958  went  on,  French  hostility  to  the  free  trade  area 
hardened  without  any  corresponding  rise  in  American  anxieties 
about  the  Community.  Rather  the  reverse.  In  the  O. E.E.C.  meetings 
of  December,  1958,  when  Sir  David  Eccles  for  Britain  and  M. 
Couve  de  Murville  for  France  became  deadlocked  in  their  violent 
disagreement  over  the  virtues  of  their  respective  "Area"  and  "Com- 
munity", it  was  taken  as  an  omen  that  the  American  observer  at 
the  session  was  curiously  silent  when  asked  for  the  views  of  the 
United  States.  The  explanation  was  not  far  to  seek,  but  it  was 
political  more  than  economic.  In  American  eyes  a  rarely  favourable 
juncture  had  arrived  in  the  affairs  of  continental  Europe.  France, 
under  De  Gaulle,  had  a  government  that  could  govern;  Germany 
still  had  in  Adenauer  a  ruler  unshakeably  committed  to  the  West. 

146 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

But  for  how  long?  He  was  old  and  he  did  not  lack  enemies.  In  the 
plans  for  the  Community  these  two  pillars  of  anti-Communism  had 
found  an  accord  which  the  Americans  desperately  wished  to  make 
permanent,  by  binding  France  and  Germany  in  the  institutions, 
initially  economic  but  finally  political,  of  the  Six.  Only  so,  it  was 
felt,  in  face  of  Russian  pressure,  could  Western  Germany  resist  the 
attractions  of  neutralism  with  its  inviting  rider  of  possible  reunifi- 
cation. By  comparison,  the  British  were  somewhat  less  committed 
to  the  idea  of  a  Western  Germany  permanently  and  militarily  bound 
to  the  West.  In  1958-60  they  were  prepared,  at  least  in  return  for 
a  real  settlement  with  Russia,  to  envisage  an  atom-free  zone  in 
Central  Europe  on  Rapacki  lines  or  at  least  a  negotiated  status  quo. 
For  such  a  policy  a  Franco-German  fusion  was  a  good  deal  less  than 
necessary. 

When  Mr.  Macmillan  visited  Washington  in  March,  1959,  to 
lay  plans  for  an  agreed  approach  to  "summit"  talks  with  Mr. 
Khrushchev  there  was  an  obvious  connexion  between  his  desire  that 
tiie  West  should  retain  the  maximum  freedom  of  negotiation  over 
Germany  and  his  concern  lest  the  U.S.A.  should  pledge  herself  to 
the  Six.  On  the  German  question  in  relation  to  summit  talks  a 
working  (or  perhaps  one  should  say  a  paper)  agreement  was 
reached  but  on  the  subject  of  the  economic  split  in  Europe  the 
Americans  remained  unpersuaded. 

After  what  happened  at  the  Eccles-de  Murville  encounter,  and 
against  the  known  background  of  American  attitudes  to  European 
unity,  this  should  have  occasioned  no  surprise.  The  fact  was  that 
a  new  and  more  positive  phase  of  American  policy  was  under  way. 
Significantly,  it  was  associated  with,  and  indeed  largely  directed  by 
Mr.  Dillon,  who  in  1957  joined  the  State  Department  as  Deputy 
Under-Secretary  of  State  for  Economic  Affairs.  A  known  Franco- 
phile and  intimate  of  M.  Jean  Monnet,  Mr.  Dillon  was  an  appro- 
priate mouthpiece  for  a  policy  which  backed  the  "Europeanists". 
But  he  was  more  than  a  mouthpiece.  Mr.  Dillon  belonged,  as  con- 
spicuously as  anyone  in  the  late  fifties,  to  that  American  "Establish- 
ment" of  internationally-minded  lawyers-cum-Wall  Street  bankers 
whose  association  with  foreign  policy-making  has  been  continuous 
in  Washington,  irrespective  of  administrations,  ever  since  Roose- 
velt's presidency  in  the  mid-thirties.  In  the  last  years  of  the  Eisen- 
hower regime,  as  Dulles's  powers  failed,  Mr.  Dillon  became  a  key 
figure  in  the  shaping  of  American  economic  policy. 

147 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

The  United  States  indeed  had  its  own  worries  about  the  Common 
Market,  but  they  were  rooted  in  something  quite  different,  and 
indeed  quite  novel,  in  an  economic  development  which  Europeans 
found  hard  to  appreciate — the  deterioration  in  America's  balance 
of  payments.  The  deterioration  first  began  to  attract  attention  in 
1958  when  the  American  annual  deficit  rose  to  $3*4  billion  from  a 
"normal"  figure  of  about  $1^2-  billion.  For  1959  the  figure  was 
$4  billion.  That  there  should  be  a  United  States  "dollar  problem" 
within  ten  years  of  the  launching  of  the  Marshall  Plan  was  some- 
thing which  to  Britain  and  indeed  to  all  European  ears  was  scarcely 
credible.  In  fact  it  was  largely  a  consequence  of  the  success  which 
had  attended  American  efforts  to  promote  European  recovery. 
When  at  Christmas,  1958,  the  pound  and  other  principal  European 
currencies  were  made  externally  convertible  the  result  was  to  pro- 
mote a  movement  of  capital  from  the  once  overwhelmingly  attrac- 
tive dollar  area  to  the  centres  of  high  interest  rates  in  Europe.  Most 
of  this  was  no  doubt  "hot  money"  rather  than  long-term  invest- 
ment, but  coming  at  a  time  of  lowered  vitality  in  the  American 
economy  it  was  naturally  a  matter  of  concern  in  Washington.  In 
particular  it  promoted  an  American  demand  that  the  U.S.A. 's 
European  allies  should  take  a  larger  share  of  the  burdens  of 
economic  aid  to  the  underdeveloped  countries  and  the  cost  of  the 
common  defence,  and  also  that  they  should  not  discriminate  against 
American  exports.  It  was  principally  in  this  last  connexion  that  the 
Common  Market  aroused  American  apprehensions.  This  however 
did  not  mean,  as  was  all  too  readily  assumed  in  Britain,  that  the 
American  stance  on  this  issue  was  becoming  identical  with  the 
British.  Far  from  it. 

Having  failed  to  persuade  the  Six  to  float  their  Common  Market 
in  a  larger  European  free  trade  area,  the  British  proceeded  in  1959 
to  create  out  of  the  seven  excluded  O.E.E.C.  members  a  Free  Trade 
Association  of  their  own.  This  was  intended  to  be  a  protective  and 
bargaining  association  which  would,  by  the  threats  of  reprisals, 
persuade  the  Community  to  maintain  liberal  trade  relations  with 
the  Seven.  Natural  though  such  a  counter-alliance  might  be  for  its 
members,  it  was  too  much  to  expect  that  it  should  enjoy  American 
backing.  In  so  far  as  it  weakened  the  Six  it  would  frustrate  the 
political  hopes  which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Americans  attached  to 
the  Community.  In  so  far  as  its  trade  bargaining  was  successful  the 
net  result  might  easily  be  an  agreement  between  the  two  blocs  to 

148 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

practise  a  joint  discrimination  against  third  parties,  of  which  the 
U.S.A.  would  be  the  main  victim.  Finally  a  protracted  duel  between 
the  Six  and  the  Seven  would  impede  the  realization  of  the  U.S.A. 's 
other  urgent  objective,  of  securing  European  assistance  with  over- 
seas aid  and  defence  costs;  instead  of  uniting  in  the  common  tasks 
of  the  alliance,  Europe  would  split  into  two  camps  with  ill-feeling 
(as  became  very  apparent  by  the  end  of  1959)  rising  daily  between 
the  two  sets  of  rivals.  Thus  though  the  United  States  and  Britain 
had  an  interest  in  resolving  the  conflict  it  was  not  an  identical 
interest. 

When  therefore  both  Six  and  Seven  accepted  in  December,  1959, 
the  American  proposal  of  a  Paris  meeting  at  which  they  would  talk 
to  each  other  (and  to  the  United  States)  for  the  first  time  since 
December,  1958,  it  was  with  considerably  different  expectations 
and  objectives  that  Britain  and  the  United  States  approached  the 
conference  table.  From  the  British  point  of  view  the  meetings  were 
only  semi-satisfactory.  The  Americans  gave  a  low  priority  to  the 
healing  of  the  rift  between  Six  and  Seven  and  on  this  no  tangible 
progress  was  made,  beyond  the  setting  up  of  a  twenty-nation  group 
(the  old  O.E.E.C.  membership  but  not  under  O.E.E.C.  auspices)  to 
keep  communications  open.  Instead  the  Americans  insistently 
pressed  for  action  on  the  aid  front  and  launched  the  idea  of  a  suc- 
cessor body  to  O.E.E.C.  which  should  co-ordinate  (and  increase) 
the  aid  programmes  of  member  states  and  which  would  have  the 
U.S.A.  as  a  principal  participant.  As  negotiations  went  on  through- 
out the  spring  and  summer,  argument  developed  on  the  powers  of 
this  successor  body,  the  O.E.C.D.  (Organization  for  Economic 
Co-operation  and  Development).  The  smaller  European  states, 
assisted  by  Britain,  pressed  for  the  inclusion,  amongst  its  objectives, 
not  only  of  aid  and  economic  growth,  but  also  of  trade  expansion. 
At  the  end  of  July  the  U.S.A.  gave  in  on  this  point,  on  the  clear 
understanding  that  she  could  not  be  bound,  in  the  tariff  field,  by 
any  collective  decision  of  the  Organization,  and  on  14  December, 
i960,  the  convention  was  signed  at  Paris  establishing  O.E.C.D.  to 
come  into  effect  in  196I  when  the  requisite  number  of  members 
ratified  the  agreement. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  conflict  of  Six  and  Seven  had  grown 
sharper  and  given  rise  to  further  asperities  between  London  and 
Washington.  When  the  Six  proposed  in  March,  I960,  to  accelerate 
their  union  by  enforcing  their  common  external  tariff  on  1  July 

149 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

instead  of  the  original  date  of  1  January,  1962,  the  Seven  received 
this  as  a  severe  jolt  to  their  hopes  of  a  negotiated  settlement.  It  was 
obvious  that  the  Six  were  deliberately  hurrying  to  put  themselves  in 
a  position  where  no  pressure  from  the  Seven  could  undo  their 
partnership.  Worse  still,  this  move  appeared  to  enjoy  American 
blessing.  What  other  interpretation  could  be  put  on  the  phrase  in 
the  communique  issued  at  the  end  of  the  Eisenhower-Adenauer 
meeting,  on  14  March,  which  spoke  of  the  proposal  as  "a  major 
contribution  to  a  general  lowering  of  world  trade  barriers"?  When 
later  in  the  month  Mr.  Macmillan  visited  Washington  in  his  turn, 
ostensibly  to  resolve  differences  over  nuclear  tests  and  disarmament 
in  preparation  for  the  "summit"  meeting  in  May,  this  issue  was 
almost  as  much  on  his  mind  as  the  problems  of  east  and  west. 
At  this  visit,  as  in  1959,  an  agreement,  somewhat  more  procedural 
than  substantive,  was  reached  on  east-west  issues,  but  there  was  no 
meeting  of  minds  over  the  Common  Market  issue.  Indeed  so  com- 
placent an  indifference  to  the  British  point  of  view  did  Mr.  Mac- 
millan encounter  that  he  apparently  felt  it  necessary  to  shock  his 
American  hosts  with  a  vehement  expression  of  his  views  on  the 
approaching  rift  in  Europe.  He  was  subsequently  reported  (in  a 
Washington  "leak"  whose  authenticity  was  not  wholly  denied  by 
British  officials)  as  reminding  Mr.  Dillon  that  once  before,  in 
Napoleon's  day,  Britain  had  frustrated  French  attempts  at  estab- 
lishing a  hegemony  in  Europe. 

The  Six  meanwhile  had  taken  the  precaution,  in  planning  their 
acceleration,  of  offering  a  "sweetener"  to  the  United  States  in  the 
form  of  a  20  per  cent  cut  in  their  common  tariff  for  any  other  states 
who  might  offer  a  quid  pro  quo.  The  United  States  administration 
liked  this  as  a  talking-point  with  Congress  in  their  campaign  for 
freer  trade  and  were  similarly  assisted  a  couple  of  months  later,  in 
June,  when  the  Six  offered  a  comparable  concession  to  the  only 
openly  hostile  American  pressure  group,  the  farmers,  by  announc- 
ing the  abandonment  of  any  direct  quantitative  restrictions  against 
grain  imports,  as  well  as  certain  tariff  reductions  for  American 
tobacco. 

Thus  I960  continued  with  no  abatement  of  American  support 
for  the  Six  and  no  sign  of  American  willingness  to  act  as  broker 
between  them  and  the  Seven.  Increasingly,  as  the  presidential  elec- 
tion approached  and  President  Eisenhower's  own  mandate  ran  out, 
it  became  impossible  to  hope  for  any  change  of  direction  or  new 

150 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

impetus  from  Washington.  Fortunately  for  Britain,  however,  some 
change  was  occurring  on  the  continent.  Though  the  impulse  for  the 
Common  Market  did  not  wane,  the  process  and  the  goals  of  unifi- 
cation were  being  modified  under  the  nationalistic  instincts  of 
General  de  Gaulle.  His  conception  of  L'Europe  des  Patries  pro- 
duced a  shift  in  the  decision-making  of  the  Six  away  from  the 
federalists  at  Brussels  to  the  individual  governments  in  their 
sovereignty-conscious  capitals.  This  implied  a  considerably  more 
limited  political  objective  for  the  Common  Market  and  one  much 
more  acceptable  to  the  British.  At  the  same  time  as  this  change 
occurred  in  Paris,  a  ferment  was  working  in  Bonn.  Here  anxiety 
was  developing  not  so  much  over  a  supra-nationalist  Six  but  over 
the  hyper-nationalist  One,  to  wit  de  Gaulle.  The  relentless  refusal 
of  the  French  President  to  co-operate  in  the  political  and  military 
processes  of  N.A.T.O.  except  on  his  own  terms  was  causing  not 
only  irritation  but  also  (especially  since  the  collapse  of  the  "sum- 
mit" in  May)  a  real  anxiety  about  its  effect  on  the  Atlantic  alliance. 
In  meetings  held  at  the  end  of  July  and  the  beginning  of  August 
this  came  to  a  head.  Dr.  Adenauer,  it  would  seem,  was  disappointed 
at  Rambouillet  that  he  could  not  move  General  de  Gaulle  by  con- 
siderations of  this  kind.  Mr.  Macmillan  coming  to  Bonn  soon  after- 
wards found  the  Chancellor  in  consequence  especially  receptive  to 
his  contention  that  French  leadership  was  taking  Western  Europe 
6ut  of  the  Atlantic  alliance  into  a  "Third  Force"  isolation  and  that 
to  stop  this  the  Germans  must  throw  a  bridge  by  which  the 
Europes  of  the  Six  and  the  Seven  could  reunite  in  an  Atlantic 
alliance  under  American  leadership.  Whatever  exactly  was  said  in 
these  meetings  a  new  mood  seems  to  have  developed;  the  British 
thought  more  kindly  of  a  Common  Market  which  would  not  aim 
at  a  precipitate  federalism  and  the  Germans  were  now  positively  in 
favour  of  healing  the  split.  Both  changes  of  heart  seem  to  have 
come  without  any  shadow  or  hint  of  encouragement  from  Wash- 
ington, but  both  reflected  a  dominating  awareness  of  Western 
Europe's  need  of  America. 

The  year  ended  with  a  significant  demonstration  of  America's 
need  of  Europe.  The  continuing  weakness  in  the  American  balance 
of  payments  led  by  the  autumn  to  a  further  sharp  drain  on  the 
U.S.A.'s  gold  reserves.  In  a  series  of  measures  reminiscent  of 
British  policy  in  1947  or  1951  President  Eisenhower  directed  all 
federal  agencies  to  cut  down  their  spending  abroad,  required  a 

151 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

stricter  "Buy  American"  policy  for  foreign  aid  funds  and  ordered 
a  reduction  of  200,000  in  the  number  of  service  dependents  living 
abroad.  At  the  same  time  Mr.  Anderson,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  and  Mr.  Dillon  visited  Bonn  to  press  for  a  $600  million 
contribution  towards  the  cost  of  maintaining  American  troops  on 
German  soil.  The  ill-timed  and  tactless  proposal  provoked  a  jarring 
refusal  and  an  unacceptable  set  of  counter-proposals.  Only  London, 
where  the  Bank  of  England  forced  gold  prices  down  by  using,  in 
part,  gold  bought  from  the  official  United  States  reserves,  was  able 
to  give  immediate  aid  to  the  giant  of  the  Atlantic  alliance. 

Thus  already  by  the  end  of  I960  a  variety  of  factors  was  making 
for  a  revision  of  Britain's  position  on  the  question  of  "going  into 
Europe".  The  switch  from  a  rather  run-down  Eisenhower  presi- 
dency to  a  brisk  and  enterprising  Kennedy  administration  did  not 
alter  any  of  the  elements  entering  into  the  triangular  relationship 
between  Britain,  the  United  States  and  the  Common  Market,  but  it 
considerably  accelerated  their  operation.  Any  Kennedy  expectations 
that  French  irritation  at  "the  Anglo-American  directorate"  could 
be  easily  eliminated,  as  for  example  by  the  Presidential  state  visit 
to  Paris  in  June,  foundered  on  the  irrefrangible  rock  of  de  Gaulle's 
"one-outmanship".  Over  N.A.T.O.,  over  Berlin,  over  the  United 
Nations,  over  nuclear  weapons,  there  was  little  or  no  effective 
Franco-American  rapprochement.  But  this  in  no  way  diminished 
the  American  conviction  of  the  political  desirability  of  an  economi- 
cally united  Europe;  indeed  it  intensified  it,  on  the  principle  that 
the  only  abrasive  which  might  reduce  French  spinosity  would  be 
her  incorporation  in  a  larger  whole.  The  continuing  American 
balance  of  payments  problem  pointed  in  the  same  direction;  only  an 
economically  integrated  Europe,  it  increasingly  seemed,  could  give 
the  United  States  effective  assistance  in  the  reallocation  of  the 
burdens  of  common  defence  and  overseas  aid.  Finally,  the  new 
fillip  which  Kennedy  dynamism  was  willing  to  gwt  to  the  thirty- 
year-old  American  drive  for  freer  trade  required  as  an  absolute  sine 
qua  non  a.  comparable  dynamism  in  the  form  of  European  integra- 
tion. 

From  the  British  point  of  view,  equally,  the  pressures  that  had 
been  forming  in  I960  intensified  themselves  in  1961.  The  high 
price  of  exclusion  from  a  closely  integrated  Six  came  to  seem  ever 
more  costly.  The  scope  for  possible  leadership  in  a  new  Europe 
began  to  seem  more  attractive.  American  pressures  towards  integra- 

152 


EUROPEAN  UNIFICATION 

tion  did  not  abate.  What  was  more,  the  willingness  of  the  Kennedy 
administration  really  to  carry  forward  the  earlier  hints  of  a  liberal 
trading  policy  over  the  whole  Atlantic  area  went  far  to  remove  the 
deepest  of  British  fears,  that  involvement  in  Europe  would  mean 
detachment  from  the  U.S.A.  If  the  United  States  was  really  pre- 
pared to  lower  her  own  tariffs  and  to  press  for  a  low  external  tariff 
in  the  Common  Market  then  a  new  way  seemed  open  by  which 
Britain  could  reconcile  her  interests  throughout  the  Common- 
wealth, across  the  Atlantic  and  across  the  Channel. 

Though  it  suited  the  British  Government  to  give  the  impression 
that  it  found  a  new  attitude  in  Washington  towards  the  problems 
of  British  entry  into  the  Common  Market  (cf.  much  British  press 
comment  after  Mr.  Macmillan's  Washington  visit  in  April,  1961), 
the  real  difference  lay  elsewhere.  It  manifested  itself  in  the  presence 
of  some  new  faces  at  the  top,^  in  a  new  approach,  at  once  more 
pragmatic  and  more  aware  of  Britain's  peculiar  problems,  and  above 
all  in  a  greater  sense  of  urgency.  When  the  long-accumulating 
pressure  finally  tipped  the  scales  and  Her  Majesty's  Government 
made  their  historic  decision  on  31  July,  1961,  to  apply  for  ad- 
mission to  the  Community,  this  was  nowhere  received  with  more 
gratification  than  in  the  United  States.  "We  welcome,"  said  Presi- 
dent Kennedy,  "the  prospect  of  Britain's  participation  in  the  insti- 
tutions of  the  Treaty  of  Rome  and  in  the  economic  growth  that  is 
the  achievement  and  promise  of  the  Common  Market." 


^  Though  not  all  of  these  were  new,  e.g.  Mr.  Dillon. 


153 


II 

THE  BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

EVEN  before  the  war  the  British  economy  had  more  links 
with  the  American  than  with  any  other  in  the  world,  the 
Commonwealth  countries  alone  excepted.  American  booms 
or  slumps,  the  raising  or  lowering  of  American  tariffs,  had  a 
peculiar  significance  for  Britain  by  virtue  of  the  exceptionally  in- 
timate trading  relationships  of  the  two  countries.  Even  in  1938, 
when  the  total  value  of  world  trade  had  fallen  to  sixty-eight  per 
cent  of  what  it  had  been  ten  years  earlier  and  when  the  develop- 
ment of  Imperial  Preference  had  cut  into  the  traditional  patterns  of 
Anglo-American  trading — even  then  the  United  Kingdom  and  the 
United  States  between  them  were  directly  responsible  for  about  one 
quarter  of  the  world's  trade,  while  "the  Anglo-American  group" 
(i.e.  the  British  Commonwealth  and  both  Americas)  accounted  for 
virtually  half.^  In  direct  trading  12-8  per  cent  of  all  United  King- 
dom exports  came  from  the  United  States  (only  the  Dominions 
supplied  more)  and  6  per  cent  of  all  American  imports  came  from 
Britain  (only  Canada  and  Japan  sent  more).  If  6  per  cent  seems 
a  modest  figure  (it  represented  only  5 '4  per  cent  of  British  exports) 
the  explanation  lay,  of  course,  in  the  pattern  of  indirect,  multi- 
lateral trading  which,  for  example,  sales  of  Malayan  tin  and  rubber 
to  the  U.S.A.  helped  to  make  up  the  difference./The  British- 
American  trading  relationship  was  indeed  a  crucial  part  of  a  world-  Q 
wide  system  to  whose  functioning  both  London  and  New  York 
were  indispensable.  ; 

Even  so,  there  was  an  imbalance  in  the  relationship  in  1938  and 
had  been  for  some  years.  Even  when  the  trading  with  third  parties 
was  added  in,  Britain's  trading  accounts  did  not  balance.  Between 
1936  and  1938  the  excess  of  Britain's  merchandise  imports  over 
her  exports  averaged  £388  million  a  year,  a  sum  which  invisible 
exports  such  as  shipping,  banking,  insurance  services,  etc.,  did  not 
suffice  to  make  up.  Britain  was  living  off  her  overseas  investments 

1  The  Network  of  World  Trade  (League  of  Nations,  1942),  p.  69. 

154 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

— and  off  the  capital,  as  well  as  the  interest.  In  terms  which  his 
successors  were  frequently  to  echo  the  President  of  the  Board  of 
Trade  warned  the  House  of  Commons  that  the  early  months  of 
1938  had  shown  a  worsening  in  the  balance  of  payments  position 
with  the  United  States  so  pronounced  as  to  be  "disquieting". 

In  other  words  Imperial  Preference  had  not  solved  the  problems 
of  Britain  as  a  trading  nation.  She  still  needed  imports  which  only 
the  U.S.A.  could  supply.  She  still  had  to  find  some  way  of  paying 
for  them.  The  negotiation  in  1938  of  the  Anglo-American  Trade 
Agreement  was  a  recognition  of  this.  Britain  and  America  reduced 
their  tariffs  on  imports  from  each  other  and,  of  course,  thereby 
gave  most-favoured  nation  treatment  to  other  traders  too.  Hesitant 
and  reluctant  though  it  was,  the  Agreement  represented  a  move 
away  from  Ottawa,  a  response  to  Mr.  Cordell  Hull's  belief  in  a 
liberal  world  of  multilateral  trade.  Even  if  there  had  been  no  war, 
Britain  was  thus  committed  to  responding  to  the  magnetic  pull  of 
American  commercial  policy.  When  war  did  break  out,  what  had 
been  a  persuasive  attraction  became  an  urgent  compulsion. 

The  war  produced  a  swift  and  progressive  British  dependence  on 
North  America  for  all  essential  supplies,  with  Lend  Lease  taking 
the  place  of  normal  methods  of  payment.  Unfortunately  much  of 
the  endemic  weakness  in  the  British  position  came  to  be  mistakenly 
attributed  to  the  abnormal  strains  of  war,  with  the  result  that  the 
country  entered  the  peace  without  a  full,  instinctive  comprehension 
of  the  economic  task  before  it.  The  United  States  itself  was  prone 
to  a  comparable  error,  as  was  demonstrated  by  the  various  mis- 
calculations embodied  in  the  Anglo-American  Financial  Agree- 
ments of  1946. 

In  consequence  weaknesses  in  the  British  position  which  might 
have  been  accurately  predicted  by  any  dispassionate  student  of  pre- 
war economic  trends  broke  upon  the  publics  of  each  country  as  a 
disconcerting  series  of  "crises"  in  the  fifteen  years  after  the  end  of 
the  war.|^The  British  balance  of  payments  looked  like  the  tem- 
perature chart  of  a  patient  with  undulant  fever,  one  attack  develop-  /  ^  c  ^ 
ing  as  its  predecessor  died  away.  [The  British  Government  found 
itself  repeatedly  obliged  to  turn  to  America  for  aid  or  to  adopt 
successive  short-term  policies  at  odds  with  its  long-term  commit- 
ments to  the  United  States\./  Britain's  post-war  impoverishment  was 
relieved  by  the  American  and  Canadian  loans  only  to  be  succeeded 

155 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

by  the  convertibility  crisis  of  1947  and  the  ensuing  devaluation  of 
the  pound.  The  strains  produced  by  the  Korean  war  and  the  Ameri- 
can "recession"  of  1950  led  to  the  tightening  controls  of  Mr. 
Attlee's  last  year  in  1951.  In  1955  Mr.  Butler  as  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  had  to  repeat  the  medicine,  raising  the  bank  rate  by  1^ 
per  cent  to  4-|-  per  cent  (the  highest  rate  since  1932),  imposing  a 
credit  squeeze  in  the  summer  and  bringing  in  a  supplementary 
budget  in  the  autumn.  The  Suez  fiasco  of  1956  produced  an  immed- 
iate run  on  the  pound  and  led  in  1957  to  the  invocation  of  the  pay- 
ments waiver  provided  for  in  the  Anglo-American  Financial 
Agreements  and  the  raising  of  a  $500  million  line  of  credit  from 
the  Export-Import  Bank,  Even  though  1958  ended  with  de  'lure 
convertibility  restored  for  current  transactions  and  1959  saw  a  real 
improvement  in  Britain's  basic  economic  position,  which  permitted 
the  removal  of  licensing  requirements  over  virtually  the  whole  field 
of  imports,  even  then  all  was  not  well.  The  old  weakness  rede- 
veloped in  I960  leading  to  another  7  per  cent  peak  in  the  Bank  rate 
in  1961.  1961-2  also  saw  the  profits  and  wages  "pause",  and  a  per- 
sistently inadequate  level  of  gold  and  dollar  reserves.  However 
much  Britain's  difficulties  might  be  the  result  of  eff^orts  in  a  com- 
mon cause,  it  was  embarrassing  to  be  seeking  recurrent  American 
aid.  It  was  even  more  embarrassing  when,  as  after  Suez,  they  were 
largely  the  result  of  over-exertion  in  a  far  from  common  cause.  *. 

Embarrassment  apart,  the  weakness  of  Britain's  reserves  on  more 
than  one  occasion  prevented  her  playing  a  full  part  in  the  various 
common  enterprises  to  which  the  two  countries  were  committed. 
We  have  seen  how  American  hopes  for  a  swift  post-war  return  to 
multilateral  trading  conditions  rested  upon  an  exaggerated  estimate 
of  the  tempo  of  British  recovery.  Here  at  least  the  British  were  not 
to  blame;  their  warning  notes  were  so  loud  and  clear  as  to  be 
written  off  as  alarmist.  But  the  British  Government  itself  was  slow 
to  recognize  the  restraints  imposed  by  its  balance  of  payments  posi- 
tion. Americans  could  fairly  complain  of  the  suddenness  of  the 
Treasury's  awakening  which  led  to  the  withdrawal  from  Greece 
and  Turkey.  Both  in  Korea  itself  and  in  the  European  rearmament 
programme  which  was  its  corollary  British  efforts  were  limited  by 
restricted  overseas  resources.  In  the  launching  of  any  common 
economic  venture,  from  the  U.N.  Expanded  Programme  of  Tech- 
nical Assistance  to  the  salvaging  of  India's  Five-Year  Plans,  the 
British  share  has  had  to  be  so  severely  limited  as  to  leave  her  too 

156 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

little  power  of  initiation  or,  comparatively  speaking,  of  control. 
Finally,  in  enterprises  where  the  British  interest  was  predominant, 
such  as  the  salvaging  of  the  British  oil  investment  in  Mossadeq's 
Persia,  Britain's  economic  stringency  left  her  so  little  scope  for 
movement  that  she  was  really  dependent  on  American  aid  for  the 
achievement  of  a  satisfactory  solution.  When,  as  over  Suez,  this 
was  denied,  the  result  was  failure. 

The  harmful  consequences  of  this  weakness  in  the  British  balance 
of  payments  would  have  been  much  greater  if  Britain  had  not 
secured  official  American  acceptance  (at  least  after  1947)  of  the 
necessity  for  protective  discriminatory  measures,  at  least  in  the 
short  run.  Without  an  apparatus  of  controls,  involving  a  rigid 
elimination  of  all  non-essential  dollar  purchases,  Britain's  payments 
position  would  have  been  enormously,  impossibly  worse.  But  how- 
ever ready  Washington  officials  might  be  to  accept  the  need  for 
this,^  Congressmen  who  voted  aid  funds  and  were  highly  sus- 
ceptible to  constituency  pressures  of  every  kind  were  seldom  so 
sympathetic.  They  showed  a  marked  reluctance  to  recognize  that 
the  quickest  way  to  become  independent  of  American  aid  was  to 
buy  as  little  from  the  dollar  area  as  possible.  It  was  one  thing  to 
accept  this  as  an  intellectual  proposition;  another  thing  to  make  it 
palatable  to  American  taxpayers  who  made  their  living  out  of  goods 
they  hoped  to  sell  to  overseas  customers,  the  British  included.  It 
was  thus  a  welcome  day  in  1959  when,  in  recognition  of  the  first 
British  trade  surplus  with  the  United  States  in  a  hundred  years, 
import  controls  were  removed  from  all  but  a  very  small  range  of 
dollar  goods.  The  quantitative  rise  in  imports  was  not  enormous 
(about  £50  million  in  I960)  but  it  had  something  of  the  same  kind 
of  token  significance  as  the  1957  easement  of  the  currency  restric- 
tions on  travel  to  dollar  areas.  The  dollar  curtain  which,  for  all  the 
intimacies  of  officialdom,  had  hung  between  the  New  World  and 
the  British  private  citizen  as  consumer  or  traveller  ever  since  1939 
was  at  last  beginning  to  disappear.  The  eventual  consequences  of  a 
restoration  of  real  freedom  of  movement  for  goods  and  persons  in 

1  Sometimes  they  were  not  very  ready,  either  because  they  had  a 
psychology  of  boldness  such  as  only  the  rich  can  afford  or  because 
they  were  doctrinaire  liberals  of  a  highly  conservative  kind,  or  because 
like  all  American  officials  they  had  to  serve  two  masters.  Congress  as 
well  as  the  President. 

157 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

both  directions  across  the  North  Atlantic  might  well  be  as  signifi- 
cant for  Britain  in  the  sixties  as  any  ojfRcial  pact  between  London 
and  Washington. 

The  quotas  were  removed  but  the  tariffs  remained.  The  history 
of  British-American  tariff  squabbles  is  a  long  and  edifying  one,  the 
details  of  which,  even  since  1938,  defy  brief  analysis.  But  a  few 
salient  features  stand  out.  Thanks  mainly  to  the  action  taken  by 
successive  American  Presidents  under  successive  Trade  Agreements 
Acts,  from  Roosevelt  in  1934  to  Mr.  Kennedy,  who  secured  a 
notable  expansion  of  such  authority  in  1962,  the  American  tariff 
against  British  imports  has  fallen  by  sometimes  between  50  and  75 
per  cent  overall,  though  any  single  figure  necessarily  conceals  wide 
individual  variations  for  certain  categories  of  goods.  The  British 
tariff  against  American  goods  on  the  other  hand  remains  very  little 
changed  and  provides  British  producers  with  a  considerably  more 
effective  protection  than  their  American  opposite  numbers  enjoy. 
This  has  not  been  fully  appreciated  in  Britain  or  in  the  United 
States,  partly  because  the  operative  restrictions  on  trade  have  been 
those  imposed  by  quota  and  currency  regulations,  but  also  because 
of  the  different  significance  that  transatlantic  trade  has  had  for  the 
two  economies. 

For  Britain,  trade  with  North  America  and  particularly  with  the 
United  States  has  been  absolutely  crucial.  Even  at  the  height  of 
Imperial  Preference,  even  at  the  worst  periods  of  dollar  shortage, 
Britain  has  been  heavily  dependent  upon  imports  from  the  U.S.A. 
because  she  alone  could  provide  items  that  were  essential  to 
Britain;  consequently,  until  most  of  the  world's  major  currencies 
became  convertible  again,  the  imperative  of  the  British  mercantile 
economy  has  been  the  provision  of  exports  to  pay  for  them.  For  the 
United  States  on  the  other  hand  foreign  trade  in  general,  including 
trade  to  Britain,  however  desirable  and  even  for  certain  products 
(e.g.  tobacco)  essential,  has  not  been  the  vital  core  of  the  country's 
economic  life.  Though  self-sufficiency  has  never  been  practicable  in 
terms  of  the  economic  and  other  goals  the  United  States  has  chosen 
to  set  herself,  such  as  a  high  standard  of  living,  free  enterprise  and 
heavy  political  commitments  overseas,  the  natural  resources  of  the 
country  are  basically  adequate  for  the  support  of  its  population  in  a 
way  that  those  of  the  United  Kingdom  have  not  been  for  over  three 
hundred  years.  When  therefore  the  American  legislator  and  official 
turn  their  attention  to  trade  it  is  either  in  terms  of  protecting  some 

158 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

particular  and  generally  local  interest  or  in  terms  of  furthering 
some  quasi-political  objective — cf.  the  almost  Cobdenite  philosophy 
behind  the  Trade  Agreements  Acts.  For  the  British  parliament  and 
government,  however,  once  the  laissez-faire  tradition  had  been 
broken  down^  the  furtherance  of  Britain's  trade  came  near  to  hav- 
ing an  absolute  priority  as  a  sine  qua  non  on  which  all  else  in  the 
nation's  life  depended. 

Thus  the  British  exporter's  eye  has  always  been  quick  to  mark 
(and  the  British  journalist  to  headline)  the  least  American  threat  to 
British  products,  while  the  American  Congressman  (and  the  Ameri- 
can leader-writer)  have  been  much  more  sensitive  to  a  British 
trading  transaction  which  violated  a  political  prejudice  (e.g.  trade 
with  the  Communist  bloc)  than  to  British  tariff  levels  in  general. 

In  consequence  British  trade  policy  as  far  as  the  United  States  is 
concerned  has  very  often  appeared  to  consist  of  a  series  of  protests 
against  malpractices  which  Americans  regard  as  minor,  the  wool 
tariff  quota  or  the  "escape  clause"  tariff  on  bicycles,  and  of  justifi- 
cations for  peccancies  which  the  Americans  regard  as  major,  such 
as  the  sale  of  raw  rubber  to  the  U.S.S.R.  or  Vickers  Viscounts  to 
China.  The  British  argument  in  each  case  has  been  essentially  the 
same;  in  the  former  case,  that  restrictions  which  are  minor  in  rela- 
tion to  the  gigantic  American  economy  may  be  major  in  the  effect 
they  have  on  Britain's  balance  of  payments;  in  the  latter  case,  that 
Britain  cannot  afford  the  luxury  of  foregoing  trade  with  political 
opponents  save  where  it  is  conclusively  demonstrated  that  its  effect 
would  be  to  assist  them  in  indubitably  inimical  enterprises.  The 
success  which  each  category  of  arguments  has  won  in  the  United 
States  has  varied  according  to  the  domestic  political  situation  and 
the  rise  or  fall  in  East-West  temperatures.  British  attitudes  over 
each  type  of  dispute  are  not  likely  to  change  in  a  foreseeable  future, 
rooted  as  they  are  in  the  persistent  facts  of  her  economic  life,  but  it 
is  possible  that  the  somewhat  disproportionate  significance  that  such 
issues  have  assumed  in  Anglo-American  policy  may  decline.  The 
development  of  the  European  Common  Market  and  the  change  in 
the  American  balance  of  payments  are  already  pointers  to  a  likely 
American  counter-offensive  aimed  at  making  sizeable  breaches  in 
all  European  tariff  walls  and  in  expanding  North  Atlantic  trade  all 
round.  At  the  same  time  post-Dulles  policy  in  the  United  States 
has  come  to  favour  a  more  pragmatic  approach  to  problems  of  East- 

^  And  indeed  before  it  was  established. 

159 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

West  relations  and  so  (Cuba  apart)  is  less  likely  to  treat  all  forms 
of  trade  with  Communist  countries  as  a  traffic  with  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness. 

The  issues  mentioned  above  do  not  exhaust  the  range  of  Anglo- 
American  commercial  controversies  which  have  their  roots  in  the 
persistent  American  temptation  to  use  the  great  power  of  the 
American  Government  to  assist  special  interests  or  sectors  of  the 
American  economy  and  in  the  hypersensitiveness  of  the  United 
Kingdom  to  anything  which  interferes  with  her  world-wide  trading 
interests.  Thus  a  long-standing  rivalry  in  shipping  has  provided  in 
its  modest  way  some  of  the  most  acrimonious  Anglo-American  ex- 
changes of  the  post-war  period,  with  each  side  damning  the  sins 
it  had  no  mind  to.  Britain,  the  possessor  of  a  great  and  indispensable 
merchant  marine,  privately  built, ^  owned  and  operated,  was  content 
to  rely  on  the  advantages  of  skill,  world-wide  bases  and  connexions 
and  low  operating  costs  (at  least  as  compared  with  North  America), 
plus  the  bargaining  advantages  that  naturally  accrued  to  her  as  a 
great  bulk  importer.  For  the  American  economy  in  peacetime  its 
mercantile  marine  was  much  less  important,  and,  by  reason  of  high 
costs,  much  more  expensive  to  build  and  maintain;  yet  for  obvious 
reasons  it  could  not  be  allowed  to  collapse  before  the  play  of  purely 
economic  forces.  In  full  knowledge  of  this  strategic  indispensability 
the  American  shipping  interests  could  always  secure  generous 
assistance  from  Congress.  The  building  and  operating  subsidies 
which  they  enjoyed  were,  in  British  eyes,  "unfair"  and  objection- 
able enough,  but  when  in  1954  the  Cargo  Preference  Act  was  passed 
a  new  kind  of  mercantilism  appeared  on  the  American  statute  book. 
Britain,  along  with  other  seafaring  recipients,  had  reluctantly 
accepted  the  principles  written  into  Marshall  Aid,  Mutual  Security 
legislation  and  the  like  that  fifty  per  cent  of  the  cargoes  involved 
should  be  carried  in  American  bottoms;  they  were  American  "gifts" 
and  had  to  be  accepted  on  American  terms.  But  the  Cargo  Prefer- 
ence Act  went  a  considerable  step  farther;  it  extended  the  principle 
to  cargoes  even  indirectly  financed  with  government  funds  and  ex- 
cluded, for  purposes  of  calculating  the  fifty  per  cent,  cargoes  carried 
in  government-owned  ships.  To  Britain  the  Act  was  doubly  objec- 
tionable; in  itself  and  as  an  incentive  to  other  countries  to  adopt 
similar  discriminating  legislation.  The  issue  acquired  a  double,  and 

1  Except  for  the  government  assistance  supplied  to  Cunard  for  the 
construction  of  the  "Queen"  liners. 

160 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

sharper  edge  in  1959  with  talk  of  America's  need  to  conserve 
dollars  in  the  interest  of  her  balance  of  payments  and  at  the  same 
time  to  enlist  European  countries  in  a  common  policy  of  aid  to  the 
"underdevelopeds".  Could  she  have  it  both  ways?  In  June,  1959, 
Britain  made  joint  representations  with  eight  other  European  coun- 
tries; then  and  in  I960  British  Ministers  of  Transport  made  strong, 
even  indignant,  protests  in  Washington.  They  were  unavailing.  The 
American  shipowners  indeed  were  stimulated  to  stronger  measures. 
They  contended  that  Britain  was  restricting  competition  by  the 
device  of  the  shipping  conference,  the  British-inspired  institutions 
which  regulate  services  and  freights  on  all  the  main  shipping  lines 
across  the  world.  Invoking  the.  sacred  principles  of  anti-trust  law. 
Congress  in  1961  authorized  the  President  to  "disallow"  freight 
rates  negotiated  by  such  a  procedure.  And  so  the  battle  went  on. 

In  general,  where  American  foreign  aid  is  concerned,  considering 
the  pressures  playing  on  Congress  and  the  opportunities  afforded 
by  the  gigantic  and  diverse  aid  programmes,  the  British  manu- 
facturer and  exporter  has  had  less  reason  to  complain  of  American 
self-favouritism  in  this  field  than  he  might  reasonably  have  ex- 
pected. Yet  inevitably  there  is  a  dual  aspect  to  all  American  activity 
of  this  kind  and  the  benefit  it  creates  for  American  producers  and 
exporters  are  bound  to  be  most  acutely  felt  by  the  country  which  of 
all  others  has  the  longest  tradition  of  trade  competition  with  the 
U.S.A.  and  stands  to  lose  most  by  being  ousted  from  any  of  its  old 
markets.  The  United  States  cannot  indulge  in  the  benevolent  exer- 
cise of  establishing  an  International  Atomic  Energy  Agency  without 
at  the  same  time  creating  certain  predispositions  in  favour  of  re- 
liance on  American-produced  equipment.  She  cannot  participate  in 
the  salvaging  of  the  Indian  Five- Year  Plans,  a  high  priority  of 
British  Commonwealth  policy,  without  invading  a  long-cherished 
domain  of  British  commerce.  There  must  consequently  always  be 
for  Britain  a  double  reaction  to  all  American  ventures  in  the  inter- 
national economic  field;  she  welcomes  them  as  the  indispensable 
blood  transfusion  without  which  successive  embolisms  would  bring 
the  economic  circulation  of  the  free  world  to  a  paralytic  standstill; 
at  the  same  time  she  has  to  scrutinize  every  point  where  the  I'lfe- 
giving  American  fluid  is  applied  to  see  that  it  does  not  swamp  an 
established  British  connexion  or  deny  Britain  a  fair  competitive 
share  of  the  opportunities  created. 

Thus  Britain  has  always  been  hyper-sensitive  to  any  American 

L  161 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

aid  programme  which  obhged  recipients  to  spend  their  dollars  on 
American  goods.  Not  only  is  any  such  tied  aid  objectionable  in 
itself  but  when  indulged  in  by  the  U.S.A.  it  has  the  added  fault  of 
constituting  a  bad  example  which  others  of  Britain's  trading  com- 
petitors, such  as  Germany,  are  only  too  ready  to  emulate.  Unfor- 
tunately, with  the  emerging  weakness  of  America's  balance  of  pay- 
ments the  temptation  to  resort  to  this  protective  device  has  increased 
and  is  likely  to  persist.  There  is  of  course  a  certain  contradiction 
between  American  advocacy  of  increased  aid  and  her  adoption  of  a 
device  which  virtually  guarantees  a  cut  in  the  real  value  of  all  such 
aid.^  Nonetheless,  logic  has  been  more  than  once  over-borne  by 
sectional  pressures  and  doubtless  will  be  again. 

In  another  context  a  comparable  connexion  between  American 
aid  and  Anglo-American  economic  rivalry  may  be  observed. 
Within  N.A.T.O.  a  keen  competition  persists  between  Britain  and 
the  U.S.A.  for  the  provision  of  agreed  weapons  to  other  partners 
in  the  alliance,  conspicuously  Germany.  When  the  West  Germans 
began  rearming  it  was  the  United  States  which  provided  free, 
under  Mutual  Aid,  their  initial  equipment.  The  habits  thereby 
established  were  hard  to  break  and  American  sales  pressure,  re- 
sponding to  America's  own  balance  of  payments  needs,  took  up 
where  American  gifts  left  off.  At  the  distasteful  point  at  which 
politics,  economics  and  rearmament  meet,  the  Americans  enjoy  an 
obvious  advantage  from  their  preponderant  role  in  the  alliance.  It 
is  consequently  hardly  surprising  that  it  was  May,  1961,  before  the 
first  substantial  German  armaments  order  was  placed  in  London. 

Of  quite  another  order  is  the  question  of  American  investment 
in  Britain.  Here  the  Government  has  had  to  face  a  problem  created 
largely  by  its  own  need  to  save  dollars  and  so  to  discriminate  against 
dollar  goods.  To  overcome  the  obstacles  thus  placed  in  the  path  of 
their  exports  an  increasing  number  of  American  firms  have  estab- 
lished branches  in  Britain.  Exact  figures  of  the  total  investment 
involved  are  hard  to  come  by,  since  no  official  statistics  appear  to  be 
kept  in  Whitehall,  but  the  total  of  United  States  investment  in  the 
United  Kingdom  has  risen  from  approximately  $450  million  in 
1938  to  $3,194  million  at  the  end  of  I960.  Although  spread  over 

^  Because,  of  course,  manufacturers  supplying  to  such  a  protected 
market  feel  free  to  raise  their  prices  without  any  worries  about  con- 
sumer resistance.  The  average  effect  on  American  aid,  it  has  been 
calculated,  is  to  cut  the  real  value  by  25  per  cent. 

162 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

hundreds  of  firms,  this  American  investment  has  been  mainly  con- 
centrated in  the  oil,  motor  car,  chemical  and  aluminium  industries. 
In  an  economy  for  whose  oversight  the  state  assumes  so  much 
greater  responsibility  than  before  the  war,  the  British  Government 
has  necessarily  had  to  concern  itself  with  this  phenomenon.  In 
general  it  has  been  sympathetic  to  such  investment,  mainly  for  its 
direct  dollar  benefits  but  also,  in  certain  cases,  for  the  indirect 
gains  accruing  from  the  introduction  of  American  productive  tech- 
niques or  the  results  of  American  research.  But  it  also  tests  each 
application  in  the  light  of  a  set  of  principles  which  the  Dollar 
Exports  Council  has  defined  as  follows  : 

"It  is  necessary  that  the  project  should  be  of  sufficient  benefit  to 
the  British  economy  to  justify  such  dollar  expenditure  [on 
transfer  of  dividends  or  possible  repatriation  of  capital]  either 
because  it  will  earn  or  save  hard  currency,  or  because  it  is  a  valu- 
able addition  to  the  country's  industrial  efficiency.  .  .  .  New 
schemes  [should]  not  involve  unreasonable  additional  dollar 
outgoings  for  royalties,  extra  raw  materials  or  components,  pay- 
ments to  foreign  technicians  and  similar  charges." 

In  other  words  American  investment  has  been  welcomed  provided 
it  meets  all  the  requirements  imposed  by  the  weakness  of  Britain's 
balance  of  payments.  Even  so,  should  it  be  welcomed?  The  question 
has  been  pressed  whenever  a  sizeable  slice  of  any  British  industry 
has  in  consequence  come  under  American  control,  as  in  I960  when 
Ford  of  Detroit  purchased  the  minority  shareholding  of  Ford  of 
Dagenham.  It  is  the  familiar  menace,  in  a  slightly  different  form, 
of  the  American  colossus  crushing  the  British  economy  by  sheer 
size  and  weight.  But  notable  though  the  post-war  rise  in  American 
investment  has  been  there  is  no  evidence  that  it  has  seriously  or 
banefully  affected  the  working  of  British  industry.  Rather,  indeed, 
the  reverse.^  Moreover,  notable  though  one  or  two  recent  moves 
have  been,  the  changes  in  the  two  countries'  balance  of  payments 
and  the  regulations  thus  induced,  together  with  the  rising  attraction 
for  American  capital  of  the  Common  Market,  strongly  suggest  that 
the  peak  point  of  American  investment  in  the  United  Kingdom  has 

1  For  a  summary  of  arguments  pro  and  con  see  John  H.  Dunning, 
American  Investment  in  British  Manufacturing  Industry  (London,  Fair 
Lawn — New  Jersey,  1958). 

163 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

by  now  been  passed.  In  any  case  the  whole  movement  cannot  be 
viewed  in  isolation.  It  is  partly  a  particular  aspect  of  that  "mixing 
up"  of  the  two  countries'  affairs  which,  if  welcome  in  other  fields, 
cannot  be  eliminated  from  this.  More  than  this,  it  is  also  one  ex- 
pression of  that  multilateralism  to  which  in  respect  of  all  other 
economic  activities  Britain  is  deeply  committed.  Finally,  were 
Britain  to  oppose  this  manifestation  of  American  enterprise  her 
position  would  be  particularly  hard  to  maintain,  since  British  in- 
vestment in  the  United  States  is  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  respect- 
able strands  in  Anglo-American  relations.  Although  many  British 
holdings  had  to  be  liquidated  in  the  early  days  of  the  war  for  the 
purchase  of  essential  requirements,  more  than  $3,750  million's 
worth  of  American  shares  are  now  in  the  hands  of  either  the  British 
Government  or  private  investors.  In  April,  1959,  the  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer  announced  that,  taking  Canada  and  the  U.S.A.  to- 
gether, British  investment  in  North  America  probably  fully  matched 
American  investment  in  Britain. 

Such  conflicts  of  interest,  real  or  imagined,  as  have  been  outlined 
above  have  provided  the  focus  for  most  of  the  discussion  and  con- 
troversy in  Britain  about  economic  relations  with  the  United  States 
since  the  war.  This  is  perhaps  natural,  but  it  is  nonetheless  unfor- 
tunate. It  has  the  result  of  giy'mg  an  exaggeratedly  nationalist  and 
political  twist  to  what  are  essential  economic  rivalries,  rivalries 
which  would  persist  just  as  vigorously  if  Britain  and  the  U.S.A. 
were  under  a  common  government,  rivalries  which  have  indeed 
their  exact  counterpart  within  the  U.S.A.  in,  for  example,  the  con- 
flicts between  the  textile  manufacturers  of  New  England  and  North 
Carolina.  Admittedly  the  British  and  American  interests  involved 
seek  and  to  some  extent  obtain  in  each  country  the  potent  backing 
of  their  government  and  admittedly  the  American  Government's 
backing,  if  fully  obtained,  is  potent  indeed.  But  there  are  two  limit- 
ing factors  of  which  British  opinion  is  seldom  fully  aware  and  for 
which  it  is  seldom  sufficiently  grateful.  The  first  is  that  although 
any  individual  American  interest  group  may  be  very  clamant  for 
a  one-way  socialism  (i.e.  government  benefits  without  government 
control),  the  American  electorate  at  large  is  in  many  ways  more 
suspicious  of  a  government-directed  economic  drive  than  is  the 
British;  countervailing  interest  operates  in  the  politico-economic, 
as  well  as  in  the  purely  economic  realm.  In  addition  to  this  there  is 
another,  and  where  Britain  is  concerned  a  more  decisive,  factor  in 

164 


BRITISH  ECONOMY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

American  policy  throughout  the  post-war  years;  this  is  the  pre- 
dominance, taken  all  in  all,  of  political  over  merely  economic  con- 
siderations, or,  to  put  it  in  other  words,  of  the  long  over  the 
short-term.  Despite  the  concessions  that  have  had  to  be  made,  to 
congressional  or  electoral  pressure,  or  out  of  consideration  for  soft 
spots  in  the  body  economic,  the  truly  impressive  feature  of  Ameri- 
can policy  as  it  has  finally  emerged  is  the  regard  it  has  shown  for 
certain  persisting  principles.  Where  Britain  is  involved  these  may 
be  summed  up  as  respect  for  her  position  as  banker  for  the  sterling 
area,  concern  to  restore  the  viability  of  her  economy  and  her  balance 
of  payments,  determination  to  secure  in  Europe  and  the  North 
Atlantic  region  in  particular  the  largest  practicable  area  of  free 
exchange,  and  finally,  with  increasing  emphasis  as  the  earlier  ob- 
jectives have  approached  realization,  a  resolve  to  accelerate  the 
development  of  backward  areas  in  Asia,  Africa  and  Latin  America. 
That  all  these  urges  had  a  common  spring  in  American  self-interest 
is  neither  here  nor  there.  What  mattered  to  British  policy-holders 
was  that  these  American  policies  took  due  notice  of  British  interests 
too  and  aimed  at  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  an  international 
economic  order  within  which  Britain  could  thrive.  Arrived  at  by 
processes  of  open  discussion  in  which  not  only  official  spokesmen 
but  also  the  free  play  of  economic  argument  and  inquiry  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  played  its  part,  they  were  proportionately 
reliable  and  stable  despite  all  the  buffeting  of  particular  interests. 
As  such,  they  formed  a  set  of  standards,  mutually  agreed,  in  relation 
to  which  British  policy  could,  with  some  assurance,  be  shaped  and 
to  which,  in  the  event  of  transatlantic  disagreement,  effective  appeal 
could  be  made. 


165 


12 

THE  PARTNERSHIP 

TO  look  back  over  the  nexus  of  relationships  which  Britain 
maintains  with  the  United  States  around  the  globe  and  in 
all  sectors  of  national  policy  is  to  see  that  they  fall,  very 
roughly,  into  two  categories.  The  first  are  mainly  non-military,  but 
are  otherwise  as  diverse  as  the  world-wide  ramifications  of  British 
policy  itself.  They  reflect  often  a  rivalry  but  much  more  often  a 
community  of  interests,  public  and  private,  which  proceed  from  the 
past  history  and  present  interaction  of  our  two  societies.  As  such 
they  do  not  lend  themselves  to  any  simple  classification  or  ex- 
haustive cataloguing.  Though  they  have  become  both  more  ex- 
tensive and  intensive  since  1938  they  existed  already — almost  all 
of  them — in  the  pre-war  world  and  so  served  as  the  soil  from  which 
the  peculiar  intimacy  of  the  wartime  alliance  took  such  quick  and 
easy  nourishment. 

Since  the  war,  however,  the  swiftly  mounting  challenge  of  the 
Communist  states,  particularly  of  the  U.S.S.R.,  has  drawn  Britain 
and  the  U.S.A.  together  in  a  new  defensive  relationship  which, 
though  harmonizing  readily  enough  (in  the  main)  with  the  other, 
is  different  in  character  and  aims.  Its  most  oviously  different  char- 
acteristic is  its  extension  to  embrace  a  diversity  of  other  anti-Com- 
munist powers,  both  in  Europe  and  elsewhere;  its  typical  vehicle  is 
the  multi-national  alliance— N.A.T.O.,  C.E.N.T.O.,  S.E.A.T.O.  If, 
within  such  alliances,  the  Anglo-American  relationship  is  of 
peculiar  importance,  this  is  partly  the  consequence  of  their  intimacy 
in  the  other  sphere,  partly  the  proportionate  reflection  of  the  scale 
of  British,  and  Commonwealth,  operations  around  the  globe. 

If  very  little  has  been  said  about  this  relationship  in  its  most 
central  aspect,  as  it  bears  directly  on  British  policy  towards  the 
U.S.S.R.,  this  is  solely  because  here  at  any  rate  is  a  feature  of  the 
Anglo-American  relationship  so  obvious  as  not  to  need  stressing. 
No  one  can  doubt  for  a  moment  that  London's  confrontation  of 
Moscow  rests  on  the  assured  and  indispensable  basis  of  Washing- 
ton's support.  Take  that  away  and  nothing  remains.  To  say  this,  of 
course,  is  not  to  say  that  British  policy  "takes  its  orders"  in  this 

166 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

essential  from  Washington,  but  simply  that  both  Britain  and 
America  recognize,  like  their  common  partners  in  the  North 
Atlantic  alliance,  that  a  common  front  to  Soviet  pressure  is  the  in- 
dispensable condition  of  their  survival  in  freedom.  But  just  as  this 
fact  is  so  obvious  as  hardly  to  need  mention,  so  any  elaboration  of 
it  (at  least  in  the  present,  inevitable  condition  of  official  secrecy 
over  the  details  of  allied  co-ordination)  runs  the  grave  risk  of  ob- 
scuring the  substance  of  agreement  by  the  accidents  of  controversy. 
It  would  not  be  difficult  to  chart  any  phase  in  the  triangular  relations 
of  London,  Washington  and  Moscow  in  terms  of  fairly  well  pub- 
licized Anglo-American  disagreements  about  the  precise  timing, 
tactics  or  style  of  their  approaches  to  the  Kremlin.  From  Churchill's 
Fulton  speech  down  to  the  negotiations  over  Berlin  there  have  been 
differences,  frankly  acknowledged  and  openly  aired,  about  how 
best  to  deal  with  the  Russians.  Nor  in  this  continuing  diplomatic 
conversation  between  the  English-speaking  capitals  can  either  side 
claim  to  have  had  the  last  word.  Now  one,  now  the  other,  view  has 
prevailed.  Moreover,  where  so  much  of  the  disagreement  has  been 
tactical,  very  little  of  it  can  be  ascribed  consistently  to  an  "Ameri- 
can" or  to  a  "British  line".  For  these  reasons  a  detailed  analysis, 
even  if  practicable,  is  hardly  profitable.  There  are,  however,  perhaps 
two  differences  in  basic  British  and  American  attitudes  here  which 
are  sufficiently  sustained  and  important  to  merit  a  mention. 

The  first  proceeds  directly  from  geography  and  recent  experience. 
Britain  knows  herself,  by  reason  of  size  and  accessibility,  to  be 
more  directly  vulnerable  to  destruction  in  any  future  war  with  the 
U.S.S.R.  than  the  U.S.A.  would  be.  She  also  knows,  at  first  hand 
as  a  result  of  her  experiences  in  1940  and  after,  what  aerial  attack 
can  do  to  a  highly  urban  and  centralized  society.  Consequently  she 
has  no  illusions  about  the  possibility  of  surviving  a  war  waged  with 
nuclear  weapons.  I  am  not  aware  that  this  has  ever  led  her  to  in- 
dulge in  appeasement  of  Soviet  appetites  or  to  contemplate  the 
surrender  of  any  agreed  Anglo-American  interest.  But  it  has  given 
her  a  more  continuously  vivid  awareness  of  what  a  resort  to  war 
implies  and  provided  a  sharper,  more  urgent  edge  to  her  desires  for 
a  negotiated  settlement.  This,  at  least,  in  comparison  with  the 
attitudes  publicly  expressed  by  Americans  at  various  levels  below 
the  very  highest  peaks  of  authority;  it  is  at  least  arguable  that  when 
it  comes  to  the  conclusions  reached  by  the  ultimate  decision  makers 

167 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

in  London  and  Washington  there  has  been  much  less  to  choose 
than  the  publics  of  each  country  have  sometimes  assumed. 

The  second  difference  springs  as  much  from  national  tempera- 
ment and  tradition  as  from  specific  experience;  Americans  lay 
greater  stress  on  Communism  per  se  as  the  enemy,  Britons  worry 
less  about  the  ideology  and  show  a  greater  readiness  to  accept  the 
faiis  accomplis  of  Communist  regimes.  Manifestations  of  this  occur 
at  least  as  far  back  as  the  October  Revolution.  Britain  recognized 
the  Russian  Communist  regime  in  1924,  the  U.S.A.  not  until  1933. 
The  war  intensified  the  contrast;  Russia,  as  a  result  of  Hitler's 
aggression,  became  an  effective  war  ally  in  June,  1941,  when  the 
U.S.A.  was  still  nominally  at  peace;  the  Anglo-Russian  Treaty  of 
May,  1942,  never  had  any  American  counterpart.  Yet,  as  we  have 
seen,  when  the  war  ended  the  real  distance  between  Washington 
and  Moscow  was  no  greater  than  that  between  London  and  Moscow 
and  it  was,  in  fact,  a  British  leader  who  sounded  the  tocsin  at 
Fulton,  Missouri,  in  March,  1946.  There  ivere  innate  American 
and  Russian  afiinities,  as  many  observers,  from  Tocqueville  on- 
wards, have  amply  demonstrated.  But  they  did  not  develop.  Their 
place  was  taken,  for  obvious  reasons,  by  a  persistent  rivalry  and 
also,  for  less  obvious  reasons  whose  analysis  lies  beyond  our  scope, 
by  a  feeling  of  moral  revulsion  and  often  total  detestation.  The 
result  was  to  g\ye  to  American  policy,  where  Russia  was  concerned, 
the  air  of  a  moral  crusade.  This  note  was  seldom  struck  in  Britain, 
where  emphasis  fell  more  often  on  the  Russian-ness  of  the 
U.S.S.R.'s  foreign  policy,  on  its  continuity  with  Tsarist  imperialism, 
on  its  traditionalist  obsessions  with  "warm  water"  or  with  the 
German  menace  or  the  Levant  or  Persia.  Similarly  with  the  satel- 
lites of  Eastern  Europe;  the  British  were  readier  to  accept  their 
Communist  governments  as  a  distasteful  but  apparently  unavoidable 
cordon  sanitaire  between  the  U.S.S.R.  and  the  West,  and  were  less 
reluctant  to  grant  them  official  recognition  and  even  to  do  business, 
commercial  and  cultural,  even  if  not  ideological,  with  puppet  ad- 
ministrations which  they  despised  but  which  they  saw  no  way  to 
remove  short  of  all-out  war.  The  Americans  more  obviously  chafed 
at  having  to  accept  the  blatant  violations  of  solemn  Soviet  under- 
takings and  of  every  human  right  which  these  regimes  represented 
and  made  little  or  no  attempt  to  find  a  t72odus  vivendi  with  the 
worst  of  them. 

168 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

It  would  be  easy  to  document,  by  chapter  and  verse,  these  diver- 
gencies of  national  attitude  to  European  Communism,  and  it  would 
be  idle  to  deny  that  official  policies,  in  each  country,  owed  some- 
thing to  the  different  temperatures  of  popular  feeling  which  these 
attitudes  generated.  Yet  if  regard  be  paid  solely  to  what  was  done 
by  the  governments  of  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.,  ignoring  what  was 
so  profusely  said,  the  ensuing  discrepancies  will  be  found  to  be 
comparatively  minor.  Even  under  the  most  explicit  apologist  for 
the  moral  line,  John  Foster  Dulles,  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  sub- 
stance of  American  policy  towards  tht  U.S.S.R.  was  significantly 
different  from  that  of  Britain.  Admittedly  Dulles's  weight  was 
thrown  against  a  summit  meeting,  with  the  result  that  the  Geneva 
encounters  of  1955  did  not  take  place  until  Britain's  most  vocal 
advocate  of  "summitry",  Winston  Churchill,  had  retired  from 
office.  Admittedly  too,  Dulles  delayed  the  Camp  David  encounter 
between  Mr.  Khrushchev  and  President  Eisenhower  in  the  autumn 
of  1959  (though  he  had  acquiesced  in  it  before  his  resignation  in 
April).  But  if  regard  be  had  to  the  subject  matter  of  the  negotia- 
tions rather  than  to  the  timing  or  the  form  of  them  it  is  demon- 
strable that  at  neither  of  these  meetings,  nor  yet  at  the  subsequent 
"summits"  of  Paris  in  I960  and  Vienna  in  1961,  was  there  any 
substantial  disagreement  between  Britain  and  the  United  States  on 
the  terms  which  should  be  offered  or  accepted.  Moreover  such 
differences  as  there  were  owed  little  or  nothing  to  any  distinction 
between  a  crusading  and  a  pragmatic  approach.  All  the  evidence 
suggests  that  when  it  came  to  the  clinch,  in  each  of  these  unhappy 
encounters,  it  was  the  real,  not  the  rhetorical,  interests  of  the  West 
which  President  and  Prime  Minister  resolutely  defended  and  that 
there  was  no  substantial  difference  in  the  interpretation  which  each 
negotiator  put  upon  them.  In  any  case,  with  the  waning  of  Mc- 
Carthyism  in  the  United  States,  the  sobering  shocks  of  sputnik  and 
the  U-2  fiasco,  less  was  heard  of  anti-Communist  crusades  even  in 
Congress  or  on  the  hustings  and  with  the  arrival  of  the  Kennedy 
administration  realism,  patience  and  caution  seem  to  have  emerged 
as  the  dominant  notes  of  American  anti-Communism.  There  was 
thus  perhaps  in  1962  less  divergence,  in  style  or  substance,  between 
the  Russian  policies  of  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  than  at  any  time  since 
the  creation  of  N.A.T.O.  in  1948-9. 

Yet  this,  paradoxically,  co-existed  with  a  considerably  lowered 

169 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

vitality  in  N.A.T.O.  itself.  For  that  there  were  many  reasons,  some 
of  which  have  been  touched  on  earlier,  but  it  would  be  dishonest 
not  to  recognize  that  the  working  of  the  Anglo-American  partner- 
ship was  one  of  them.^  We  have  noted  the  contradiction  that  was 
built  into  N.A.T.O.  at  its  very  inception,  that  though  a  multi- 
nation  alliance  in  form,  its  essential  strength  was  derived  from  the 
possession  by  one  member  of  a  deterrent  denied  to  the  rest  and 
uncontrolled  by  them.  So  long,  however,  as  the  U.S.A.  also  made 
its  full  contribution  in  conventional  forces  this  constituted  no  weak- 
ness in  the  alliance — was  indeed  an  extra  source  of  strength.  It  was 
when  the  doctrine  of  "massive  retaliation"  with  non-consultative 
overtones  was  advertised  that  the  problems  created  by  the  nuclear 
deterrent  began  to  corrode  the  alliance.  When  Britain,  by  unaided 
efforts,  broke  the  American  monopoly  of  the  deterrent  and  de- 
veloped subsequently  its  own  variant  of  reliance  on  the  nuclear 
weapon  solidarity  was  further  impaired.  The  French  acquisition  of 
an  atomic  bomb  took  the  process  of  disintegration  a  step  further. 

The  British  deterrent,  though  independently  obtained,  admitted 
her,  as  we  have  seen,  to  a  sharing  of  American  atomic  secrets.  This 
was  mistakenly  understood,  amongst  many  members  of  N.A.T.O., 
conspicuously  France,  as  constituting  the  basis  of  the  distinctive 
Anglo-American  partnership;  as  such  it  stimulated  the  demand  for 
each  member  to  have  his  own  deterrent  and  so  to  gain  admission 
to  the  "atomic  club",  or  else  for  the  creation  of  a  N.A.T.O.  deter- 
rent, whatever  exactly  that  might  mean.  But  although  certain 
admitted  benefits  did  accrue  to  Britain  in  her  relations  with  the 
U.S.A.  from  the  possession  of  a  deterrent  of  her  own,  it  was  not 
from  this  that  the  "special  relationship"  (if  indeed  it  was  "special") 
derived  its  speciality.  It  did  not  even  derive  it  from  the  partnership 
which  preceded  the  British  deterrent — the  availability  of  Britain  as 
the  unsinkable  aircraft  carrier  for  S.A.C.  Valuable  as  this  was  for 
American  strategy,  this  was  not  a  unique  service  which  Britain 
rendered;  other  S.A.C.  bases  were  soon  established  in  Europe,  Asia 
and  Africa  in  countries  none  of  which  acquired  thereby  a  larger 
voice  in  the  alliance.  What  then  was  the  essential  nature  of  Britain's 
relationship  with  the  U.S.A.  during  these  years  and  from  what  did 
it  derive? 

^  Though  paradoxically  it  was  also  the  axis  around  which  the  rest 
of  NATO  largely  revolved. 

170 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

There  was  one  thing  which  it  was  not;  it  was  not  a  treaty  rela- 
tionship. The  only  important  treaty  relationships  which  Britain  has 
or  has  had  with  the  U.S.A.  since  the  war  are  the  familiar  anti- 
Communist,  multilateral  ones  of  which  N.A.T.O.  is  both  the  proto- 
type and  the  most  successful  example.  There  arc  indeed  bilateral 
agreements  in  plenty^  and  some  of  these  admit  Britain  to  a  pre- 
ferred, exclusive  defence  relationship,  mainly  those  relating  to 
atomic  energy.  But  even  the  most  cherished — or  envied — of  these 
cannot  be  said  to  be  the  basis  on  which  rests  the  close  understanding 
between  London  and  Washington.  They  are  the  results,  not  the 
causes,  of  that  understanding.  And  not  surprisingly,  therefore,  the 
intimate  consultation  which  is  the  best  expression  of  that  under- 
standing does  not  proceed  through  the  channels  established  by  any 
of  these  written  undertakings,  not  even  those  of  N.A.T.O.  itself. 
To  go  back  to  the  distinction  made  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter, 
any  especial  intimacy  which  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  maintain  in 
their  anti-Communist  operations  and  organizations  derives  essen- 
tially from  a  community  of  interests  which  is  both  logically  and 
chronologically  prior  to  it.^ 

More  surprising  perhaps  than  the  reluctance  to  codify  the  rela- 
tionship in  a  treaty  is  the  stubborn  refusal  to  incorporate,  or  even 
symbolize,  it  in  an  institution.  The  United  States  may  not  be  a 
country  of  very  strong  institutional  growths,  but  Britain  is,  in 
almost  all  departments  of  its  national  life.  Yet  there  is  no  Anglo- 
American  equivalent  of  the  Commonwealth  Prime  Ministers'  Con- 
ference, or  even  of  that  shadowy  wraith,  the  Council  of  Europe. 
There  are  indeed  Anglo-American  institutions  a-plenty,  but  they 
are  all  private  associations,  smiled  on  sometimes  by  governments, 
patronized  by  officials,  but  never  claiming  to  represent  legislatures 

^  A  list  of  them  is  provided  in  Appendix  A. 

2  Although  at  a  thousand  points  co-operation  in  the  North  Atlantic 
and  other  alliances  has  intensified  that  community  of  interests,  in  one 
important  sense  it  has  actually  proved  an  embarrassment  for  it.  As 
loyal  allies  with  the  rest,  both  Britain  and  the  United  States  have 
repeatedly  had  to  disavow  in  public  an  intimacy  which  they  enjoy  in 
private.  Indeed  their  characteristic  posture  is  often  that  of  the  laconic 
heroes  of  Victorian  boys'  fiction  whose  amity  is  best  expressed  in  a 
silent  hand-clasp  and  averted  gaze,  with  perhaps  only  the  occasional 
tribute,  at  a  Pilgrims,  or  English- Speaking  Union  dinner,  of  a  tear 
dashed  away  from  a  manly  blushing  cheek. 

171 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

or  executives  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  nearest  both  sides 
have  ever  come  to  creating  such  an  embodiment  of  their  relation- 
ship is  in  the  recurrent  meetings  of  President  and  Prime  Minister, 
first  instituted  by  Roosevelt  and  Churchill  in  the  war,  then  largely 
intermitted  by  Truman  and  Attlee,  but  subsequently  resumed  with 
an  increasing  frequency,^  However,  important  as  these  encounters 
are,  they  are  not  by  any  means  distinctive  or  exclusively  Anglo- 
American;  they  are  only  the  application  to  that  relationship  of  a 
diplomatic  technique  which  the  aeroplane  has  made  possible  and, 
because  possible,  obligatory  for  heads  of  state  everywhere.  Though 
by  their  frequency  or  otherwise  they  provide  a  rough  indication  of 
the  intimacy  of  consultation  at  the  highest  levels  between  London 
and  Washington,  it  is  a  very  rough  indication  indeed.  If  we  had  a 
chart  of  the  telephone  calls  between  Number  Ten  and  the  White 
House  that  would  tell  us  a  good  deal  more. 

The  fact  is  that  the  distinctive  feature  of  the  Anglo-American 
relationship,  so  far  as  governments  are  concerned,  exists  at  a  much 
more  mundane  level.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the  generally  informal, 
frequently  unofficial  co-operation  that  has  grown  up  as  a  kind  of 
second  nature  between  civil  servants  and  diplomats  on  each  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  based  on  an  experience  of  mutual  trust  and  a  joint 
pragmatic  approach  to  common  problems,  the  whole  over-arched 
by  a  sense  of  common  interests  and  common  values — and,  of  course, 
enormously  facilitated  by  the  use  of  a  common  language.  In 
London  and  Washington — and  indeed  in  many  other  capitals  where 
British  and  American  officials  find  themselves  working  together — 
this  often  finds  expression  in  committee  meetings  at  a  departmental 
level  which  provide  for  regular  consultation  and  discussion  over  a 
wide  range  of  matters  of  common  concern.  However  even  in  these 
it  is  not  necessarily  in  the  formal  confrontation  over  minutes  and 
agenda  papers  that  the  relationship  has  its  most  distinctive  ex- 
pression. A  seasoned  American  observer  has  given  his  impression 
of  what  this  means  where  defence  is  concerned : 

"There  are  dozens  of  long,  vehement,  good-natured  talks 
between  diplomats  and  soldiers,  airmen  and  sailors  here,  in 
Washington  and  elsewhere.  Each  participant  carries  into  such 
discussions  all  his  national  prejudices.  But  each  is  also  conscious 

^  See  Appendix  B  for  a  list  of  such  meetings  to  date. 

172 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

of  the  over-riding  problem  of  winning  the  long  duel  with  the 
U.S.S.R.  to  the  extent  that,  in  the  small  hours,  the  two  national- 
ities often  merge  into  a  common  effort."^ 

What  Mr.  Middleton  says  about  the  diplomats  and  fighting  men 
could  equally  well  be  applied  to  the  economists  and  administrators. 
The  working  relationships  thus  established  not  only  guarantee  a 
smooth  discharge  of  decisions  arrived  at  at  the  highest  levels;  they 
reflect  and  create  a  climate  of  common  purpose  and  frank  dis- 
cussion. Consequently  they  persist,  by  a  healthy  momentum  of  their 
own,  even  when,  as  at  Suez,  rupture  and  conflict  impair  the  func- 
tioning of  "the  highest  levels".  There  is  thus  a  kind  of  Anglo- 
American  Gulf  Stream  whose  flow  is  little  affected  by  the  tempests 
which  may  disturb  the  Atlantic  surface. 

To  say  this  is  not  to  ignore  certain  evident  differences  in  the 
British  and  American  ways  of  doing  business  which  show  up  in  the 
deliberations  of  officials  no  less  than  in  the  encounters  of  private 
persons.  The  government  which  the  British  official  represents  is 
comparatively  small,  trim  and  tidy,  close-knit  in  its  operations, 
internally  fairly  disciplined  and  co-operative,  equally  seasoned  in 
all  its  important  parts  and  generally  stable  both  in  its  internal  com- 
position and  in  its  relationship  to  parliament  and  the  country.  The 
American  executive  by  contrast  is  large,  loose,  even  sprawling,  set 
by  the  Constitution  and  still  more  by  the  facts  of  the  society  it 
serves  under  the  jurisdiction  of  two  masters,  the  President  and 
Congress,  fluid  in  its  individual  memberships  and  fluctuating  in  its 
popular  support.  The  one  enjoys  privacy,  the  other  lives  always  on 
the  frontier  of  publicity.  Hardly  surprising  therefore  if  the  com- 
bined functioning  of  two  such  entities,  or  of  their  representatives, 
gives  rise  to  a  sufficiency  of  those  frictions,  flurries,  leaks,  dropped 
catches,  or  missed  goals  which  form  the  frequent  gossip  of  the 
official  capitals  and  supply  much  of  the  material  for  newspapers. 
The  most  obvious  operational  weaknesses  are  likely,  for  the  reasons 
listed  above,  to  be  on  the  American  side,  and  to  be  most  amply 
documented  in  Washington.  It  is,  however,  worth  remembering 

^  Drew  Middleton  in  Neiv  York  Times ^  25  February,  1960. 

2  As  Mr.  James  Reston  once  pointed  out,  "the  Department  of  State 
has  been  in  a  constant  state  of  reorganization  ever  since  World  War 
11":  New  York  Times,  20  November,  1956. 

173 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

that  in  such  a  relationship  the  too  smooth  functioning  of  a  too  pro- 
fessional team  may  carry  hazards  of  its  own  as  great  as  the  unco- 
ordinated "playing  by  ear"  of  the  amateurs.  What  is  elegant  and 
intellectually  satisfying  in  Whitehall  may  wear  quite  another 
appearance  in  Washington;  in  a  fast-changing  world  there  are  no 
absolute  experts,  in  administration  or  anything  else,  and  the  Ameri- 
can contribution  often  gains  a  creative  edge  from  its  very  unpro- 
fessionalism.  Moreover,  unified  as  the  Whitehall  team  may  be,  it 
seldom  plays  alone;  the  Commonwealth  partners,  whose  significance 
has  been  earlier  remarked,  sometimes  complicate  life  for  American 
negotiators  who  are  accustomed  to  seeing  such  relationships  in  the 
comparatively  orderly  form  of  the  federal  structure.  To  find,  as  the 
leader  of  an  alliance,  exactly  when  to  speak  and  what  to  say  to  all 
the  members  of  the  Commonwealth  on  the  matter  of  a  developing 
negotiation  which  concerns  them  all,  but  not  all  equally — that  is  as 
pretty  a  problem  for  the  American  diplomat  as  any  that  the  Ameri- 
can separation  of  powers  creates  for  the  British.  For  Britain  too, 
as  her  maternal  authority  wanes  in  a  world  where  parents  are  not 
what  they  used  to  be,  there  are  problems  whenever  she  has  to 
negotiate  with  the  United  States  on  matters  that  affect  other 
members  of  the  Commonwealth  as  well  as  herself.  Even  the 
"Canadian  bridge",  valuable  as  it  often  is,  can  sometimes  become  a 
"clover-leaf"  on  which  the  traffic  has  got  into  the  wrong  lanes. ^ 

1  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  we  have  so  litde  record  of  what 
the  Anglo-American  partnership  is  hke  at  this  working  level.  One  of 
the  few  accounts  of  it  written  from  within  is  that  provided  by  Sir 
Erich  Roll  in  The  Combined  Food  Board,  Stanford,  1956.  He  sums  up 
his  impressions  as  follows  (p.  306): 

"Some  commentators  have  stressed  the  effectiveness  of  the  British, 
Combined  Board  team  and  have  compared  it  favourably  with  that  of 
the  American.  It  is  true  that  more  of  the  initiative  came  from  the 
British  side  and  that  with  much  smaller  numbers  the  British  were  able 
at  the  least  to  equal  the  American  contribution.  But  this  is  hardly 
surprising.  Here  was  a  small,  compact  team,  having  at  its  disposal  an 
amalgam  of  different  qualities  which  a  picked  staff  of  varied  antece- 
dents was  able  to  contribute,  depending  upon  a  highly  refined  and 
efficient  machine  at  home,  never  in  doubt  either  as  to  its  broad  objec- 
tives or  as  to  the  limits  of  its  discretion  on  immediate  issues,  having 
undivided  responsibility  over  the  entire  field  and,  above  all,  because 
of  the  general  character  of  combined  machinery  in  Washington,  exert- 
ing considerable  influence  in  the  councils  at  home.  It  would  have  been 

174 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

For  these  and  for  other  reasons  this  crucial  "middle  level"  co- 
operation in  the  Anglo-American  field  is  no  automatic,  self -regulat- 
ing mechanism.  It  requires  all  the  skill  and  devotion  which  its 
practitioners  can  bring  to  it  and  all  the  guidance  and  stimulus 
which  are  provided  by  the  wider,  extra-governmental  Anglo- 
American  community  of  which  it  is  merely  a  partial  expression. 


astonishing,  indeed,  if  in  these  circumstances  it  had  not  acquitted  itself 
well.  What  is  far  more  remarkable  is  the  speed  with  which  the  American 
members,  many  of  whom  were  necessarily  less  experienced  in  these 
matters,  were  able,  whenever  the  basic  issue  of  their  relations  to 
national  responsibility  and  power  was  successfully  resolved,  to  operate 
with  ease  and  assurance.  It  is  true  that  there  were  some  "tricks  of  the 
trade"  in  combined  procedure,  such  as  methods  of  preparing  meetings 
and  papers,  co-ordination  of  instructions,  effective  liaison  inside  and 
out,  and  all  the  other  paraphernalia  of  smooth  administration  in  which 
the  British  were  more  at  home.  But  there  too  the  Americans  quickly 
learned;  and  on  the  major  question  of  processing  issues  for  decision, 
there  was  not,  in  the  outcome,  any  particular  advantage  on  the  British 
side. 

"The  British  may  claim  to  have  helped  improve  the  United  States 
machinery  at  least  by  example,  though  sometimes  by  the  kind  of  direct 
precept  which  is  permissible  among  friends  and  allies — an  achievement 
which  is  by  no  means  diminished  by  the  fact  that  it  was  based  on  a  sort 
of  enlightened  self-interest.  The  British  soon  learned  that  their  main 
concern  was  not  in  gaining  some  quick  short-term  advantage,  but 
rather  that  lasting  benefit  to  themselves  (and  to  the  common  cause) 
depended  upon  the  effectiveness  of  the  combined  machine  and  thus 
upon  the  effectiveness,  day  in,  day  out,  of  the  United  States  machine. 
Clarification  and,  where  appropriate  concentration  of  responsibility  of 
the  American  side,  even  if  it  tended  in  the  short  run  to  militate  against 
some  desirable  United  Kingdom  objective,  was  in  itself  desirable,  since 
it  would  be  bound  to  lead  to  more  effective  co-operation  in  the  long 
run. 

"In  aU  this  the  Canadians  played  an  extremely  useful  part.  Being 
fortunate  in  possessing  a  governmental  machine  which  seemed  to 
combine  the  best  features  of  the  British  with  the  best  of  the  American, 
closely  tied  politically  and  economically  (in  food  particularly)  to  the 
United  Kingdom,  yet  having  powerful  bonds  also  with  the  United 
States  and  being  often  faced  with  very  similar  domestic  repercussions 
of  international  decisions,  they  were  able  to  make  most  valuable,  and 
at  times,  decisive,  contributions  to  finding  solutions  that  were  accept- 
able to  all ..." 

175 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Fortunately  for  its  good  health,  the  part  it  expresses  is  quite  a  good 
deal  of  the  whole,  as  the  common  concerns  of  British  and  American 
governments  have  come  to  range  far  beyond  the  traditional 
province  of  diplomacy.  An  eloquent  symbol  of  this  is  provided 
by  the  British  Embassy  in  Washington  which  has  added  to  the 
country  house  elegance  of  the  original  Lutyens  building  a  far  larger, 
frankly  utilitarian  Chancery  block  which  handles  the  day-to-day 
office  work  of  a  microcosm  of  Whitehall.  Behind  this  brick  and 
glass  fagade  almost  600  persons,  the  largest  embassy  staff  in  Wash- 
ington, are  engaged  not  primarily  in  "representation"  as  it  was 
once  known,  nor  yet  in  "negotiation",  but  in  the  task  of  maintain- 
ing contact  with  their  American  opposite  numbers  over  what  is 
virtually  the  entire  field  of  British  government — from  agriculture 
to  the  West  Indies.  In  London  an  even  larger  (and  considerably 
more  elegant)  structure  in  Grosvenor  Square  houses  an  equivalent 
range  of  American  officials  discharging  a  similar  function  in  rela- 
tion to  their  opposite  numbers.  What  the  activities  of  these  practi- 
tioners are  helping  to  create  is  hardly  indeed,  in  the  conventional 
sense  of  the  term,  an  alliance  at  all;  it  is  more  nearly  a  community. 
Viewed  from  London,  in  1945  or  1946,  this  community  or  alli- 
ance had  two  principal  functions  to  discharge.  The  first  was  to  pro- 
vide American  aid  in  restoring  Britain's  war-crippled  economy  and 
in  reconstructing  a  ruined  Europe.  The  second  was  to  prevent  any 
return  to  American  isolationism  and  to  guarantee  that  American 
power  would  be  mobilized  to  check  Russian  expansionism.  Looking 
back  over  the  fifteen  years  that  followed,  it  is  evident  that  both 
objectives  have  been  realized.  Thanks  in  part  to  the  Financial 
Agreements  of  1946,  but  more  more  to  the  European  Recovery  and 
Mutual  Aid  Programmes,  the  United  Kingdom  and  Western 
Europe  both  found  themselves  enjoying  a  higher  degree  of  pros- 
perity than  they  had  ever  known,  with  economies  resting  on  far 
more  stable  foundations  than  in  1938.  Thanks  largely  to  the  first 
Truman  administration  and  contemporary  Republican  leadership  in 
the  Senate,  American  isolationism  was  routed  and  by  successive 
stands,  over  Greece  and  Turkey,  over  Berlin,  over  the  North 
Atlantic  Treaty,  over  Korea,  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  and 
largely  in  the  world  outside,  was  held.  In  the  process  of  so  doing 
a  new  relationship  had  developed  between  Britain  and  the  United 
States.  Though  the  U.S.A.  had  assumed  many  of  the  global  defence 
burdens  which  had  previously  been  Britain's,  it  was  no  longer  a 

176 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

relationship  merely  of  British  dependence  upon  American  strength. 
There  was  also  an  American  recognition  of  her  need  for  an  ally 
who  maintained  some  structure  of  order  in  a  generally  chaotic 
world  and  could  even  assist  in  the  defence  of  the  United  States.  In 
the  pre-sputnik  era  she  had  helped  to  keep  America's  frontier  on 
the  further  side  of  the  Atlantic;  in  the  post-sputnik  era  of  over- 
leaped frontiers  she  could  still  house  weapons  of  deterrence  that 
lost  their  efficacy  if  housed  in  America  itself. 

But  as  the  racing  minute  hand  of  invention  passed  from  A-bomb, 
through  H-bomb,  to  I.C.B.M.,  the  conviction  intensified  in  London 
and  in  Washington  that  the  protection  afforded  by  the  new  weapons 
was  fragile  indeed.  They  were  a  sword  hardly  less  perilous  to  wield 
than  to  be  smitten  by.  The  result  was  a  fresh  search  for  some  point 
of  detente  with  the  Soviets  and,  if  possible,  some  agreed  and  con- 
trolled disarmament.  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.  had  their  differences 
of  tempo  and  technique  over  this,  which  did  not  frustrate  (even 
though  they  sometimes  obscured)  the  parallelism  of  their  ap- 
proaches. A  great  deal  of  diplomatic  history  of  the  late  fifties  is 
made  up  of  the  details  of  abortive  Anglo-American  negotiations 
with  the  Russians,  but  for  any  student  of  the  alliance  two  points 
stand  out.  The  first,  that  the  Russians  never  got  anywhere  in 
their  endeavours  to  divide  Britain  and  America;  the  second,  that 
Britain  and  America  never  got  very  far  in  their  search  for  a  settle- 
ment. At  most  they  only  learnt  to  Yxmq.  with  their  problem  and 
hoped  it  would  be  willing  to  live  with  them. 

Similarly  in  the  economic  field  the  relationship  between  the 
United  Kingdom  and  the  United  States  had  moved  away  from  the 
simple  dependence  of  poor  debtor  on  rich  creditor.  The  huge  dis- 
crepancy of  wealth  and  resources  remained,  but  Britain  now  stood 
reasonably  firmly  on  her  own  feet,  capable  of  being  an  active 
partner,  not  a  mere  protege,  in  the  tasks  of  economic  leadership 
that  the  Atlantic  Alliance  had  to  undertake  around  the  world. 
Meanwhile  a  Western  Europe,  revitalized  in  large  part  by  American 
(and  indeed  British)  efforts,  had  emerged  as  a  new  bastion  of 
economic,  and  so  potentially  of  political,  strength.  Whether  the 
European  Economic  Community  developed  as  a  "third  Force"  or 
as  a  counterbalancing  but  still  integrated  element  in  the  Atlantic 
Alliance  depended  on  the  relationship  which  first  Britain  and  then 
the  U.S.A.  succeeded  in  establishing  with  it.  To  the  simple  concept 
of  "integrating  Europe"  was  now  being  added  in  the  U,S,A,  a 

M  177  ' 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

new  and  sophisticated  awareness  of  the  need  to  prevent  any  new 
European  economic  block  from  being  exclusive  and  restrictionist. 
By  machinery  such  as  O.E.C.D,,  by  the  strengthening  of  interna- 
tional agencies  such  as  G.A.T.T.  and  the  Fund,  and  by  moves  in 
the  direction  of  a  freer  American  trading  policy,  it  was  hoped  to 
guarantee  that  the  economic  energies  of  the  new  Europe  would  be 
outward-flowing  throughout  the  Atlantic  area  and  beyond.  Britain, 
forced  at  last  to  contemplate  a  plunge  which  created  major  problems 
for  her  domestic  economy,  for  her  Commonwealth  relations  and 
for  her  associations  with  the  United  States,  was  bound  to  welcome 
an  American  interest  which  promised  active  participation  in  the 
venture.  There  was  at  last  a  good  prospect  that  if  Britain  went  in 
with  the  Six  she  would  not  be  committed  to  an  association  which 
would  weaken  historic  and  essential  transatlantic  links. 

Meanwhile,  however,  beyond  the  European  and  North  Atlantic 
areas,  a  new  world  had  grown  up,  as  different  in  many  ways  from 
the  world  of  1945  as  from  the  world  of  1938.  Its  dynamism  was 
variously  labelled  as  "anti-colonialism",  "anti-Western  national- 
ism" or  "the  revolution  of  rising  expectations",  though  none  of 
these  appelations  fully  described  its  character.  Two  things,  however, 
were  certain  about  it — that  it  gave  to  aggressive  Communism  a 
new  weapon  against  the  West  with  which  to  overleap  the 
N.A.T.O.,  C.E.N.T.O.  and  S.E.A.T.O.  walls,  and  also  that  the 
problems  it  presented  were  not  such  as  could  be  solved  by  any 
simple  resort  to  force,  as  in  Suez,  or  by  mere  metropolitanism,  as 
in  Algeria,  or  by  mere  aid,  as  in  Laos.  As  far  as  Britain  was  con- 
cerned, moreover,  though  she  had  won  important  interim  successes 
in  some  areas,  like  South-East  Asia  or  West  Africa,  it  was  apparent 
that  neither  here  nor  elsewhere,  as  in  the  Middle  East,  could  she — 
or  the  Commonwealth — ^provide  single-handed  a  solution  that  gave 
any  promise  of  permanence.  And  with  every  year  of  the  fifties  that 
passed  the  number  of  countries  so  affected  and  the  degree  of  their 
affection  increased. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  alliance  displayed  the  same  vitality, 
unity  and  creativeness  in  meeting  this  challenge  as  it  had  in  the 
great  days  between  1947  and  1950  which  saved  Western  Europe. 
Suez,  in  a  sense,  was  the  classic  expression  of  its  inadequacy.  In  the 
light  of  that  disaster,  however,  a  growing  awareness  had  developed 
in  Britain  and  America  of  the  shape  and  dimensions  of  the  task 
before   them.   The   Eisenhower-Macmillan   meeting  of  October, 

178 


THE  PARTNERSHIP 

1957,  and  the  N.A.T.O.  meeting  which  followed  it  gave  much 
currency  to  the  concept  of  "interdependence".  "The  countries  of  the 
free  world  are  interdependent  and  only  in  genuine  partnership,  by 
combining  their  resources  and  sharing  tasks  in  many  fields,  can 
progress  and  safety  be  found. "^  At  the  time  and  in  the  light  of  the 
actions  immediately  taken  this  was  primarily  understood  as  referring 
to  the  numbers  of  the  Anglo-American  alliance  and  beyond  them 
to  all  the  members  of  N.A.T.O.  But  it  soon  became  apparent  that 
the  words  were  susceptible  of  a  wider  meaning — and  that  in  fact 
they  needed  to  be  so  interpreted  if  the  essential  interests,  perhaps 
of  any  members,  but  certainly  of  Britain  and  the  U.S.A.,  were  to  be 
safeguarded.  In  a  shrinking  world  (and  an  expanding  U.N.)  the 
fortunes  and  preferences  of  the  so-called  "underdevelopeds"  were 
daily  acquiring  a  new  significance;  a  Northern  hemispheric  partner- 
ship which  left  out  of  account  the  emerging  South  would  soon  find 
itself  stalled  in  the  animosity  of  the  poor  and  the  wreckage  of  its 
own  most  essential  values.  Of  course,  neither  in  Britain  nor  else- 
where had  this  challenge  gone  wholly  by  default;  it  was  part,  at 
least,  of  the  historic  mission  of  the  Commonwealth.  But  the  fifties 
provoked  an  acceleration  of  pressures  so  great  as  to  constitute  a 
virtually  new  challenge  and  one  which  neither  Britain  nor  anyone 
else  could  meet  alone.  It  involved  both  the  elimination  of  the  last 
stigma  of  inferiority  that  attached  to  colonialism  and  the  extension 
to  other  parts  of  the  world  of  the  benefits  of  Western  technology. 
Britain,  with  the  legacy  of  the  greatest  imperial  power,  and  the 
United  States,  as  creator  and  manager  of  the  greatest  productive 
machine  in  history,  had  irresistible  commitments  here.  They  lab- 
oured also  under  painful  disabilities — a  tenacious  tradition  of  colour 
prejudice  in  both  societies,  an  adherence  in  Britain,  often  in  unex- 
pected quarters,  to  outmoded  attitudes  and  incompatible  interests, 
the  prevalence  in  America  of  simpliste  approaches,  political  or 
administrative,  to  situations  of  historic  complexity.  But  they  also 
enjoyed  certain  assets  derived  from  their  history  and  the  nature  of 
their  society.  Their  democratic  and  liberal  traditions  offered  the 
best  guarantees  available  to  human  fraility  that  they  would  sub- 
ordinate sectional  interests  to  a  wider  view  and  learn  some  at  least 
of  the  lessons  of  experience.  The  United  States  had  resources,  in- 
ventiveness, generosity  and  elan;  Britain  had  the  partnership  of  the 

^  Communique  of  the  Eisenhower-Macmillan  meetings,  25  October, 
1957. 

179 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Commonwealth  and  a  tradition  of  administrative  pragmatism.  In 
combination,  these  assets  and  these  attitudes  offered  a  fair  chance 
that  the  size  of  the  problem  would  be  realized  and  a  serious  effort 
would  be  made  to  find  a  solution.  It  could  not  be  an  exclusively 
Anglo-American  solution.  It  would  require  the  co-operation  of 
Europe,  the  mediation  of  international  agencies,  the  admission  even 
of  the  clients  to  an  equality  with  their  patrons.  But  without  the 
partnership  of  Britain  and  America  it  was  fairly  certain  that  no 
peaceful  solution  would  be  found. 


180 


APPENDIX  A 

Principal  Treaties  and  Agreements  between  the 

British  and  United  States  Governments, 

June,  1945  to  December,  1960 

(References  are  to  the  Treaty  Series  and  to  Command  Papers, 
HMG=Her  Majesty's  Government  and  USG  =  Government  of 

the  U.S.A.) 

T.S.  No.  17  (1946)  Agreements  between  the  Governments  repre- 
Cmd.  6837  sented  at  the  Bermuda  Telecommunications 

Conference.  Bermuda,  4  Dec,  1945. 

T.S.  No.  53  (1946)  Financial  Agreements   between   HMG   and 
Cmd.  6968  USG.  Washington,  6  Dec,  1945. 

T.S.  No.  3    (1946)  Final  Act  of  the  Aviation  Conference  and 
Cmd.  6747  •   Agreements  between  HMG  and  USG  relating 

to  Air  Services.  Bermuda,  11  Feb.,  1946. 

T.S.  No.  13  (1946)   Settlement  for  Lend-Lease,  Reciprocal  Aid, 
Cmd.  6813  Surplus  War  Property  and  Claims.  Washing- 

ton, 27  March,  1946. 

T.S.  No.  41  (1948)  Economic  Co-operation  Agreement  between 
Cmd.  7469  HMG  and  USG.  London,  6  July,  1948. 

T.S.  No.  69  (1948)  Agreement  for  the  Establishment  of  the  U.S. 
Cmd.  7527  Educational  Commission  [so-called  Fulbright 

Commission]  in  the  U.K.  London,  22  Sept., 

1948. 

T.S.  No.  56  (1949)  North  Atlantic  Treaty.  Washington,  4  April, 
Cmd.  7789  1949 

T.S.  No.  13  (1950)  Mutual  Defence  Assistance  Agreement. 
Cmd.  7894  Washington,  27  Jan.,  1950. 

T.S.  No.  74  (1950)  Agreement   for   the   Establishment   in   the 
Cmnd.  8109  Bahama  Islands  of  a  Proving-Ground  for 

Guided  Missiles.  Washington,  21  July,  1950. 
181 


APPENDICES 


T.S.  No.  3 
Cmnd.  9363 

T.S.  No.  9 
Cmd.  8757 

T.S.  No.  63 
Cmnd.  265 

T.S.  No.  52 
Cmnd.  9555 

T.S.  No.  55 
Cmnd.  9560 

T.S.  No.  44 
Cmnd.  178 

T.S.  No.  14 
Cmnd.  406 

T.S.  No.  41 
Cmnd.  537 


T.S.  No.  24 
Cmnd.  1034 


(Extended  to  cover  additional  sites  by  further 
agreements  on  15  Jan.,  1952,  25  June,  1956 
and  1  April,  1957.) 

1955)  Status  of  Forces  Agreement  of  Parties  to  the 
North  Atlantic  Treaty.  London,  June  1 9, 1 951 . 

1953)  Agreement  to  Facilitate  the  Interchange  of 
Patents  and  Technical  Information  for  De- 
fence Purposes.  London,  19  Jan.,  1953. 

1957)  The  South-East  Asia  Collective  Defence 
Treaty.  Manila,  Sept.  8,  1954. 

1955)  Agreement  for  Co-operation  regarding 
Atomic  Information  for  Mutual  Defence 
Purposes.  Washington,  15  June,  1955. 

1955)  Agreement  for  Co-operation  on  the  Peaceful 
Uses  of  Atomic  Energy.  Washington,  15 
June,  1955. 

1957)  Agreement  amending  the  Financial  Agree- 
ments of  Dec.  6,  1945  (The  "Waiver"). 
Washington,  March  6,  1957. 

1958)  Exchange  of  Notes  Concerning  the  Supply  to 
the  U.K.  Government  of  I.R.B.Ms.  Washing- 
ton, 22  Feb.,  1958. 

1958)  Agreement  for  Co-operation  on  the  Uses  of 
Atomic  Energy  for  Mutual  Defence  Purposes. 
Washington,  3  July,  1958.  (amended  on  7 
May,  1959). 

1960)  Exchange  of  Notes  .  .  .  Setting  up  of  a  Ballis- 
tic Missile  Early  Warning  Station  in  the  U.K. 
London,  15  February,  1960. 


182 


APPENDIX  B 

Meetings  of  British  Prime  Ministers  and 

United  States  Presidents  since  World  War  II 


1945 
1950 
1952 
1953 

1954 
1955 

1956 
1957 


1958 
1959 

1960 

1961 


Nov.  10-16  Attlee — Truman 
Dec.  4-9       Attlee — Truman 
Jan.  5-22      Churchill — Truman 
Jan.  5-8        Churchill — Eisenhower 


at  Washington 
at  Washington 
at  Washington 
at  Washington 
Dec.  4-7  Churchill — Eisenhower — Laniel  at  Bermuda 
June  25-28    Churchill — Eisenhower  at  Washington 

July  17-23    Eden — Eisenhower — Faure 

— Bulganin  (Summit  Meeting)  at  Geneva 
Jan  30-Feb.  3  Eden — Eisenhower  at  Washington 

Mar.  21-24  Macmillan — Eisenhower        at  Bermuda 

Macmillan — Eisenhower        at  Washington 
Macmillan — Eisenhower  etc.  at  Paris 
(N.A.T.O.  Heads  of  Government) 
Macmillan — Eisenhower        at  Washington 
Macmillan — Eisenhower        at  Washington 
Aug.  27-Sept.  2  Eisenhower — Macmillan  at  London 
Mar.  27-29   Macmillan — Eisenhower        at  Washington 
Macmillan — Eisenhower 
Macmillan — Kennedy 
Macmillan — Kennedy 
Kennedy — Macmillan 
Macmillan — Kennedy 


Oct.  23-25 
Dec.  16-19 

June  7-11 
Mar.  19-23 


Sept.  27 
Mar.  26 
April  4-9 
June  4—5 
Dec.  12-22 


1962     April  28-29  Macmillan— Kennedy 


at  U.N. 
at  Key  West 
at  Washington 
at  London 
at  Bermuda 
at  Washington 


183 


APPENDIX  C 
British  Ambassadors  to  the  United  States 


Sir  Ronald  Lindsay 
The  Marquis  of  Lothian 
Viscount  Halifax 
Lord  Inverchapel 
Sir  OUver  Franks 
Sir  Roger  Makins 
Sir  Harold  Caccia 
Sir  David  Ormsby-Gore 


appointed  11  May,  1930 
29  Aug.,  1939 
22  Dec,  1940 
25  Jan.,  1946 
22  May,  1948 
31  Dec,  1952 
2  Nov.,  1956 
21  May,  1961 


American  Ambassadors  to  the  United  Kingdom 


Mr.  Joseph  P.  Kennedy 
Mr.  John  G.  Winant 
Mr.  W.  Averell  Harriman 
Mr.  Lewis  W.  Douglas 
Mr.  Walter  S.  Gifford 
Mr.  Winthrop  W.  Aldrich 
Mr.  John  Hay  Whitney 
Mr.  David  K.  E.  Bruce 


7  Jan.,  1938 

6  Feb.,  1941 
23  Mar.,  1946 
26  Feb.,  1947 

7  Dec,  1950 
2  Feb.,  1953 
7  Feb.,  1957 
2  Feb.,  1961 


184 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abadan,  114,  116-18 
Acheson,  Dean,  73-74,  79,  92 
Aden,  ,104 
Adenauer,    Konrad,     135,     146, 

150-51 
Africa,  124,  165,  170,  178 
Africa  Star,  116 
Aid,  U.K.,  Ill,  179 
-Aid,    U.S.    102-3,    148-9,    152, 

161-2,  176 
Aid,  U.S.  to  Europe,  43,  46-47, 

51-52,  145,  176 
Aid,  U.S.  to  India,  99  n. 
Aid,  U.S.  to  Middle  East,   105, 

111-13,  115,  117-18,  178 
Aid,    U.S.    to    U.K.    32,    36-40, 

155-7,  160,  176 
Alabama  Claims,  22 
Aleutians,  the,  71 
Algeria,  128,  133,  135,  178 
Ambassadors,  British  to  U.S.A., 

i9>  25,  30,  51,64,  143 
Ambassadors    U.S.    to    Britain, 

28-29,  64,  76 
Anderson,  Sir  John,  63 
Anderson,  Robert  B.,  152 
Anglo-American  financial  agree- 
ments 36-40,  42-43,  124,  141, 
155-6,  176 
Anglo-Canadian   financial   agree- 
ments, 36 
Anglo-Russian  Treaty,  168 
A.N.Z.U.S.  Pact,  85-86,  100 
Arabian- American  Oil  Co.,  104 
Arabs,  105,  11 1 

Atomic  energy  and  weapons,  1 5 , 
20,  50,  58  ff.,  76,  95,  124,  126- 
38,  152,  170-71,  177 


Attlee,  Clement,  42,  44,  55,  60- 
65,  68,  76,  125,  130,  138,  156, 
172 

Australia,  71,  82,  85-86,  90,  loi, 
103,  141 


Baghdad  Pact,  120 
Bahrain  Petroleum  Co.,  104 
Bases,  British  in  the  Middle  East, 

104,  no,  115-16,  120 
Bases,  British  in  South  East  Asia, 

102 
Bases,  U.S.  in  the  Phillipines,  102 
Bases,  U.S.  in  U.K.,  50-51,  68, 

1 3 1-2,  134-9,  141 
Bases,  U.S.  in  Middle  East,  104-5, 

115 
Belgium,  48 

BerHn,  50,  138,  152,  167,  176 
Bermuda,  30,  82,  120,  13 1-3 
Bevin,  Ernest,  36,  42-44,  46-49, 

109,  125,  142 
Bretton  Woods,  39 
British  Purchasing  Agency,  30 
Brussels  Treaty,  48-49,  56,  128 
Burma,  71,  83,  90  n.,  100,  106 
Butler,  R.  A.,  156 
Byrnes,  James  F.,  36 


Cambodia,  102 

Camp  David  Meeting,  169 

Canada,    55,    59,    63,    85  n.,    86, 

141,  154-5,  164,  174 
Cargo  Preference  Act,  160-61 
Casablanca  Conference,  60,  133 


187 


INDEX 


Central  Treaty  Organization 
(CE.N.T.O.),  105,  120,  166, 
178 

Ceylon,  74,  90,  100,  106 

Committee  for  European  Econo- 
mic   Cooperation    (C.E.E.C.), 

47,  51 
Chamberlain,  Neville,  25-30 
Chiang  Kai-Shek,  70,  73,  75,  83, 

87,97 
China,  72-76, 80-84,  87-89,  90-93, 

97-98,  loi,  103,  117,  159 
"China  Lobby",  87,  94-95 
Christmas  Island,  20,  69,  134  n 
Churchill,    Winston  S.,    26,    31, 

32-34,     36,     38,     42,     54-5  5, 
58-62,  68-69,  82,  85,  93,  96, 
117,  124,  138,  142-3,  167,  169, 
172 
ChurchiU's    Second    World    War 

quoted,  32,  59,  60 
Clark,  Gen.  Mark  W.,  80 
Clay,  Gen.  Lucius  D.,  48-49 
Colombo  Plan,  20,  100 
Colonialism  See  Imperialism 
Colonial  Development  Corpora- 
tion, 20 
Combined  Boards,  33,  3  5,i74n. 
Combined    Chiefs    of   Staff,    35, 

53,  71 

Combined  Policy  Committee, 
60-64 

Commonwealth,  19-21,  22,  72, 
74-75,  78,  82,  85-86,  90,  96-97, 
102,  121,  122-3,  140-42,  153, 
154,  161,  166,  171,  174,  178-80 

Communism,  47,  48,  54,  74, 
90-91,  100,  103, 178 

Communism,  U.K.  attitude  to- 
wards, 73,  77,  96,  166-9 

Communism,  U.S.  attitude  to 
wards,  67,  73,  75,  77,  94,  98, 


lOI,    107-8,  no,    112,    114,    120, 
160, 166-9 

Conant,  James  B,,  61 

Congress,  U.S.,  38-40,  43-45,  47, 
49,  61,  64-69,  77,  81,  84,  88, 
93-94,  99,  112,  133,  143,  150, 
157-61,  169,  173,  176 

Council  of  Europe,  142,  171 

Crimean  War,  122 

Cripps,  Sir  Stafford,  51 

Cromer,  Lord,  116 

Cunard  Steamship  Co.  160  n. 

Cyprus,  104 

Czechoslovakia,  29,  48 


Defence  White  Paper,  1957,  57, 

125-8,  131-2,  135 
Destroyer-bases  deal,  31 
Dewey,  Thomas  E.,  83,  144 
Dien-Bien-Phu,  93,  98 
Dillon,    Clarence   D,,    147,    150, 

152,  153  n. 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  116 
Dollar  Exports  Council,  163 
Dulles,  John  Foster,   56,  82-84, 

87-88,     92-93,     95-99,     115, 

117  ff.,  126,  147,  159,  169 


Eccles,  Sir  David,  146-7 
Economic  Cooperation  Admini- 
stration (E.C.  A.),  52 
Eden,  Sir  Antony,  25-29,  55-57, 

79,  84,  93,  95,  97-99,  1 10, 
114  n.,  115  ff,  123,  127 

Egypt,  29,  104  ff 

Eisenhower,  Dwight  D.,  34,  53, 
69,  87-89,  90,  92,  102,  no, 
1 14-15,  117-20,  123-6,  13 1-3, 
139,  144,  147,  150-52,  169,  178 

Eisenhower  Doctrine,  105, 1 19-20 


188 


INDEX 


Eniwetok,  69,  126  GifFord,  Walter,  76 

Ethiopia,  27  Glubb,  General  J.  B.,  105 

Euratom,  145  Greece,  29,  36,  41-45,  125,  156, 

Europe,  28-29,  34,  45-57,  7^,  95>  176 

99,  127  fF,  140  ff,  165,   178-80  Groves,  Gen.  Leslie  R.,  62,  64 
European    Defence    Community 

(E.D.C.),  5  5-5  7, 1 17, 140  n.,  145 

European  Economic  Community  ^^^*^^^'  ^ord,  28-29,  64 

(E.E.C.),     133,     144,     146-53,  Hall-Patch,  Sir  Edmund,  51 

163,  177  Hammarskjold,  Dag.,  125 

European  Free  Trade  Association  Harriman,  W.  AvereU,  43,  47,  5  2, 

(E.F.T.A.)  146-51  ^4 

European       Payments        Union  Henderson,  Loy,  115 

(E.P.U.),  141,  145  Hickenlooper,  Senator,  65-67 

European  RecoVery  Programme  hitler,  Adolf,  28-29,  32-33,  168 


(E,R.P.),  See  Marshall  Aid 

Far  East,  27-29,  70  ff 

Flynn,  Erroll,  71 

Ford  Motor  Co.,  163 

Formosa,  75,  82-84,  87-88,  90  n., 
98,  lOI 

Forrestal,  James,  43-45,  49-51 

France,  32,  46-48,  51-53,  55-57, 
76,  86,  90-91,  98,  loi,  105,  113, 
116,  118-19,  123,  127-8,  133-6, 

145-7,  150-52,  170 
Franks,  Lord,  19,  47,  51 
Fuchs,  Klaus,  67 
Fulton,  36,  167-8 
Fylingdales,  136 


Holland,  48 

Holy  Loch,  137 

Hong  Kong,  70,  74,  80-81,  88, 

lOO-IOI 

Hopkins,  Harry,  60 
Hull,  Cordell,  27,  155 

Imperialism,  British,  42,  70,  94, 
105,  no,  113-14,  116,  119,  129 

Imperialism,  French,  98 

India,  71-72,  74,  82-83,  87,  90, 
96-100,  102,  106,  no,  156,  161 

Indonesia,  36,  90,  1 00-101 

Indo-China,  90-93,  98-100,  117 

Iran,  36,  104-6,  113  ff.,  157,  168 

Iraq,  104,  106,  in,  120 

Ismay,  Lord,  52 

Isolationism,  U.S.,  26,  35,  176 

Israel,  See  Palestine 

Italy,  27,  47,  133-4 


Gandhi,  Mahatma,  97 

Gaulle,  Charles  de,   134-5,   146, 

1 5 1-2 
Geneva,  88,  95,  98-100,  103,  117, 

169 
George  VI,  30 
Germany,    25-31,    35,    42,    49^ 

54-56,   127,   133,   135,   145-7,     Johnson  Act,  26 

151,  162,  168  Jordan,  104-5,  m,  120 


Jameson  Raid,  122 
Japan,  27,  29,  70-72,  81-87,  9°  n-. 
94,98,  117,  154 


189 


INDEX 


Kashmir,  102  Maudling,  Reginald,  89  n. 

Kennedy,    John   F.,    89,    102-3,  Maxwell-Fyfe,  Sir  David,  5  5 

139  n.,  152-3,  158  Menon,  Krishna,  97 

Kennedy,  Joseph  P.,  28-29  Menzies,  Robert,  86 

Keynes,  John  M.,  37-38  Middle  East,  42,   104  ff.,    122-5, 
Key  West,  103  146,  178 

Khrushchev,  Nikita,  103,  147, 169  Missiles,  130-33,  177 

King,  Admiral,  33,  71  Modus  vivendi,  the,  66-67 

King,  Mackenzie,  63-64  Molotov,  M.,  36,  46 

Korean  War,  54,  75-81,  87,  91-92  Monroe  Doctrine,  71 

94-95,  97,  100,  125-6,  130,  145,  Monnet,  Jean,  147 


156,  176 


Laos,  87,  101-3,  178 

Ladjbird,  zj 

League  of  Nations,  74 

Lebanon,  36,  iii,  120,  134 

Lend-lease,  31,  32,  35-37,  155 

Libya,  104 

Lindsay,  Sir  Ronald,  2  5 

Lloyd,  Selwyn,  79,  125 

Lothian,  Lord,  30 


Montgomery,  Gen.,  33 
Morrison,  Herbert,  55,  83 
Mossaddeq,  Mohammed,  1 13-14, 

Munich,  29-30 

Murville,  Couve  de,  146-7 

Mutual  Aid,  33,  162,  176 


Nasser,  Gamal  Abdel,  1 16-17 
N.A.T.O.,  41,  47  ff.,  67,  72,  91, 
99-100,  127-8,  1 3 1-5,  140-41, 
143,  151-2,  162,  166,  169-71, 
176-9 
MacArthur,    Gen.    Douglas,    72,      Nautilus,  136 

75-79,  81  n.,  86  Nehru,  Jawaharlal,  72,  74,  96 

McCarthy,    Senator   Joseph,    67,      Neutrality  Acts,  U.S.,  26,  30 

75,  77,  81,  87,  169  New  Deal,  24,  27 

McMahon,  Act,  64-66,  69,   128,      New  England,  164 

133,  138  New  Zealand,  71,  82,  85-86,  loi, 

McMahon,  Senator,  61  103, 141 

Macmillan,  Harold,  88,  103,  120,      Nixon,  Richard,  119 
123-5,130-33,139,147,150-51,      North  Carolina,  164 


153,  178 
Malaya,  70,  78,  81,  85-86,  90-91, 

95,  100,  102,  103,  154 
Manchuria,  26,  70 
Manila,  loi 
Marshall,   Gen.    George   C,   43, 

46-49 
Marshall  Aid,  39,  41,  46  ff.,  66, 

141,  144-5,  148,  160,  176 


Nuclear  energy  See  Atomic 

Organization  for  Economic  Co- 
operation and  Development 
(O.E.C.D.),  149,  178 

Organization  for  European  Eco- 
nomic Cooperation  (O.E.E.C.), 
51-52,  141,  143,  145-9 


190 


INDEX 


Pakistan,  74,  90,  96-97,  100-02, 

105,  120 
Palestine,  29,  44-45,  104  fF 
Panama  Canal,  108,  116 
Panay,  27 
Pathet  Lao,  103 
Pearl  Harbor,  3  2 
Persia  See  Iran 
Persian  Gulf,  104-7 
Philippines,  the,  71-72,  86.  90  n., 

101-2 
Pleven  Plan,  5  5 
Poland,  29,  42 
Polaris  See  Missile 


Quebec  Agreement,  60-66,   129, 

138,  i39n 
Quebec  Conference,  60,  62 
Quemoy  and  Matsu,  87-88 


Radford,  Admiral  Arthur  W.,  93 

Rapacki  plan,  147 

Rayburn,  Sam,  40 

RB  47,  137-9 

Reston,  James,  117 

Ridgway,  Gen.  Matthew  B.,  78  n.. 

Roebuck  Committee,  122 

Roosevelt,   Franklin   D.,    25-31, 

33,  35-36,  58-62,  70,  96,  147, 

158,  172 


Sackville-West,  Sir  Lionel,  24 

Sandys,  Duncan,  131 

San  Francisco  Peace  Conference, 

83-84 
Santa  Lucia,  30 

Saudi  Arabia,  104-5,  iio-ii,  120 
Schuman  Plan,  142 
S.H.A.E.F.,  33 


S.H.A.P.E.,  53,  loi 

Shoosmith,  Gen.  S.  N.,  80 

Shin  well,  Emanuel,  80  n 

Simon,  Sir  John,  70,  74 

Singapore,  29,  70-71,  81,  85-86, 
102 

South-East  Asia  Treaty  Organi- 
zation (S.E.A.T.O.),  97-98, 
100-03,  120,  166,  178 

Spaak,  Paul-Henri,  133 

Spain,  29 

Sputnik,  132,  169,  177 

Stalin,  34-35,42,  126 

Stevens,  Sir  Roger,  1 1 5 

Stilwell,  Gen.  Joseph  W.,  70 

Stimson,  Henry,  62,  70,  74 

Strategic  Air  Command  (S.A.C.), 
50,  55,  68,  94,  loi,  105,  115, 
128,  130,  138,  141,  170 

Suez,  105-6,  108,  no,  113,  115  ff., 
122-5,  130-33,  145-6,  156,  157, 
173,  178 

Syria,  36,  134 


Thailand,  90  n.,  loi,  103 
Tibet,  87,  98 
Tizard,  Sir  Henry,  5  8 
Tocqueville,  Alexis  de,  168 
Trade,  U.K.,  20,  37,  39,  82-84, 

90,  124-5,  142,  146-53,  154-8, 

160-62,  164-5 
Trade,    U.K.    with    China,    74, 

80-82,  88-89,  159 
Trade,    U.S.,    105,    148,    150-52, 

154-6,  1 6 1-2,  164-5,  178 
Trinidad,  30 
Truman,  Harry  S.,  35-36,  42-43, 

45-49,  52,  54,  61-67,  75-76,  82, 

85,  87,  92,  109,  114,  138,  144, 

172,  176 


191 


INDEX 


Truman  Doctrine,  41  fF.,  108,  115 

Turkey,  29,  41,  45,  72,  75, 104-5, 

115,  120,  125,  134,  156,  176 


U-2,  137-9,  169 

United  Nations,  35-36,  39,  44-45, 
64-65,  74-79>  82,  89,  97,  loi, 
109,  113-14,  118-19,  123,  125, 
152,  156,  179 

U.S.S.R.,  27,  34-36, 42-43, 45-49> 
53-55,  59><^7,  72,74,  76-77,  82, 
89,  103,  104,  106-7,  no,  113, 
115,  117,  119,  129-32,  135-8, 
147,  159,  166-9,  ^73,  177 


Vandenberg,  Senator,  45,  65-67 
V-bombers,    53,    127-8,    130-31, 

136 
Vietnam,  98-100,  103 


War  Debts,  26 

Watkinson,  Harold,  136 

Welles,  Sumner,  25 

Western  Union,  48,  117,  142 

Wingate,  Orde,  71 

Woomera,  20 

World  War  I,  23,  26 

World  War  II,  12,  30  ff.,  58-63, 
70-71,  79.  82,  86,  94,  104, 
108-9,  133,  155,  168,  172 


Yalu  River,  76,  80 
Yorktown,  23 
Younger,  Kenneth,  84 
Yugoslavia,  43 


Zahedi,  General,  114,  117 
Zionists,  105,  108-9 
Zurich,  142 


Due 

Returned 

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Britain  and  the  U.  S.  A.  mam 
327.73N597bC.2 


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