A special relationship America, Britain and the international order since the Second World War -...

A 'Special Relationship'? America, Britain and the International Order Since the Second WorldWarAuthor(s): David ReynoldsReviewed work(s):Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 62, No. 1(Winter, 1985-1986), pp. 1-20Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Institute of International AffairsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2618063 .

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A 'special relationship'? America, Britain and the international order since

the Second World War

DAVID REYNOLDS-

A fortnight after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill arrived in the United States. For much of his three-week visit he stayed in the White House itself, engaged in lengthy and informal conversations with the President. On one occasion, so the story goes, Roosevelt was wheeled into his guest's room only to discover Churchill emerging from the bath-wet, glowing and completely naked. Disconcerted, FDR made as if to withdraw, but Churchill waved him back. 'The Prime Minister of Great Britain', he announced, 'has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.'1

Sir Winston denied the anecdote, but, true or not, it captures something of what is meant by the concept of an Anglo-American 'special relationship': an intimate, harmonious bond between the two nations celebrated on state occasions with suitably hyperbolic prose. Leaders as diverse as Churchill and Richard Nixon have used the term. Harold Wilson preferred to talk of a 'close relationship' while Margaret Thatcher has reaffirmed the 'extraordinary alliance'. Others, however, have dissented. Max Beloff, for instance, portrayed the notion of a special relationship as an agreeable British 'myth' to help cushion the shock of national decline, while Dean Acheson denounced it as a dangerous intellectual obstacle to acceptance of Britain's largely European role.2

Forty years on from 1945, what meaning, if any, should be attached to the concept of a postwar Anglo-American special relationship?

'Special relationship'-towards some definitions

Although used on both sides of the Atlantic, the term has been very much more prevalent in Britain than America. Churchill popularized and perhaps coined it in the

David Reynolds is a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Christ's College, Cambridge. The argument of this article was presented to the fifth Woodrow Wilson Center/Ditchley Foundation conference on 'The United States, Britain and Europe' in Washington in May 1985. The author is grateful to members of the conference for their comments and to Cambridge colleagues Zara Steiner, John Thompson and Ian Clark for helpful criticisms of a draft version.

1. Robert E. Sherwood, RooseveltandHopkins: an intimate history (New York: Harper Brothers, 1948), p. 442.

2. For examples of these and other views see the selections in Ian S. McDonald, ed., Anglo-American relations since the Second World War (New York: St Martin's, 1974). On the 'myth' see Max Beloff, 'The special relationship: an Anglo-American myth', in Martin Gilbert, ed., A century of conflict, 1850-1950: essays for A. J. P. Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966), pp. 151-71. Other discussions of the 'special relationship' include Coral Bell, The debatable alliance: an essay in Anglo-American relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1964); Bell, 'The "special relationship"', in Michael Leifer, ed., Constraints and adjustments in British foreign policy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 103-19; and A. E. Campbell, 'The United States and Great Britain: uneasy allies', in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner and David Brody, eds., Twentieth century American foreign policy (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1971), pp. 471-501.

0020-5850/86/1/0001-20 $3.00 (C) 1986 International Affairs



2 AMERICA, BRITAIN AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER

winter of 1945-6,3 but as an objective of British foreign policy it has been in continuous existence since early in the century. In September 1917, for instance, Lord Robert Cecil emphasized in a memo for his Cabinet colleagues that the Americans were at last 'taking a part in international European affairs' and 'they will soon begin to realise what vast power they have'. He noted that 'there is undoubtedly a difference between the British and the Continental view in international matters' and argued that 'if America accepts our point of view in these matters, it will mean the dominance of that point of view in all international affairs.' Cecil was hopeful this could be achieved because, 'though the American people are very largely foreign, both in origin and in modes of thought, their rulers are almost exclusively Anglo-Saxons, and share our political ideals.'4 Later in the century, Harold Macmillan (himself half-American by birth) expressed the same idea more elegantly when he spoke of Britain playing Greece to America's Rome-civilizing and guiding the immature young giant-a role he tried to act out alongside Kennedy in the early 1960s. Perhaps the most engaging formulation of what British policy-makers have really meant by the 'special relationship' is contained in an anonymous verse of 1945, when Britain was soliciting a postwar US loan:

In Washington Lord Halifax Once whispered to Lord Keynes: It's true they have the money bags But we have all the brains.5

In this sense, the notion of an Anglo-American special relationship has been a device used by a declining power for trying to harness a rising power to serve its own ends. Avoid public confrontation; seek private influence. Propitiate openly; manipulate secretly. These are the tactics of this form of alliance politics. Not all British policy-makers agreed that the game was worth the candle, particularly before the Second World War. Curzon, Hankey and Neville Chamberlain were among those who doubted that 'appeasing' America would benefit Britain and guarantee reliable support. But the cultivation of an Anglo-American special relationship-indeed the assertion that it exists-has been a recurrent theme of British diplomacy from Joseph Chamberlain to Margaret Thatcher.

Recognizing that the 'special relationship' has been in part a deliberate British creation-a 'tradition' invented as a tool of diplomacy-helps us appreciate the artifice that has often lain behind fulsome official British rhetoric about America, its leaders and its ties with Britain. Nevertheless, exploration of that tradition is not the purpose of this article. Instead it seeks to ask whether the concept of a special relationship is an accurate description of the place of Anglo-American relations in world affairs since the Second World War. Stated more succinctly: whatever London might say, was the relationship really 'special' ?

3. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: his complete speeches, 1897-1963, Vol. 7 (New York: Chelsea House, 1974), pp. 7248, 7289-addresses of 7 Nov. 1945 to the Commons and 5 March 1946 at Fulton (the so-called 'iron curtain' speech).

4. Cab 24/26, GT 2074, Cecil, memo, 18 Sept. 1917 (London: Public Record Office; subsequent references to the Foreign Office General Political Correspondence, FO, and the Prime Minister's Operational Papers, Prem, are also to documents in the PRO: all quotations appear by permission of the Controller, HMSO).

5. Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-dollar diplomacy in current perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 3rd edn., 1980), p. xiii.



David Reynolds 3

I will talk in what follows of 'Britain' and 'America' even though these can only be shorthand terms for complex political organisms. Works of theory and history by students of international relations have made us well aware of the danger of talking of countries as if they are 'unitary, purposive actors', without attention to domestic politics, bureaucratic interplay and the impact of 'opinion makers' and the 'foreign policy public'.6 This is particularly true in the case of pluralist democracies, of which the United States is the supreme example. In America the management of foreign policy is peculiarly difficult, given the extent of congressional power, the uncontrolled bureaucracy, the influence of lobbyists, and the freedom of the media. US relations with Britain have therefore never been the exclusive preserve of government departments, insulated from the currents of larger public debate-witness the loan negotiations of 1945-6. Certain ethnic groups have exercised particular influence. In 1945-8, Jewish-American opinion helped shape Truman's policy towards Palestine/ Israel, while the Irish-American lobby has helped propagate a generally sceptical American attitude towards British policy in Northern Ireland in the last decade or so.

Britain, by contrast, has a more cohesive political and administrative system- susceptible to greater control by the government of the day-but even here relations between the two countries have been affected by internal differences of view. A notable example has been the anti-Americanism of the Labour left-from the 'Keep Left' movement of 1946-7, through the critics of the Vietnam war, to the unilateralists of the present.

In international relations states might therefore be conceived of not as billiard balls-solid, clearly-defined entities cannoning off each other-but as distinct, swirling masses of gas-more diffuse but with no less potential energy. This should be remembered when reading the shorthand expressions 'Britain' and 'America' used below. Nevertheless, my Iustification for paying less attention to domestic factors is that these have rarely made a decisive difference to the pattern of Anglo-American relations-consider, for example, the basic continuity in policy between Labour and Conservative governments, whatever the Labour left might demand in 1945-6 or 1964-5. Fundamentally the postwar relationship has been shaped by the power and international position of the two countries. This is where we must look for what, if anything, has made it 'special'.

Whatever the term might mean, it clearly cannot connote perfection or pure harmony. A series of books written over the last decade has exposed the friction and controversy beneath the surface of Anglo-American cooperation in the Second World War and after. The most important source of argument was Britain's empire-formal and informal-and the US challenge to the British imperial position from both an ideological and self-interested standpoint. Decolonization, oil, and the battle to dominate civil aviation were among the specific issues at stake. And the development of the relationship since the Second World War is part of a larger story of the decline of British power against that of America-with the United States sometimes giving the British Empire a push down the slippery slope.7

Furthermore, the concept of a special relationship is not uniquely Anglo-American.

6. e.g. Graham Allison, Essence of decision: explaining the Cuban missile crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Bernard Cohen, The public's impact onforeign policy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); David Vital, The making of British foreign policy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968).

7. See discussion in David Reynolds, 'Roosevelt, Churchill and the wartime Anglo-American alliance, 1939-45: towards a new synthesis', in Hedley Bull and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The 'special relationship': Anglo-American relations since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986, forthcoming).




It has also been applied to ties between the United States and others of its allies (usually, it might be noted, by the ally rather than the United States). Israel, Brazil, pre-communist China, and the Federal Republic of Germany are among the examples of this usage.8

These considerations suggest some guidelines for our thinking. If the Anglo- American relationship can be termed 'special' it is not by reference to some idealized standard of international amity. We must bear in mind the elements of tension and hostility that are evident in this as in any other diplomatic relationship. And we have to assess its 'specialness' against the character of the relationships between the United States and its other close allies. Was the cooperation, however imperfect and flawed, different in degree and extent from that of any other alliance?

But quality is not the only criterion for judging the specialness of the relationship. Importance provides another touchstone: is or was this bilateral relationship especially important for each country and, indeed, for the world at large? That also seems to have been part of what was meant by the concept of a special relationship. For Churchill at Fulton in 1946 it was no less than guarantor of 'the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands . . .' Conversely Harold Wilson, a quarter-century later, recalled an aphorism of Charles Lamb, the nineteenth-century essayist, that 'there is nothing so irrelevant as a poor relation.'9 One may still be fond of the aged relative, the ties may still be unusually close, but the relationship has diminished in value to oneself and to the family fortunes (though it may have become more useful to its importunate beneficiary).

It may be helpful, then, to judge the specialness of the Anglo-American relationship in two ways. Was or is it special in quality from other bilateral alliances? Was or is it of special importance for the two countries and for the international order as a whole? These provide criteria for the general survey that follows.

The foundations of the 'special relationship'

During the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps until the end of Macmillan's premiership, the Anglo-American relationship was special in both quality and importance.

Of course, that cannot be a blanket generalization-as a glance at the ups and downs will show.'0 Brought together by the crisis of 1940, Britain and America entered into a unique alliance, but one in which the United States was clearly the dominant partner by the last year of the war. In 1945-6, however, the partnership disintegrated in many areas, of which nuclear disentanglement was the most notorious, and relations were never again as close or as equal. Nevertheless, the ties were partially reconstructed from 1947 in the deepening cold war. The Korean war and the challenge of Middle Eastern nationalism gave the relationship a global dimension, but then it faced one of its gravest twentieth-century crises in the Suez debacle of 1956. Even the

8. e.g. Nadav Safran, Israel: the embattled ally (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 571, on the "'special" American connection with Israel'; John D. Martz and Lars Schoultz, eds., Latin America, the United States, and the inter-American system (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980), pp. 80-1; Michael H. Hunt, The making of a special relationship: the United States and China to. 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: a special relationship? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).

9. Quoted in McDonald, ed., Anglo-American relations, pp. 35, 220. 10. Surveys of the postwar period include H. G. Nicholas, Britain and the United States (London:

Chatto & Windus, 1963); John Baylis, Anglo-American defence relations, 1939-84: the special relationship (London: Macmillan, 2nd edn., 1984); and later chapters of D. Cameron Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain's place, 1900-75 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).



David Reynolds 5

intelligence artery, the closest link, was nearly ruptured. Yet within a year or two the wounds had healed, as Macmillan recreated a special nuclear relationship with his old wartime ally, Eisenhower, and played a significant part in efforts to thaw out superpower relations. Remarkably he achieved a similar personal rapport with Ike's successor, despite an age difference of twenty-three years, but the extent of British dependence was dramatically demonstrated during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.

Despite the uneven texture of the relationship, overall it was unusually close. Its special quality derived from three salient characteristics. First of all, the two countries shared similar interests which became apparent in the sustained international crisis of the 1940s. Both wished to maintain the independence of Western Europe in the face of powers apparently intent on continental domination, first Hitler's Germany and then Stalin's Russia and Cominform. In a much more qualified way they also discerned a common interest in preventing violent, sudden change in Asia and the Middle East, which might threaten their economic interests and the general distribution of power. Hence their cooperation against Japan during the war and, from the late 1940s, against the spread of radical nationalist or communist movements in Asia and the Middle East associated with Moscow or Beijing.

Similar interests were reinforced by similar ideology. Again the point cannot be pressed too far on the American side. The United States has always seen itself as the New World in antithesis to many of the values of the Old, especially colonialism and such 'feudal' anachronisms as monarchy and aristocracy. Nevertheless, in the 1940s, the similarities between British and US values seemed more apparent to Americans than the differences in a world threatened by 'totalitarianism'. Both were liberal, capitalist democracies, sharing common beliefs in the rule of law and the principle of peaceful change.

And for the British the ideological legacy of 1940 was profound. After the Anglo-French entente of the Phoney War, whiclh many senior policy-makers saw as the basis of a permanent postwar alliance, the French were felt to have betrayed them in 1940. Britain therefore turned away from the perfidious continentals to its kin across the seas-the Commonwealth and the United States. Together, so it was felt, they won the war, and it was only natural to look in the same direction for support and cooperation in peacetime. Such deeply held beliefs coloured British attitudes towards the continent for a generation.

These ties of interest and ideology were incarnated, thirdly, in a network of close personal contacts and friendships. These were forged during the war, as the two sets of policy-makers became 'mixed up together', to borrow Churchill's famous phrase." The Roosevelt-Churchill connection was the most celebrated, but more important in the long run were contacts between men lower down their respective hierarchies who would rise to positions of prominence in the 1950s. For them consultation with colleagues in the other capital became easy and natural.

These personal links were facilitated by the shared language. Admittedly this was not without its problems: Churchill alludes in his war memoirs to the confusion caused at one conference by the diametrically opposite British and US usages of the verb 'to table'.'2 And the similarities of language and culture can encourage

11. House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 5th ser., Vol. 364, col. 1171, 20 Aug. 1940. 12. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (London: Cassell, 1948-54, 6 vols.), Vol. 3, p. 609. For

the British, 'to table' denoted putting a document forward for discussion; for Americans it meant withdrawing it.




policy-makers to conceive of transatlantic counterparts in their own image- sometimes with disastrous results, as during the Suez or Skybolt crises.13 Nevertheless, the common language permitted more extensive and more intensive communication than would otherwise have been possible, since, in principle, any Briton or American could participate at a depth usually permitted only to skilled linguists. Compare the wartime United States-United Kingdom relationship in this respect to that of Britain and France or America and China.

Here was what made the relationship especially close-the community of interests, values and personal ties in the face of common threat. But this was not of itself sufficient to make the relationship especially important. That depended on an additional factor-Britain's continued role as a world power.

What had brought the two countries together in 1940 was a sense of mutual need. After France fell, Britain and its empire needed US support for survival, let alone victory. But the United States, disarmed and disorganized at that time, also needed Britain. The Royal Navy was regarded as America's 'front line' against German expansion into the Atlantic, and Britain's empire was acknowledged, albeit more ambivalently, as a source of key raw materials and a bulwark against Japanese aggression in Asia. From 1942 the British Isles became the essential base for bombing and then invading Hitler's Europe.

Britain ended the war reduced in power and resources. The conflict had cost perhaps a quarter of its national wealth, and Britain's position in the Indian subcontinent never recovered from wartime protests and the humiliation of Japan's Asian victories. For a century India had been the cornerstone of empire-the source of much of its wealth and armed manpower-and the defence of India was the original raison d'etre for many of Britain's other territorial acquisitions. When India became independent in August 1947 it must have seemed like a grim realization of Curzon's warning at the beginning of the century: 'As long as we rule India we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall drop straight away to a third-rate power.' And the rest of Britain's colonies and protectorates would become redundant-in his picturesque phrase, 'the toll-gates and barbicans of an Empire that has vanished."14

Forty years after the end of the Second World War, Curzon's prediction seems all too accurate. The imperial crown lost much of its value after the central jewel had gone. Yet the Labour and Conservative governments of the 1940s and 1950s were more sanguine. Clearly Britain was no longer in the same league as the United States and the Soviet Union-sometimes, to quote one senior diplomat, it seemed to be in 'the position of Lepidus in the triumvirate with Mark Antony and Augustus.'15 But Bevin firmly denied in 1947 'that we have ceased to be a great Power', insisting that Britain 'was one of the Powers most vital to the peace of the world'. 16 The strategy now was to transform the barbican of empire, the Middle East, into its new keep and stronghold, and to develop the resources of British Africa and south-east Asia for the benefit of the sterling area. The form of the relationship was to be negotiated partnership, not imperial subordination-Commonwealth replaced Empire-but, behind the

13. Richard E. Neustadt, Alliance politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 14. Quoted in Michael Howard, The continental commitment: the dilemma of British defence policy in

the era of two world wars (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 14. 15. FO 371/44557, AN 2560/22/45, Sir Orme Sargent, minute, 1 Oct. 1945. 16. Hansard (Commons), Vol. 437, 16 May 1947.



- David Reynolds 7

enlightened rhetoric, the determination to maintain Britain's world role remained positively Churchillian.17

The persistence of this global outlook needs to be stressed, in view of the tendency (both popular and scholarly) to write Britain off as a world power after 1945. Nor was the outlook unreasonable even if it did breed some illusions. For Britain was still the world's third major state in the 1940s and 1950s-economically, militarily and in nuclear capability. As such it remained a valuable ally for the United States. Although the wartime alliance was unique, the mutual need that had cemented it continued to hold the two countries close in the late 1940s and 1950s. And their role as the principal non-communist world powers gave their relationship a special importance in shaping the post-1945 international order as it evolved from world war to cold war.

The special relationship's special importance, 1945-63

The importance of the relationship-for the two allies and for international relations-can be seen by glancing at four of its aspects in the period from 1945 to about 1963: the world economic order, European security, cold war diplomacy, and global containment.

First of all the economic connection. Here the ties were least close because of fundamental policy disagreement. Since the Ottawa Conference of 1932, the British had inclined towards a protectionist policy, seeking to consolidate their trading position within countries of the empire and especially the sterling area. But from 1934, successive US governments sought to dismantle trading barriers, especially those of a discriminatory nature, and Britain's Imperial Preference was at the top of their list. British economic policy was the natural response of a declining trading power to the depression and to the 'imperialism' of American free trade. It was also an ironic reversal of the two countries' policies in the late nineteenth century, when emerging America was still vehemently protectionist and dominant Britain preached laissez faire. The basic division of outlook was also apparent during the Second World War, and in the postwar era the British resisted as premature US attempts to restore currency convertibility and did their best to build up the dollar-earning power of the sterling area. Adherence to the European Free Trade Association and finally the European Economic Community was part of the same pattern-Britain could not survive economically without maximizing trade, but it could no longer afford the costs of open competition within a multilateral economy dominated by the United States. Hence the British predilection for extensive but protected free trade areas.

This basic divergence in policy precluded special cooperation between the two countries in economic matters. Nevertheless, the differences were not unbridgeable: in principle most British policy-makers favoured a multilateral world economy, if British interests were protected and if the United States assumed the responsibilities for world stability incumbent upon it as the major exporter and creditor nation. And US leaders in the Second World War did seem ready to accept those responsibilities. This was the basis of the hard-won agreements associated with the Bretton Woods conference of

17. As recent studies have emphasized:John Gallagher (ed. Anil Seal), The decline, revival andfall of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-51 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984); and the essays by R. F. Holland, 'The imperial factor in British strategies from Attlee to Macmillan, 1945-63', and John Darwin, 'British decolonization since 1945: a pattern or a puzzle?', in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Jan. 1984, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 165-86 and 187-209.




July 1944, from which originated the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. They were achieved by a small group of British and US economists and civil servants-men such as Keynes, Harry White, James Meade and Harry Hawkins-against extensive opposition within their respective political systems (an example of how the Anglo-American relationship has been partially insulated from these larger political currents). And, although the two nations increasingly diverged in their basic policies, these agreements constituted the framework for the postwar economic order for a quarter-century.18

Even in economic affairs, then, where the relationship was hardly special in quality, it was of special importance at a crucial point in the shaping of the postwar world. Turning to cooperation in European security in the 1940s and 1950s, we find a relationship that was special in both quality and importance. As recent work has shown, the development of the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO were very much a joint enterprise, with Bevin playing a major role alongside Marshall and Acheson.'9 Later, in 1954, the Foreign Office made a significant contribution to solving the crisis over German rearmament. Western European Union, lately enjoying something of a renaissance, and the British commitment to German defence date from this time. The Atlantic alliance as we know it today was in many ways an Anglo-American creation.

US economic and military help in Europe was, of course, vital for the British government. Less familiar is the degree to which Britain mattered to the United States. At every stage of his European commitment in the 1940s, Truman faced sustained congressional opposition-to Marshall Aid, to the Military Assistance programme, to his desire by 1950 for substantial US rearmament. In each case it required a major international crisis (the Czech coup, the Soviet atomic test and the onset of the Korean war) to mobilize the necessary support on Capitol Hill. Consequently, the administration did not intend to assume unlimited obligations. Even the US troop commitment to NATO was expected to be a short-term venture. The general philosophy, as expressed by Marshall Aid administrator Paul Hoffman, was 'to get Europe on its feet and off our backs'.20

Allies were therefore invaluable to share the burdens of containment. And Britain was still America's principal ally. In the early 1950s Britain's arms production exceeded that of all the other European partners combined, and it manufactured thirty per cent of the industrial production of non-communist Europe.21 Britain's four divisions and tactical air force were essential components of NATO's Central Front at a time when Germany was disarmed and France preoccupied first with Indochina and then Algeria. In the late 1940s the United States also wanted Britain to lead an integrated Western Europe-a hope soon dashed but later revived with the advent of de Gaulle. And from July 1948 Britain provided essential bases for Strategic Air Command's B-29s. These became a vital element of US nuclear strategy in what was still the pre-missile era. Use of these bases (and others in the British Middle East) enabled the United States to threaten the Soviet Union in a way that was not possible in return (hence, in part, Khrushchev's later Cuban gamble).

18. The classic study remains Gardner, Sterling-dollar diplomacy. 19. e.g. Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-51 (London: Heinemann, 1983); Avi

Shlaim, 'Britain, the Berlin blockade and the cold war', InternationalAffairs, Winter 1983/4, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 1-14.

20. See David Reynolds, 'The origins of the cold war: the European dimension, 1944-51', Historical Journal, June 1985, Vol. 28, No. 2, p. 512.

21. Baylis, Anglo-American defence relations, p. 43.



David Reynolds 9

Britain also played a part in trying to thaw out the cold war. Churchill's attempts in 1953-4 to arrange a summit meeting after Stalin's death laid the groundwork for the Geneva Conference of 1955. This failed, however, and in the mid-1950s the strained relationships between Eden and Eisenhower, and Dulles's close ties with Adenauer, limited the effectiveness of the Anglo-American diplomatic axis. But Macmillan, Eden's successor from January 1957, was an old friend of Eisenhower. They had worked closely together in 1943-4 when Macmillan was British minister attached to Ike's Allied Force Headquarters in North Africa and Italy. And, although Eisenhower was always in ultimate command of US policy, the vacuum created in 1959-60 by Dulles's death and the President's ill health permitted the British to play a more influential international role. Macmillan's visit to Moscow in February-March 1959-the first by a Western head of government since the end of the war-helped modify the Soviet position on Berlin and paved the way for the Eisenhower- Khrushchev meeting in September. Despite the failure of the Paris summit of May 1960, Macmillan maintained his peace-making efforts through a cordial if surprising friendship with Kennedy, and the British were active participants in the negotiations leading to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of August 1963. In these years Britain's self-image as a broker or intermediary, helping to bring the two superpowers together, was not mere self-delusion.

In the cold war, as in the Second World War, the convergence of Anglo-American security interests was generally closer in Europe than in Asia. The British, pressed by India and the Commonwealth, refused to take the extreme US line over China in 1949-50. They also feared US escalation of the Korean war, including the possible use of atomic weapons, and in the winter of 1950-1 these issues led to considerable friction. For the United States, British colonialism and economic rivalry continued to strain the relationship.

But the British, whatever their doubts, supported US intervention in Korea with forces of their own, and the American view of the British Empire remained ambivalent. For the British provided a valued network of bases, intelligence and indigenous clients which would assist in the global containment of communism. Here postwar British determination to retain its world role was of particular importance to the alliance, especially given Indian independence and Britain's subsequent willingness to talk the language of partnership rather than domination. After the Korean war there was periodic US prodding over decolonization (for example, Central Africa under Macmillan) and occasional British objections to American cold war extremism (such as abstinence from the total trade embargo on Castro's Cuba). But freedom to differ occasionally was built into the relationship, and it rarely imperilled the general cooperation in the 1940s and 1950s between the two world powers in global containment.

The one great exception to that generalization is of course the Middle East. In 1945-8 relations has been strained over Palestine, and in Iran in 1951-4 the United States exploited the oil nationalization crisis to establish Anglo-American parity in what had been Britain's last oil stronghold. Then in 1956 came Suez-perhaps the worst crisis between the two countries since 1916. The military operation seemed to the Americans like the worst kind of gunboat diplomacy-all the more contemptible because it was inept as well as imperialist. Eisenhower refused to support the embattled pound until Britain withdrew, and one cannot underestimate the shock caused by the whole episode to British illusions about their independence and about American friendship.




Nevertheless the US objections were mainly about means (military intervention in defiance of international law) and timing (the simultaneous presidential election and the Russian invasion of Hungary). Both governments agreed that Nasserism was a threat to their common interests in the Middle East. When their major ally, the Nuri Said regime in Iraq, was toppled in July 1958, Britain and America mounted a carefully planned, combined operation to shore up client states in Jordan and Lebanon. Coming as it did less than two years after Suez, this is a reminder that the crisis of autumn 1956 should not be exaggerated.

Specialit6s-the diplomatic, intelligence and nuclear relationships

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s the Anglo-American relationship was not without its frictions, but it was nevertheless uniquely close and uniquely important to both governments and to the shaping of the postwar world. Three specific areas of functional cooperation are worthy of closer attention: intelligence, nuclear weapons and diplomatic consultation. These might be termed the specialites of the relationship.

The habit of diplomatic and bureaucratic consultation is the most fundamental. Officials in each government tended naturally and readily to consult with their opposite numbers. Some of this contact was institutionalized-through transatlantic committees-but much of it was informal, building on the network of personal contacts and the facility of the common language. The point was to keep abreast of what one's opposite numbers in London or Washington were thinking-to have a sense not just of official policy but of the background debates and the alternative options.

This was particularly important in Washington given the fragmented nature of the US policy-making process. Lord Halifax, British ambassador in America during the war, likened it to 'a disorderly line of beaters out shooting; they do put the rabbits out of the bracken, but they don't come out where you expect.'22 Washington was (and is) unusual in the limited control and coordination exercised by diplomats-the State Department-over the various strands of America's external relations. It was therefore essential to keep tabs on a whole variety of governmental agencies and, because of the independence and power of Congress, to 'work the Hill' assiduously. This the British generally did with subtlety and skill: the failures of consultation, such as Suez or Skybolt, usually came in situations when normal. diplomatic channels had been bypassed.

Consultation did not guarantee consensus, of course. Policy towards China in the 1950s or over the Indo-Pakistani dispute since the 1960s are cases in point. But these are also instances of how the relationship could accommodate unresolved differences. A member of the Foreign Office's North American Department wrote presciently in 1944 that the Anglo-American partnership 'implies full consultation on all major and many minor issues, but it is perfectly compatible with the view that if consultation fails to produce an agreed policy, each partner should be free to follow that policy which it thinks best, taking due account of the other's special interests or susceptibilities.'23 Consultation sometimes produced agreement, sometimes agreement to differ.

From this practice of prior discussion each side derived substantial benefits. The British were frequently able to feed their views into the US decision-making process at

22. Halifax to Lord Simon, 21 Mar. 1941, Hickleton papers, A4.410.4.14 (Churchill College, Cambridge).

23. FO 371/38508, AN 1886/6/45, P. Mason, minute, 16 May 1944.



David Reynolds 11

an early stage before the bureaucratic and political trade-offs that make up American policy had set firm. By that latter point-the moment at which a policy might be offered for formal diplomatic negotiation with allies-it is often too late to effect any significant changes. In return the United States had a natural ally-whose support could generally be assumed because of the similarity of interests and values and the habit of advance consultation.

In a sense the intelligence relationship is only one instance of this 'consultative relationship'. But it is also at the heart of what makes the Anglo-American tie so different from other alliances. In the Second World War the two countries pooled their resources on an unprecedented scale, and the collaboration, in attenuated and secret form, survived the general severing of links in 1945-6. With the onset of the cold war, mutual need dictated renewed cooperation. Britain had an intelligence network on a scale that it could no longer afford; the United States had dismantled the wartime Office of Strategic Services and was beginning again in 1947 with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). America could therefore use British expertise, staff and installations; Britain needed US financial support.

The outcome was the 1947 UKUSA agreement which created a global division of labour in communications intelligence (Comint) between the two governments (plus Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Liaison offices were established in both capitals and in the central intelligence-gathering installations (Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) near Cheltenham and the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland). GCHQ and other British intelligence operations also received significant US funding from the NSA budget. In due course NSA set up its own gathering and relay stations in Britain, at Chicksands, Bedfordshire (from 1950), Menwith Hill near Harrogate (from 1956), and, in Scotland, Kirknewton (1952-66) and Edzell near Montrose (since 1960). And during the 1950s, from the outbreak of the Korean war, the two air forces cooperated in overflights of Soviet Europe using combined crews flying from British and continental bases. This allowed NATO to maintain surveillance even after the shooting down of Gary Powers in May 1960 obliged Eisenhower to end US-manned U-2 flights over Russia.24

The intelligence relationship has experienced frequent friction, for example CIA mistrust of the Secret Intelligence Service after the defection of Burgess and Maclean in May 1951. Nevertheless, its evolution has been relatively smooth compared to the nuclear relationship. In 1939-40 British atomic research was further advanced than American, and the sharing of information and personnel in 1940-1 significantly accelerated the pace of the US 'Manhattan' project. In September 1944 Roosevelt and Churchill concluded a secret agreement that 'full collaboration' in atomic development 'for military and commercial purposes should continue after the defeat of Japan unless and until terminated by joint agreement.'25 But many in Washington, including Truman, were unaware of the agreement and in August 1946 a nationalistic, secrecy-conscious Congress, anxious that the United States alone should control the 'superbomb', passed the McMahon Act which prohibited the transfer of any atomic information to a foreign government. Subsequent Anglo-American agreements in 1948 and 1955 did little to change the basic position. Britain had been virtually excluded from nuclear collaboration-a source of deep and abiding bitterness in

24. Duncan Campbell, The unsinkable aircraft carrier: American military power in Britain (London: Michael Joseph, 1984), ch. 5; Christopher Andrew, Secret service (London: Heinemann, 1985), pp. 491-9.

25. Prem 3, 139/9, Aide-memoire, 18 Sept. 1944.




Whitehall and an aberration from the general close Anglo-American relationship in the late 1940s and 1950s.

The shift came in October 1957. Sputnik demonstrated that the Soviet Union now had a missile capable of intercontinental range which could therefore threaten the United States directly, at a time when America's own intercontinental ballistic missile programme was behind that of the Soviet Union. America was shaken and nervy -Macmillan judged the impact of Sputnik to be 'something equivalent to Pearl Harbour'26-and felt in need of all the help it could get. Britain was the obvious ally. The British had developed their own nuclear weapons programme over the previous decade, testing a hydrogen bomb in May 1957. Within three weeks of Sputnik, Macmillan had been invited to Washington, where Eisenhower committed himself to seek amendment of the McMahon Act, and in July 1958 and May 1959 new agreements were signed to permit a much fuller exchange of information, technology and fissile materials.

In March 1960 collaboration was extended to weapons systems. At Camp David the British were offered the US Skybolt air-to-ground missile on advantageous terms, and Macmillan agreed that the United States could establish a Polaris submarine base at Holy Loch on the Clyde. There was no explicit 'deal', but it was generally understood that the two agreements were implicitly related. There were echoes here of the 'Destroyers-for-Bases' deal of August 1940. Indeed one might call this the 'Missiles- for-Bases' deal. Nearly twenty years had elapsed and the military technology had changed out of all recognition. But once again each country required the other's help at a time of global insecurity. Mutual need, more than Eisenhower's genuine feeling that the British had been badly treated, was at the root of the revived nuclear special relationship.

In one sense, the Polaris agreement at Nassau on 21 December 1962 was only an extension of this relationship. Once Defense Secretary McNamara had decided to cut Skybolt on grounds of cost-effectiveness, Macmillan could justifiably argue that the 1960 'deal' obliged Kennedy to provide Polaris instead. The defusing of the crisis and the continuance of Britain's uniquely privileged access to US nuclear technology were further instances of the specialness of the Anglo-American relationship. Macmillan talked on his return of how Nassau had preserved 'both the concepts of independence and interdependence' that lay at the heart of what he meant by the special relationship.27

But, more profoundly, the Nassau agreement permanently altered that relationship. Skybolt was a stopgap-an air-to-ground device that would be carried by Britain's V-bomber force. It was already obsolescent in the impending era of long-range missiles such as Minuteman and Polaris. But neither the RAF nor the Admiralty had been seriously interested in Polaris during the late 1950s, for it would destroy the rationale of both the V-bombers and the blue-water navy. And within Macmillan's Cabinet there were some who doubted whether Britain should remain a nuclear power in the new and massively more costly missile age. Others felt that, if it did, an 'entente nucleaire' with France might be a better option in view of Britain's current interest in the EEC. These debates were terminated by the Skybolt crisis, the sudden switch by

26. Harold Macmillan, Riding the storm, 1955-9 (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 320, quoting diary for 23 Oct. 1957.

27. Andrew J. Pierre, Nuclear politics: the British experience with an independent strategicforce 1939-70 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 314. On the Macmillan-JFK relationship, the basic study remains David Nunnerley, President Kennedy and Britain (London: Bodley Head, 1972).



David Reynolds 13

Macmillan to Polaris, and his deal with Kennedy at Nassau-which the Cabinet could only rubber-stamp. Britain would now remain in the nuclear game, but using American technology. The nuclear relationship re-established between 1957 and 1962 was special in more ways than one: Britain enjoyed uniquely privileged access to US nuclear secrets and weapons, but was to be the only nuclear power without a delivery system of its own.

Important or importunate? Britain's decline and readjustment, 1963-73

Distinguishing historical periods is an agreeable academic exercise, but it rarely corresponds to the confusions of the real world. It is nevertheless fair to say that the decade after Macmillan's resignation in October 1963 saw a pronounced decline in Britain's special importance to the United States. In part, this was a matter of personalities: Wilson and Heath never established rapports with Johnson and Nixon comparable to Macmillan's relations with Eisenhower and Kennedy. But the decline had set in during the last chaotic months of the Macmillan premiership-de Gaulle's veto, Profumo, Philby and a general sense that Edwardian nonchalance was anachronistic in the swinging sixties. The last Macmillan-Kennedy meeting in June 1963 was a sad anticlimax.

The underlying reason was not personalities but power. During this decade Britain's residual capability as a great power was eroded, and with it Britain's special value to the United States. The decline was apparent in Europe itself, where British air and ground contributions to NATO's Central Front had been of particular significance in the 1950s. But the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) joined NATO in May 1955 and in April 1957 the Sandys Defence White Paper announced the end of conscription after 1960-a belated reversion to normal British peacetime policy. In 1964 for the first time West Germany's armed forces exceeded those of Britain at 430,000 to 425,000. Moreover, the British army (like the French) was still spread around the globe, whereas Germany's was completely assigned to NATO's Central Front. The disparity in that crucial theatre was therefore much greater-274,000 Germans to 53,000 British-and the FRG's troop contribution even surpassed that of the United States, whose 7th Army in Central Europe had been reduced from 275,000 to 237,000 in 1964.28 Manpower figures are only a crude measure of military strength, but they do indicate that during Macmillan's premiership the FRG had replaced Britain as the European pillar of NATO.

This decline in military capability reflected fundamental economic weakness. In the late 1950s and the 1960s Britain was unable to keep up not only with the superpowers but with its European neighbours. In 1951 Britain had been the world's third economic power, measured in GNP. Ten years later it had been overtaken by the FRG, and France was close behind. By 1971 Japan was in third place, followed by West Germany and the French, while Britain's GNP was roughly half Japan's.29

The German economic 'miracle' and the later French modernization were reflected institutionally in the success of the EEC. Britain's disdain for the Community in the mid-1950s had been understandable. British economic strategy was to develop the sterling area, and few anticipated the EEC's success in reducing tariffs or predicted the extent and pace of the German-led continental boom. By 1961 a penitent Macmillan

28. The military balance, 1964-5 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1964), pp. 17-18, 21-4.

29. The military balance, 1972-3 (London: IISS, 1972), p. 73.




government had opted for entry, having been assured by Kennedy 'that relations between the United States and the UK would be strengthened not weakened, if the UK moved towards membership'.30 The intensity of subsequent US pressure on the negotiators showed how strongly the administration felt about this, but the de Gaulle vetoes of 1963 and 1967 meant that Britain was in limbo for a decade until Heath's successful negotiations after the General resigned in 1969. During that time Britain was increasingly bypassed in tJS-European relations, with much of America's diplomacy directed towards the EEC and, after the French withdrawal from the integrated military command of NATO in 1966-7, towards the FRG.

During this decade Britain also proved much less successful as a broker between the two superpowers. Macmillan had played a significant part in achieving the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. The British were naturally involved in these discussions as a nuclear-testing power. But the nuclear issue of the later 1960s, leading up to the SALT I agreements of May 1972, was the question of controlling weapons systems. Here the superpowers were in a league of their own, and the British had little influence on the central arms control negotiations.

The other great superpower diplomatic issue of the 1960s was Vietnam. Again the British played only a minor role, despite Wilson's best endeavours. Under the 1954 accords, Britain and the Soviet Union were co-chairmen of the Geneva Conference on Indochina-another example of how Britain's previous status as a great power provided residual leverage. But Wilson's repeated efforts to bring the belligerents to the negotiating table, most notably during Kosygin's visit to London in February 1967, earned him only LBJ's growing distrust. 'I won't tell you how to run Malaysia and you don't tell us how to run Vietnam', the President responded sharply when Wilson tried to temper US policy after the bombing of North Vietnam commenced in February 1965.31

LBJ's reference to Malaysia is a reminder that the British were also embattled in south-east Asia during these years, and they proved even less able than the Americans to sustain their exposed position. Sukarno's challenge to the Malaysian federation tied down some 30,000 British troops in 1963-4--more than in any other conflict since the end of the war. Although Sukarno's regime collapsed in 1966, the sustained operation, at a time of acute financial crisis, forced the Cabinet to reassess Britain's global role. When he came to power Wilson had declared that 'We are a world power, and a world influence, or we are nothing.'32 But recurrent balance-of-payments crises and the drain on Britain's reserves necessitated retrenchment, reductions, and finally rapid retreat in the wake of the devaluation of November 1967. The Cabinet then decided to abandon the Persian Gulf and Singapore by the end of 1971 and to give up any capability for operation east of Suez. The Heath government modified that policy, but did not alter it fundamentally.

This precipitate relinquishment of Britain's world role came as a shock to the United States. In December 1964 Denis Healey, the Minister of Defence, just back from Washington, told the Cabinet that what the Americans wanted Britain to do 'was not to maintain huge bases but to keep a foothold in Hong Kong, Malaya, the Persian Gulf, to enable us to do things for the alliance which they can't do.' Healey added that 'they

30. McGeorge Bundy to President, 7 Apr. 1961, National Security Files 170 (John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass.).

31. Harold Wilson, The Labour government, 1964-70: a personal record (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, 1971), p. 80.

32. The Times, 17 Nov. 1964, p. 6, reporting his Guildhall speech the previous day.



David Reynolds 15

think that our forces are much more useful to the alliance outside Europe than in Germany.'33 The abandonment of this major out-of-area role was therefore keenly opposed in Washington. When Foreign Secretary George Brown reported the Cabinet's post-devaluation decision to withdraw forces in Washington, Dean Rusk and the State Department were horrified. 'Be British, George, be British-how can you betray us?' pleaded one official.34 The main US complaint was not about the Far East but the Gulf. It was there that the British position was deemed especially important.

By the early 1970s Britain had therefore lost much of its special importance for the United States. Germany had replaced Britain as the principal European pillar of NATO, the EEC was a major focus for America's alliance diplomacy, the United Kingdom had little influence on superpower relations, and Britain's economic decline had forced it to abandon its global commitments more rapidly than it intended or the Americans desired. During this period Britain had often seemed importunate rather than important-begging for IMF loans to shore up the pound, begging for entry into the EEC, begging still to be taken seriously on the international stage. But this was a period of unprecedented change, managed by men brought up on the idea of Britain as ruler of a quarter of the world. By 1973 Britain was adjusting to the status of a primarily European power, albeit with continuing global interests. And it remained to be seen how the Anglo-American relationship would be affected by Britain's new European identity.

Since 1973-a less important relationship, still special in quality

Despite the contraction of British power in the 1960s, the Anglo-American relationship over the last decade or so has remained special in quality. In certain respects it continues to be important for the United States and the international order.

Of particular value is the role of the Royal Navy-the second largest in NATO-in guarding the Channel and the eastern Atlantic, backed by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Here narrow British national interests dovetail with broader alliance needs, for the security of these transatlantic communications is essential if NATO is to reinforce the Central Front from North America as planned in the event of European war.

On the continent itself the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) and RAF contingents (57,000 and 10,000 in 1984) remain much less than the German or American contributions.35 But their symbolic importance is enormous. Were a future British government to renege on this continental commitment or to extricate itself from NATO, the shock in Washington would be immense, probably shaking the alliance to its foundations. When that possibility appeared on the horizon, as in the run-up to the 1983 general election, US policy-makers became more conscious of the importance of the Anglo-American relationship to their European policy. The fact that the relationship can generally be taken for granted in Washington is, paradoxically, an earnest of its fundamental importance.

Beyond the continent, Britain and France remain the only West European powers with a genuine out-of-area military capability. Here both score heavily over the continent-bound Germans, but the convoluted French relationship with NATO makes liaison with Britain far easier for the US government. The Diego Garcia basing

33. Richard Crossman, The diaries of a Cabinet Minister (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975-7, 3 vols.), Vol. 1, p. 95, entry for 11 Dec. 1964.

34. Crossman, Diaries, Vol. 2, p. 646. 35. The militarv balance, 1984-5 (London: IISS, 1984), pp. 35, 40.




arrangements and the continued commitment in Belize are examples of British support for US global deployments.

Likewise the specialites remain invaluable. The 1947 UKUSA agreement is still the foundation of the intelligence alliance, and the development from the mid-1970s of satellites as the principal form of international telecommunications has given the NSA stations in Britain a further task as major tracking centres. Also important to the United States is the British-based component of the SOSUS underwater listening system whose passive acoustic arrays follow the movements of Soviet nuclear submarines across much of the North Atlantic.

After what some see as a hiatus in the later 1960s and early 1970s,36 the nuclear relationship has been renewed by the agreements of 1980. Trident is scheduled to replace Polaris as Britain's 'independent strategic nuclear force' in the 1990s, while cruise is the contemporary analogue of the US Polaris submarines that Macmillan agreed to have based on the Clyde.

The consultative relationship also continues to flourish.37 Despite criticism, all British ministries maintain a substantial Washington presence in the mini-Whitehall on Massachusetts Avenue. At the very top the links have been strengthened by the rapport between President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher, but they subsist independently of the ebb and flow of high politics. This was dramatically illustrated by events in the South Atlantic in the spring of 1982. Close personal ties between the two naval establishments, backed by Secretaries Weinberger and Haig, ensured vital US logistic support for the over-extended British forces.38

In these various ways the Anglo-American relationship still displays a special quality that distinguishes it from other American diplomatic lilnks. And although no longer of special importance to the United States and the international order, it remains one of the most important of America's many bilateral ties. Nevertheless, much of Britain's utility now stems not from its intrinsic power as an independent actor (as in the 1940s and 1950s), but from its role as a linch-pin within NATO. The naval connection, the continental commitment, out-of-area capability, the specialites-all these are significant within the framework of the Atlantic alliance rather than as separate factors in the arithmetic of global power.

A changed international order

The point, then, is that although the Anglo-American relationship remains in certain respects special, the larger international realities have changed fundamentally.

36. John Simpson, The independent nuclear state: the United States, Britain and the military atom (London: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 219-20.

37. An intriguing example of the extent of this diplomatic consultation is the role of Sir Thomas Brimelow, then Deputy Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, in drafting the 'Agreement on the prevention of nuclear war' in 1972-3. That this is now virtually forgotten is testimony to the success of the 'special relationship', claims Henry Kissinger. For the Soviet Union had proposed in May 1972 a draft treaty under which the United States and the USSR would renounce the use of nuclear weapons against each other. In Washington's view this imperilled the impending Nixon-Brezhnev summit and threatened to divide America from its allies. According to Kissinger, Brimelow was secretly brought into US discussions and given access to all relevant documentation. He played an invaluable role in determining strategy and drafting the eventual banal statement of dedication to peace, thereby defusing what had been initially regarded in Washington as a dangerous Soviet demarche. See Henry Kissinger, Years of upheaval (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, 1982), pp. 274-86. Elsewhere Kissinger, who sees close consultation as central to the specialness of the relationship, has gone so far as to claim that during his years as National Security Adviser, 'I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the State Department'. Henry Kissinger, 'The special relationship', The Listener, 13 May 1982, p. 16.

38. See The Economist, 3 Mar. 1984, pp. 23-5.



David Reynolds 17

Basic is the contraction of British power. In the period from the Second World War to perhaps the early 1960s, the relationship remained one of partnership. The United States was clearly senior partner, Britain increasingly the junior, but it was a tie characterized by mutual need derived from Britain's independent capability as a world power. Over the last twenty years, however, Britain has become primarily (though by no means exclusively) a regional power. Although, as we have seen, the United States still derives evident benefits from the special British connection, Britain's link with America is now one of dependence rather than partnership. And, as a regional power, Britain's role is mainly played out within the dominant institutions of the region- NATO and, gradually and painfully, the European Community.

Not only has Britain changed, so too has Western Europe. The distinctive influence of the British on the continent in the 1940s and 1950s was largely attributable to the postwar vacuum. Once Germany had been revived (albeit in truncated form) and integrated into NATO, Britain's contribution was inevitably less important. At that point, the early to mid-1 960s, France's withdrawal from the alliance gave Britain a new lease of life as a significant continental actor. In recent years, however, the gradual de facto reintegration of France into NATO and the development of Franco-German cooperation have left Britain increasingly on the periphery of US-European relations. Aggravating this isolation is the fact that over the last decade Britain has allowed itself to be perceived as Gaullist France's successor in the role of the 'bad European'.

Britain has changed. Western Europe has changed. So too has the United States. The wartime alliance and the European crisis of the later 1940s nurtured a generation of American policy-makers on the doctrines of 'Atlanticism': the conviction that America's relations with Europe were fundamental and that Britain was a particularly important intermediary. Those are no longer unquestioned axioms of US policy. In part this is because the 'Atlanticists'-men such as Acheson, Rusk and Harriman- have passed from the stage, to be replaced by leaders whose formative experiences were often Vietnam rather than the 1940s. But the 'successor generation' is a matter of background as well as age. For the United States is a very different country today from forty years ago. Wealth and power have shifted from the north-east and Midwest-the powerhouse of America as it assumed its world role-to the states of the west and south. To take the extreme example, the gross product of the state of California is greater than that of all but seven of the world's industrial nations.

The 'natural' orientation of these 'sunbelt' states is not towards the Atlantic but towards Central America and the Pacific. And this geographical shift in America's power centre coincides with changes in the ethnic composition of its population. The quotas of the 1920s brought to an end the mass transatlantic migrations that had shaped early twentieth-century America and sustained the living ties with Europe. Gradually the immigrants were assimilated, but, having declined steadily since the 1910s, the percentage of foreign-born in the United States rose again in the 1970s (to 6.2 per cent). This time, however, the flow was from a different direction. Of some 4.3 million immigrants officially admitted in that decade, only 13 per cent came from Europe, whereas 41 per cent migrated from Asia and 42 per cent entered from Latin America. In particular Hispanic-Americans, now calculated as 6.5 per cent of the US population (a marked underestimate given the unpoliceable Mexican border), are the fastest- growing minority group.39 Their numerical increase, coupled with their successful

39. Andrew Hacker, ed., UIS: a statistical portrait of the American people (New York: Viking, 1983), pp. 35-7, 44, 47, based on data from the US census of 1980.




insistence in many cities on the use of Spanish as the basic teaching medium, will have profound consequences for America's ethnic balance, sense of identity and focus of international attention by the twenty-first century. For the English language has been a decisive influence not only on American links with Britain but in ensuring an Atlanticist orientation to US foreign policy during much of this century.

The gradual but perceptible shift in the economic and ethnic balance of the United States away from Europe has coincided with parallel changes in the international distribution of power. In the 1940s and 1950s Europe seemed the most dangerous and unstable region of the world. And, despite their decline relative to the new 'superpowers', the major nations of Western Europe remained influential world actors and, as both producers and consumers, major determinants of world trade. By the early 1970s, however, Europe had achieved real stability compared with the first half of the century. The superpowers were learning to live with each other across a divided continent and the once intractable 'German problem' had reached defacto resolution. Despite the upheavals of the early 1980s, the achievements of detente and Ostpolitik have not been subsequently negated.

In the 1980s the main areas of instability, as far as the United States is concerned, are in the Middle East, Central America and parts of Asia. These regions, rather than Europe, also seem the principal arenas of superpower conflict. Demands in Congress for a diminished US military role in Europe (the recurrent Mansfield and now Nunn amendments) strike a responsive chord in many Americans, particularly at a time of acute budget deficits. Economically, the most critical ties for the United States are no longer with Western Europe but Japan, whose challenge to American industry and parasitic military relationship constitute major issues in US politics. Other developing Pacific nations such as South Korea are also industrial rivals in certain sectors. The long-term trend seems clear. In 1982, for the first time this century, America's trans-Pacific trade exceeded its trans-Atlantic trade in value. The Pacific region, with sixty per cent of the world's population, its two most advanced industrial states and most of its fastest growing economies is likely in the future to prove the dynamic part of the international order as well as a chronic area of instability. Its consequent importance for US policy can only increase.

An incongruous relationship for Britain?

The Anglo-American relationship may still have a special quality and a continued, if greatly reduced, international importance. However, it endures in a fundamentally 4ifferent world from that of 1945. It is not simply that Britain has changed, diminishing in power to a largely regional role. Western Europe, the United States, and the international order itself have changed as well. Much of that change has occurred in the last decade or so-to a degree that is often hard to perceive, let alone accommodate.

This complex, more pluralistic, less Atlantic-centred world has to be borne in mind as we assess the place of the Anglo-American relationship in current British foreign policy. Is it now a somewhat incongruous relationship, out of step with some of Britain's current needs and aspirations? The specialites, for instance, are largely a legacy of the 1940s and 1950s when Britain was still a world power. Today, does Britain need the same global intelligence capability, or is that now of greater benefit to the United States? Does the rejuvenated transatlantic nuclear relationship prevent closer European cooperation? Is it an extravagance today, particularly with an



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impending crisis in the defence budget? Does Britain's substantial bureaucratic presence in Washington still fulfil an important role, or is it overblown? Is the consultative relationship itself increasingly in tension with Britain's identity as a member of the European Community? The contradictory pulls that Britain experienced over the 'Year of Europe' in 1973 have recurred since, especially over policy towards Israel, and they are likely to be a feature of debates over the Strategic Defence Initiative and its European rival, 'Eureka'.

In short, can Britain still have its cake and eat it? Does Britain enjoy a privileged position as transatlantic intermediary between the United States and Europe? Or does it fall between two stools: an increasingly irrelevant, if well-loved, poor relation in Washington, and a 'bad European' in a continent increasingly dominated by the Franco-German axis?

At root here is the question of whether Britain's readjustment to the rank of a mainly European power implies a marked reduction in the broad community of strategic interests that underpinned the Anglo-American alliance in the 1940s and 1950s. Now that Britain is no longer a world power, does it have the same interest in US globalism as it had in days when communist insurgents in south-east Asia or Nasserite radicalism in the Middle East could be seen as common enemies? This is particularly problematic when a US administration is preoccupied with its status as a superpower locked in global ideological rivalry with the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger posed the essential issue in 1973 when he highlighted the contrast between the interests of a global power and those of its regional allies.40 The problem for Britain is whether its mainly (though not exclusively) regional interests may in the future be better protected through fuller commitment to the regional organization it has entered (the European Community), given the incipient realignments in US foreign policy and the shifts in the international pattern of power.

This is a pertinent question, posed acutely by the developments of the last decade or so. But the changes must not be exaggerated. Just as the Anglo-American relationship has endured, so too has NATO. In a century of incessant, bewildering change it has proved a remarkable survivor, surmounting one 'crisis' after another, each of which, the pundits assured us, sounded its death-knell. The debate about strengthening Western European cooperation usually assumes the continued existence of that Atlantic alliance and the American nuclear umbrella. For, as long as one of the two 'superpowers' is perceived as a major threat, it will be hard for the diverse states of Western Europe not to look towards the other for the fundamentals of their security. Underpinning NATO, the transatlantic bonds of culture, values and trade have persisted. In some cases they have been strengthened. For instance, nearly half the United States' direct investment abroad is in Europe41 -a marked increase since the immediate postwar era.

A historian of the Anglo-American relationship can point, then, to elements of continuity as well as change. The changes are pronounced, particularly in the last two decades-changes in British power, Europe's internal balance, America's character, and the overall pattern of international relations. Taken together they suggest the need to reassess fundamentally the diplomatic traditions Britain has inherited from the 1940s and 1950s, of which the idea of a pre-eminent, two-way relationship with

40. See his 'Year of Europe' speech of 23 Apr. 1973, printed in Henry A. Kissinger, American foreign policy (New York: Norton, 1974), p. 168.

41. Phil Williams, 'The United States' commitment to Western Europe: strategic ambiguity and political disintegration?', International Affairs, Spring 1983, Vol. 59, No. 2, p. 200.




America is a notable example. Yet the elements of continuity are also apparent. After more than forty years the Anglo-American relationship, with its undoubted special quality and special features, has been woven into the fabric of British foreign policy and into the tangled tapestry that is NATO. The conclusions of this rapid historical survey, therefore, point in somewhat contradictory directions, particularly with regard to future British foreign policy. Are the bonds of the 'special relationship' now a restraint on Britain's diplomacy? Yet, after so long, can they easily be untied?



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