Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Relations Jonathan Hollowell hollowell/94885/crc 15/2/01 10:51 am Page 1 Contemporary History in Context Series General Editor: Peter Catterall, Lecturer, Department of History, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London What do they know of the contemporary, who only the contemporary know? How, without some historical context, can you tell whether what you are observing is genuinely novel, and how can you understand how it has developed? It was, not least, to guard against the unconscious and ahistorical Whiggery of much contemporary comment that this series was conceived. The series takes important events or historical debates from the post-war years and, by bringing new archival evidence and historical insights to bear, seeks to re-examine and reinterpret these matters. Most of the books will have a significant international dimension, dealing with diplomatic, economic or cultural relations across borders. in the process the object will be to challenge orthodoxies and to cast new light upon major aspects of post-war history. Titles include: Oliver Bange THE EEC CRISIS OF 1963 Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in Conflict Christopher Brady UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS CAMBODIA, 1977–92 Peter Catterall and Sean McDougall (editors) THE NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION IN BRITISH POLITICS Peter Catterall, Colin Seymour-Ure and Adrian Smith (editors) NORTHCLIFFE’S LEGACY Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896–1996 James Ellison THREATENING EUROPE Britain and the Creation of the European Community, 1955-58 Helen Fawcett and Rodney Lowe (editors) WELFARE POLICY IN BRITAIN The Road from 1945 Jonathan Hollowell (editor) TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS Simon James and Virginia Preston (editors) BRITISH POLITICS SINCE 1945 The Dynamics of Historical Change Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah (editors) THE MYTH OF CONSENSUS New Views on British History, 1945–64 Wolfram Kaiser USING EUROPE, ABUSING THE EUROPEANS Britain and European Integration, 1945–63 hollowell/94885/crc 15/2/01 10:51 am Page 2 Keith Kyle THE POLITICS OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF KENYA Spencer Mawby CONTAINING GERMANY Britain and the Arming of the Federal Republic Jeffrey Pickering BRITAIN’S WITHDRAWAL FROM EAST OF SUEZ The Politics of Retrenchment Peter Rose HOW THE TROUBLES CAME TO NORTHERN IRELAND L. 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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England hollowell/94885/crc 15/2/01 10:51 am Page 3 Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Relations Jonathan Hollowell St Peter’s College Oxford Foreword by Kathleen Burk hollowell/94885/crc 15/2/01 10:51 am Page 4 Selection,editorial matter and Introduction © Jonathan Hollowell 2001 Foreword © Kathleen Burk 2001 Chapters 1–10 © Palgrave Publishers Ltd 2001 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVEis the new global academic imprint of St.Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–80404–X This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Twentieth-century Anglo-American relations / [edited by] Jonathan Hollowell. p.cm.— (Contemporary history in context) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–80404–X 1.United States—Foreign relations—Great Britain.2.Great Britain—Foreign relations—United States.3.United States– –Foreign relations—20th century.I.Hollowell,Jonathan,1964– II.Contemporary history in context series. E183.8.G7 A682 2000 327.41073—dc21 00–066561 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd,Chippenham,Wiltshire Contents GeneralEditor’sPrefacebyPeterCatterall vii ForewordbyKathleenBurk ix IntroductionbyJonathanHollowell xi NotesontheContributors xvii 1 IsoscelesTriangle:Britain,theDominionsandthe UnitedStatesattheParisPeaceConferenceof1919 1 MargaretMacMillan 2 UnderpinningtheAnglo-AmericanAlliance: theCouncilonForeignRelationsandBritain betweentheWars 25 PriscillaRoberts 3 EricKnight’sWar:theCampaignforAnglo-American Understanding 44 F.M.Leventhal 4 TheByrnesTreatyandtheOriginsofthe WesternAlliance,1946–48 64 DaniloArdia 5 ‘Butwestward,look,thelandisbright:Labour’sRevisionists andtheImaginingofAmerica,c.1945–64 87 StevenFielding 6 TheNumberOneReason:McCarthy,Eisenhower andtheDeclineofAmericanPrestigeinBritain,1952–54 104 JussiHanhimaki 7 AVeryConsiderableandLargelyUnsungSuccess: SirRogerMakins’WashingtonEmbassy,1953–56 124 SaulKelly 8 Anglo-AmericanRelationsandDiverging EconomicDefencePoliciesinthe1950sand1960s 143 AlanP.Dobson v vi Contents 19 Eisenhower,EdenandtheSuezCrisis 166 PeterG.Boyle 10 LyndonJohnson,HaroldWilsonandthe VietnamWar:aNotSoSpecialRelationship? 180 SylviaA.Ellis Index 205 General Editor’s Preface Earlyin1962aForeignOfficepaperon‘BritainthroughAmericanEyes’ warnedthat itisprobablytruetosaythatalargeproportionofthepopulationis ill-informed about Britain and has no more than a hazy idea of our geography or history, overlaid with certain traditional beliefs about socialism,colonialismandtheRoyalFamily. Evenatthepolicymaking level,relationscould bebedevilledbyignor- ance or misperceptions, not least in the furore over Skybolt which ensued later that year. The problem, according to the Foreign Office author, was that ‘While most foreigners are judged by what they do, wearejudgedbywhatAmericansthinkweare.’ Neither this, nor the ignorance of which he complained, necessarily meant that Anglo-American relations had ceased to be important. Indeed,thediplomat’saphorismcouldsimplyreflecttheextensiveness ofthecontactsbetweenthetwocountries.Despitetheincreasingpower disparity between them, with Britain only spending about a tenth of whattheUSdidondefencebytheearly1960s,theirinterestscontinued to overlapeverywherearoundtheworld.Inthesecircumstancesitwas perhapseasiertooperateonnormativeviewsofeachother,ofwhateach otherwaslikelytodoinaparticularinstance,andofwhatAmbassador Bruce described in 1961 as ‘the essential solidarity of informed self- interestbetweentheEnglish-speakingpeoples’,eveniftheseviewsand expectationsweretobedisappointed,sometimespainfully,onoccasion. Indeed, the growing power disparity of the postwar years may have encouraged this tendency. While American policymakers during the cold war tried to structure the international behaviour of Britain to conform to their perceived needs within a Manichaean view of the world shared only to a limited extent by their allies, the British, in turn, repeatedly concluded that they needed to retain what influence theycouldinWashington.Otherwise,asHaroldMacmillanputit,they ‘could not count on American support in all circumstancesand would be less able to stand up to Soviet threats against the UK or British interestsoverseas’. vii viii GeneralEditor’sPreface Much of the work on Anglo-American relations in recent years has beenconcernedwiththiscoldwarperiod.Thisisunsurprising,reflect- ing the increasing availability of documents for these years. However, while this book adds to this literature, drawing on recently released archives to cast new light on episodes such as the origins of NATO, McCarthyism,SuezortheVietnamWar,oneofitsundoubtedstrengths liesinthehistoricalrangethatitcovers.Theessaysherespantheyears fromtheendoftheFirstWorldWartothelate1960s,aperiodinwhich the relationship between Britain and America was arguably one of the mostimportantdynamicsinworldaffairs.Intheprocesstheyprovidea range of settings in which to examine the nature of Anglo-American relations.EvenifsuchrelationsmaybecementedbyBruce’s‘informed self-interest’theycanvaryovertime.Theycancertainlychangeaccord- ingtogeographicalsetting,avariablethatcouldleadtouncharacteristic behaviour–asMacmillanenjoyednotingin1963, We shall not give British Guiana ‘independence’ only to create a Cuba on the mainland. It is however rather fun making the Amer- icansrepeatoverandoveragaintheirpassionatepleatoustostickto ‘Colonialism’and‘Imperialism’atallcosts. And, not least,they canchange accordingto thepolicymaking level beinginvestigated.Anglo-Americandiplomacyoperatesatanumberof levels: between the respective armed and intelligence services; State DepartmentandForeignOffice;ataninformallevelinvolvingorganisa- tionssuchastheCouncilonForeignRelations;betweenpresidentand prime minister. The essays collected here touch on all of these dimen- sions of Anglo-American relations. Authored by leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, the result is a book which provides a multi- faceted set of analyses of one of the key international relationships of thetwentiethcentury. PETER CATTERALL WestminsterCollege Fulton,Missouri and InstituteofContemporaryBritishHistory London Foreword There is a central theme to Anglo-American relations in the twentieth century: the decline of Great Britain and the rise of the United States. This was not a smooth trajectory: rather, there were episodic rises and falls, but the primary direction was clear. This is not even a case of hindsight. It was clear at the time, perhaps even more clear to Great Britain than it was to the United States. The single most important reason for this was need. The fact that Great Britain was convinced that without the support of the United States she could not maintain her foreign policies – nor even, at one juncture, her independence – betrays this dependence. The United States, conversely, believed that she could afford to ignore the outside world, at least until she was attacked. But she did not fear attack beforehand, as did Great Britain. Itiswelltopointoutthatthefundamentalbasisofthisdependence waseconomic.Formuchoftheperiod,certainlyuntil1943,themilitary forcesofGreatBritainoutstrippedthoseoftheUnitedStates.Thecrucial point, however, is that there was – and in theory, is – no limit to the amount which the United States could – and can – spend in order to achieve and maintain military dominance. In the early years of the century, Great Britain had the economic resources to contemplate spending what was in those days an impressive sum. This is no longer thecase.Ifshecannotfinanceherforeignpoliciestotheextentthatshe would like, she has to find another country to help. The only country outside the Commonwealth to which she could turn, and can turn, is the United States. The passing across of crude specie is no longer the issue; now it is shared foreign policy goals, and the willingness of the United States to contribute the greater share of the finance needed for joint technology: intelligenceand nuclear weapons.Thecontributions ofGreatBritainarediplomaticandmilitary prowess,andawillingness andabilitytodiscuss,discreetly,foreignpolicyproblemsintheEnglish language. Itisnoticeablethatthepredominantamountofworknowbeingdone on Anglo-American relations concentrates on the post-1945 period. Theremaybeseveralreasonsforthis.Firstofall,muchworkhasalready been done on the earlier period, and thus it is more difficult to find a trulyfreshtopic.Secondly,andconnected,post-1945isfresherterritory, ix