Abstract
At the end of the Second World War Anglo-American relations deteriorated badly, but by 1950 economic interdependence and the cold war reversed this decline and forged a new special relationship.1 It was not as comprehensive or special as in the war, but it counted over a range of changing policy areas until the 1960s when sterling devaluation and British military withdrawal from east of Suez diminished its value. In the meantime it empowered, but also restrained, both countries and this may be clearly seen in the field of cold war economic defence policies.2
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Notes
For details of the rise, decline and revival of the special relationship see: Alan P. Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century: Of Friendship, Conflict and the Rise and Decline of Superpowers (Routledge, London, 1995), ch. 4.
For analyses of Anglo-American relations in both a more general and a more specific focus, see Alan P. Dobson, ‘The USA, Britain, and the Question of Hegemony’, in Geir Lundestad (ed.), No End to Alliance: the United States and Western Europe, Past, Present and Future (Macmillan, London), 1998, pp. 134–67;
and Alan P. Dobson, ‘The USA, Hegemony and Airline Market Access to Britain and Western Europe, 1945–96’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 9(2), 1998, pp. 129–60.
R. Bullen and M.E. Pelly (eds.), assisted by H.J. Yasamee and G. Bennett, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 2, Vol. 2, 1950 (HMSO, London, 1987), p. 94, first bipartite official meeting, 24 April 1950.
Alan P. Dobson, ‘Informally Special? The Churchill-Truman Talks of January 1952 and the State of Anglo-American Relations’, Review of International Studies (1997), 23, pp. 27–47.
Ibid., p. 87; for a consideration of some of the broader implications of these matters, see Alan P. Dobson ‘Anglo-American Relations and the Cold War’ in Alan P. Dobson (ed.) with Graham Evans and Shahin Malik (assistant eds), Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Cold War (Ashgate, Andover, 1999), pp. 69–88.
Andrew M. Johnston, ‘The British Global Strategy Paper and the New Look’, Diplomatic History, (1998), 22(3), pp. 361–98.
K. Larres, ‘Eisenhower and the First Forty days After Stalin’s Death: the Incompatibility of Detente and Political Warfare’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (1995), 6(2), pp. 431–70, p. 435.
For more detailed discussion of this see Dobson, ‘The USA, Britain and the Question of Hegemony’; T.E. Forland, ‘Selling Firearms to the Indians: Eisenhower’s Export Control Policy, 1953–54’, Diplomatic History, 15, 1991, pp. 221–44;
R.M. Spaulding, ‘A Gradual and Moderate Relaxation: Eisenhower and the Revision of American Export Control Policy, 1953–54’, Diplomatic History, 1993, 17, pp. 223–49;
John W. Young, ‘Winston Churchill’s Peacetime Administration and the Relaxation of East-West Trade Controls, 1953–55’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 7(1), 1996, pp. 125–40;
I.Jackson, ‘Co-operation and Constraint: Britain’s Influence on American Economic Warfare Policy in COCOM, 1948–54’, PhD thesis, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1997.
Wolfram Kaiser, Using Europe, Abusing the Europeans: Britain and European Integration, 1945–63 (Macmillan, London, 1996);
John W Young, Britain and European Unity, 1945–1992 (Macmillan, London, 1993).
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Dobson, A.P. (2001). Anglo-American Relations and Diverging Economic Defence Policies in the 1950s and 1960s. In: Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Relations. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985311_8
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