Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1941-1965
The Enemy Within: then-Senator Richard Nixon spy-hunting in c. 1955
As with so many things during his many decades of public service, the fate of world geopolitics in the years after the World War seemed to hinge on the opinions and actions of Franklin Roosevelt. As well as masterminding the American war effort, Roosevelt also invested a lot of political capital in designing the skeleton framework for the postwar world. In February 1946, he shocked the world when he announced that he would be resigning the American presidency (the first person ever to do so) in order to take up the role of the first Secretary General of the United Nations (Gladwyn Jebb having previously served five months in that capacity on an interim basis), to which he was elected unanimously by the General Assembly.
Being the first person to hold the position enabled Roosevelt to put his stamp on the role, which was otherwise loosely defined in the UN Charter. Roosevelt interpreted his role as that of a world mediator and he was energetic in attempting to solve global flashpoints. He is credited as being key to preparing the Geneva Conference, mediating between the three sides of the Franco-Vietnamese conflict and bringing about a peaceful resolution of the dispute between Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia over control of the Istrian Peninsula. Furthermore, he was instrumental in arranging for the (relatively) orderly partition of Europe and the Middle East, as well as supervising the population transfers in those regions after partition.
Aside from all of this, Roosevelt’s personality, especially his role in brokering the wartime alliance between the United States, Commonwealth and Soviet Union, made him unique. During his tenure, Roosevelt skilfully worked to keep relations between the three superpowers peaceful and, to this extent, he was successful. Even the creation of the Anglo-American dominated NATO and the Soviet-dominated Bucharest Pact in 1949 and 1950 (respectively) were, while superficially statements of great power rivalry, in fact agreed in a relatively transparent manner and with Roosevelt’s tacit agreement as part of the world’s new multi-polar security structure. While there were many potential flashpoints during the Chinese Civil War - where the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets both deployed troops on opposing sides - all sides were careful to prevent them from ever taking to the field opposite each other and he was generally regarded as being very successful in this attempt (he was reelected to his position unanimously in February 1951) until his sudden death in November 1952. V.K. Wellington Koo was elected to complete Roosevelt's second term but, while an admirable figure in many ways, he lacked the authority and charisma of his predecessor.
While it would be simplistic to assert that this single event was totally decisive in and of itself, it does seem to have contributed to a moment of rupture. With a keystone in their relationship knocked away, the three superpowers began to move further apart from each other, with the Soviets going one way and the Anglo-Americans another. For example, even though it would not be true to say that the Soviets had not been supporting the communist insurgents in Malaya and the East Indies before this point, after 1952 they did step up their support (at least until a private agreement with the Commonwealth in 1958).
The most notable expression of this split was in the United States, where the so-called ‘Red Scare’ of 1952-56 was spearheaded by Senator Richard Nixon’s Committee on National Security, catapulting the Californian to global notoriety. Nixon was eventually selected as the Vice Presidential candidate by the Republican presidential hopeful Everett Dirksen and this trio (Charles Halleck was the GOP pick for Speaker) ended up defeating President A. Philip Randolph’s bid for re-election in 1956. Despite being the first GOP team to win the presidential election since 1928, the popularity that ushered the Dirksen-Nixon-Halleck ticket into power would not prove lasting. Dogged by revelations about his bullying and borderline-illegal actions while heading up the Committee on National Security, Nixon was almost forced to resign as early as 1957. A sharp economic downturn in 1959-60 put paid to their reelection hopes and they went down to the Progressive candidate of Estes Kefauver (along with his running mates Vice President John F. Kennedy and Speaker Roy Wilkins) in 1960. The anti-Soviet hysteria went down with them and American foreign policy towards the Soviets continued to be dominated by the ideas in George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram,’ which had argued that the Soviets were ultimately a defensive and not an expansive power and that coexistence with them was possible.
During this time, however, the alliance between the Commonwealth and the Americans seemed to hold: the political leaders of both countries had a close personal rapport and a shared understanding that their nations’ interests were best served together. Key to this was the personal role of Clement Attlee, whose geopolitical view was strongly shaped by the War, viewing the Americans as friends and the Soviets as allies of convenience. In the decade after Roosevelt’s death and the cooling of relations with the Soviets, however, Anglo-American relations too began to cool. Partly this was an ideological split about who should lead the organisation variously referred to as the ‘English-speaking world,’ the ‘West,’ the ‘capitalist world’ or the ‘First World.’ But, more prosaically, it had to do with a growing geopolitical belief, on the part of both the Commonwealth and the United States, that, maybe, their strategic aims were no longer as united as they had once been.
Following Attlee’s departure in 1955, the British cabinet was left denuded of its old pro-American figures. Of the prominent Labour members of the old wartime coalition most were either dead (in the case of Ernest Bevin, Arthur Greenwood and Stafford Cripps) or retired (in the case of Attlee and Nicolson).* This left a cadre of ministers whose experience of the War involved either fighting it or generally living through it rather than politically managing it. As a result they had a more cynical attitude towards the Americans. After Gaitskell died in 1963, the Big Four were now led by men and women (Barbara Castle, Lester Pearson, Ayub Khan and George Cole) whose attitudes towards the Americans were, at best, ambivalent. The President of the Commonwealth Council, Robert Menzies, had a romantic attachment to Britain, which he still called the ‘mother country’, that overwhelmed any love he might have for America. Tony Crosland, the Speaker of the Assembly, had his own plans for the organisation and the United States was of far less interest to him.
Thus, when the split came, it came as a result not of active hostility but due to the fact that there really was nobody left to defend the idea of continuing close cooperation. In January 1966, the Commonwealth formally withdrew from NATO and ordered all foreign military personnel to leave Commonwealth territory by the end of the year. A furious G. Mennen Williams, the US Secretary of State, asked whether this removal should include the exhumation of the American war dead buried around the world on Commonwealth territory. The proximate cause of the split was the American government reaching an agreement with the Spanish monarchical government to station a US naval detachment in Guantanamo Bay, giving the Americans another major toehold in what the Commonwealth had traditionally considered their lake. In truth, however, the split had been coming for some time, as we have seen. The fact was that, by 1965, there were not enough people left in positions of significant authority to argue in favour of a close alliance with the Americans.
Despite the hyperbolic predictions of some at the time, the weakening of cooperation between the three superpowers did not presage the collapse of the postwar order. The tripartite Reykjavik conference of March 1967 was held in good spirits and is generally agreed to have laid the grounds for the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Afterwards, the supposed ‘spirit of Reykjavik’ animated the cordial and cooperative relations between the three superpowers, even if they shied away from the close cooperation of the war years. Although the summit communique referred to the principles of non-interference, many analysts saw this as a thinly-veiled reference to spheres of influence. However, with Dag Hammarskjold still at the helm of the UN, the institution retained a certain kind of informal primacy and the three superpowers were relatively happy to carry out their diplomacy within it, at least for now.
*The only one of that coterie still around in frontline politics was Malcolm MacDonald, whose post-1945 career had seen him serve in junior ministerial positions at the Ministry of Health (1945-49), Transport (1949-51) and Supply (1951-53), before becoming a Commonwealth AM (1953-62) and from then on the head of the Commonwealth secretariat until his retirement in 1966. In these later two roles he took a generally pro-Commonwealth (if not fully anti-American) line.
Secretaries General of the United Nations
- Gladwyn Jebb; United Kingdom; September 1945 - February 1946
- Franklin Roosevelt; United States; February 1946 - November 1952
- V.K. Wellington Koo; China; November 1952 - February 1956
- Dag Hammarskjold; Sweden; February 1956 - present
Nuclear-Armed States (with date of first weapon)
- United States; 1945
- Soviet Union; 1949
- Commonwealth; 1951
- Sweden; 1964
- French Union; 1966