Britain and the Cold War: 1945 as Geopolitical Transition 9781474291804, 9781474291811, 9781474291828

Citation preview

Britain and the Cold War

History and Politics in the 20th Century: Bloomsbury Academic Collections

This collection of ten facsimile titles, chosen from our imprints Pinter, Mansell and Continuum, covers a broad variety of themes that confronted Europe throughout the turbulent twentieth century, focusing on European politics abroad as much as on inter-European political changes and challenges. The titles in this set examine the development of Britain from Empire to Commonwealth, paying particular attention to the inter- and post-war years, the emergence of the European Union and the struggles faced by former Soviet states in the 1990s. They also pick up on two of the leitmotifs of the 20th century: the quest for sovereignty and the rise and fall (and rise) of extreme right ideas and politics. The collection is available both in e-book and print versions. Titles in History and Politics in the 20th Century are available in the following subsets: International Relations in the 20th Century Europe in the 20th Century Conflict in the 20th Century Postcolonialism in the 20th Century Multidisciplinary Approaches Other titles available in Europe include: Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918-45 by Peter Catterall with C.J. Morris Crossing Borders: Political Essays by Sir Bernard Crick European Unity in Context: The Interwar Period edited by Peter M. R. Stirk Failure in Palestine: British and United States Policy after the Second World War by Martin Jones Post-Communist Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary edited by András Bozóki, András Körösenyi and George Schöpflin Reclaiming Sovereignty by edited Laura Brace and John Hoffman The EC, Eastern Europe and European Unity: Discord, Collaboration and Integration Since 1947 by Peter van Ham The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA edited by Paul Hainsworth The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the Mainstream edited by Paul Hainsworth

Britain and the Cold War 1945 As Geopolitical Transition

Peter J. Taylor

History and Politics in the 20th Century: Europe BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC COLLECTIONS

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 1990 by Pinter Publishers This edition published by Bloomsbury Academic 2016 © Peter J. Taylor 2016 Peter J. Taylor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-9180-4 ePDF: 978-1-4742-9182-8 Set: 978-1-4742-9296-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Series: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, ISSN 2051-0012

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Britain and the Cold War

Britain and the Cold War 1945 as Geopolitical Transition

Peter J. Taylor

Pinter Publishers London Guilford Publications, Inc. New York

©Peter J. Taylor 1990 First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Pinter Publishers Limited 25 Floral Street, London WC2E 9DS All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any other means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Please direct all enquiries to the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-86187-717-9 Published in 1990 in the United States by GUILFORD PUBLICATIONS, INC. 72 Spring Street New York, N.Y.10012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Peter J. (Peter James), 1944Britain and the cold war. (Geography and international relations series) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Great Britain—Politics and government— 1945- . 2. Great Britain—Foreign relations— 1945- . 3. World politics-1945- . 4. Cold War. I. Title. II. Series. DA588.T35 1990 941.085 90-7201 ISBN 0-89862-538-6

Typeset by Florencetype, Kewstoke, Avon Printed in Great Britain by iBilling & Sons Ltd, Worcester

Contents

Preface

ix

Prologue: the return of geopolitics

1

Part One: INTRODUCTION Chapter 1

The concept of geopolitical transition

Chapter 2

A contested history

'

9 22

Part Two: ALL CHANGE - 1945 Chapter 3

Nineteen forty-five in BraudeUien perspective

33

Chapter 4

Alternative worlds in 1945

44

Chapter 5

Britain at the turning point

56

Part Three: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER Chapter 6

The geoeconomic dilemma

71

Chapter 7

The geopolitical dilemma

87

Chapter 8

The geostrategic dilemma

101

Part Four: DISCUSSION Chapter 9

Questions of concern

121

Chapter 10

The salience of the geopolitical transition concept

134

Bibliography

143

Index

149

Tables and Figures

List of tables 1

Constructing a geopolitical code: US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1947

16

2

Rise and demise of the Grand Alliance

18

3

Hegemony and Kondratieff Cycles

40

4

Keynes's estimates overseas balance sheet for Great Britain in 1945

74

List of figures 1

A pantegion global model

49

2

Three 'Monroes' in 1945

50

3

Alternative bi-polar worlds in 1945

52

4

The real world of three distinctive bilateral associations

58

5

The Mediterranean, the Middle East and the USSR 'threat'

104

6

Mackinder's definitions of land power

126

For ENID, in lieu of decorating

The wisdom of our actions in the first three years of peace will determine the course of world history for half a century . . . (Henry Wallace, US Vice-President in 1941; Walton, 1976, i) From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. (Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister in 1946; James, 1974, 2290) Anyone under the age of fifty grew up or was born into - a world glaciated into its Cold War form. It must seem like an immutable fact of geography that the continent of Europe is divided into two blocs which are struck into postures of 'deterrence' for evermore. (Edward Thompson, 1987, 14) The world is no more likely to remain frozen in 1987 or 2000 than it was in 1870 or 1660. (Paul Kennedy, 1987, 440)

Preface

Anybody who writes yet another book about the origins of the Cold War needs to provide a good excuse. The only justification that will be acceptable is that the author has something fresh to say. The problem is, therefore, to show that within this vast corpus of knowledge something new can be produced. In one sense this is actually not difficult. Scholarship proceeds by continual reinterpretation of sets of known facts that are resorted into new patterns. Over time the contexts from which authors look back on events change to provide different insights into established interpretations. This has certainly been the case in Cold War studies and we can expect a new avalanche of reinterpretations now that the Cold War has been proclaimed dead, or at least nearly so. This study may be viewed as just such an early 'post-Cold War' offering. But the claims for the distinctiveness of this book lay elsewhere. The book before you is different on two counts: the empirical concern is geopolitics; and the theoretical perspective is world-systems analysis. This is, I contend, a unique combination with which to analyse the Cold War. Whether good or bad we can be sure that there is no other book quite like this one. By geopolitics I mean the study of the distribution of power across the world and the processes underlying its ever-changing patterns. Most such studies have been exercizes in 'hard-headed realism' that has frightened many people including myself. This study does not set out its postulates in such a way that getting ready to bomb the USSR is the only answer. Rather we employ world-systems assumptions which provide the degree of historical sensitivity necessary when confronting such recent events as the construction of the Cold War. It also makes for a more secure future! By world-systems analysis I mean the historical-social theory developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and his colleagues at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton, New York. In this form of analysis recent social change is treated as essentially a worldwide phenomenon based upon an integrated economic structure of core and periphery and a fragmented political structure that is the inter-state system. Most world-systems studies have concentrated on the material base of our modern world, the capitalist world-economy, leaving the inter-state system relatively neglected. Here we draw on concepts from Braudel and Wallerstein and apply them to a most classical international relations topic. I think the resulting reinterpretations, both empirically and theoretically, are interesting enough to warrant a public airing. That is my excuse and hence this book.

X

PREFACE

The corner of the Cold War literature on which I concentrate is to do with, Britain's role in the making of the world order at the end of the Second World War. Britain as victor was one of the 'Big Three' but, as several authors have pointed out in the last decade, Britain's contribution to constructing the post-war world has been neglected. I am greatly indebted to the small school of scholars who identified an anomaly in the existing literature and have attempted to fill it so intelligently. I follow their leads in exploring the degree to which Britain can be implicated in creating the Cold War. I call this 'the Britain hypothesis' and most of the book consists of generating a geopolitical version of that supposition. The basic Wallerstein assumption underlying this argument is that you cannot understand the political activities associated with any one state separate from processes operating at the world-system level. This is transparently true for Britain in 1945. We begin the book with a short prologue that attempts to clear the ground for our geopolitics. We identify the traditional sabre-rattling version as a rather vulgar political geography which is being replaced by geopolitical analyses that are informed by modern social theory. This study is a contribution to the latter. The main argument is then divided into four parts. Part One: Introduction, consists of two short chapters that provide the necessary background. In the first chapter we derive the concept of geopolitical transition as a relatively abrupt change in the global power structure. In this we are drawing on recent geopolitical studies that emphasize the social and historical basis of the ubiquitous 'geographical factor': our geopolitics is a very dynamic one and is not frozen into any particular pattern. In Chapter two we describe briefly the historiography of studies on the origins of the Cold War and derive the 'Britain hypothesis'. In this 'contested history' we focus on the supposed roles of Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin as the creators of an Anglo-American front against the USSR. The remainder of the book attempts to place such crucial decisionmakers into a broader context. Part Two: All Change - 1945 concentrates upon specifying the period when the post-war world was being created in world-systems terms. A 'long 1945' is identified from late 1944 to early 1946 when the politics of the Grand Alliance of the Big Three was transformed in such a way as to make the Cold War geopolitical configuration, at the very least, highly probable. This is our geopolitical transition which we describe in terms of Braudel's 'social time' concepts in Chapter three. While recognizing 1945 as a crucial turning point in terms of the very important events that occurred in that year, we go beyond this short-term view to consider Braudel's other spans of time. From the long-term perspective we consider the idea that the Cold War represents a fundamental clash of 'civilizations', which we will argue against; but from a medium-term perspective we do identify 1945 as representing a change of global hegemony - the USA finally becoming world leader. In Chapter four we concentrate on the politicalfluiditythat is the precondition for any transition. Five alternative worlds are identified as possible outcomes of Big Three machinations, giving four rivals to the

PREFACE

XI

actual outcome of USA and Britain versus the USSR. Finally in Part Two, we highlight the position of Britain in 1945. We argue in Chapter five that since Britain had particularly strong relations with both its partners in the Big Three, it was in a pivotal position in 1945. This became even more explicit with the election of a Labour government with a potential centre location between US capitalism and Soviet communism. We review the debate over a socialist foreign policy to show that this political position was actually quite false and was to be no hindrance in making the Cold War. The core of the book is Part Three: Britain's Crisis of Power, in which three chapters chart the basic dilemmas facing Britain in 1945. The geoeconomic dilemma, virtual bankrupcy, is described in Chapter six, which concentrates on the negotiations with the USA for a loan. This is interpreted as the final handover of hegemony, leaving Britain highly dependent on the USA. This weakness is explored further in Chapter seven, where Britain's struggle to maintain its world-power status is described as its geopolitical dilemma. This particular dilemma was faced in two contrasting ways: using traditional diplomatic skills; and by preparing to join the new 'atomic club'. Here we come to the heart of the Britain hypothesis as we find Britain influencing events despite her enormous post-war problems. In fact Britain is able to use her weakness to bring the USA into new arenas to precipitate the Cold War. This process is most clearly seen in Chapter eight, dealing with the geostrategic dilemma Britain was facing in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In effect the USA comes to defend the traditional lifeline of the British Empire. This is the geopolitical version of the Britain hypothesis. All of the analysis of these dilemmas is based upon secret and confidential Foreign Office documents that are now released for research. I have used the collection of papers brought together by Bullen and Pelly (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987) and I am indebted to them for their painstaking work in making such valuable and interesting primary material so accessible. This main part of my text can be interpreted as a particular geopolitical route, via nearly 200 references, through their four volumes. By its nature this is not a study with a conclusion. Rather, Part Four is a 'Discussion'. In Chapter nine I consider some outstanding questions that will concern readers. How could Britain as the weakest of the Big Three have so much influence on making the Cold War? How on earth could the traditionally anti-imperial Americans be lined up to defend the British Empire? These are the key questions that our Britain hypothesis is tested against here. We also look at the longer term effect on Britain - the irony that it was Britain that lost more from the creation of a new bi-polar world than either the USA or USSR. In the final chapter we move on to the more general question of whether our analyses have any wider significance, in particular to our contemporary situation. It is, of course, no coincidence that writing this book about a geopolitical transition has been executed at a time when we are just entering into a new transition. It is hoped that this study may in some small way inform that transition. It is with such thoughts that we conclude this book.

Xll

PREFACE

Having reviewed the contents let me now say something to the various audiences for whom I am writing. Political geographers will by now be familiar with my application of world-systems analysis to their subjectmatter. Nevertheless, they may be a little surprised to find a political geography of just a single year. This is, I think, a unique concept for a political geography book, which I justify on the ground of the profound importance of 1945. More generally, one of my motives for writing this book is my concern for the subdiscipline's revival being built upon shaky foundations. Research monographs seem to be lagging behind other manifestations of political geography's current success. We should be wary of this since previous political geography 'revivals' have fallen at this hurdle. The series of which this book is a part is an attempt to stimulate solutions to this problem. For international relations researchers this book may appear as something of a surprise, being on their 'patch' from a new and what may seem to be an unlikely source. Surely political geography ended with Sir Halford Mackinder, that pioneer arch-realist. Well no, actually, political geography is alive and kicking. By combining political geography concerns with a world-systems approach, this book may be viewed as a contribution to an already existing 'world-systems school' in international relations - Hollist and Rosenau's (1981) third approach alongside the traditional division between realism and idealism. In this context international relations scholars should treat this book as an attempt to apply world-systems theory to one of their most researched topics. As such, it is a severe test of this approach to see whether new insights can be produced. This is the most that can be hoped for and I leave it to readers to decide whether this is in fact achieved from their particular perspectives. At the very least, even if my product is deemed to be either naive political science or innocent history, I hope they will view this volume as a curious and interesting book. For world-systems analysists generally, this book should be of interest because it confronts the relative neglect of the inter-state system previously noted. Terry Hopkins (1978) has argued that our knowledge of system-wide political processes is much more meagre and theoretically incoherent than studies of international economics. This book is a minor contribution to the task of rectifying this debilitating anomaly in historical social science. In particular the instrumentalist treatment of the state, while fundamental to world-systems analysis, requires much elaboration to provide a comprehensive view of international politics. By concentrating on a specific topic in some depth, a little substance and subtlety is added, it is hoped, to the instrumentalism. The utilization of Braudel's social time concepts has been particularly helpful in this respect. For the general reader I expect my topic to be so intrinsically interesting that they will be willing to put up with my theoretical excursions. In any case I think it to be intellectually patronizing to assume the general public that is interested in your topic will not be able to handle theoretically informed analysis. Nobody likes turgid listing of facts that doubles as narrative in the worst texts. This book includes terms that may be

PREFACE

Xlll

considered jargon initially, but all are defined as they appear and are subsequently used in necessary ways. In any case both Braudel and Wallerstein have shown that mixing theory in social analysis within historical writings can command a very large audience. Part Three, at least, should entertain beyond academia. I will keep my acknowledgements short. First, I must thank audiences for listening and responding to seminars in which parts of the arguments below were hesitantly presented. These were at postgraduate seminars in the Geography departments at the Universities of Glasgow, Leeds, Colorado and Penn. State, at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California and at the Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers in Phoenix. More personally, I would like to record my thanks to a small group of international political geographers who by their work have made my foray into geopolitics that much easier: John Agnew, Simon Dalby, Leslie Hepple, Yves Lacoste and the French Herodote group, John O'Loughlin, Patrick O'Sullivan, Gerhard Sandner and the German historical revisionist group, Gearoid OTuathail and Herman van der Wusten. Special mention must be made of John O' who read through the manuscript and made many valuable suggestions-. In addition, I continue to be inspired by Ron Johnston's humanity, scholarship and friendship. Iain Stevenson, who first came up with the idea of a series on Geography and International Relations, has encouraged me as author of this book for which I thank him. I must also record my thanks to Yvonne Lambord and Margaret Taylor who turned my rapid scrawl into a typed manuscript. Last but not least I dedicate this book to my wife Enid as a silver wedding present. No words of mine can convey adequately the love, companionship and support we have shared over a quarter of a century. Towards the end of producing this volume she did point out that I could have decorated our old six-bedroomed house twice over in the time spent on writing. The reader may feel I should have done that when he or she reaches the last page. Me? I'm getting ready to write something else before Enid brings out the paint brushes. Peter J. Taylor Forest Hall, August 1989

Prologue

The return of geopolitics

Geopolitics presents a distorted view of the historical, political and geographical relations of the world and its parts. It identifies no universal forces or process like gravity. It is relative to the state to which it is applied. At least so say its advocates. Its arguments as developed in Germany are only made up to suit the case for German aggression. It contains, therefore, a poisonous self-destroying principle: when international interests conflict or overlay, might alone shall decide the issue. (Bowman, 1942, 646). Les Hepple, drawing on an article by J. Graham, tells the delightful story that the revival of the term 'geo-politics' originated from a typist's error in Richard Nixon's White House (Graham, 1970; Hepple, 1986, 25). The word that should have been typed was 'ego-polities', which, it is suggested, is a much better description of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy initiatives. Whatever the truth of the matter - and I for one would like to believe the story - since the early 1970s geopolitics and its associated adjective 'geopolitical' have become increasingly commonplace words in discussions of world affairs. This is a remarkable turnaround from the first three decades after the Second World War when geopolitics was effectively proscribed due to its association with the German Geopolitik of the Third Reich. The latter was seen as instrumental in guiding German expansion through the search for lebensraum (literally 'living space') by invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland and finally the USSR. Guilt by association meant that no book with the word geopolitics in its title appeared between 1945 and 1975 (Hepple, 1986). Typist error or not, we can be reasonably sure that Henry Kissinger was 'a key trigger' in releasing geopolitics back into our vocabulary (Hepple, 1986, 25). He used the term rather vaguely to mean a global politics promoting an equilibrium or balance between great powers. As US Secretary of State in the early 1970s Kissinger had to face a relative decline in US power and a new multinodal world as he saw it. Kissinger thought the USA ill-prepared for this new situation, since the state had no 'geopolitical tradition' (Hepple, 1986, 26). It was the Secretary of State's task to create just such an approach to US foreign policy based upon his knowledge as an historian of nineteenth-century European balance-of-power theories. In this way Kissinger re-legitimized geopolitics, so enabling it to return to our language.

2

PROLOGUE

There are both pluses and minuses from this particular route to literary rehabilitation. The big advantage is that geopolitics has returned to the academic agenda of political geography. The disadvantage is that Kissinger's rather general use of the term has been compounded further in popular usage. According to Hepple (1986, 28-9) [Geopolitics] appears as a disembodied term, with no known history, and can variously meari 'global-strategic', 'ideological East-West conflict', 'regionalpolitical', 'geographical-contextual', or nothing very very clear at all.. . It carries connotations of hard-headed, no-nonsense realism, with the writer [and reader] facing up to 'geopolitical realities'. In one sense the vagueness is unimportant since social science terminology will always suffer this fate in popular discourse. The 'hard-headed' connotation is important, however. A 'new [sic] geopolitics' became a tool of the new (sic) right in, first, their efforts to discredit 1970s detente, and then to promote the 'Second Cold War' of the early 1980s. All this occurred before political geographers had really got to grips with their erstwhile notorious progeny. The relationship between geopolitics and political geography has been long debated. The most common conclusion has been that the former is a subjective pseudo-science which contrasts with the objective science of political geography. Geopolitics is seen as an 'applied political geography' that somehow went too far in the Third Reich - in Patterson's (1986) terms it became subservient to policy needs. The cardinal error, which gives it its pseudo-science label, is that truth was sacrificed for politics. This traditional story will no longer stand up to scrutiny. As soon as political geography stops claiming to be a simple objective science, the relationship with geopolitics becomes quite problematic. It is on these grounds that Lacoste's (1987) Herodote group have brought geopolitics back to the centre stage in French political geography. Their argument is as follows: Since geography's raison d'etre is to understand space so that society can act more effectively it means that all such analyses of political spatial configurations are essentially political. Hence the old division between 'objective' political geography and 'political' geopolitics breaks down. Such knowledge can be constructed as a tool for domination to be sure but equally any liberation movement must have spatial knowledge and policies - a resistance geopolitics. The Herodote group's logic leads them to find geopolitics and hence to conduct geopolitical analyses at all geographical scales from the global to the local. I prefer to keep the traditional association of geopolitics with global or at least inter-state political processes. But this is where we must be very careful. Studying global rivalries does not mean ignoring other geographical scales. The focus of study may be global but to understand any geography scale we must expect to have to resort to a kaleidoscope of scales. Scales do not define autonomous 'systems' of operation, rather they all fit together as a single whole. We can no more understand the global by neglecting the local

PROLOGUE

3

than we can analyse the local and ignore the global. And this is what modern political geography is all about, whether through the French Herodote's various 'geopolitics' or the typical Anglo-American organization of political geography by geographical scale (Taylor, 1982,1989a). We are now in a position to return to consideration of Third Reich geopolitics and recent new (sic) right geopolitics. They should not be dismissed as mere 'pseudo-science'. They have been too successful for us to deal with them in such a cursory manner. The best way of interpreting them is as vulgar political geography*. They stand in relation to political geography in the same way that the cruder 'economism' of the Second International relates to Marxist theory. This vulgar Marxism was a simplistic application of a much more subtle theory to immensely complex processes of social change. It could make sense in the short term but with catastrophic long-term consequences. Similarly, vulgar political geography provides simplistic answers to complex questions and subtlety is conspicuous by its absence. It, too, has experienced catastrophic consequences. Vulgar political geography has no meaningful treatment of the different scales of human activity. Crude state-centric analysis produces simplistic theories. A classic case is the 'domino theory' thatfirstappeared around the same time as the Cold War. In this theory states are depicted as dominoes lined up in a row so that if one 'falls to communism' the rest tumble down. Greece, South Vietnam and El Salvador have each in their time been prime dominoes. This model illustrates beautifully the poverty of vulgar political geography and why it is so dangerous. We must be grateful to Patrick O'Sullivan (1982) for doing such an efficient demolition job on this particularly vulgar political geography. What this theory does, of course, is to allow the proponents to ignore internal conflicts within countries, so that social and national movements for change all become mere tools of the USSR. Not unnaturally these 'domino countries' resent being treated as either vertical or horizontal game pieces (O'Sullivan, 1982, 59). O'Sullivan argues that President Eisenhower popularized the model in the mid-1950s, although he traces its origin to 1947. In fact since such ideas have constituted a major US interpretation of the dynamics of the Cold War, they can be traced right back to the end of the Second World War. Loth (1988, 86) quotes the US Ambassador in Moscow, Arevell Harriman, as early as April 1945 talking in such terms. In particular he credits the famous Kennan telegraph of February 1946 warning of Soviet expansion as 'at first sight a brilliant intellectual vindication of the 'domino theory' (Loth, 1988,108). This link is important because we know from Isaacson and Thomas (1986, 170) that Kennan's theories leading to the containment model were based upon a crude geographical and historical determinism whereby the USSR's 'national personality' was supposed to be due to its geography and history. Here we find a vulgar geography and history at the heart of Cold War thinking. It leads to statesmen seeing danger in grand sweeps of geography and history. In the Senate J. Howard McGratt could argue that:

4

PROLOGUE

Today (February 26,1946) it is Trieste, Korea and Manchuria, tomorrow it is the British Empire. The next day it is South America. And then - who is so blind as to fail to see the next step? (Adler and Paterson, 1970, 1057). Meanwhile in the State Department, Dean Acheson pored over his maps, he had no doubt what the Soviets were up to. History offered many examples of an emerging power moving into regions that a waning one could no longer influence (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 369). All this vulgar geography came to policy fruition in the Truman doctrine speech of 12 March 1947 in which the President assured both Houses of Congress that: It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. (Walton, 1976,144). Such faith in elementary map interpretation is worrying to say the least. We have to turn to a later President who was equally concerned with domino theory to find an accurate portrayal of the social theory underlying this type of thinking. President Johnston's domino theory asserted that: If you let a bully come into your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day, and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed. (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 642). We may label this very vulgar political geography. In general it can be argued that vulgar analyses have no intellectually respectable social theory underlying their analyses. In the case of political geography simple notions of state-centric power politics usurp social analysis resulting in an uncritical acceptance of the importance of physical features in geopolitics. In new (sic) right geopolitics, for instance, it has become almost compulsory to quote Nicholas Spykman's (1944) dictum that 'Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent' (Gray, 1977,11). From this position Gray describes geopolitics as 'a master framework that, without predetermining policy choice, suggests long term factors and trends in the security objectives' of states. Despite this small retreat from determinism, Gray is still able to define as 'the central argument' of his study that 'it needs to be recognised that East-West conflict is (for all relevant policy-related purposes) a permanent feature of international relations' (p. 8, emphasis in the original). The central argument of this study is the exact opposite of the above. Vulgar political geography is important because it lures unsuspecting prey into a geopolitical trap. Hence we should not automatically welcome Kelly's (1986, 162) observation that Most geopolitical concepts now are academically respected, and political analyses based upon these approaches no longer encounter the Hitlerian geopolitik stigma once given them in the decades following World War II.

PROLOGUE

5

Hepple (1986, 32) has the right approach when he warns that The revival of geopolitics offers both opportunities and dangers.' The dangers arise from the attractiveness of simple spatial theories and the easy solutions to the unpredicabilities of a complex world that they provide. The opportunities arise from the possibility of transcending the vulgarity and finally generating a geopolitics within a framework of modern social theory. This is a major task facing political geography in the 1990s and this book is my small contribution to that end. Finally I must assure readers that attempting to produce a socialtheoretically respectable study in geopolitics does not mean a surfeit of abstract theorising. This book is primarily an empirical study of particular episodes in international relations in the making of the 'Cold War'. One of the reasons for choosing this theme is because the Cold War has been an ideal breeding ground for vulgar political geography pronouncements. Obviously, with global politics described by a climatic analogy as a world frozen in conflict, ideas about 'constant' and 'natural' geopolitical imperatives seemed to be quite reasonable. To expose such thinking we must undermine the assumptions. A key path to such ends can be found specifically in the analysis of the social construction of what seems to be so 'natural': what has been built can be unbuilt since there is nothing immutable about social constructions. Quite simply, the more we know about what we have built, the greater our potential to control it. The ultimate aim is to have the choice to reject any particular ordering of the world against the advice of vulgar political geographers who tell us it is both necessary and inevitable. That is true freedom. If our geopolitical world is not a constant one then we need to theorize its changes beyond the fall of minor 'dominoes'. Does global geopolitical change occur smoothly or does some change occur rapidly to be followed by periods of relative stability? I believe the latter bestfitsour recent experiences. The key concept I introduce is geopolitical transition from one kind of geopolitical world to another. Of course, the very notion of geopolitical transition undermines the certainties of vulgar 'geopolitical lessons'. That is why we start with this concept.

Part One Introduction

Chapter 1

The concept of geopolitical transition

One could describe geopolitical reasoning as the creation of the backdrop or setting upon which 'international polities' takes place but such would be a simplistic view. The creation of such a setting is itself part of world politics. This setting itself is more than a simple backdrop it is an active component part of the drama of world politics . . . It is in this sense that geopolitical reasoning helps constitute the world and its political geography. It is an innately political process of representation by which the 'intellectuals of statecraft' designate a world and 'fill' it with certain dramas, subjects, histories, and dilemmas. All statespersons engage in the practice; it is one of the norms of the world political community. (O'Tuathail and Agnew, 1987,12). In September 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation on the crisis in Europe: How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. (Thompson, 1965, 175). That 'faraway country' was Czechoslovakia. A decade later, in February 1948, this same country had become a focus of concern. The communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and particularly the shock of the death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, more than any other single event signalled the existence of a Cold War in Europe. Somehow Czechoslovakia no longer seemed so far away. L.E. Davis (1974) in his monograph on the origins of the Cold War begins with essentially the same paradox. Why, he asks, did the USA ignore the overruning of Eastern Europe by Nazi Germany before 1941 but confront the USSR just a few years later in this very same region. It is not that Czechoslovakia or Eastern Europe have changed their physical location on the world map; it is rather that the meaning of their locations had changed for the key actors in the inter-state drama. Put another way, the geopolitical context has altered so that countries and regions have had to be reevaluated. We shall term such fundamental shifts 'geopolitical transitions'. It is the prime purpose of this chapter to define, refine and illustrate this concept. The chapter is divided into three parts. We begin by rehearsing the important argument that geopolitics can be properly understood only as a social and historial product. There is nothing eternal about geopolitics. We

10

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

then set about the task of defining geopolitical transition more precisely. En route to this end we have to describe the related concepts of geopolitical code and geopolitical world order. In this terminology the Cold War becomes a geopolitical world order and the US containment policy an example of a geopolitical code. Finally, we describe the transition to the Cold War geopolitical world order to illustrate the concept and as background to the remainder of this study. Geopolitics is social and historical If one of the purposes of this book is to go beyond vulgar geopolitics, we must begin by specifying the nature of our social and historical geopolitics. This is, of course, not a new task. Many years ago Bowman (1948, 130) commented that It is often said that geography does not change. In truth geography changes as rapidly as ideas and technologies change; that is the meaning of geographical conditions change, (emphasis in the original) Using traditional geopolitical frameworks the argument has been illustrated perhaps most convincingly by Meinig (1956), and has been confirmed most recently by Sloan (1988, x). In this study we will employ a critical approach to geopolitics that draws on the recent pioneering work of OTuathail and Agnew (1987). They define geopolitics as a reasoning process, a series of discourses that order the world of states. All such exercises in statecraft consist of intellectual rationalizations of preferred foreign policies. Such exercises are carried out in two different contexts. Practical geopolitical reasoning is the work of state servants either foreign policy departmental personnel or elected members of government. Formal geopolitical reasoning is the product of the academic community whereby specific theories of geopolitics are produced. Since most producers of the latter have aspired to belong to the former, the distinction between the two forms of reasoning is sometimes hard to draw. Nevertheless, political geographers have tended to be mesmerized by their formal geopolitical heritage at the expense of studying the much more important practical geopoliticians. Here we will reverse this unfortunate bias. In our substantive chapters below we will present very many examples of politicians and other foreign policy operatives making geographical statements about the nature of the world in which they find themselves working. This practical geopolitics is invariably vulgar in historical social science terms as its purpose is typically short term, self-seeking and uncritical in nature. Very often the world presented is highly simplified on purpose to obtain a desired response from the audience. This was the case with President Truman's famous speech to Congress in 1947 which marked the initiation of containment policy. The government's chief adviser on the USSR, George Kennan, subsequently recanted in 1956 directly admitting that

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

11

The image of Stalinist Russia poised and yearning to attack the West, and deterred only by our possession of atomic weapons, was largely a creation of the western imagination. (Adler and Paterson, 1970,1057) The chief 'creator' of this security overstatement or making arguments 'clearer than the truth' was Dean Acheson (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 318), whose purpose was to manipulate Congress to obtain the funds for extending US presence into the western Mediterranean. Gaddis (1982, 52) calls the Truman Doctrine exaggerated rhetoric or 'universalist rhetoric for particular purposes'. Whatever terminology we use, the speech included very effective vulgar geopolitics, whose short-term purposes produced profound effects for the longer term. It is just such practical geopolitics that we investigate in subsequent chapters. In the tradition of 'serving my country right or wrong', some political geographers have been equally vulgar in their attempts to legitimize their state's foreign policy. Formal geopolitics is strewn with such offerings which undermine the critical potential of political geography. In this text formal geopolitics has the immediate task of interpreting the practical, the intermediate task of providing critical evaluation of the practical and the ultimate task of informing the practical to produce a more humane geopolitics. Whether practical or formal, geopolitical discourse is not a simple product of the minds of 'great men' revealing geographical 'truth'. Geopolitics is created by people operating in specific contexts. This constructed geopolitics incorporates the interests and contributes to the conflicts of its context. There can never be anything neutral about questions of free trade and tariff protection or war and peace. All such international matters will generate winners and losers among the social groups affected by the decisions, however 'natural' such issues are made to seem. The geopolitics behind such decisions involves providing places - other states - with particular meanings in terms of a given state's security. In this way the world is divided up and valued differentially. Every place is given a use (or non-use) in such a constructed geopolitical scheme of things. O'Tuathail and Agnew (1987) refer to places as being represented as security commodities in geopolitical reasoning. Hence geopolitical concepts, such as heartland, buffer zone, shatter belt, sphere of influence, check-point, client state and so on, are simple ways of giving particular security 'values' to places (Agnew and Corbridge, 1989, 269). We can summarize the above by saying that the products of geopolitical reasoning are social, the meanings given to the world cannot be understood separately from the society in which they are produced. Much earlier Kenneth Boulding (1956) came to similar conclusions in his investigations of 'images' in international relations. But these geopolitical products are also historical. The meanings attributed to places change as the contexts in which the meanings are made change. This seems to be what has happened in the Eastern European examples with which we began this chapter. The meaning of Czechoslovakia changed considerably in terms of its evaluation as a security commodity from supposed irrelevance to crucial importance.

12

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

We can say, therefore, that a geopolitical transition must involve a fundamental re-evaluation of places as security commodities. Before we develop this argument any further, a short digression on popular input into foreign policy decision-making is in order here. Foreign policy including geopolitical reasoning has been traditionally viewed as 'high polities' to emphasize its importance to the state in comparison to domestic or 'low polities'. The European dynastic origins of high politics has been undermined by the rise of a more popular political process just as in all other politics. But the effect has been much less marked. Although Boulding (1956) is able to discuss 'mass images' alongside 'elite images', the importance of the former as a factor in foreign policy-making is quite problematical. In 1901 the young Winston Churchill warned about the unpredictability of popular input into 'high politics' - 'Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets', he argued. 'The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings' (Bartlett, 1984, 86) - but in the event this politics has been far better insulated by elites than other areas of policy. This has been achieved in many ways, ranging from recruitment policy into foreign office departments to the reservation of such issues to 'presidential' or 'prime ministerial' politics. Reviewing the British situation, Hill (1981, 59-60) comments: on matters of foreign policy, the governments in liberal-democratic societies can use appeals to patriotism, secrecy and small size of attentive public to dampen controversies on inconvenient subjects and to inspire a comfortable consensus. Of course, this is not always true and exceptions can be readily found. But the pervasion of bipartisanship in foreign policy matters has been remarkable when we contrast it with domestic political conflicts. A form of high politics seems to have survived popular input into government. Governments can use and manipulate 'public opinion' in this sphere of their operations much more than elsewhere. A good and pertinent example would be the 1946 decision of the Labour government in Britain to build its own atomic weapons. Although the party had a clear set of democratic channels for decision-making, this vital 'state' decision wasrnade in great secrecy so that even some members of the Labour Cabinet were not informed. The decision was presented as a fait accompli to party and citizenry at a later date when the time was right, or, to put it another way, when a context existed in which the general propensity to accept the new weapons was strong. Modern geopolitical transitions will have to involve fundamental changes in mass images of the world. What our discussion implies is that such changes at the popular level will follow the machinations of the politicians and their expert advisers. The people have to be educated to understand the need to love old enemies and to hate former friends. It is at this stage that formal geopolitical reasoning may be popularized to legitimate a new world order.

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

13

Geopolitical codes and geopolitical world orders Geopolitical reasoning produces geopolitical codes. These are defined by Gaddis (1982) as the operational code that a government uses to make sense of the world. They are particular state-centric frameworks in which other states are ordered in relation to the government's state. The key element of such codes is the definition of state interest. From this are derived perceived threats to the interest, and policies to counter the threats. State interest also provides a justification for the policies. Such codes are inevitably geographical because they must encompass variations in the valuation of foreign places. No government has ever perceived the rest of the world as a single blanket threat - even Albania at the height of its Cold War isolation. The differential valuation of places - regions and other states - means that practical geopolitical reasoning in the form of geopolitical codes provides the political geography assumptions informing foreign policy. The first assumptions made relate to state security so that other places are viewed as security commodities, using OTuathail and Agnew (1987) terms. Kenneth Boulding (1956) has suggested we consider such international images along four dimensions. First, other states are assessed on a 'geographical dimension'. For instance, states sharing boundaries will always figure prominently in their respective government's operational codes. France and Germany can never ignore one another. Second, there is the fundamental assessment along a 'hostility versus friendliness dimension'. Friendliness is often formalized by an alliance which is itself always directed at specific non-alliance or counter-alliance states. The Warsaw Pact versus NATO is obviously the current major example. Third, at any point in time the stability of inter-state relationships is an important dimension. Some patterns of friendship and hostilities are more permanent than others, often referred to as 'special relationships' and 'traditional enemies'. Within NATO, for example, Britain claims a special relationship with the USA, whereas Greece and Turkey have continued to behave as traditional enemies. Finally, Boulding argues that international images incorporate a power dimension. All governments order other states with whom they have relations in terms of relative power to influence their policies. A change of power can be seen in NATO, for instance, as the USA has come to show more regard for West Germany than Britain as its key European ally. This last example is very instructive because it points out a weakness in Boulding's international relations model. Britain remains the only nuclear power other than the USA fully integrated into NATO's command structure. Why then the shift in US preference to West Germany? Obviously, there is the matter of the economic power of places. We must never remain narrowly political in our interpretation of geopolitical codes. Political security is important in the short term, but in the long term economic security is the necessity. All four of Boulding's dimensions have relevance for state trade policies from traditional trading partners to antagonist trading rivals. Today Japan is vital to any US government's geopolitical code for reasons of economic security. In short, we must pursue a political-economy

14

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

interpretation of geopolitical codes. As we shall see, the British Empire and not the USSR was at the centre of the USA's geopolitical code in 1945, not as a political threat but because she was perceived as the main obstacle to US global 'open door' policy. Geopolitical codes may be considered at different levels of detail. For instance, we can identify a general 'containment' geopolitical code providing the political assumptions of US foreign policy since 1947. However, different US governments have interpreted containment in very different ways, as Gaddis (1982) illustrates. Hence, it is probably best to view containment as a family of geopolitical codes (Taylor, 1989a). Following this example, we may generalize to say that geopolitical codes are best viewed at the level of particular governments. Hence, throughout the world at any one time there will be as many codes as there are states with governments, and those codes will alter as governments change. Boulding's 'geographical dimension' of these operational codes can be used to refine the concept further. We can think of geopolitical codes as operating on three scales: local; regional; and global. Governments of all countries have to have a local code describing neighbours and nearneighbours who may impinge on their security. Governments of many countries have regional codes as they perceive a need to evaluate other states beyond their neighbours but in their region of the world. These are the regional or aspiring regional powers. Finally, governments of major world powers will be required to devise global scale geopolitical codes. The various US containment codes are examples of such global images. Such a division of levels of codes is a simplification, of course. Today the old European imperial powers continue to have a legacy of worldwide interests although their code is now primarily focused at the regional level. Hence their geopolitical codes may be quite complex, for instance continuing French concern for the South Pacific. Nevertheless, the three-scale identification of codes does seem to be more than an arbitrary division. We can find many examples of such a tripartite organization. In the First World War, for instance, Bartlett (1984, 89) describes Germany's view of the war as 'one of defence against France, prevention against Russia but a struggle for world supremacy with Britain'. Britain's traditional nineteenth-century family of codes was derived from a local code of defence along the Channel (and in Ireland as 'back door'), a regional code of balance-of-power strategies in Europe and a global code centering on sea power and the Royal Navy 'ruling the waves'. The US rise to global power has consisted of going beyond its regional codes - the Monroe Doctrine - to global containment codes after 1947. In one reaction Gaullist French codes were premised on friendship with its neighbour, West Germany, European detente with the USSR, and challenge to Anglo-American world hegemony. These wideranging examples suggest that our tripartite model of codes may be of general utility. In our substantive discussions below we consider the specific geopolitical codes of the 'Big Three' - the USA, the USSR and Britain - in 1945, concentrating on the regional and global level of their international images.

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

15

It may be useful if at this time we sketch briefly all three codes as the Second World War ended. The simplest geopolitical code was that of the USSR (McCauley, 1983). Having lost some 11 per cent of its pre-war population as a result of the German invasion and its repulsion, the USSR's security needs were immediately obvious. Eastern and Central Europe were the centre of Soviet concern. The first need, conceded by the USA and Britain, was the re-incorporation of parts of the old Russian Empire lost after the First World War, notably the Baltic States and eastern Poland. Second, the remainder of Eastern and Central Europe was to be under Soviet influence to the degree that it represented no security threat. As a sphere of influence, this was never fully accepted by the USA and Britain. Beyond this crucial zone for USSR security, other border areas from Turkey and Iran in the Middle East to China and Manchuria in the Far East were of direct if lesser concern. Although the USSR expressed interest in other areas, notably Japan and North Africa, these were never important in the geopolitical code; neither was ideology. The wartime alliance with the capitalist powers meant that the 'inevitability' of their collapse was not seen as imminent. Communist politicians in countries outside the crucial security code areas were supported only intermittently. Britain's geopolitical code in 1945 was an updated version of the nineteenth-century imperial code (Fawcett, 1949). There was continuing concern for the 'sinews of Empire', the communication links between the far-flung units of the Empire. This emphasized the route through the Mediterranean and Middle East to India, the Far East and Australia. The Suez Canal was the crucial 'choke point', the 'jugular' of the empire. In addition, the alliance with the USA meant that the North Atlantic had become a second crucial zone in Britain's geopolitical code. Britain, Canada and the USA represented a new focus now the latter had emerged from its isolationism. Beyond these two crucial areas Britain had direct concern for colonies on all continents. In short, Britain had a worldwide code reflecting both historical legacy and contemporary needs. It was to be unsustainable. The geopolitical code of the USA was the most interesting because it was the most changeable at this time (Gaddis, 1982). Recent 'isolationism' did not, of course, mean that the USA had no security concerns and interests beyond its borders. The Monroe Doctrine and Pacific and Asian policies represented the traditional US geopolitical code that was in no sense weakened by the Second World War. In fact the latter was immeasurably strengthened with the defeat of Japan. But US relations with Europe are what is vital, here, of course. Originally committed to bringing all troops home from Europe within two years, the USA's geopolitical code was extended by the Truman Doctrine and solidified by the establishment of NATO in 1949. Instead of the traditional abhorrence of entanglement in European affairs, the USA became a central actor on the continent. It is this changing code which, in interaction with Soviet concern for Central and Eastern Europe, defines the Cold War, of course. We can see how far the US geopolitical code had extended beyond Latin America and East Asia by 1947 in the rankings shown on Table 1. This document of the Joint Chiefs

16

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

Table 1

Constructing a geopolitical code: US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1947

Places ranked in terms of 'urgency of need'to combat communist threat

Rankings based on VS. security

Overall ranking of importance: Geopolitical Code

9. 6. u. 3. 1. 2. 7. u. 10. 12. 17. u. 5. u. 13. 18.

Great Britain France Germany Italy Greece Turkey Austria Japan Belgium Netherlands Latin America Spain Korea China Philippines Canada

1 2 3 7 10 9 6 13 4 5 11 12 15 14 16 8

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

4. 8. 11. 14. 15. 16.

Iran Hungary Luxembourg Portugal Czechoslovakia Poland

u u u u u u

u u u u u u

u = unranked

Source: derived from Joint Chief of Staffs document reproduced in Etzold ÒC Gaddis (1978) p. 79, 82 & 83. of Staff also provides some insight into the making of a geopolitical code. In this case places are ranked first in terms of importance for US security and then in terms of the perceived urgency of a place's need for US support. A final ranking combines these two orderings of places to produce a code with the top ranks, not surprisingly, coinciding with US security interests. It is this geopolitical code as a complete reversal of the traditional 'isolationism' that required the excessive rhetoric of the Truman Doctrine to create 'containment'. These geopolitical codes of the Big Three are crucial to our subsequent story. This is because although there are as many geopolitical codes at any one point of time as there are states and governments, this does not produce a chaotic mixture of different and unrelated state-centric images informing world politics. No single code is produced autonomously. Furthermore, the pattern of influence on codes is very hierarchical. The major powers of any era provide the assumptions and agenda to which all other states have to adapt. Hence there is normally a consensus among the world political

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

17

community on the dominant drama of international relations (O'Tuathail and Agnew, 1987). This defines a geopolitical world order. Geopolitical world orders are relatively stable organizations of the world that come to be generally accepted as the way in which the world works. They are structures that guide both thinking and action in international relations. All governments have to devise their operational codes within such overarching frameworks. In the post-Second World War era, for instance, all countries have had to define their stance in relation to the 'Cold War' - pro-USA, pro-USSR, neutral or non-aligned - and define their geopolitical code accordingly. Fundamental shifts in such codes such as the transfer of a state from the Western to the Eastern sphere of influence can be accommodated within the structure. Only changes in major power geopolitical codes can threaten a world order. We are now in a position to define more precisely a geopolitical transition. This concept applies specifically to a change from one geopolitical world order to another. Such a transition occurred in the years before 1950 and this is the subject-matter of this book. We can appreciate the degree of 'global shift' involved by noting that both a new world leader and chief challenger appeared on the scene at this time. Instead of Germany challenging the British Empire, a completely new world was constructed with the USSR challenging the USA. This was some geopolitical transition! Transition to the Cold War geopolitical world order The geopolitical world order that preceded the Cold War has been termed the 'World Order of the British Succession' (Taylor, 1989a). The power of the British state both politically and economically has been declining since the late nineteenth century. For most of the first half of the twentieth century there was no one state willing or able to replace Britain as the dominant power in the world. With hindsight we can interpret the two world wars as contests for the British succession between Germany and the USA. This contest was not decided until the end of the Second World War and the unconditional surrender of Germany. The long drawn-out decline of Britain meant that as late as the 1930s the legacy of her triumphs of the nineteenth century still set the global agenda. For instance, Watt (1984, 44) notes that in the 1930s Britain continued to occupy 'the central position . . . in American maps of the world'. Put simply, Britain was the status quo power in the world in favour of no change (Northedge, 1974, 303). As the First Sea Lord said in 1934: We have got most of the world already, or the best parts of it, and we only want to keep what we have got and prevent others from taking it away from us. (Reynolds, 1981, 294). In short all countries, including the USA, were 'have nots' compared to Britain. The policy subsequently denigraded as 'appeasement' was quite logical in these circumstances. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's

18

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

approach was straightforward: he 'clearly wished to uphold a liberal capitalist Britain and its empire against allcomers - Socialists, Communists, Fascists and Americans' (Bartlett, 1984, 191). As Churchill appreciated in 1937, war was no solution to Britain's problems as the status quo power since 'Even if we win, it would cost us so much the victory would look like defeat.' (Bartlett, 1984, 191). As the options for Britain narrowed with the approach of the Second World War, the Foreign Office admitted that policy came down to a preference for US dominance over German victory. In these circumstances it is easy to agree with Gamble (1981, 103) that 'Britain's decision to fight Germany a second time brought a sudden end to Britain's world dominance'. The succession was now reduced to either a liquidation of the British (and French) empires and their replacement by three or four economic and political blocs centred on Germany, Japan, the USA and possibly the USSR (Taylor, 1989a) or the more simple 'one world' replacement of the dominant British formal political empire with a new US informal economic empire. In the event neither of these potential geopolitical world orders was constructed. The first was destroyed by the Second World War, the second began to be implemented but was soon transformed into the two-world geopolitical solution of the Cold War. Hence the geopolitical transition came in two stages: first, a trend towards blocs defeated by the 'Grand Alliance' of USA-USSR-Britain; and second, the breakdown of this alliance with the failure of the USA to create 'one world'. We will be concerned with the second part of the transition in this study. In Table 2 we present a chronology of the rise and fall of the Grand Alliance of the 'Big Three' for future reference as we tell our story. The main landmarks on the route from one world to two worlds can be described as follows. The USA began the process of constructing one world even before it entered the Second World War. In 1941 at the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt which produced the Atlantic Charter agreement to support national sovereignty and self-determination, while principally aimed at German conquests in Europe it was also applicable to non-European zones and hence presaged decolonization. A year later although the Lend-Lease

Table 2

Rise & Demise of the Grand Alliance

1. Building the Grand Alliance 1941 :

March 11th Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act so that the USA can act as Britain's arsenal June 22nd Germany invades the USSR July 13th Britain & the USSR agree mutual aid pact August 14th Atlantic Charter agreed by Britain & the USA making political self-determination a war aim August 25-29th Iran divided between Britain ÒC the USSR December 7th Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour December 11th Germany declares war on the USA

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

Table 2

19

continued

2. Preparing for Peace 1943:

October 19 th-Nov ember 1st Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow - the first between the Big Three November 28th-December 1st Tehran Conference - first meeting of the leaders of the Big Three

1944 :

August 21 st-September 2 7th Dumbarton Oaks Conference - United Nations proposal discussed by Big Three August 24th Hyde Park Meeting between Britain & the USA on Atomic Policy November 6th Roosevelt reelected for 4th term

1945 :

February 4th-l 1 th Yalta Conference - second meeting of the Big Three leaders April 12th Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes President April 25th-]une 26th San Francisco Conference of 50 countries agrees to create the United Nations May 7th Germany unconditionally surrenders July 17th-August 30th Potsdam Conference - third and final meeting of the Big Three leaders July 26th Labour wins British General Election August 6th Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 8th USSR declares war on Japan August 14th Japan surrenders

3. Breakdown of the Grand Alliance 1945 :

September 11 th-October 2nd First Foreign Ministers Conference held in London - USSR isolated December 6th USA-Britain loan deal agreed December 16th-28th Second Foreign Ministers Conference held in Moscow - USA-USSR accommodation

1946:

February 22nd George Kennan's 'Long Telegram' from Moscow gives strong anti-USSR argument March 5th Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech blames the USSR for dividing Europe March 6th USA protest note to USSR over Iran April 25th-July 30th Third Foreign Ministers Conference held in Paris - USSR isolated again

1947:

February 27th Britain inform the USA that they can no longer afford to keep troops in Greece March 12th Truman's message to Congress comes to be known as the Truman Dotrine - end of US isolationism June 5th Marshall calls for European recovery programme June 12th-15th Community of European Economic Co-operation set up as non-communist group

20

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

agreements enabled the USA to supply its allies, they also had a second role as a tool for economic liberalization: the clause promoting no discrimination in trade was a direct attack on British imperial preferences. Towards the end of the war and with victory in sight, conferences were held in the USA at Bretton Woods and San Francisco to produce the institutional framework for one world in economic terms (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, dollar convertibility) and political terms (the United Nations) respectively. By 1945 the vision of one world was becoming a reality. But this vision was a US dream, whereas the war victory was a three way affair. Leaders of the 'Big Three' in the Grand Alliance met at Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945) to discuss war aims and peace plans, but with little success. The result was that the 'one world' model was never able to build upon a peace treaty that concluded the hostilities. Instead a series of declarations and negotiations left more uncertainty rather than a new stability. Yalta has become notorious in this respect. Here there was both a formal declaration promising self-determination for the peoples of Eastern Europe and an informal sphere of influence agreement allocating most of Eastern Europe to the USSR. This contradiction proved to be unbridgeable. At Potsdam it was agreed to set up a regular series of conferences of foreign ministers to cope with such problems, and it is in these meetings that one world disappears and bi-polar confrontation finally becomes apparent for all to see. After 1945 there is a clearly agreed set of events that point the way to the Cold War. In 1946 there is George Kennan's famous telegram from Moscow warning his government of Soviet intentions. In the same year Winston Churchill makes his famous speech at Fulton, Missouri in which he uses the image of an iron curtain being drawn across Europe. In 1947 came the Truman Declaration and the Marshall Plan. In the former the President identified a world in which there was competition between 'alternative ways of life': I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. (McCauley, 1983,121) In the Marshall Plan the division of Europe between East and West was confirmed, with aid going only to the latter. In 1948 came the coup in Czechoslovakia and the blockade of Berlin. The year 1949 saw NATO formed to confront the USSR in Europe, while on the other side of the world the communists triumphed in China. Finally, in 1950 the Cold War turned 'hot' in Korea and rearmament began on a large scale. By this time there was no doubt that a new and dangerous divided world had been created. In a short period, therefore, friendly allies had converted each other into mortal enemies. This was not necessarily that unusual in the history of 'high politics' but in the circumstances of the 1940s such a turnabout, especially in the Western countries, had to be justified to peoples expecting peace, expecting one world. The means of persuasion was a crusade of anticommunism.

THE CONCEPT OF GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION

21

Even at the moment of victory, the USSR was an enigma to the West. Here was a different sort of state from either the USA or Britain, whose actions always seemed to be unpredictable. Adler and Paterson (1970) have shown how historical analogy was used to make sense of this unpredictability and in the process turn the USSR from ally to enemy. The key was to promote the concept of totalitarianism as the opposite of liberal democracy. Originally coined to describe fascist Italy and then popularly used in antiGerman propaganda in the Second World War, it was next applied to the USSR. Once this label was firmly attached, it was clear to see that 'the prewar decade provided an accurate map of the post-war era' (Adler and Paterson, 1970, 1060). Hence the lessons of the futility of appeasement could come into play: it was useless to negotiate or compromise; totalitarianism only understood power and confrontation. With the acceptance of this historical analogy came the inevitable concern over 'fifth columns' in Western governments. In the late 1940s there are numerous purges of communist and other left-wing personnel from Western governments culminating in the USA with the more general McCarthy witch hunts. But it is only relatively recently that the importance of anticommunism in the domestic sphere has been fully appreciated (Miliband and Liebman, 1984). Anti-communism provided a means of unifying Western peoples and governments. Above all, it gave a rationale for the need for rearmament so soon after the Second World War and so legitimated the Cold War. In the process it produced a unique geopolitical world order justified on ideological grounds - Truman's 'alternative ways of life'. As such, this world order was to seem more permanent and natural than any of its forebears. This is clearly reflected in the historiography of the making of the Cold War co which we now turn.

Chapter 2

A contested history

In so far as the literature on the Cold War, in dealing with recent historical events, takes the development of the conflict as the starting point, and then proceeds to an interpretation of ideological mobilization, it in itself forms part of the conflict. (Loth, 1988, 1) The literature on the origins of the Cold War is immense and after nearly fifty years many books and articles on the subject continue to be published every year. Obviously this study will use and build upon this material and, it is hoped, inform our understanding of the events in question to become a legitimate addition to that literature. But this chapter is not going to be a traditional 'literature review' for two very good reasons. First, the quantity of material precludes any attempt even to begin a comprehensive description except as a volume (or volumes) in its own right. Hence, we will have to classify the material and deal with 'types' of arguments in the literature. Second, the massive accumulation of studies should not be interpreted as our knowledge getting closer and closer to the 'truth' about the origins of the Cold War. Rather, we have a contested history of many alternative interpretations of events. In fact it is this contestation that has proved to be the main stimulus to the continual production of the literature. All history is, of course, contested to varying degrees. What makes this particular historiography so fascinating is that the contemporary salience of the subject-matter has been so acute that changes of interpretation have been explicitly political. In the Cold War geopolitical world order the story of how the structure came about is of enduring relevance for all actors in the drama. In the event two important 'deconstructions' of the literature took place, effectively producing three types of interpretations (McCauley, 1983; Loth, 1988). First, the 'orthodox' views were attacked by 'revisionists' who in turn have been supplanted by 'post-revisionist' positions. These three interpretations are described below in the first section of the chapter. In the second section, we introduce the 'Britain hypothesis' which states that, at the very least, these interpretations need to be revised to take into account the role of Britain in the early post-Second World War period. In a final section, this hypothesis is illustrated by describing the activities of Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin as 'Cold Warriors' before the Cold War.

A CONTESTED HISTORY

23

Before we investigate this historiography it will be useful for readers to keep in mind E.H. Carr's (1961) famous dictum that all history is a dialogue between the past and the present. It is for this reason that no historical interpretation of an event is ever finished; new times bring forth new questions and hence fresh interpretations. Therefore as our present changes so too does every past that we study. There is no clearer example of this historiographical process than in the origins of the Cold War literature. The present is in the past For twenty years through the height of Cold War animosities an orthodox or traditional viewpoint dominated the Western literature. This interpretation broadly accepted the positions taken by Western governments during the split with the USSR. As such, they developed and embellished the basic argument contained in the influential Kennan telegram that the Soviet state is inherently expansionist. The orthodox Western interpretation goes as follows. Under MarxistLeninist leadership the old Russian state has acquired a new lease of life in which the ideology of world revolution is a threat to all other countries. Hence for the USSR, the Grand Alliance was just a tactical necessity to counter the Nazi threat. Any promise for future co-operation is therefore ruled out of court, except where short-term advantages may override policies reflecting the long-term aims of the USSR. With the defeat of Nazi Germany the USSR, therefore, could return to type, testing US commitment in different arenas as it attempted to expand on several fronts. Using a mixture of Red Army pressure and local communist collaborators, the USSR was able to extend its empire throughout Eastern Europe and China and North Korea before Western governments realized the errors of their ways. It is with this realization of the need to get tough with the communist adversary that the Cold War begins. Hence, the blame for the Cold War lies squarely with the USSR. The revisionist critique of this interpretation became particularly popular at the height of the Vietnam War (Loth, 1988, 5). The New Left anti-war position led easily into a reassessment of US involvement in the making of the Cold War. As in Vietnam, the official view of an altruistic USA combatting the totalitarian foe under the flag of freedom came under scrutiny. Rather than seeing the USA reacting to Soviet aggression, the motives of the USA itself are shown to be expansionary. Instead of the explanation for the Cold War being Soviet political imperialism, US economic imperialism is brought to centre stage. The first point the revisionists make is the unequal competition between the USA and the USSR in the period 1945 to 1950. Whereas the USA had expanded during the war, doubling its gross national product, the USSR was devastated having suffered some 20 million deaths. Hence the USSR was in no position to theaten any other major powers, least of all the USA. Its main foreign policy concern was external security after two invasions in

24

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

a single generation. The foreign policy motives of the USA, on the other hand, were the creation of an open world economy in which US capitalism could expand and dominate. Such a pax Americana in Eastern Europe would constitute a threat to Soviet security as political influence would inevitably follow economic interests. By resisting this process the USSR forced the USA to settle for a divided Europe and Germany in which the richer parts were open and the poorer parts abandoned, at least temporarily. Hence, the blame for the Cold War lies squarely with the USA. Inevitably at the height of detente in the 1970s a post-revisionist interpretation was developed which avoided the polarities of the above debate (Loth, 1988, 9). Both previous views were criticized for being too simplistic in their adherence to one particular side of the argument. The post-revisionists have attempted to 'stand back from the battle, avoid blatant partisanship and at the remove of a generation or more to pass a cold, critical eye over the "sins" of all participants' (McCauley, 1983,14). In this way the question of blame is removed from the centre of the debate and a more complex and subtle understanding is developed which incorporates the better insights from both previous approaches. The result is very often a political compromise. Here is a typical example of a post-revisionist conclusion from one of the earliest examples of the genre: The Cold War grew out of a complicated interaction of external and internal developments inside both the United States and the Soviet Union. The external situation - circumstances beyond the control of either power - left Americans and Russians facing one another across a prostrate Europe (Gaddis, 1972, 361). This is a detente statement par excellence - nobody is to blame for the Cold War! Continuing the logic of this historiographical process suggests that a further deconstruction in the literature is imminent. In the late 1980s proclamations of the end of the Cold War have become commonplace and are given credibility by sources on both sides of the contest. The time may be ripe therefore for a true revolution in interpretation of the origins of the Cold War. It is not simply that in these circumstances it may be easier to aspire to the post-revisionists' laudable goal of a more unbiased approach: in addition a more truly critical interpretation can emerge from the new context. We may be able, at last, to free our history from the constraints of the Cold War itself so that its political assumptions - whether right, left or neutral - no longer are automatically our intellectual assumptions. We may tentatively term such a truly non-Cold War approach a 'non-aligned interpretation'. This differs from post-revisionism in the same way as nonaligned states differ from neutral states. The latter accept the Cold War but refuse formally to take sides, whereas non-alignment is about rejecting the Cold War as an organizing principle for world politics. It is now time for such non-alignment to come to the aid of Cold War historiography itself. This latest deconstruction would seem to require a critical re-evaluation of the whole bi-polar nature of the Cold War. In terms of Cold War origins, a small literature already exists that casts doubt on the notion of blaming

A CONTESTED HISTORY

25

either the USA or USSR for the contest. If any single country is to blame, perhaps we should look to the forgotten member of the original 'Big Three', Britain. We will use this 'Britain hypothesis' as our route into a non-aligned interpretation of the making of the Cold War. The Britain hypothesis It should be noted that in the post-revisionist conclusion from Gaddis (1972) quoted above there is no mention of Britain. The origins of the Cold War are deemed to be a matter of interaction between only the USA and the USSR. In this particular feature the post-revisionists share their bi-polar assumptions with both the orthodox and revisionist writers they claim to have superseded. But Deighton (1987,449) has claimed that all such writing is profoundly 'unhistorical'. There were three main victors to emerge from the Second World War, the USA, the USSR and Britain; and the 'Big Three era' lasted into 1947. In this period Britain was as active as either the USA or the USSR in trying to construct a new world order to her liking. As Watt (1984, 11) reminds us, when US General William T. Fox first coined the term 'superpower' in 1944 he intended it to apply to Britain as much as to the subsequent Cold War adversaries. At the end of the war, therefore, there were three superpowers, not our familiar two. Hence, it follows that all bi-polar accounts of the origins of the Cold War are fundamentally deficient (Hathaway, 1981, 1; Anderson, 1981, viii). In short, the Cold War literature overall - orthodox, revisionist and post-revisionist - represents a general example of imposing a very domineering present on a recent but quite different past. A bi-polar Cold War is projected back onto its origins when the bi-polarity had not yet formed. The initial stimulus to re-evaluate Britain's role in the early post-First World War period came with the public release of official British Foreign Office documents under the thirty-year embargo rule. Immediately Watt (1978) challenged British historians to break the US monopoiy of Western interpretations of the Cold War and, according to Smith (1988, 631): 'The response has been a significant one which, in large measure, has overturned the bi-polarity of Cold War historiography.' We can define the re-insertion of Britain into the origins of the Cold War story as a weak version of the Britain hypothesis. Smith is telling us that this is now generally accepted the Cold War resulted from post-war interactions between all three of the wartime Grand Alliance. For some writers this is as far as the correcting of the 'unhistorical error' needs to go. Rothwell (1982), for instance, argues that the British Foreign Office assumptions concerning post-war policy did not point towards an East-West confrontation. Several other writers, on the other hand, in concentrating on British-US relations, tell a very different story. Both Anderson (1981,12-13) and Hathaway (1981, 52) quote the following 1944 Foreign Office Memorandum entitled 'The Essentials of American Policy':

26

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

It must be our purpose not to balance our power against that of America, but to make use of American power for the purposes which we regard as good . . . If we go about our business in the right way we can help steer the great unwieldy barge, the United States of America, into the right harbour. If we don't, it is likely to continue to wallow in the ocean, an isolated menace to navigation. Here we have an indication of a British policy of manouvering the USA which it has been suggested eventually produced the Cold War. Deighton (1987, 449), for instance, argues that: to the extent that the Cold War began with the division of Germany between East and West, Britain carried the responsibility for the Cold War as much as Russia or America. Even more dramatically Ryan (1982, 9) asserts that it was Foreign Office preoccupation with 'maintaining Great Britain in the first rank of power' that necessitated the generation of the Cold War as 'a secondary objective'. This particular indictment of British responsibility for the Cold War we may term the 'strong version' of the Britain hypothesis. It is certainly consistent with the chronology of the transition to Cold War in that the 'little' AngloSoviet Cold War certainly preceded the Cold War proper (Harbutt, 1986, 117-8). At the very least this strong version of the hypothesis is a healthy antidote to the familiar Cold War metaphysics of the inevitability of the Cold War: like all other geopolitical world orders, this one had to be constructed. British 'Cold Warriors' before the Cold War In the remainder of this book we assume the weak version of the Britain hypothesis to be accepted as historically self-evident and we concentrate on exploring the strong version. It has been presented in several guises: in the final part of this chapter, as an introduction to our later geopolitical version, we will concentrate on the roles of the two leading British 'Cold Warriors' of the times, Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin. As we have seen, Ryan (1982) provides a very strong version of the Britain hypothesis. He argues that the Cold War was a direct result of the decline of Britain which had reached crisis proportions by the end of the Second World War. The failure to maintain British power is directly implicated in the origins of the Cold War: In short, had British strength not declined, the confrontational attitudes and related events that we lump together and call the 'Cold War' might never have occurred. (Ryan, 1982, 6) The confrontation, when it came therefore, was not accidental; it was the result of hard work by the British. The person most implicated is Winston Churchill. For Churchill, Britain's crises of power could be overcome by a closer association with the USA to produce a new power in the international arena

A CONTESTED HISTORY

27

that Ryan (1982,2) terms 'Anglo-America'. Churchill's wartime government had merged military commands with the USA and had sought a similar coordination for foreign policy. On some occasions Churchill went as far as to call for common citizenship (Ryan, 1982, 2). Even after his defeat in the 1945 British election, Churchill continued to work for the Anglo-American solution. He provided the following advice to the new Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, which neatly summarizes the strategy: The long term advantage to Britain and the Commonwealth is to have our affairs so interwoven with those of the United States in external and strategic matters, that any idea of war between the two countries is utterly impossible, and that in fact, however the matter may be worded, we stand or fall together . . . the vital fact [is] that a special and privileged relationship between Great Britain and the United States makes us both safe for ourselves and more influential as regards building up the safety of others through the international machine. (Ryan, 1982, 4) The letter goes on to refer to the idea of the two countries being 'for strategic purposes one organism'. The most spectacular intervention of Churchill after loss of office was, of course, his speech in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. Using his immense reputation as war leader, this provocative speech provided the two elements that were vital in transforming the Big Three into the Cold War. The speech is most remembered for invoking the threatening image of the iron curtain: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind this line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. Games, 1974, 2290) The half of the speech in which the above appeared identified the enemy. The other half provided the solution: the 'special relationship' between Britain and the USA, Ryan's Anglo-America. The reaction to the speech was mixed. President Truman, who had introduced Churchill at Fulton, felt the need publicly to distance himself from Churchill's ideas. But the speech was crucial in setting the new agenda in which the 'Soviet menace' became widely discussed even if Churchill's Anglo-America solution was not taken initially on board (Harbutt, 1986, 207). The idea of using the USA to shore up the British Empire was nearly as old as British decline itself; Ryan (1982,17) traces it back as far as the USBritish rapprochement at the end of the nineteenth century. For Churchill it was the First World War alliance that induced romantic notions of kinship (Harbutt, 1986, 9). At the same time he developed an intense emotional hatred of communism (Harbutt, 1986,23). Hence his political campaigning in 1945 and 1946 was the third time Churchill had tried to mobilize Britain and the USA against the USSR - the previous occasions were in 1918-9, when he fell out with President Wilson at the Paris Conference over this

28

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

issue; and in 1931, during a lecture tour of the USA. In his speech during the latter campaign he claimed: T h e two great opposing forces of the future . . . would be English-speaking peoples and Communism' (Harbutt, 1986, 17). In the event the special relationship was built up a decade later in a crusade against the Nazi world threat (Anderson, 1981) but the renewed crusade against communism did not go to plan. If Churchill was partly responsible for producing a bi-polar world after 1945, the Cold War that resulted was not what he had envisaged. Barker (1983, 69) informs us that 'During 1947 the concept of the big three as the governing factor in world affairs finally perished.' In the US State Department Dean Acheson was changing his view of the post-war world: Before the war, he had envisioned a Pax Anglo-Americana. But now shared hegemony was out of the question . . . He knew that the end of Pax Britannica meant the beginning of Pax Americana. (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 388) This was confirmed institutionally with the creation of NATO in 1949. Although this committed the USA to the defence of Western Europe against Soviet aggression, it was nothing like Churchill's Anglo-America ideal. NATO was a multilateral aggregation of many Western states under US command, not the Pax Britannica-Americana of Churchill's dreams (Ryan, 1982, 3) but Acheson's Pax Americana. In short, Britain had failed to remain a great power but in the process of the struggle she had disproportionally contributed to making the Cold War geopolitical world order. Without doubting the immense reputation of Churchill as a world statesman and war hero, the weakness of the above argument is that Churchill was not actually in government when the Cold War was created. He may have been influential in setting agendas but he could not himself carry out the policies leading towards the Cold War. Ernest Bevin, on the other hand, was the strong man in the new British Labour government who did control policy and could be directly implicated in the transition to Cold War. Bevin's anti-communism was as long standing as Churchill's, but was derived from a different political arena. As a trade union leader, Bevin had long fought against communist rivals. This reminds us that the making of the Cold War was not simply an inter-state process but could be traced back to old divisions within the European socialist movements. Hence the Labour government's conflict with the Soviet Union and its corresponding attack on the British Communist Party, as well as the T.U.C.'s anti-communist campaign, continued a long-standing struggle with their rivals in the trade union or socialist movements. (Weiler, 1988, 25) Bevin's role in the origins of the Cold War, therefore, is perhaps more complex than Churchill's. But he was certainly another 'Cold Warrior' before the Cold War. One of the remarkable features of early post-war British foreign policy was the continuity from the Conservative-dominated coalition government to the new Labour government. This was symbolized by the attendance of Attlee alongside Churchill at Potsdam before the general election in 1945.

A CONTESTED HISTORY

29

After his appointment as Foreign Secretary, Bevin insisted that 'foreign policy had to be seen in national not party terms' (Bullock, 1983, 98). Alan Bullock, his biographer, tells us that Bevin was fascinated by his predecessors in this high office of state and was known to make statements such as 'I wonder what Lord Curzon would do if he were in my shoes' (Bullock, 1983, 88). This was very important in 1945 because, by insisting on German unconditional surrender, the Allies created a power vacuum in Europe that was counter to the traditional British balance-of-power policy on the continent. The USSR was ready to step into the breach but where was the balance to come from? The only answer was the USA. Hence Schlaim et al (1977, 68) have argued that: Bevin's attitude to Russia was not only aggressive from the start; he also endeavoured to persuade the sceptical American leaders to adopt a tough line with their common wartime ally. In this process of institutionalising the cold war Bevin played a larger part than is commonly realised. Deighton (1987) in particular has developed this argument. At Potsdam the 'Big Three' agreed that Germany would not be dismembered but be administered by a joint Allied Control Council. Nevertheless the country was divided into four military zones for day-today administration by Britain, France, the USA and the USSR. It was also agreed that peace agreements would be negotiated at regular Councils of Foreign Ministers. It was at these meetings that Britain, according to Deighton (1987, 451), was 'to spearhead the diplomatic breakdown of the Grand Alliance which later came to be symbolized by a divided Germany'. At the Councils of Foreign Ministers: The overriding aim of the British government quickly emerged: to secure a continuing American commitment to harmony and a balance of power in Europe that would not favour Communism. (Deighton, 1987, 454) The 1946 summer meeting in Paris and the 1947 spring meeting in Moscow are highlighted in terms of British success in this policy. At Paris Bevin's dissatisfaction with progress led to a threat that Britain would go it alone in its German zone: 'This was the first public move towards the division of Germany and, with it, the European cold war' (Deighton, 1987, 456-7). By January 1947 a 'Bizone' was formally agreed between Britain and the USA which 'represented a clear breach of the spirit, if not the letter, of Potsdam' (Deighton, 1987, 457). At Moscow the 'letter' was breached. The British prepared for the Council by drawing up a statement known as the 'New Potsdam' or 'Bevin Plan', which was 'a masterly device for forcing the Russians to exclude themselves from western Germany and leave a Germany divided' (Deighton, 1987, 458). The plan was finally successful when the Soviet refusal to allow the Marshall Plan to operate in their zone led to the 'Trizone' (including the French Zone) receiving aid and becoming West Germany, leaving the Soviet zone to emerge as East Germany. Hence, Deighton (1987, 465) is able to conclude that

30

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

In Paris and Moscow, Britain acted as the initiator and pace-setter in a radical policy that defied the Potsdam accords and four power co-operation and led towards a divided Germany. Britain helped to lead America towards a policy which turned western Germany from a defeated and devastated enemy into a potential partner in the incipient confrontation with the Soviet Union. A balance of power of a sort was restored in Europe. Although Churchill and Bevin remain the main actors in the Britain hypothesis, there are other accounts that highlight different events that illustrate Britain's latent strength at this time (for instance, Ovendale, 1985). Nevertheless our discussion above does provide a reasonable sample of such studies. But it has been pointed out that we should not overstate 'the Anglocentric view of the early Cold War' (Reynolds, 1989, 108), for, as Anderson (1981) has argued, the British policy could not have succeeded without the help of Soviet policy. In fact, of course, what we have is the interaction of three sets of policies plus influences from actions by many other countries involved in these particular international relations (Reynolds, 1989). Nevertheless, I think the Britain hypothesis offers more than just 'a healthy antidote to an excessively American-dominated account of Western policy in the Cold War' (Reynolds, 1989, 108). In short, it is a hypothesis worthy of pursuing with reason and remembering the broader context. A political geography approach, it seems to me, can provide just such a set of tools for getting beyond particular personalities and events to generate a distinctive viewpoint on this contested history.

Part Two All change -1945

Chapter 3

Nineteen forty-five in Braudellien perspective

From the recent experiments and efforts of history, an increasingly clear idea has emerged - whether consciously or not, whether excepted or not - of the multiplicity of time, and of the exceptional value of the long time span. It is this last idea which even more than history itself - history of a hundred aspects - should engage the attention and interest of our neighbours, the social sciences. (Braudel, 1980, 27) By coincidence both Martin McCauley (1983) in his The Origins of the Cold War and Wilfreid Loth (1988) in his The Division of the World entitle their pivotal chapters '1945: The Turning Point'. Let us explore the meaning of designating this year as 'the turning point'. The obvious way to start is to list all the important events that occurred in 1945. The defeat of Germany and Japan, the meetings of the 'Big Three' at Yalta and Potsdam, the agreement to set up the United Nations at San Francisco, the beginning of 'the atomic age' - there are not many single years that can provide such an impressive list. Even just within Britain, 1945 provides two important 'firsts' - the election of a majority Labour government and virtual economic bankruptcy. Certainly 1945 was a momentous year, but a simple accumulation of great events need not equal a turning point. To identify a turning point we have to go beyond the events of a particular year. We have to possess some notion of the 'flow' of history in which the particular year occurs at a crucial conjuncture. Turning points can be designated only in hindsight: we have to know what went before and what went after our chosen year. Braudel (1980, 36) uses this argument in his comparison of sociological and historical analyses. Although the former can study contemporary events 'as they happen', the analysis is inevitably limited by the lack of hindsight. Quite simply, we can judge the importance of particular events only by the magnitude of their consequences; and that ultimately requires the hindsight of historical analysis. Braudel's historical analysis is not the conventional narrative history of events. In an important debate Braudel introduces a multiple historical time to free history from the simple chronological metric of days, months and years. Unlike physical time, historical time is itself a product of the social processes of history. Three different kinds of time are identified in terms of

34

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

their spans. The short term is the span of events, l'histoire évenementielle or courte durée, of traditional narrative history. This was the history that Braudel and the Annates school, of which he was a leader, were rebelling against. The medium term, the moyenne durée, deals with the span of cycles and trends which describe the patterns of history. The most famous pattern in this historical time is the Kondratieff cycle, which describes the ups and downs of economies at approximately fifty-year intervals. The long term is represented by the structures in which the other times exist. This is Braudel's longue durée, the coherent and fixed series of relationships that form the uncontested assumptions of an era. Events and cycles are prisoners of this deeper history, 'this semistillness' where 'everything gravitates around it' (Braudel, 1980, 33). Hufton (1986) describes these three times in terms of focus on the particular, the dynamic and the immobile, respectively, although we must never consider the latter 'changeless' as we shall see. We shall apply this Braudellien form of historical analysis to 1945 in order to assess the 'turning point' thesis more rigorously. We know 1945 is important in the courte durée, but how does it fare from moyenne durée and longue durée perspectives? In fact we will find that a 'long 1945', overlapping slightly into 1944 and 1946, is indeed a turning point. Before we develop this argument, however, there are two common misconceptions concerning Braudel's model that need to be dispelled. First, the three spans of historical time can apply equally to different social activities. Although in practice l'histoire évenementielle has dominated political history, the moyenne durée is associated largely with social and economic history and the longue durée is considered to be a feature of cultural history, there is no logical reason for this disciplinary arrangement. From our perspective, the important point is that although political history has 'centred on the drama of "great events" [working] on and in the short span' in reality 'political history is not necessarily bound to events' (Braudel, 1980, 28). In short, there is no impediment to employing all three historical times in our analysis of the politics of the making of the Cold War. The second misconception is that these three historical times are in some sense distinct and separate from one another. This is partly due to the debate in which Braudel developed his longue durée as an argument against 'the sin of eventism' (Baker, 1984,17). In fact Braudel (1980, 33) is at pains to emphasize that his longue durée is 'merely one conception' of history and that it would be an error 'to choose one of these histories to the exclusion of all others' (1980, 34). This is because, like the three geographical scales that political geographers deal with, 'these different time spans which we can discern are all interdependent' (1980, 48). Furthermore, 'to be able to achieve an imaginative understanding of one of these time spans is to be able to understand them all' (1980, 48). It is in the spirit of this last statement that this chapter is written: we 'locate' 1945 historically within the different time spans. We begin with the widest span and consider the 'epoch making' potential of 1945. In the second section we investigate the year's cyclical importance. These two

NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE IN BRAUDELLIEN PERSPECTIVE

35

discussions allow us to return to the courte àuree in the third section and consider the specific nature of 1945 as 'the turning point'. A challenge to the longue durééì For Braudel (1980, 33) it is 'the expanses of slow moving history' that provides the 'infrastructure' of all history. These structures are the social organization through which our social activities operate. Braudel's own work concentrated on the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, in which he identifies a basic coherence in economic life which he terms mercantile capitalism. For interpreting our era we will draw upon the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (1983), whose historical writings are framed in the spirit of Braudel. The basic structural fundamentals of our modern world-system are expressed in three forms. In the economic sphere, production is for sale in the world market and the basic driving force is ceaseless capital accumulation: economic growth is a necessity for survival in a world of competition. This is expressed geographically in 'developed' and 'less developed' zones which Wallerstein terms core and periphery but which are now commonly recognized as 'North' and 'South'. The relationship between these two zones has been, and continues to be, an imperialist one in the sense that core dominates periphery first of all economically, but also politically and culturally. This brings us on to the other two structural fundamentals. In the political sphere, competition is just as acute as in the economic. An inter-state system operates where territorially defined fragments of capital, or 'national economic interests', attempt to use their state apparatuses to gain advantage in the world market. In the process of this competitive activity core states have fought each other for advantage in the periphery 'imperialist wars' - and to prevent a rival's advances in the core itself. In the latter case states can be actually removed from the inter-state system itself. But there is a more mundane politics that is equally vital to this structure. The territorial basis of the system provides each state with control over flows across its boundaries - it can attempt to define how it links into the world market. This has been expressed largely as questions of tariffs and free trade. All of this rivalry may be termed the geopolitics of the system (Taylor, 1989a). It is important to note that this is not a separate autonomous sphere of activity but, as Christopher Chase-Dunn (1981, 25) put it, there is but one 'logic': The interdependence of political military power and competitive advantage in production in the capitalist world-economy reveals that the logic of the accumulation process includes the logic of state building and geopolitcs. In Wallerstein's (1984) terms, the states are necessary for the modern worldsystem to operate. There is a very important third structural form in our world which equates with Braudel's (1980, 31) 'mental framework'. This is the ideology

36

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

of progress expressed as a faith in science and technology and a general expectation of ever-continuing improvement to the world. Put another way, the modern world-system is a civilization with a distinct world view, customs and culture which it has attempted to spread across all parts of the globe. In the nineteenth century this was generally referred to as a 'civilizing mission', more recently the goal has been to 'develop' the periphery. But the point of this 'mentality' is to make the underlying processes of the modern world-system seem natural and eternal. To compete is human nature. 'Free lunches', stateless persons and 'end of the world' fundamentalists, each, in their different ways, is respectively, economically, politically and culturally 'odd'; each is outside the central parameters of our civilization. These are the fixed series of relationships that give coherence to the longue durée, the fundamental assumptions of our era. We all expect to provide for our needs through commodities and produce very little for our own consumption; the world market provides. We all accept the 'balkanization of the world' so we have loyalty to our current state or else to an alternative state: unionist or separatist, state is the common denominator. And, of course, there is the expectation of a better life ahead: the general belief in progress gives universal hope. These are the structures that bound our world. The structures may seem permanent but the longue durée is never completely immobile. They can, as Braudel (1980, 31) puts it, 'wear themselves out'. In the modern world-system the assumptions of the social organization are challenged by the anti-systemic movements, notably the socialists. For Wallerstein (1984a, 173), for instance, the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 proved that the modern system was not 'eternal'. An alternative was placed on the world agenda, perhaps a new longe durée was in the making. The outcome of the Second World War brought this alternative agenda to the forefront. During the war 'rational planning' had replaced the market in the allocation of resources. If successful in wartime, why not use this logic in peacetime? Furthermore, the war itself was directed at an extreme competitive version of 'economic nationalism' whose defeat provided opportunity for 'Left' forces throughout Europe. And, finally, the most dominant expression of the anti-systemic forces, the USSR, emerged from isolation, to number two slot in the inter-state system, poised to challenge for world leadership. Even in the USA Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's Vice-President from 1940 to 1944, had championed a new 'century of the common man' (Walton, 1976). In longue durée terms, therefore, 1945 was at the point of thefirstmajor conjuncture between two competing worlds. The common yearning for a 'new world', a resistance to return to a 'bad old world' put long-held assumptions to the test. The longue durée was in crisis. Even beyond the core the challenge was building up, especially under Gandhi's leadership in India. We know now that the capitalist world-economy was able to accommodate the challenges,firstthe reformist social democrats, second the anti-colonial nationalists and,finally,the communist threat of the USSR. But this was by no means clear in 1945. And this is crucial to the making of the Cold War.

NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE IN BRAUDELLIEN PERSPECTIVE

37

In a sense two civilizations were on offer to the peoples of the world in 1945. Both offered progress but to different ends. The original assumption was that the two 'systems' could easily coexist and preserve peace in the world through the United Nations. But the potential always existed for ordinary political differences to be translated into a 'clash of civilizations'. And this is what happened, of course. Anti-communism was not a rational political argument but 'a crusade' (Kolko and Kolko, 1972, 169; Weiler, 1988, 191). By early 1946 one Republican representative was to declare in the House: 'War has been declared on Western civilization and we must recognise it' (Hathaway, 1981, 246). Such rhetoric led directly on to the language of the Truman doctrine of a year later when the President informed Congress that 'At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life' (McCauley, 1983, 121). Across the Atlantic Bevin was to produce his anti-USSR argument in a 1948 Foreign Office memorandum entitled 'The threat to world civilization' (Bartlett, 1984, 274). Whatever the basic nature of the Cold War geopolitical world order, therefore, the rhetoric of the rivalry was firmly set in longue durée structural terms. It is this more than any other feature that has made the geopolitical transition seem to be so deep and the resulting world order appear to be so constant and immutable. The year 1945 represents a high point of resistance to the assumptions of the modern world-system whose resolution was the Cold War. Moycnnc durée: changing hegemonies Perhaps the most notable feature of 1945 was the relative demise of Britain, a political power that had dominated the world for a century and a half. In a survey of British public opinion in August 1945, for example, only 14 per cent thought Britain would have most influence over world affairs in the next five years (Gallup, 1976, 117 - the figures for the USA and the USSR were 48 per cent and 31 per cent respectively). At the world summit in Munich only seven years earlier Britain had appeared as the 'leader' of the democratic world, with neither the USA nor the USSR present. Now Britain was a poor third. Clearly in the interval the Second World War had totally undermined Britain's position despite her finishing on the winning side. But we should not view this demise as simply a short-term effect of the war. There was a medium-term process operating here. Northedge (1974, 3 5 8 9) describes it thus: It is important to see this British decline first in what may be called its world geopolitical context, that is, in terms of the ever changing balance of world forces as a whole . . . Because of the strength and ubiquity of these geopolitical forces hardly any action by a British government... could have done anything to arrest or reverse the British decline. In Braudellien terms this is a matter of the medium term and not of events

38

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

linked to particular government decisions. This moyenne durée is usually equated with changing hegemony, from Britain to the USA. Most studies of the moyenne durée have dealt with economic cycles, particularly the fifty-year Kondratieff cycles. Before we can properly consider the notion of changing political hegemony, we need to introduce these economic processes which underpin the changes in world politics. The 'long cycles' of approximately fifty years in duration first proposed by Nicolai Kondratieff in the 1920s consist of two phases of about equal length. Phase A is a period of rapid growth when the world-system experiences a general expansion. Phase B is a period of stagnation when growth slows down and the world-system experiences a general restructuring of its economy. The particular debates in the literature concerning the processes behind these cycles do not concern us here (see Goldstein, 1988; Hall and Preston, 1988; Wallerstein, 1984b) except to note that there is now a widespread acceptance of the existence of such cycles. In this context we can see in hindsight that 1945 falls between two phases: the stagnation of the 1920s and 1930s; and the massive 'post-war boom' that lasted until about 1970. More generally, there are four Kondratieff cycles identified since the Industrial Revolution, and 1945 is at the junction of the third and the fourth cycle, between the IIIB and IVA phases. The really interesting question is how these economic cycles relate to political processes. Certainly boom conditions or restructuring will directly impinge on the political agendas of all countries in the world-economy. It is not surprising, therefore, that in recent years there has been a marked increase in studies of political cycles (see Goldstein, 1988), many of which centre on changes in world leadership. The best-known approach is probably George Modelski's (1987) long political cycles of about a century, but his model suffers from treating the politics as autonomous of the economic cycles. Keeping to our 'one logic' approach brings us to Wallerstein's (1984a) concept of hegemony. Hegemony is a rare phenomenon in the modern world-system. Wallerstein identifies just three cases, the Dutch Republic in the mid-seventeenth century, Britain in the mid-nineteenth century and the USA in the midtwentieth century. Such hegemony is defined in materialist terms. As a historical process it builds up in three stages. First, the state in question gains an appreciable lead in agro-industrial production in terms of efficiency using the latest technologies. This is followed by a commercial victory as the production efficiencies are translated into world-market gains. Finally, the merchant benefits are transferred into thefinancialsector so that the state becomes the banking centre of the world. When these three 'victories' coincide, then a state can be said to be fully hegemonic. In the midnineteenth century, for instance, Britain was the workshop of the world, 'a nation of shopkeepers' and the world's bankers. Wallerstein (1984a) further hypothesizes that hegemonic advantages are lost in roughly the same order that they are gained. In the British case, therefore, the production edge was lost first, but the financial dominance was able to last into the twentieth century.

NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE IN BRAUDELLIEN PERSPECTIVE

39

With economic hegemony came political power. But there is no movement towards a world imperium, in fact hegemonic states emerge after the defeat of such projects, rather hegemony enables the state to mould a world to its own advantage. Its ideas are widely interpreted as universal ideas for all. The most overt example of this is the call for a liberal world-economy which will benefit the efficient, that is the hegemonic power. Despite such obvious self-interest, free trade is promoted relatively successfully as a universal panacea for economic growth and prosperity. This process is described by Robert Cox (1981, 1983) as the production of a special hegemonic world order. These are produced through three interacting forces or potentials for action. First, there is the need for material capability which we have described above. Second, there have to be a set of ideas that are broadly accepted throughout the world system. These are typically liberal, as we have seen. Third, a set of institutions has to be constructed to stabilize and perpetuate the hegemonic world order. This is what is being created at the end of the Second World War as US hegemony is constructed. The Bretton Woods Agreement (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) promoting a liberal world-economy and the San Francisco agreement to form a United Nations Organization promoting a liberal international inter-state system were the chosen tools for US hegemony. Wallerstein (1984b) devises very long 'hegemonic cycles' about these short hegemonic phases when new world-system-wide institutions and ideas are generated. What is the relationship between such cycles and the shorter Kondratieff variety? One useful suggestion is that the hegemonic cycles or at least the last two, may be expressed in terms of 'paired-Kondratieffs' (Research Working Group, 1979; Taylor, 1989a). This is shown in Table 3 as British and US 'centuries' that are chronologically similar to Modelski's long political cycles. The matching of liberal phases of full hegemony contrasting with other periods of competition and rivalry in the two hegemonic cycles is quite an impressive symmetry. The key point for our discussion here is the location of 1945 at the beginning of US hegemony when anew special world order was being established. Before we leave the tnoyenne àuree span, one further sequence of medium-term phases is relevant to our arguments. Phillips and Wallerstein (1986) have argued that instead of treating nationalism and internationalism as fundamental ideological rivals, they can be viewed as simultaneous tendencies in political movements whose overall balance will vary over time. This suggestion has not been followed up empirically but it is clear that the nationalism-internationalism balance has varied remarkably in the twentieth century. This is most obvious at the end of each world war, as Rustow (1967, 21) has commented; whereas in 1919 war was blamed on the suppression of nationalism, in 1945 it was blamed on the expression of nationalism! In fact the short period after the Second World War is one of those rare times when internationalism can clearly rival nationalism. In Britain, for instance, as late as September 1946 a clear majority of people surveyed (50 per cent to 27 per cent) were willing to turn over British armed forces to United Nations command as long as other countries did the same

Table 3

Hegemony and Kondratieff cycles 'The American Century*

'Great Britain 's Century'

1890-6

1790-8 Kondratieff Cycle I

Ax Ascending hegemony

Rivalry with France (Napoleonic Wars) Productive efficiency: Industrial Revolution

Kondratieff Cycle III

1815-25 Bi

Hegemonic victory

Commercial victory in Latin America and control of India: 'workshop of the world'

A2 Hegemony maturity

1890-96

Source: Taylor (1989a)

1913-20

% Commercial victory in the final collapse of British free trade system and decisive military defeat of Germany

Hegemonic victory 1940-45

Era of Free Trade: London becomes financial centre of the world-economy

Kondratieff Cycle IV

A2 Hegemonic maturity

Liberal economic system of Bretton Woods based upon the dollar; New York new financial centre of the world

1967-73

1870-5 B2 Declining hegemony

Rivalry with Germany Productive efficiency: mass production techniques

Ascending hegemony

Bi

1844-51 Kondratieff Cycle II

Ai.

Classical age of imperialism as European powers and USA rival Britain. 'New' Industrial Revolution emerging outside Britain

B2 Declining hegemony

Reversal to protectionist practices to counteract Japan and European rivals

NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE IN BRAUDELLIEN PERSPECTIVE

41

(Gallup, 1976, 139). Such idealistic internationalism is no doubt related to hegemonic projects in some way but such survey results are quite remarkable none the less. We may conclude this section by asserting that 1945 was an important conjuncture in moyenne àuree terms as much as it was for the longue àuree. Courte durée: the turning point And so we return to 1945 as a time of key events. In courte àuree terms, the importance of this year has never been in doubt. Of course, we are not dealing with the precise calendar year 1945; we are not working in that sort of time. We are not averse to discussing events just before or after the calendar year. What we are dealing with for this Vbistoire évenementielle as 'the turning point' is the period of overlapping phases of war and peace when the world situation could be described as fluid and hence amenable to reconstruction. In geopolitical terms, this lasts from when the USA clearly supplants Britain as the major 'Western' power to when the USA 'drifts' into confrontation with the USSR and the Cold War seems inevitable. Precise dating is not important; the following notes from the literature provide a reasonable summary of this key short span. As an early outer limit Rothwell (1982, 108) argues that the 1943 Moscow conference of Foreign Ministers was 'the last important occasion when Britain spoke for the West, with the United States accepting a subordinate role'. Churchill himself has reported the change a little later: 'Up until July 1944 England had considerable say in things; after that I was conscious that it was America who made the big decisions' (Hathaway, 1981, 14). This month was also the date of the Bretton Woods agreement when the economic disparity between the USA and Britain was clear for all to see with its profound implications for post-war reconstruction. In terms of terminating '1945 as the turning point', Harbutt (1986) has considered this matter in some detail. Of course, there is a large literature on when the Cold War can be said to have begun but Harbutt makes a good case for an early start, with February 1946 highlighted. He mentions several important events - Stalin's speech on 'two worlds', Churchill meeting Truman before his 'Iron Curtain' speech, changes in policy towards Eastern Europe and, of course, the famous Kennan telegram from Moscow. I am particularly impressed, however, by his discussion of the telegram sent to Iran encouraging that government to resist Soviet demands. This was the USA's first Cold War initiative: At bottom, therefore, this obscure February 22nd cable is much more than an expression of intensified interest in the evolving Iran crisis. It reflects the beginnings of a profound geopolitical change that would rapidly take the United States, for the first time, into the heart of Anglo-Soviet confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. (Harbutt, 1986, 169)

42

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

We can now date our 'long 1945' as lasting approximately from July 1944 to February 1946; in traditional terms, from Bretton Woods to the Kennan telegram. We can begin to appreciate 1945 as a period of extremefluidityand hence opportunity by briefly reviewing Alan Bullock's (1983) The world in the summer of 1945', which is the first chapter of the final volume of his biography of Ernest Bevin. The purpose of the chapter is to portray the immense range of problems facing the new Foreign Secretary in the Labour government. As well as relations with the other two members of the 'Big Three' over the problem of the defeated Germany, Bevin had to devise policies relating to the USSR in Eastern Europe, especially for Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, and policies relating to the USA in its new sphere of influence in East Asia and the Pacific, especially concerning Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Malaya (Malaysia) and Singapore. Most vital of all, in the traditional British sphere of influence in the Middle East, policies had to be devised to combat Soviet pressure in the eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey and Libya) and US pressure in the oil states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran where the USSR was also pressing. Add to this the imperial problems of the Palestine mandate and Indian independence and we can see why Bevin was to lament 'AH the world is in trouble and I have to deal with all the troubles at once' (Bullock, 1983, 184). Thefluidityof 1945 is to be found in the foreign policies of the other two superpowers. Although Loth (1988, 98-9) emphasizes the continuity in Soviet policy in 1945 relative to the 'US turnabout', we should not interpret this to mean a concerted Soviet push towards Cold War. Rather Mastny (1979, 261) describes Soviet policy in 1945 as 'erratic and inconsistent rather than pre-meditated and methodological'. US policy was equally uncertain. Etzold and Gaddis (1978, 39) describe the divergent views of US policy-makers in terms of two documents, one emphasizing power political approaches by the Chiefs of Staff and a more idealistic 'reply' from the State Department. They conclude that 'Taken together, the documents suggest the absence of a consensus in Washington as late as the end of 1945 over what course postwar Soviet-American relations might take.' What this all adds up to is a validation of 1945 as the turning point, a time of decision and opportunity when a new world could be created. This is important for onefinalpoint in the treatment of time. The courte durée is the time span of events resulting from decisions and therefore of the individuals who make the decisions. Much of the thrust of Braudel's history is against the emphasis on 'great men' to be found in narrative political history. But taking a Braudellien approach does not mean that we banish individuals who have unusual influence on history from our story. Braudel integrates the three spans and hence the individuals of the courte durée remain, although they are demoted from their traditional 'supermen' status. Mandel (1986) provides a good summary of this problem in his discussion of the role of Hitler in the origins of the Second World War. He argues that the relationship between social forces and individual leaders is that the latter cannot change the former: 'Even the most powerful tyrant in the world

NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE IN BRAUDELLIEN PERSPECTIVE

43

cannot escape the implacable demands of capital accumulation' (Mandel, 1986, 62). In our terms, the longue àuree and moyenne àuree cannot be avoided - it would seem we cannot, for instance, plan Kondratieff cycles out of existence. None the less, individuals can operate to accelerate or delay secular trends and cycles in particular places (Miliband, 1980). But at key periods of fluidity opportunities for individual leaders to make a profound impact do occur. The 'long 1945' was just such a short span. This is not to say that the right leader could have stopped Britain's decline, but the British and other leaders to varying degrees could and did have particular influence on the outcome that was the Cold War. As 'the turning point', 1945 offered world statesmen real alternatives and their actions may be interpreted as choices from these different future worlds. It is to these alternative geopolitical worlds of 1945 that we now turn.

Chapter 4

Alternative worlds in 1945

To recapture what was in the minds of Western leaders as the Cold War began requires, in addition to traditional methods of historical research, something of an imaginative leap. One must get a sense of how things looked at the time. One must free one's vision from the accumulative impressions of the more recent past, from the tyranny of knowing what came next. (Gaddis, 1987, 21) One common expression of imposing present concerns on to past events is what can be called the 'battles of the memoirs'. The major actors in important events have notoriously varied memories as they seek to find a favourable position for themselves in history. The origins of the Cold War have a splendid example of this in the quarrel between President Truman and his first Secretary of State, James Byrnes. The issue is who was the villain in not realizing Soviet aggression in early 1946. Was Byrnes running a 'soft' foreign policy at variance with the President's appreciation of the need for a tougher line against the communist threat? If the answer is yes, then Truman can be a Cold War hero, a statesman with the foresight to see real Soviet intentions before their general revelation in the Cold War itself. The case for Truman as Cold War hero is made in his memoirs. One particular event is highlighted. On 5 January 1946 Truman met Byrnes and gave him a severe dressing down. He read the 'riot act' in the form of a 'letter-memorandum' which concluded 'I'm tired of babying the Soviets' (Harbutt, 1986, 157). Taking this event at its face value, it provides a crucial step in changing US policy and hence in the making of the Cold War. But it is not that straightforward for as Harbutt (1986, 158) points out: This famous memorandum, like the Truman memoirs generally, has had an excellent historiographical run. But it seems very unlikely that the confrontation ever took place. Byrnes always denied it and plausibly insisted that he would have resigned if it had occurred. Now it seems clear that he was right. Nobody really believes that Truman's memory failed him in these circumstances. He was reconstructing the past to suit his present (Cold War) needs. He was using historical hindsight to gain personal advantage. In the very fluid situation of 1945, especially in US foreign policy, he was locating himself in a Cold War position. The fact that Truman had to fabricate to

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

45

meet his Cold War ends reminds us that in our 'long 1945' the Cold War was by no means inevitable. Fluidity implies options. Options are there to be chosen. The fact that we know the outcome is no proof of inevitability. At the turning point there will be alternative worlds that may be created. The actual outcome is only one possibility from a set of such possibilities. In this chapter we focus on 1945 as containing just such a set of alternative worlds. Although the actual outcome is not inevitable, this does not imply that we must replace determinism by historical anarchy. There is no way that 'anything is possible'. The structures of the long àuree and the cycles of the moyenne àuree set limits on choices even during the mostfluidcourte àuree. In the 'long 1945' we can logically derive alternative worlds from the fact that there were just three powers who could appreciably influence events. Using the 'Big Three' as our starting point we can find five alternative worlds that were facing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta, and Stalin, Truman and Attlee at Potsdam. There arefivepermutations into which we can arrange the three powers. The simplest is that the three will continue to work together. This cooperation solution is the 'one world' ideal. The opposite is that the three powers will fall out with one another to produce 'three worlds'. This confrontation solution would be a return to a world of power-blocs. There are three further solutions that pit two powers against one power in a mixture of co-operation and confrontation. These are Britain and the USSR versus the USA; the USA and the USSR versus Britain, and the USA and Britain versus the USSR. We know now that it is the latter 'two world' solution that was eventually created as the Cold War. By identifyingfivealternative worlds that were 'available' to the decisionmakers in 1945, we can better see how the turning point was actually constructed. The actual outcome, the Cold War, had to be made, or, to put it another way, the other world outcomes had to be prevented from being made. There could be only one outcome to be sure, but to understand fully its creation we need to know its rivals and how they were disposed of. In this chapter we begin with the simplest solution, the continuation of the Grand Alliance into peacetime to create 'one world'. We then turn to the obverse of this: the complete breakdown of the Grand Alliance to produce three worlds. In a final section, we explore the alternative two world solutions,finishingwith the Cold War arrangement itself. Hence, the chapter consists of a tour through world alternatives to reach the actual outcome. One ideal world of co-operation The notion of one world is intimately linked with hegemony in the worldsystem. The hegemonic state encourages the removal of barriers between countries and promotes an open liberal world order. Such policies were associated with Britain in the nineteenth century; in the twentieth century we have to turn to the new hegemonic power, the USA, for such policies.

46

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

The idealist streak in US foreign policy first came to international prominence with the entry of the USA into the First World War. President Wilson was fond of distinguishing the crude power politics of the Old World with the new moral politics being introduced by the New World. In his words the 'balance of power' would be replaced by a 'community of power' which found partial expression in the League of Nations (Bartlett, 1984, 100). Such Wilsonian internationalism was strong in the Roosevelt government's rhetoric in the Second World War. The main difference, of course, was that at the end of the second global conflict the USA was in a much stronger position to implement its ideas. One world could become a reality. It is worth briefly rehearsing just how powerful the USA actually was in 1945. Lundestad (1986, 264) enumerates the following indicators. Economically the US gross national product had grown 70 per cent between 1939 and 1945 to constitute about one-half of the world's total production. With 6 per cent of the world's population the USA had 46 per cent of its electric power, 48 per cent of its radios, 54 per cent of its telephones and controlled 59 per cent of total oil reserves. Militarily the USA was the only atomic power; it had by far the largest airforce and navy and was outstripped in land forces only by the Soviet Red Army. This was a severe case of hegemony indeed. From this position of immense strength, the USA could begin to set about producing a world in its own image. Schurmann (1978) highlights the role of President Roosevelt in attempts to create such a new world. Roosevelt was eminently suited to this unique position as a long-term student of the USA's foremost geopolitician Admiral Mahan. According to Range (1959, x): 'There is no doubt... that [Roosevelt's] knowledge of geography was fabulous and his geopolitical theory of a quality that in his time made a great deal of sense.' His 'geopolitical theory of global proportions' (Range, 1959, 15), or as we would term it the geopolitical code he worked to, consisted of four traditional assumptions: that power struggles were now global; that defence at a distance is a key to US security; that hostile powers must be prevented from controlling the largest landmass, Eurasia; and that US defence was of continental scope (i.e. the Monroe Doctrine). This very realist code was integrated with an idealist concern for grand objectives so that US national interests could be equated with a more universal good. In this 'one world' states would behave as 'good neighbours' to one another through enlightened self-interest; imperialism and spheres of interest would be abolished and there would be worldwide democracy and freedom. Economic justice and prosperity would be guaranteed by a 'global New Deal' and political justice and security by a collective security system. No wonder Range (1959, 31) describes all this as a 'remarkable combination of realism and idealism'. Before his death Roosevelt had the opportunity to set in motion the creaton of institutions to build his one world. Schurmann (1978, 41-2) goes as far as to suggest that without Roosevelt neither the World Bank nor the United Nations would have come into being at the end of the war:

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

47

'Roosevelt's vision of the postwar world was, thus, a prediction of what would be, made by the only man in the world at that time who had the power to bring it about.' We might add that his power ultimately rested on the wider framework of trends and cycles which eventually were to become an obstacle to one world - what Kolko and Kolko (1972) describe in detail as the 'limit to US power'. But we are getting ahead of our argument. Of what did this internationalism actually consist in practice? It could be seen clearly in wartime relations between the 'Big Three'. The liberal internationalist political programme was expressed in the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration on Liberated Europe at Yalta in which self-determination was promoted by the USA. The liberal internationalist economic programme or 'Open Door' was expressed in Lend-Lease negotiations whereby part of the deal involved opening up markets for US producers. As the USA began to face up to planning the post-war world, the overall package was described by the progressive politician Louis Fischer in 1944 as follows: most of us know what we don't want: alliances, spheres of influence, imperialism, high tariffs, domination of small powers by great powers, etc. Many of us also know what we do want: a world arranged for peace on internationalist lines, a better world economic order, universal democracy (Hathaway, 1981, 107). This was a classic hegemonic programme. It finally replaced the earlier, more parochial 'isolationist' and protectionist programme of 'USA the world pretender' in the 'long year' of 1945. The revisionist historians Kolko and Kolko (1972, 2) emphasize the economic aspects of one world: 'The United States aim was to restructure the world so that American business could trade, operate, and profit without restrictions everywhere'. Policy was formulated around four key propositions. First, economic blocs and conflict were the root cause of world wars. Second, protectionism ultimately reduces overall production and hence causes unemployment. Third US traditional isolationism was no longer feasible because the USA did not have access to all the strategic raw materials it required. Fourth, US plant had to be fully utilized to prevent unemployment and this meant large exports. From these assumptions 'American leaders erroneously conceived England as the main barrier to the attainment of their post war goals' (Kolko and Kolko, 1972, 18). Quite simply, the British Empire was by far the largest protected market in the world and had to be prised open for US business. Clearly 'one world' is another way of saying 'changing hegemony'. The USSR's position in this one world was handled differently. As Davis (1974) emphasizes, there was always a contradiction between Atlantic Charter self-determination principles and Soviet requirements for 'friendly' governments in Eastern Europe. Charles Bohlen of the State Department proposed an ingenious compromise: The US should not and indeed could not assist or even acquiesce in the establishment by the Soviet Union of exclusive spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe by means of complete domination. On the other hand, we should

48

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

not in any sense attempt to deny the Soviet Union the legitimate prerogatives of a great power in regard to smaller countries resulting from geographical proximity. (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 340-1) Such 'open' spheres of influence were acceptable 'provided this did not extend to internal control of the subject state or exclude intercourse with foreign nations' (Harbutt, 1986, 131). Presumably the USSR would behave like a 'good neighbour' in the way the USA itself would in Latin America. Both Britain and the USSR went along with the one world vision during wartime since they saw it as necessary to keep US support and commitment. But the British in particular, as former hegemonic power, appreciated what was at stake. As one British Foreign Office official said of Roosevelt after the signing of the Atlantic Charter: I do not think that he believes very much in all the democratic slogans and catchphrase words which he and we think it our duty so constantly to repeat. He pays lip-service to them, as every American must do, but what he is out to do is put the USA definitely on top, and sees that she stays there. (Reynolds, 1981,260) Another official saw the economic implications as 'a system of informal empire by which the United States would control economic resources without formal annexation' (Rothwell, 1982, 10). Replace the USA by Britain in this statement and you have a description of British hegemony a century earlier. In short, 'the United States is not so much a land of opportunity as a land looking for opportunity' (Rothwell, 1982, 11-12). For all this understanding by Britain of US hegemonic tactics, Britain was the power that was defeated while the USSR was able to resist US advances. Some of the reasons for this are to be found in another alternative world, the 'three world' solution to post-war reconstruction. Three worlds of unequal 'Monroes' The one world vision was primarily a rejection of the trend towards autarchy during the decline of British power. As Britain's hegemony gave way to inter-state rivalries, the world seemed to be drifting towards a system of relatively self-sufficient economic blocs. The basic targets of this reorganization were the 'old' European powers and their empires - Britain, France and the Netherlands. They were to be replaced by 'new' powers Germany and Japan, but also the USA and the USSR. The idea was to transform the chaotic fragmented pattern of the old sea-borne empires into a new rational division of the world. The most developed theories to support this reorganization were devised by the geopolitik school in Nazi Germany (O'Loughlin and van der Wusten, 1988). The theory of pan-regions envisaged a world of large longitudinal political zones that would be economically self-sufficient. Each zone would have territory from different latitudes so that each could produce the whole range of the world's harvest. In fact we can view a pan-region as a miniworld-economy with its own core in the temperate zone and a vast tropical

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

Figure 1

49

A panregion global model

periphery. Germany, for instance, was designated the core of Eurafrica which combined Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The usual number of pan-regions was four (Figure 1). The classic case was considered to be the USA's dominance of Latin America symbolized by the Monroe Doctrine. Germany's designation of a Eurafrica could be viewed as their Monroe Doctrine. In addition, the rise of Japan in the East produced the 'East Asia Co-prosperity Zone' as a third pan-region. Finally, the USSR could expand south to the Indian Ocean as a fourth pan-region. As late as 1940 there were German-Soviet negotiations whereby the latter was offered a free hand in South Asia in return for conceding German dominance in Eastern Europe (Bartlett, 1984, 232). The offer was refused but the negotiations were consistent with geopolitik ideas that Germany should keep the USA and the USSR neutral and with their own pan-regions, while Germany and Japan carved out their pan-regions at the expense of the British and French. The geopolitikers did not, therefore, advocate invasion of the USSR, but when that came about they revised their division of the world to three pan-regions with 'Russia-India' eliminated (Cohen, 1973, 46). But this invasion, and the Japanese attack on the USA in particular, effectively scuppered the pan-region project. This was despite the fact that the four pan-region model had also been promoted earlier by the Japanese Foreign Minister (Bartlett, 1984, 229). In the event the old European empires survived the assault of Germany and Japan, but only after the immense aid of the pan-region theory's other two core states, the USA and the USSR. The war itself had left these two powers with military control of vast territories in the Pacific/East Asia and Eastern Europe, respectively, which clearly had the potential for forming a new division of the world. Although not classic pan-regions, a relatively

50

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

self-sufficient USSR with Eastern Europe and perhaps Central Asia could form one political-economic bloc and the original American pan-region could become a Pacific-centred 'super-region' by encompassing the defeated Japanese bloc. This was the power-political reality in 1945 facing the one world vision. Although the USA's preference was strongly for the one world solution as we have seen, there was plenty of evidence that in its newly founded 'double pan-region' US behaviour was less open than their global rhetoric might suggest. Kolko and Kolko (1972, 81), for instance, describe US economic policies as 'dual standard': If the United States could not profit from the restrictive practices of other nations, it at least profited from its own, and therefore the United States never adopted a consistent policy and practice on foreign economic policy. They describe the main examples of US exceptionalism to the open door policy in Latin America, especially Cuba and Argentina, and East Asia, especially the Philippines and Thailand. This fuelled British scepticism of US idealism and their one world vision. Perhaps the world was about to become divided anew among the 'Big Three' (Figure 2). But this would not be the neat division of the geopolitik pan-region model. The USA would have its

USA

USSR PACIFIC/ EAST ASIA

Figure 2

Three 'Monroes' in 1945

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

51

'double pan-region', the USSR its 'mini pan-region', leaving Britain with a residual jumble of territories. Whereas the first two regions were coherent units, Britain's residual zone most certainly was not. The dangers of this situation were readily understood by the new British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, in 1945. In an oft-quoted memorandum dated 11 November 1945 (e.g. Rothwell, 1982, 425; Bullock, 1983, 193; Edmonds, 1986, 27) he argued that 'Instead of world co-operation we are rapidly drifting into spheres of influence or what can be better described as three great Monroes.' After describing the US addition of China and Japan to Latin America and a Soviet zone from 'Port Arthur to Lubeck' he concludes that this leaves Britain and France 'with a very weak position . . . a tremendous area to defend and a responsibility that, if it does develop, would make our position extremely difficult'. And the 'Monroes' were progressing beyond security police areas; there was a tendency to autarchy, according to Bevin, in both Soviet and US policies in their zones. He concluded that this was a threat to the new United Nations: 'it seems to me that we are dealing with power politics naked and unashamed'. Here we see the geopolitical basis of the Britain hypothesis for the making of the Cold War: whereas the USSR could happily consolidate its new sphere and the USA now had a 'double pan-region' to expand into, Britain was left with an 'extremely difficult' position. A three world solution in 1945 was Bevin's nightmare and given British scepticism for one world this left a two world approach as Britain's only option. Two worlds: a choice from three fronts A two world solution does not necessarily mean the Cold War structure, of course. There are, as we have seen, three possible combinations that divide the world in two. These are shown in Figure 3. We shall discuss the two solutions that did not emerge before finally considering the alternative world that was actually constructed. In many ways the most obvious bi-polar world in 1945 would combine the USA and the USSR in an anti-imperialist front, clearing away the old world of European empires. We have already noted with Kolko and Kolko (1972) that US economic policies targeted 'England' as the main enemy. Northedge (1974, 185) comes to the same conclusion: 'At the end of the war it seemed as though the disestablishment of the British Empire was the first objective of American policy.' This was, of course, entirely compatible with Soviet anti-imperialism. In short an anti-imperialist front could combine the world leaders of liberalism and socialism in a final challenge to the remnants of reactionary conservatism. Anti-imperialism was a strong force in the USA. War aims had had to be carefully agreed so that the USA could not be accused of shoring up the British Empire. This is what the Atlantic Charter and Lend-Lease agreements were about. Hence when Winston Churchill declared in his 1942 Mansion House speech: 'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to

52

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

USA Figure 3

USSR

Alternative bi-polar worlds in 1945

preside over the liquidation of the British Empire', this was viewed as repudiating the Atlantic Charter (Hathaway, 1981, 45). It fuelled suspicion that Britain was using the USA for its own imperialist ends. Certainly Roosevelt went to great lengths to prevent any impression that the USA was ganging up with Britain against the USSR in the 'Big Three' meetings. Northedge (1974, 212) argues, for example: At the Yalta conference in February 1945 there seemed to be almost tacit understanding between President Roosevelt and Marshall Stalin that their joint mission in the world was the elimination of every vestige of European colonialism. Even after Churchill's Iron Curtain speech Walter Lippman felt it necessary to warn in his influential US newspaper column that The line of British imperial interest and the line of American vital interest are not to be regarded as identical' (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 363). This was typical of the suspicious reaction to Britain even in 1946. There was a second basis for a USA-USSR front. President Truman was advised in the State Department's position paper for Potsdam that war between the USA and the USSR was 'in the highest degree unlikely' (Hathaway, 1981, 167). It was widely considered that there were no major outstanding problems separating the two powers. In April 1945 John McCloy, who was to become US Military Governor in Germany, stated baldly: Our geographical situation with respect to Russia, as well as our position in the world, make it perfectly possible to get along without fighting. (Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 289)

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

53

Charles Bohlen, the Special Assistant to Secretary of State Byrnes, was even more explicit in a memorandum explaining the basis of State Department policy: Between the Soviet Union and the United States there is no material concrete dispute of any character. There is no place where our material interests clash. There is no question of territorial dispute. There is no concrete dispute or difference between the Soviet Union and the United States. So that objectively there is absolutely no reason why the two nations should not work out any problems they have between them. There is no need for war between the United States and Russia. The geographical location between the two countries does not provide places where the friction arises automatically. (Harbutt, 1986,132) This argument was linked by Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's Vice-President before Truman and Truman's Commerce Secretary, to the anti-British imperialism position. He reported his suspicions of Britain to the President - his diary entry for 15 October 1945 describes a meeting with Truman as follows: I said that apparently the purpose of Britain was to promote an unbreachable break between us and Russia . . . I said Britain may have plenty of excuses for playing the game the way she does; it may fit into her geographical position, but we must not play her game. (Walton, 1976, 63) His position was that a US foreign policy that supported Britain would be against the tide of history and thus allow the USSR to take sole possession of the anti-imperialist mantle. If the USA was to break with her progressive tradition, she would be marginalized, handing over ultimate world leadership to the USSR. Perhaps not surprisingly, Henry Wallace was to become the major political victim of the Cold War in the USA. The other alternative to the Cold War was an anti-hegemonic front. As the two weaker powers in the 'Big Three' it might be thought logical that the USSR and Britain would collaborate to neutralize US power. The basis for this existed in the strength of the popular progressive fronts that emerged throughout Europe in 1945 (Weiler, 1988). These fronts were anti-capitalist; their social democratic wings looked to the British Labour Party for support, their communist wings to the USSR. With the election of a Labour government in Britain, the potential for an international progressive front existed. At the 1945 Labour Party conference Bevin had used the phrase 'Left understands left but right does not', and although this was originally meant to apply to French socialists it was subsequently interpreted as referring to the USSR (Bullock, 1983, 69). Certainly the left wing of the Labour Party favoured a rapprochement with the USSR as we shall see in the next chapter. Also there was much suspicion in the USA of the new 'socialist' government in Britain. Nevertheless, a socialist anti-hegemonic front never got off the ground. When Attlee and Bevin returned to Potsdam as Britain's representatives, it was soon clear that British 'socialism' was to be no ally of Russian communism. Molotov, the Soviet foreign secretary is reported to have said to Bevin at Potsdam: 'Churchill and Eden used to be

54

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

friends of the Soviet Union, but you and Attlee are old fashioned British imperialists' (Shlaim, et al 1977, 40). Allowing for the hyperbole, we can see that this alternative two world solution was a victim of the bipartisan continuity in British foreign policy across governments. More generally the collapse of popular progressive fronts was to become the major domestic indication of the coming of the Cold War when social democrats left Eastern European governments and communists left Western European governments two or three years hence. The break-up of popular fronts in the West was a product of anticommunism. At the international level the anti-communist front led by the USA and Britain could build upon a wartime alliance when the two Western countries combined their efforts on the same military fronts, with the USSR fighting elsewhere. In addition there were obviously many cultural links between the two countries - Churchill's English-speaking peoples - but it is as well to remember Hathaway's (1981, 15) stricture: 'Anglo-American partnership was not a natural and inevitable part of the structure of world politics. It was fragile, in constant need of nurture.' As we have already seen and will elaborate later, the British had to work hard to generate US support against the USSR. Many writers have reported how anti-communism was used to counter anti-imperialism sentiments (e.g. Kolko and Kolko, 1972, 66-9; Hathaway, 1981, 246). But the British had some official support in the USA. An Office of Strategic Services report in 1945, for instance, argued that: The United States should realize . . . its interest in the maintenance of the British, French and Dutch colonial empires . . . It is not in our national interest to lead a crusade for colonial independence . . . Our interest in developing a balance to Russia should lead us in the opposite direction. (Hathaway, 1981, 47) The main push for an anti-communist front, however, seems to have come from the US and British diplomats in Moscow. Kennan sent his famous telegram in February 1946, while in the British Embassy Frank Roberts played a similar role. His telegram to London of March 1946 asserted that 'Soviet security has become hard to distinguish from Soviet imperialism and it is becoming uncertain whether there is, in fact, any limit to Soviet expansion' (Merrick, 1985, 454). Harbutt (1986, 130) concludes: 'The solution, as both Roberts and Kennan saw it, was to present a firm Anglo-American united front to the Soviets. This front already existed among the diplomats in Moscow.' In this argument the Cold War was indeed produced in Moscow, but by Western diplomats! The success of the Cold Warriors was quite remarkable. Anderson (1981, 183) notes that in the USA 'Anglophobia, rampant in 1944, had practically disappeared by 1947, superseded by fear of communism.' As one British official in Washington remarked: 'It was strange to read in American newspapers that Britain was proceeding too fast in weakening the empire' (Anderson, 1981, 183). By this time, the Cold War had superseded all its rival alternative world orders. The 'victory' of the Cold War was not inevitable, as we have argued. We

ALTERNATIVE WORLDS IN 1945

55

can conclude this chapter by suggesting further that it was not even the most probable outcome from among the five. Certainly it was the one world solution that was both the popular and the expected outcome for the British general public. Gallup (1976, 98) recorded a huge 91 per cent to 7 per cent majority in favour of 'Big Three' 'co-operating together after the war' in October 1944. It was also considered to be the most likely outcome by 51 per cent to 23 per cent in an August poll of the same year (Gallup, 1976, 97). Such sentiments reflected the feeling that the sacrifices of war must not be squandered in new conflicts. But this was far removed from the 'high politics' of the decision-makers as Barker (1983, 11) emphasizes: if ordinary people in Britain had known at the time that their soldiers and diplomats were seriously considering the possibility - however understandable - of a future war with the great ally Russia, most would have felt this was profoundly shocking, a betrayal of what they had beenfightingfor for such a long time. British 'high politics' had long lost its vision of one world. This is what makes the Britain hypothesis on Cold War origins so intriguing and so plausible. Let us now return to consider Britain's situation in the making of the Cold War afresh.

Chapter S

Britain at the turning point

One thing will certainly be said about the General Election of 1945: it will be called a revolution. Given a suitable and secondary definition of the word, it may be a justifiable expression but it might be as well as to avoid i t . . . in its true political sense a revolution is 'especially a forcible substitution by subjects of new rule or policy for old'. Such were the American, French and Russian revolutions; a British general election is quite another thing. (McCallum and Readman, 1947, 270) We have spent much of the previous two chapters moving between different time spans; here we shall return to moving between geographical scales. Although there is no doubt that 1945 is a 'global' turning point, it is equally important to appreciate that its importance transcends any one geographical scale. We have argued previously that geographical scales, like historical spans, are interdependent and must be integrated in any proper understanding of social change. Quite simply, a changing global agenda cannot avoid having profound effects on countries and communities in all corners of the world. If the fluidity of 1945 was endemic throughout the system, the power to make choices was most unequal. The beneficiaries of the 'conjuncture of decisions' were a relatively small group in the aftermath of war. To a large extent, or so we have argued in the last chapter, at the global scale we can limit our consideration to only the 'Big Three'. At the scale of the state different political elites, new and old, interacted with the 'Big Three' framework in searching for the best openings for their interests in the New World. The degrees of freedom varied greatly but were most severe in Eastern Europe where 'and-Yalta' politics are still practised nearly fifty years after the event (Konrad, 1984, 1). As one of the 'Big Three' Britain was in a privileged position in terms of its degrees of freedom. The 'Britain hypothesis' on Cold War origins emphasizes this relative power of Britain in 1945. In this chapter we pursue the strong Britain hypothesis described in Chapter two. We will argue that Britain's role in the 'Big Three' was important because of its linkages with the other two powers. Whereas US-Soviet relations were relatively undeveloped before the Cold War, Britain had long-standing important relations with both of its partners. For instance, geographically Britain's

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

57

interests focused on the North Atlantic and the Middle East (Fawcett, 1949), bringing it into contact with both other superpowers. Ideologically, after Labour's electoral victory many contemporaries viewed Britain as being between the extremes of capitalism and communism in the USA and USSR respectively. On both counts Britain would be central to any accommodation within the 'Big Three'. The chapter is divided into three sections. We begin by reviewing the evidence for Britain's 'pivotal position' in the 'Big Three'. Second, we look at how the special 'bridging role' of British social democracy fared in the ruthless world of capitalism and communism. In this discussion the issue of a socialist foreign policy comes to the fore. In the final section, we consider the policy options expressed within the Labour Party in 1945. We will find three 'socialist foreign policies' which relate to the alternative worlds depicted in the last chapter. Once again, although only one policy could prevail - the one compatible with the Cold War - it is important to see it as just one choice from several for the Labour government in 1945. Britain's 'pivotal position' Although Britain was an accepted member of the 'Big Three' in 1945, it is also true that she was generally viewed as the weakest of the three. The strong Britain hypothesis most certainly cannot be built, therefore, upon the amount of power Britain could wield at meetings of the 'Big Three'. And yet both the USA and the USSR found it necessary to devise their global policies around Britain. Clearly Britain's influence was more subtle than a simple possession of state power. We get a hint of this in Rothwell's (1982, 247) discussion of the differences between George Kennan and Frank Roberts in relaying their anti-Soviet views from Moscow. From the British Embassy, Roberts could frame his advice in the context of 150 years of intensive Anglo-Russian relations. Kennan, on the other hand, was in the process of constructing an important international relation between the USA and the USSR for the first time. The idea that Britain had more-developed relations with each of its 'Big Three' partners has been best expressed by Harbutt (1986, 4) as Britain's 'pivotal position'. Quite simply: Britain had with each of the stronger powers a much closer relationship and a much wider range of geopolitical connections than they had with each other.' He views the Grand Alliance, therefore, as not a tripartite unity but as three different and distinctive bilateral associations. Between Britain and the USA there was a 'fraternal association' incorporating economic competition; between Britain and the USSR a 'power-political association', incorporating political competition; but between the USA and the USSR there was only a 'detached association' before the Second World War. Harbutt's argument is portrayed in Figure 4 and in the remainder of this section we elaborate on the relations represented by each side of the triangle.

58

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

FRATERNAL ASSOCIATION

% POWER-POLITICAL O ASSOCIATION \

USA

Undeveloped Competition

USSR

DETACHED ASSOCIATION Figure 4

The real world of three distinctive bilateral associations

In November 1945 Churchill first used the expression 'special relationship' to describe Anglo-American relations (Reynolds, 1989, 94). Four months later it was to be one of the key points in his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech. But it is important to remember that for nearly all of the 150 years of AngloAmerican relations there was nothing 'special' about it, and for most of that time even the adjective 'friendly' would be most inappropriate. The diplomatic stragegy of cultivating friendlier relations with the USA began in the 1898-1906 rapprochement between the two countries when Britain decided to concentrate its efforts on the vital struggles in Europe (Reynolds, 1989, 95; Watt, 1965, 12). In effect, Britain chose to combat the German pretender and not the US one. In reaching this decision Watt (1965) mentions cultural factors as important such as common progressive views and the personal relations of the foreign policy elites. Hathaway (1981, 13) describes the cultural links as 'an unescapable truth: the two peoples were united by history in no ordinary relationship'. But, of course, this supposed cultural affinity had to be harnessed for political ends. Edmonds (1986, 14) plays down its importance and talks of the 'thinness of the texture' of Anglo-American relations in the inter-war period. He identifies the strongest link to be in showbusiness, far removed from the real world of international politics! In fact naval rivalries in the 1920s led to 'possible talk of war' between the two countries on two separate occasions (Watt, 1984, 50). After the institution of imperial preferences in 1931, economic competition

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

59

became severe. Hence, by the beginning of the Second World War AngloAmerican relations were quite ambiguous. Facing Germany for the second time, Reynolds (1981, 13) describes Britain's view of the USA in terms of three emotions: 'doubt' concerning US reliability; 'hope' concerning eventual US help, and 'fear' concerning US competition. The Second World War transformed the situation. The wartime association was unique in relations between great powers because it involved 'the concept of a worldwide system of unified theatre commands': 'Never in the history of international relations had the affairs of two sovereign nations become so thoroughly entangled' (Hathaway, 1981, 8-9). But even in this closest of relationships we can see different priorities, with Britain being concerned with the post-war geopolitical situation of the USSR in Europe while the USA remained determined to pursue the most efficient route to victory in the war itself. On three occasions Britain was overruled in proposals to get to Central Europe before the Soviets - in 1943 through the Balkans, in 1944 through Italy and the Alps, and in 1945 through a rapid drive to Berlin (Anderson, 1981). And so we come to the end of the war and Britain's expectation of a continued 'special relationship'. For Reynolds (1989) the idea of a special relationship was basically a strategem of British diplomacy, a use of the cultural connection to manage the new superpower for British ends. Nevertheless, Reynolds does recognize the existence of a unique relationship in terms of liberal political traditions expressed particularly in two wartime alliances 'for freedom and democracy'. Certainly by 1945 war with the USA was utterly 'unthinkable' (Barker, 1983, 13). In the new world Britain would be 'vital and indispensable' to the USA according to John Maynard Keynes, the British government's economic adviser. He derived a central location for Britain in the USA's post-war world as follows: Further acquaintance with Russia does not increase intimacy or confidence. The illusion of China has faded. Central Europe is a dreaded cavern of misery and chaos. The governments of Western Europe are wished well but are doubtful qualities. The little Latin nephews are all very well but not what Uncle hoped. There is nothing to be found reliable or homely in the habitable globe outside Britain and the British Commonwealth. This, today, is America's deepest, least alterable conviction. (Hathaway, 1981, 87) There was a degree of idealistic wishful thinking in Keynes's hopes for Anglo-American relations as we shall see in the next chapter, but the importance of Britain to the USA and vice versa cannot be doubted. What was to be decided was the nature of the close or even 'special' relationship as the very mixed reactions to Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech illustrated (Harbutt, 1986). Relations between the USSR and Britain had been nothing less than the 'Great Game' of nineteenth-century international politics (Edwardes, 1975). As Britain consolidated its Indian Empire and the Tsarist Empire spread eastwards, it was inevitable that they would eventually meet. Central Asia became the arena of the 'Great Game' as a contest for political ascendancy

60

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

in the region. This was 'high polities' par excellence with diplomatic probing of each other's weaknesses but no open conflict (Edwardes, 1975). As with US relations, this controlled hostility was converted to friendship in Britain's reassessment of its world role at the beginning of the twentieth century. In a classic example of what Wallerstein (1984a, 10) calls those 'strange alliances', Britain joined the Russian Empire in the Entente with France in 1907. This alliance of liberal Britain with the most reactionary of the other major powers may have 'dismayed much progressive opinion in Britain' (Bartlett, 1984, 52) but 'high politics' overrides 'low politics' in matters of national security. Since Britain had chosen Germany as the pretender to be disposed of, Russia became an indispensable link in the geopolitical world order being constructed. The USSR aided Britain's resistance to Germany's challenge in both world wars but the 'Great Game' was never forgotten. The Soviet threat to Britain's Empire and its communications re-surfaced as Germany's second defeat became assured. According to Rothwell (1982, 114) the 'simple military minds' of the British Chiefs of Staff assumed 'that Russia would simply replace Germany as Britain's enemy' (1982,115). The Post-Hostilities Planning Committee came to this conclusion in 1944 (Barker, 1983, 7). These views were a continuation of traditional Foreign Office policy. As with the Tsarist state before 1917, the Soviets would be expected to probe Britain's imperial links looking for weaknesses. The point is that Britain and the USSR had a well-established set of geopolitical relations that both sides understood. In contrast, US relations with the USSR had been minimal before the Second World War. The two countries had never had close political or economic relations so that co-operation and conflict had been sporadic and had developed no pattern. Gaddis (1987) describes this legacy in some detail, concluding that co-operation against Britain in the nineteenth century and against Germany in the twentieth century has been more notable than the conflicts between the two countries but that the cooperation had not been found 'easy to arrange or sustain' (1987, 18). Hence, the USA and the USSR entered centre stage in world politics in 1945 without major bilateral foreign policy traditions to build upon. Britain's resulting pivotal position in the 'Big Three' was expressed in several ways. British politicians and officials attempted to take on a 'wise man' role to advise the relative 'newcomers' to the top heights of high politics. In British attitudes to the USA this could be quite patronizing and insulting, offering 'superior statecraft and experience' (Hathaway, 1981, 52) to Americans who were, according to British ambassat >r Halifax, 'still politically very immature' (Anderson, 1981, 33). In respo/;e US politicans and officials were suspicious of the wily British and their diplomatic trickery (e.g. Isaacson and Thomas, 1986, 283). With the USSR Britain's position was more straightforward. Power politics were resumed and the 'Great Game' was resurrected as we shall see.

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

61

A social democratic bridge? The British state was clearly in a pivotal position whichever government was to be in power in 1945. Nevertheless, the election of a Labour government in July added a very important new ingredient to the situation. At first it seemed to reinforce the pivotal position ideologically - Britain could now talk to Americans as fellow democrats and to Russians as fellow socialists. Social democracy could be the bridge to join the USA and the USSR in constructing one world. In 1945 the Labour Party inherited a socialist foreign policy that had evolved in the inter-war years (Gordon, 1969; Naylor, 1969). There was little doubt in the party that its foreign policy was distinctive and separate from traditional British power politics. As party leader Attlee had written in 1937; 'There is no agreement on foreign policy between a Labour Opposition and a Capitalist Government' (Gordon, 1969, viii). Labour's policy was essentially internationalist incorporating anti-militarist and anti-capitalist positions. As stated by Arthur Henderson, the Foreign Secretary in the Labour minority government of 1929 to 1931, Labour's goal must be a 'Cooperative World Commonwealth' because socialism in one country would be prey to international capitalist anarchy (Gordon, 1969, 7, 15). Hence, foreign policy and domestic policy were necessarily linked in Labour's programme. But in 1945 the influence of this legacy was countered by the recent circumstances of Labour's membership of Churchill's wartime coalition government. Labour leaders were associated with the foreign policy decisions of that government which in no sense claimed to be socialist. Hence we have a recipe for conflict and confusion over Labour's foreign policy and this emerged before and after the 1945 election. The 1945 election was largely about domestic policies - in one poll of 'the most discussed issues' international security came a poor fifth cited by only 5 per cent of the sample (McCallum and Readman, 1947, 150). Nevertheless, the most notable conflict of the campaign centred on foreign policy. When Churchill invited Attlee to accompany him to the Potsdam conference before the election, Harold Laski the Labour Party chairman warned that no Labour government could be bound by what Churchill agreed at the conference. Hence, Attlee should attend in 'the role of observer only' (McCallum and Readman, 1947, 145). This was seized upon as an election issue by the Conservatives, suggesting that the party machine and not the parliamentary leadership controlled Labour policy. They predicted 'a secret Socialist foreign policy' (1947, 147) would be hoist on an unsuspecting nation should Labour win power. In fact Labour's policy programme Let's Face the Future had pledged 'to apply a socialist analysis to the world situation' (Weiler, 1988, 189) but nevertheless Attlee was portrayed as dummy to 'Gauleiter Laski's' ventriloquist (McCallum and Readman, 1947, 148). Of course, the Conservatives had uncovered a difference of opinion in Labour ranks that was being papered over, but the degree of split was not to become apparent until after the election.

62

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

When the new Parliament assembled, the expectation of Labour MPs and the party rank and file was that a British Labour government was in a unique position to construct a new world. Michael Foot in his maiden speech in the debate on the King's Speech was most eloquent in describing this social democratic bridge in the 'Big Three'. We do not wish to play the part of Lepidus in this triumvate of great nations. Britain stands today at the summit of her power and glory, and we hold that position because today, following the Election, we have something unique to offer. We have a conception of political liberty which our friends in Russia unhappily have not been blessed with. We have at the same time a conception of economic democracy . . . which is unhappily not yet shared by the people of the United States. If, however, we were able to take a free vote of all the peoples of Europe, I believe that they would vote overwhelmingly for these two ideas. (Hansard, 1945a) But new Foreign Secretary Bevin's reply to the debate first set party alarm bells ringing when in effect he 'repudiated a socialist foreign policy as fantasy' (Gordon, 1969, 105). The result was that Labour had two rival foreign policies in 1945 that were 'fundamentally opposed', differing in interpretation of the world situation, objectives of policy and means of achieving objectives (Gordon, 1969, 117). These intra-party policy differences can be illustrated as contrasting geopolitical codes. Consider the following fact: by 1945 the USSR sphere of influence had expanded westwards four-fifths of the way to the North Sea from its 1939 borders. From a traditional British viewpoint this was alarming. For more than 200 years foreign policy had been to achieve a balance of power in Europe, including isolating the Russian Empire in the East. Now they were in Central Europe and threatening the West. This outcome of the war was a disaster for Britain, the only answer was to commit the USA to Europe to rebuild the balance. But this was not the only interpretation. Here is an alternative: since the USSR was a peaceful ally and the world was being re-created around the Grand Alliance and the United Nations there was no need to be concerned with the old worries of power politics. The outcome of the war had eliminated the Central European threat and provided an opportunity to build a different international politics. Bevin held the traditional geopolitical code, most of the party were closer to the alternative code. The result was that 'the Labour Party's traditional foreign policy caught the party unawares after 1945' (Gordon, 1969,135). Although there has been some debate about whether Bevin was anti-Soviet from the outset or whether he initially tried to co-operate with the USSR, his acceptance of the power political British geopolitical code balance of power in Europe, holding the line elsewhere — would strongly suggest that he identified the Soviet threat immediately and then applied traditional policy prescriptions: 'Thus far from mediating between capitalist America and communist Russia, as Labour Party members had come to expect, the Labour government assumed the initial responsibility for checking the dynamic of Soviet expansion' (Gordon, 1969, 109).

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

63

If there were to be no 'social democratic bridge' what would become of the world role of British social democracy? Both sides of the debate used the same label for their own ends. For the Foreign Office social democracy was the ideological foe of communism (Rothwell, 1982, 427). It was the only 'progressive faith' that could rival communism for the allegiance of the working classes throughout Europe (Weiler, 1988,197). The Foreign Office adjusted their language accordingly. The first meeting of their 'Russia Committee' in April 1946 warned that the USSR 'had opened an offensive against Britain as leader of social democracy in the world' (Merrick, 1985, 455). In this way social democracy was incorporated into the Cold War anti-communist front. In contrast, the left-wing critics of the government's foreign policy developed the idea of a 'third force'. With the break-up of the Grand Alliance the stark choice between the USA and the USSR offered by the new bi-polar world could be subverted by building a new social democratic bloc (Gordon, 1969, 182). This was originally to be a Western Europe socialist bloc, but eventually developed into a more general 'neutralist bloc' to include the new Third World countries such as India. The fact that these policies were never applied is less important than the fact that social democracy and socialist foreign policy could be interpreted as anything from neutralism to Cold War belligerence. To understand what is going on here we need to stand back a little from these political practices and consider the theory that could stimulate such disparate policy outcomes. What is a socialist foreign policy? According to Jones (1977, 105), in 1945: 'On the subject of a "socialist foreign policy" there were as many ideas as there were Labour MPs.' This expresses the confusion in party ranks over foreign policy, although in practice there were three main types of policy which were reduced to a simple two-way choice in debate. The latter revolved around whether Bevin was pursuing 'Conservative policies': Despite the 'socialist' presentation of his policies, it soon became apparent, to the relief of the Opposition and the bewilderment of many of his own supporters, that on most issues and in most areas of the world he was assiduously advancing the policies of his Conservative predecessors. (Jones, 1977, 116) Hence, the 'real opposition' to government policy came from within their own party Qones, 1977, 118). This unusual situation for party-based government was expressed at the 1946 Labour Party Conference in a blunt resolution that read: This Conference recognising that the only hope of lasting peace lies in the international adoption of Socialism, and regretting the Government's apparent continuance of a traditionally Conservative policy of power politics abroad, urges a return to the Labour Party foreign policy of support of Socialist and antiimperialist forces throughout the world. (Labour Party, 1946, 151)

64

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

Bevin interpreted this, not unnaturally, as a vote of censure and on the matter of following a Conservative policy he said simply 'I deny that. I repudiate it' (Labour Party, 1946, 163). Under the chairman's guidance the resolution was withdrawn. But this is very curious when we remember the Laski affair of just a year earlier. Then Attlee had stated the national need for 'unity in foreign policy' at this particular time and Bevin had agreed (Bullock, 1983, 67). Nevertheless, according to Jones (1977, 109): 'to compound the confusion the leadership had delved into the lexicon of traditional "idealist" foreign policy to inject the necessary rhetoric into the election campaign'. The confusion continued in the early period of the government's tenure because, until the Cold War was firmly in place, they were unwilling and unable to concede the concept of a 'socialist foreign policy' to their critics. The Labour Party was able to maintain this position of conceptual confusion through the 'long 1945' because of the inherent vagueness of its international position. All sides in every dispute claimed to be internationalists so that the word itself comes into disrepute. In fact we can begin to make some sense of this of we follow Halliday's (1988, 188) idea of 'internationalism' as 'a cluster concept in which a number of ideas are conveniently associated without any single one or group of them constituting a core meaning'. As such it is available for interpretation in very different ways. Halliday provides a typology of internationalisms in which three distinct types are identified. Liberal internationalism is the belief in co-operation between countries to produce a more rational and peaceful world: this is the internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, of the League of Nations and the United Nations. Hegemonic internationalism is a belief in global inequality and imperialism: this is a power-political argument of international policemen as in the pax Britannica or pax Americana. Revolutionary internationalism, on the other hand, is anti-imperialist and aims to overthrow current structures and replace them with a new classless society: without classes there will be no wars. Hence all three internationalisms share the goal of peace, whether negotiated, imposed or won. The Labour Party incorporated all three internationalisms in its policies and policy-making for peace in 1945. If we look at the foreign policy debates at the party conferences in 1945 and 1946, we can find all three internationalisms well represented. This is not to say that the debates are between these three positions. Rather, Halliday's typology provides the themes that are woven together for political debate so that most speakers draw on more than one 'internationalism'. This is the nature of a cluster concept and its utility for debate. Support for the United Nations, for instance, incorporated hopes based upon all three internationalisms liberal as a world debating chamber, hegemonic in its Security Council recognition of five permanent members (the 'Big Three' plus France and China) and revolutionary in its potential as an assembly of 'nations', the peoples of the world, rather than states. Nevertheless, we can separate each theme for discussion.

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

65

Liberal internationalism is best represented in Attlee's speeches. At the 1945 Conference his short speech was peppered with phrases like 'full co-operation', 'mutual understanding' and 'common good' (Labour Party, 1945,107-8). He uses the British Commonwealth as his ideal: We want a world of free and democratic States, good neighbours, co-operating together just as we and the Dominions co-operate together. And let us not be ashamed to say that we have shown the world an example of the co-operation of free nations. (Labour Party, 1945,107-8) Replace 'Dominions' by 'Latin America' and the statement could be from a US liberal politician. No wonder he was to be criticized in the debate from a more revolutionary position: As far as the workers of Europe are concerned the only alternative is Socialism. Mr. Attlee this morning did not apply the socialist analysis to the world situation. It was an analysis that might have been applied by a very good liberal statesman in those days of the League of Nations when people believed sincerely that a League of capitalist governments would prevent war. (Labour Party, 1945, 112) This sort of radical sentiment dominated the debates. The basic assumption of revolutionary internationalism was clearly stated in the 1945 debates: 'It is not possible to establish a permanent peace in a predominantly capitalist world' (Labour Party, 1945,112). A major spokesman for this viewpoint was Konni Zilliacus, who, in the House of Commons, had proclaimed Labour's electoral victory as 'our British version of the Russian Revolution'. In his view: 'the necessity for Socialism does not stop at frontiers but expands throughout Europe. A new wind is blowing throughout the world and we are part of it' (Hansard, 1945a, 886-7). The best statement of this position at the party conference came from Dennis Healey: the Socialist revolution has already begun in Europe and is already firmly established in many countries in Eastern and Southern Europe. The crucial principle of our own foreign policy should be to protect, assist, encourage, and aid in every way that Socialist revolution wherever it appears .. . there is a very great danger, unless we are very careful, that we shall find ourselves running with the Red Flag in front of the armoured cars of Tory imperialism and counter revolution. (Labour Party, 1945, 114) This last warning was the result of Healy's recent experience of the activities of the occupation forces in Europe. A year later the rift with the USSR had become clear and the conference debates included more explicitly pro-Soviet statements. The need for 'firm friendship and co-operation with the progressive forces throughout the world . . . in particular with the Soviet Union' was contrasted with a repudiation of attempts 'to tie us closely to the chariot-wheels of American imperialism' (Labour Party, 1946, 157). And, of course, this had distinctive geopolitical implications: We must convince Russia that our actions in Greece were not the survival of the days when imperialist Britain and Russia were traditional potential foes over our interests in the Near East and in the Indian Ocean. (Labour Party, 1946, 158)

66

PART TWO: ALL CHANGE - 1945

Traditional British foreign policy is thus, of course, utterly rejected and hence we understand the leadership's concern over labelling Bevin's policies 'Conservative'. In fact, as we have seen, there was continuity of foreign policy from the Churchill to the Attlee government. Bevin was a classic hard-headed realist politician: A keen appreciation of the importance of power was the main quality which Bevin carried from the trade union movement to the Foreign Office. He knew from experience that the highest ideals and noblest intentions were as useless in diplomatic negotiations as they were in industrial bargaining unless they were backed by force. (Shlaim et al., 1977, 36). His approach to foreign policy is epitomized in a short passage from his speech in the defence debate at the 1945 party conference: 'I would ask Conference to bear this in mind. Revolutions do not change geography and revolutions do not change geographical need.' This stark vulgar political geography allows for a 'socialist continuation' of traditional British foreign policy: it is geopolitics that lessen the degrees of freedom for action in the foreign sphere compared with domestic policies. Hence Attlee's defence of Bevin's policies: It was naive to demand that the nation's foreign policy reflect a domestic party's ideology. Any groping in that direction would be foredoomed because there abounded hard and inescapable facts of international life - for instance geography and national resources - which were impervious to ideological treatment. (Gordon, 1969, 138) This statement was made during the Labour parliamentary revolt of November 1946 and it is ironic since naivity is exactly the accusation the realists at the Foreign Office were to make against Attlee's liberal internationalism, as we shall see in Chapter eight. How was this power-political approach equated with socialist internationalism? It was not particularly unusual for socialist politicians to be nationalist realists on the international stage. In Germany before 1914, for instance, the whole geopolitical theory of economic blocs had been developed as a 'socialist foreign policy' in the Social Democratic Party as a popular alternative to revolutionary and liberal internationalist approaches also found within the party (Fletcher, 1984; Taylor, 1990). Joseph Bloch's 'national internationalism' was based upon socialism as collective politics and the nation as the 'highest collective'. Hence 'socialist power politics' has a long pedigree and is found even in this largest of Marxist socialist parties before 1917. For Bevin, since the British nation had now become 'social democratic', a power-political foreign policy was simply promoting that social democracy and hence justified the label 'socialist'. In fact the need for a socialist justification of foreign policy gradually changed (Gordon, 1969, 139). According to Weiler (1988, 190): Foreign policies were initially presented as the application of socialism abroad, a view that could be attacked as untrue, by 1948 they became a defence of freedom against totalitarianism or civilization versus barbarism.

BRITAIN AT THE TURNING POINT

67

The first major step in the move was the Dennis Healey 1947 pamphlet Cards on the Table, in which the blame for lack of international socialist solidarity was placed squarely on the USSR. Healey lamented the coincidence of the election of a Labour government with the rise of Soviet hostility to Britain as 'a major tragedy of socialist history' (Harris, 1982, 307). Returning to our long 1945 we can now see that the cluster concept of internationalism allowed for a constructive ambiguity to be used by the leadership of the Labour Party to cover its division with the rank and file. This was a necessary period of confusion on the British route to the Cold War. Weiler (1988,201) notes that 'In part to protect himself from left wing critics . . . Bevin denied hostility to the USSR and the growing AngloAmerican alliance.' As late as June 1946 Bevin could profess to party conference: I am not going to be party, as long as I hold this office, to any design, any strategy, any alignment of forces, any arrangement of defence . . . To attack Russia. I will be no party to it. (Labour Party, 1946,168) I cannot find this quotation in any of the laudatory appreciations of Bevin as the greatest Foreign Secretary of the twentieth century. No wonder Weiler (1988, 201) tells us that all Bevin's public moves were designed to protect him from Labour Party criticism. This being the case, we have got just about as far as we can in our story based upon the contemporary public record. In order to reconstruct Britain's role in the geopolitical transition to the Cold War we must now move on to the confidential record that has been released under Britain's thirty-year rule.

Part Three Britain's crisis of power

Chapter 6

The geoeconomic dilemma

The notion of hegemony as afitbetween power, ideas and institutions makes it possible to deal with some of the problems in the theory of state dominance as the necessary condition for a stable international order; it allows for lags and leads in hegemony. For example, so appealing was the nostalgia for the nineteenth century hegemony that the ideological dimension of the pax Britannicaflourishedlong after the power configuration that supported it had vanished. (Cox, 1981,140) Through the steam in a bathroom at 11 Downing Street, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's official residence, a Treasury official read out the telegram announcing the conclusion of the loan negotiations in Washington, DC on 6 December 1945. In the bath the Labour Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, 'waved, tossed and splashed a large sponge, to express his mixed emotions' (Pimlott, 1985, 432). Such was the scene at the last rites of British hegemony. With the British signing of the Loan Agreement with the USA the latter was firmly seated in the driving seat of the post-war world-economy. Changing hegemony is a long drawn-out process. It is not an overnight affair, it is a phenomenon of the moyenne àuree. The challenge to Britain was about half a century old in 1945. The most overt threat had been the military one of Germany. But at the same time the USA had been building its economic power to become the alternative pretender. Since we have argued that hegemony is ultimately based upon economic prowess, it is the activities of the USA in the period of British decline that is of particular relevance here. The USA's hegemonic project, as distinct from its simple rise to political importance in the inter-state system, can be said to begin with the return to power of the pro-free trade Democrats under President Wilson in 1912. Wilson's attempt to build a liberal world order around the economic power of the USA became explicit during the First World War. Watt (1984, 32) quotes him in July 1917 as asserting: England and France have not this same view with regard to peace that we have by any means. When the war is over we can force them to our way of thinking, because by that time they will, among other things, befinanciallyin our hands. For the USA the First World War ended too early for this scenario to prove correct. But 'Wilsonians' were back in charge of foreign policy after the

72

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

return of Roosevelt's Democrats in 1932, in particular, Roosevelt's longest serving Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. He described Britain's decision finally to reject free trade for imperial preferences in 1932 as 'the greatest injury, in a commercial way, that has been inflicted in this country since I have been in public life' (Edmonds, 1986, 95-6). Not surprisingly he saw the destruction of Britain's imperial preferences as the essential first step in the construction of a new liberal world-economy (Reynolds, 1981, 27). In this context the Second World War was a second opportunity to put US hegemony into place: With the proper utilization of the great economic strength of the United States, Hull and his associates reasoned, they might be able to use the tragedy of global conflict to create a new international structure that would substantially reduce the likelihood of a third world war. In doing so, moreover, they would be insuring America's own well-being and spreading the blessings of a free and prosperous world order to other peoples. (Hathaway, 1981, 16) The hegemonic project was well and truly back on the political agenda. The first practical steps to this end come in the discussions leading to the Atlantic Charter and the beginnings of the Lend-Lease negotiations in 1941 (Gardner, 1980, 40). The result was Article Seven of the eventual LendLease settlement, which was a binding international commitment to a postwar multilateral trading system (Gardner, 1980, 54). In this chapter we are concerned with bringing the goals of Article Seven to fruition in the second half of 1945. There are three sets of events we deal with. In chronological order they are: the controversy surrounding the ending of Lend-Lease on 22 August; the negotiations between Britain and the USA over the US loan from 11 September to 6 December; and the parliamentary debates on the agreement from 12 December to 16 December 1945. The heart of this chapter is an interpretation of the loan negotiations using some of the ideas we have introduced earlier. We will argue that Britain was caught in a 'Braudellien time trap', a contradiction in its interests in terms of time spans. But before we can develop this argument we need to consider the actual financial position in which Britain found herself at war's end. The Chancellor's adviser, John Maynard Keynes, did not pull punches: Britain was facing, he argued, nothing less than 'a financial Dunkirk'. This is where we begin our discussion. We conclude it by looking at the political response to the Loan Agreement in which one opponent termed it 'an economic Munich' for appeasing the USA. Our main source for this chapter is the volume of Documents on British Policy Overseas that includes 163 documents on the international financial matters that are our concern (Bullen and Pelly, 1986). It is clear from the very first memorandum of 3 August that officials at the British Foreign Office knew full well the historical implications of Britain's financial situation: The general trend of American economic policy is, at present, away from their old heresies (i.e. protectionism) which hit us so hard, and towards what our own economic policies had been until the 1930s (i.e. free trade) when we were forced

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

73

to abandon it under pressure of the exhorbitant American tariff . . . But the situation has changed since 1930. While at that time, we might have been willing and able to continue our traditional policy, we are less able to do so now. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 3) Clearly, the US world economic order still had to be built. Let us see how they achieved the major step towards their goal.

A financial Dunkirk On 14 August Hugh Dalton circulated a memorandum to senior Ministers of the government in which he declared that he was 'anxious that my colleagues should be informed, without delay, of this most grim problem' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,28). The 'grim problem' that the Labour government had inherited was a financial crisis. The annex to Dalton's memorandum was a paper by Keynes on 'Our Overseas Financial Prospects', which must have made most depressing reading for the Ministers. Here Keynes spelt out that 'we are, with the imminent cessation of Lend-Lease, virtually bankrupt' (1986, 36). In the circumstances his phrase 'a financial Dunkirk' (1986, 36) hardly seems exaggerated: the future of the nation was at stake. Here we are at the centre of Britain's crisis of power in 1945. In purely military terms, territory under British arms, the Empire had never been greater. But the military commitment was itself the basis of the problem. Britain had won the war but at great financial cost. The British Embassy in Washington was particularly aware of the implications. In a letter to Bevin on 23 August from the Embassy, an official quoted a US general as saying 'Britain is nowadays no more significant than Costa Rica' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,13). He went on to introduce 'the Big Two concept', arguing that the USSR, because of her size and resources, 'is the only world power comparable in stature to the United States' (1986,13). Britain could no longer compete. The financial situation brought this crisis of power to a head. Keynes painted the following picture to the new Labour government. The 'intensity' of Britain's war effort had been based on foreign financial assistance which precluded a need to develop or sustain exports. The result was that with the end of the war Britain was left with a highly distorted and dependent economy. Assuming Lend-Lease would continue to the end of 1945, Keynes drew up a table of Britain's accounts for 1945 (Table 4). The figures were alarming, to say the least. Lend-Lease from the USA alone was more than three times greater than the estimated total British exports. Even more startling, expenditure on keeping the military in the field accounted for the total income overseas, leaving nothing for purchasing food, raw materials or other goods. In all the deficit was a massive 72 per cent of total overseas expenditure. In addition Keynes predicted that the account would not break even until 1949, accumulating an additional deficit of £1,700 million. No wonder he was to ask 'Where, on earth, is all the money to come from?' (1986,33). He quickly provided the answer: 'The conclusion is

74

Table 4

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Keynes's estimated overseas balance sheet for Great Britain in 1945 (£ million) Income

Exports Net invisible income and sundry repayments, etc. Receipts from allies for their forces and munitions Total Overseas Income

Expenditure 350 100 350 800

Imports (excluding munitions) 1250 Munitions received from Lend-Lease or Mutual Aid 850 Other government expenditure overseas 800 Total Overseas Expenditure 2900

Deficit 2100 Financial assistance Lend-Lease (munitions) Lend-Lease (non-munitions) Canadian Mutual Aid Sterling Area credits, etc. Total Financial Assistance

600 500 250 750 2100

Source: derived from Bullen and Pelly (1986, 30) inescapable that there is no source from which we can raise sufficient funds to enable us to live and spend on a scale we contemplate except the United States' (1986, 33). He estimated that 'aid of the order of $5 billions is required from the United States' (1986, 35). By the time the paper was discussed by senior Ministers (Attlee, Morrison, Bevin, Dalton, Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence) at a meeting in 10 Downing Street on 23 August, it was known that Lend-Lease was to be terminated immediately. Hence the situation was even more urgent; Keynes's LendLease assumption had been too optimistic. Ministers accepted the remainder of Keynes's paper and the discussion concentrated on the nature of the forthcoming negotiations with the USA. In particular there was 'the question of what we should give as quid pro quo' (1986, 73) for help that was expected. The Bretton Woods Agreement, commercial policy and other questions were discussed. The latter included the possibility of throwing in 'some island or islands which we could make over as part of the deal' (1986, 75). The British Ambassador to the USA, Lord Halifax, suggested 'we should make a gift of the island of Tarawa to the United States in recognition of the noble feat of arms there by the United States Marines' (1986, 76). The final conclusion was that the financial negotiations be handled by Keynes and his colleagues 'on the basis that he had outlined that evening' (1986, 76). And so the Labour government embarked on this most important first step in their international programme without the slightest hint of 'socialist foreign policy'. There was one unspoken assumption in all of this: Britain must remain a great power. For Bevin the purpose of any loan that would be negotiated was to prevent Britain's power crisis impinging on Britain's global role. The

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

75

geographical breakdown of 'other government expenditure overseas' in Table 4 is quite revealing; £725 million is estimated to be spent on the armed services and war supplies: £410 million to the Asia parts of the Empire; £120 million to the Mediterranean and Middle East; £110 million to the southern Dominions; £40 million for the European occupation army; and £20 million to the African colonies. All of this summed to more than twice the total exports. Not surprisingly Keynes considered them as 'burdens with which there is no reasonable expectation of our being able to carry' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 35). Nevertheless, this imperial heritage was Britain's main claim to superpower status in 1945; hence the quandary. Without a sufficient loan from the USA: Abroad it would require a sudden and humiliating withdrawal from our onerous responsibilities with great loss of prestige and an acceptance for the time being of the position of a second class Power. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 37) Here is the paradox. In order not to become a second-class power Britain has to go to the USA as a suppliant, that is to behave like a second-class power.

The Braudellien time trap The loan negotiations betweeen Britain and the USA in Washington, DC took four months to complete. They were much longer and tougher than the British had expected. On three occasions the talks nearly broke down and as late as 3 December Chancellor Dalton was preparing a speech for Parliament on the assumption that no deal would be reached (Hathaway, 1981, 195). The details of the negotiations have been described by the historian of the early post-war international economic order Richard N. Gardner (1980). Five major issues were raised and finally resolved: (/) the nature of the US assistance - a loan at 2 per cent payable over fifty years; (ii) the size of aid - $3.75 billion; (Hi) commercial links - no discrimination against each other's exports; (iv) convertibility of sterling within one year of the agreement; and (v) Lend-Lease - Britain's obligations written off. The latter was the only satisfactory outcome from the British point of view. So much for the facts; interpretation has been remarkably varied. On the one hand, US generosity has been praised; on the other, the USA is portrayed as a bully forcing its will on a destitute ally. Kolko and Kolko (1972, 22), for instance, identify loan agreements as the USA's 'key vehicle' for the 'structural change in the capitalist world' that they were engineering at this time. Britain got the first and best loan deal 'not because it was the neediest or most war-torn - it was scarcely either - but because it was so important to the American foreign economic policy' (1972, 66). Quite simply: The loan to Britain . . . in the end reflected the United States' desire to thrust out into the world, assume great tasks, and overcome obstacles, no matter how

76

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

expensive, to the fulfilment of its peace aims. It was both in principle and in magnitude, the first major test of American postwar policy. (Kolko and Kolko, 1972, 65) This contrasts with Hathaway's (1981, 197) argument that it is a misrepresentation to portray the negotiations 'in an adversary framework': 'to paint the two delegations as distrustful antagonists, the stronger out to coerce the weaker, is to distort the dynamics which informed the discussions' (Hathaway, 1981, 197-8). Strangely, Hathaway goes on to admit that the Americans were 'hard bargainers' and that the 'economic partnership they sought was to be largely on American terms' but - and here is the key point - the differences were not 'basic doctrinal disputes': The Americans wished to talk of fundamental principles and long term solutions . . . the British of what it would be possible for their embattled nation to do in the immediate future. (Hathaway, 1981, 198) Precisely, Britain was caught in what we may term a Braudellien time trap. Two features of hegemonic power are relevant here. First, the hegemonic state is embarked on a project which, in Braudellien times, is of a moyenne durée span. Other less-powerful states will be vulnerable to hegemonic pressures in a variety of circumstances. In such situations the hegemonic power may provide short-term solutions for the 'crisis state' in return for concessions in the medium term. In this way a world structure can be built to the hegemonic state's design. The Washington loan negotiations represent a remarkably explicit example of this process. A 'Foreign Office Memorandum on Anglo-American relations' of 16 August, a month before negotiations got underway, concluded simply that: 'Our immediate objective must be to obtain a breathing space, before the Americans take any final decisions' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 53). Britain, perforce, was operating in a toute durée span, vulnerable in a Braudellien time trap. But Britain was not just any country caught in this trap. The loan discussions were remarkable for a second reason: in Washington the former hegemon faced the new hegemon. In these circumstances it is no wonder there were 'no basic doctrinal disputes' for, from the perspective of the old hegemon, the USA was finally dispensing of its 'old heresies' and coming to adopt 'our' traditional policies. This position was facilitated by the fact that hegemonic principles are themselves portrayed and widely accepted as general doctrines, universally good. This sentiment pervades the statements of hegemonic powers as we have seen. In the case of the USA, Hathaway (1981, 17) claims: 'There was no conscious hypocrisy in the linking of national interest and lofty idealism.' What is important is that the universality was particularly relevant in the case of Anglo-American relations because of the continuity it provided between hegemonic periods. The Braudellien time trap was well-oiled in Washington in the autumn of 1945. Let us see how it worked. The fact that Britain's chief negotiator was the leading economist in the world at the time is important. Before the negotiations began Keynes made

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

77

it very clear 'that he and his colleagues desired much the same sort of economic world as did the United States' (Hathaway, 1981, 186-7). On the boat going over to North America Keynes had time to take stock of the situation and sent a very revealing statement back to London. He revised some of his earlier estimates of Britain's financial plight but this did not affect his 'financial Dunkirk' evaluation. In fact we can now see how this evocative phrase, implying as it does making current sacrifices for future benefits, expresses BraudePs courte durée. Keynes specifies the short term as follows: 'it is our running adverse balance in the period of three to five years after the war which constitutes the major part of the urgent problem' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 98). How to solve it?; Keynes provides two alternatives. The first is for Britain to develop its own economic bloc based upon the Sterling Area. Using a system of controlled trade impending financial disaster could be held off. This is most certainly not an orthodox economist's solution as Keynes is at pains to make clear: In short, the system would be forcing an unnatural pattern on international trading relations, though perhaps one advantageous to British short term interests, over the whole of the formative postwar period, when as rapid a return as possible to normality is in the permanent interests of peaceful and profitable trade between nations. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,102) Note the use of the words 'unnatural' and 'normality', classic hegemonic phraseology. Later he refers to the Sterling Area as 'the peculiar war-time system' (1986,103), further undermining this alternative's credibility. He is thus able to conclude that the alternative is really no answer to the crisis at all since it involves 'merely postponing the solution of the intrinsic problem to the end of the transitional period' (1986,102). So what is the solution? Keynes proposed co-operation with the USA to construct an international liberal economy. Intriguingly he describes this in the following way: 'The other alternative is therefore to organize, as far as may be, as being in the general interest and not only in our own.' In Britain's crisis of power here we have a proposal of international altruism that is truly hegemonic in nature. In short, beyond his particular national brief, Keynes maintained the 'higher ideals' of a liberal world order which provided him with a second role, his 'great constructive effort: the creation of a new world economic order' (Pimlott, 1985,436). He shared these ideals with his US negotiators. Earlier, in a memorandum dated 15 August, Keynes had conceded that 'a very large part of American policy is, I believe, in our own interests as much as theirs' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 45). In the circumstances Keynes can be fairly designated an economic cuckoo in the British nest. As a co-author of the Bretton Woods Agreement, he was a genuine economic link between two hegemonic projects, appearing at the tail end of one and the beginning of another. Given the communality of doctrine, the British entered the loan negotiations optimistically; in fact Hathaway (1981, 188) accuses Keynes of being over-optimistic. This was reflected in assessments of the relative power of

78

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Britain in the discussions. A Foreign Office memorandum of 16 August for instance, had claimed: If the US do not give usfinancialassistance, they must renounce the hope of the sort of world economy they have at heart. .. We are not entirely free to say, 'You can only have the sort of world you want if you give usfinancialassistance'... We can however refuse to consider . . . anything . . . that would make it impossible for us to take part in the economic system which the US are aiming at. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 53) It was in this spirit and with additional appeal to Roosevelt's pledge of wartime 'equality of sacrifice' that Keynes thought he could secure a $6 billion grant-in-aid or at least an interest-free loan from the USA. The spirit of optimism did not last long. The first formal discussion between the two sides in the Federal Reserve Building, Washington, DC took place on 13 September. By 26 September one British official was writing back to Whitehall: I think you people in London will very soon have to put your thinking cap on and decide whether we should remain here, or whether it is not better tactics for us to withdraw, make all preparations to tighten our belts, and then see in, say, three or four months time, whether the hard facts of life have penetrated sufficiently the crust of ignorance here to permit fruitful discussions to be resumed. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,156) By 16 October Halifax and Keynes reported that 'The atmosphere was gloomy and unconstructive' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 223) but consoled themselves with the thought that 'It would be as awkward for them to break off as for us' (1986, 224). On 18 October a memorandum reported deadlock and disillusion was complete: We came here in the hope that we could persuade the United States to accept a broad and generous solution which took account of ourfinancialsacrifice before the US entered the war and of President Roosevelt's principle of equality of sacrifice as well as the postwar advantages to the United States of a settlement with us which would enable us to share world responsibilities with them free from unduefinancialpre-occupation and to join them in shaping the pattern of world commerce and currency on lines which would favour expansion and general prosperity. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 227-8) All this was gone and now there was much less optimism concerning Britain's residual powers. The signals received from the US negotiators were clearly against Anglo-American partnership in the new world order. Could Britain really go it alone if there was a complete breakdown of negotiations? The answer from the negotiators in Washington seemed to be 'no': If our present friendly and intimate relations with the American side are brought to an end and we announce that we are tired of being pushed about and would prefer to stand up by ourselves without the entanglements of Anglo-American partnership or agreement in the economic field, so much will be disastrously changed over so wide afieldand for a period to which no one can set a term, that we cannot bring outselves to contemplate it. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 232)

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

79

The British negotiators were experiencing another's hegemony for the first time in centuries. It was clearly a chilling and upsetting experience. There was a similar debate in the British camp during the November difficulties with the negotiations. The US negotiators were dismissed as 'rabbits' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 321) and on 25 November it was announced from Washington that 'we have reached bottom point' (1986, 357). Still some optimism on Britain's position survived at the Foreign Office. In one note to Washington they argued: In the circumstances the best plan seems to be to try the approach now suggested by the Treasury, namely, a rejection of the American unpalatable proposals . . . we should not be afraid of breaking off negotiations for a little. I still feel that the prizes the Americans win if the negotiations succeed . . . are so important to them and are such an essential part of their policy, that we can afford to be tough. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 353) But in Washington Keynes prevailed. By providing the government with two alternatives but then completely dismissing one of them, he was left as a negotiator with only one option; for Keynes there was no alternative. In Washington he rehearsed his pseudo-alternatives argument again with 'Alternative A' being to accept a US loan with commercial and other strings attached and 'Alternative B' being to go for a commercial loan with no strings (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 253). This was sent to London on 27 October. A day later another note was sent which dismissed Alternative B: All of us are convinced that the alternative has to be ruled out altogether as being quite beyond any practical possibility . . . If we follow this line we must expect a dangerous hardening of opinion in all quarters here. In American eyes we should appear to be deliberately preferring the policy of separate economic blocs. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 269) Not surprisingly, on 6 November the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied from London: 'Alternative B can be dropped' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,290). In short, Britain was trapped with no alternative but to accept the US loan with strings. Dalton was disappointed with the final outcome as his bathroom antics indicated. He described the long drawn-out negotiating process as, in reality, three British capitulations: from a free gift to an interest free loan, and from this again to a loan bearing interest, from a larger to a smaller total of aid; and from the prospect of loose strings, some of which would be only declarations of intention, to the most unwilling acceptance of strings so tight that they might strangle our trade and, indeed, our whole economic life. (Pimlott, 1985, 431) That he was, in these circumstances, to support acceptance of the Loan Agreement clearly shows the strength of US hegemony. The Braudellien time trap was a reality the Labour government could not transcend. But how could it sell such an outcome to its supporters and the British public in general?

80

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Secret but not socialist One of the great ironies of all this was that during the 1945 election campaign, Churchill accused Labour of preparing 'a secret Socialist Foreign Policy' to hoist on an unsuspecting public should they become the government. The reality could hardly be further from the truth, as we have seen. The only accurate part of Churchill's rhetoric was the term 'secret'. The Labour government in association with their Washington negotiators were producing what can only be called a secret capitalist and traditional foreign policy. It was 'capitalist' in content and 'traditional' in the nature of its production. The election of a Labour government had merely meant that one political oligarchy had replaced another. In terms of the top state officials - the 'mandarins' at the Foreign Office, Treasury and negotiating in Washington - there was no change whatsoever. All this could hardly be further from the socialist image of John Freeman in the debate on the King's Speech where he looked forward to a very different world: 'In future, the housewife and the wage earner must dictate the foreign policy of nations' (Hansard, 1945a, 71). This dream soon melted away as state foreign policy remained the prerogative of the few. For four months almost every weekday evening from 9.00 p.m. to midnight the Labour Cabinet inner circle (Attlee, Bevin, Dalton, Morrison and Cripps) and their top advisers met in the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street to try and make sense of the plethora of telegrams coming from the negotiators in Washington (Pimlott, 1985, 532). The financial situation dominated all domestic business throughout the autumn. Here were the suppliants thousands of miles away from where their country's future was being negotiated by officials unaffected by the socialist promise of the 1945 election result. One can hardly picture a situation further from the ideal of a new socialist Britain that Labour was elected to fulfil. As Attlee's biographer puts it, when the final deal was done: The government could not admit its disappointment to the public. On the contrary, it chose to mislead the country about what had happened. In the House, Dalton said of the agreement: 'I value this settlement very highly'. (Harris, 1982, 274) This is the same Dalton who privately bemoaned the three capitulations. But this veil of secrecy can be traced to the first days of the government. A few senior Ministers might have been worrying about their country's fate in the Cabinet Room throughout the autumn of 1945 but everybody else was kept in the dark. We can go back to the termination of Lend-Lease to find the first explicit secrecy policy. On 21 August at a meeting of senior Ministers at the Foreign Office: 'There was some discussion as to whether we should make clear to the people of this country the shabby fashion in which we were being treated by the Americans' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 56). The conclusion was that relations with the USA were too sensitive at this stage to take such a step. On 23 August at 10 Downing Street the decision was made not to have

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

81

a debate in Parliament on the ending of Lend-Lease since 'it was felt that a debate on this matter . . . might be embarrassing' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 76). It was also agreed that the Leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill, 'should be approached . . . and asked to do his best to handle the matter in such a way as to avoid debate' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 76-7). In the event there was no debate after Churchill informed the House on 24 August that 'a debate of a discursive nature arising before these issues have been properly weighed by the House might easily be detrimental to our national interest' (Hansard, 1945a, 957). There was no subsequent mention of Lend-Lease for nearly two months when a backbench MP asked the Prime Minister a question on the matter on 18 October. Attlee merely replied 'it is not convenient to deal with this subject by way of question and answer' (Hansard, 1945a, 917). A statement was promised and came in the Dalton's Budget speech on 15 November when he mentioned the seriousness of the situation and the Washington negotiations, but quickly concluded 'I do not propose to make any further statement on them today' (Hansard, 1945a, 1880). The shadow Chancellor, Sir John Anderson, in replying to the Budget Speech could say only: 'To me there is, I confess, an atmosphere of unreality about all our discussions of the financial position while the outcome of these talks is still uncertain' (Hansard, 1945a, 2019). And that covers the total parliamentary debate on the Washington negotiations before the Loan Agreement was signed. The full Cabinet fared only slightly better. Shortly before the completion of the negotiations a draft agreement was presented by Dalton to the Cabinet. Two Ministers, Shinwell and Bevan, objected to the agreement. Shinwell, in particular, argued that: In any event, it was desirable that those members of Cabinet who had not been constantly in touch with the progress of the negotiations should have more time in which to assess the effect of the proposed agreement on their Departmental plans. He urged therefore that no decision should be taken until these Ministers had had an opportunity for further considerations of the proposals. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 393) Hardly unreasonable for such an important item one might have thought. But Bevin objected, Morrison reminded the Cabinet that the USA was our friend and Attlee authorized final negotiations along the lines of the draft agreement (1986, 394). And so the agreement was signed and went to Parliament finally for public debate on 8 December. Before we look at the parliamentary debate itself, one further aspect of the secrecy around the negotiations should be mentioned because some matters were not made known and so do not appear in the discussions in Parliament. These relate to strategic issues. In general, of course, it is these matters that are most prone to secrecy. In the case of the Labour government this had the additional bonus of protecting it from its own left-wing critics, as we noted at the end of the last chapter. Bevin was to write to his officials about placating 'the elements in Parliament and the public who are restive about the extension of our relations with America and suspicious of our

82

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

attitude to Russia' (Weiler, 1988, 201). The situation was clear to the US Embassy in London, who reported that every move of the government was 'carefully considered and planned from [the] point of view of protecting Bevin against Labour Party rebels' (Weiler, 1988, 201). These statements are from early 1947 but this form of secrecy can also be traced to the beginnings of the Labour government. In a 18 September 1945 report, 'speaking entirely personally and without any instruction', Lord Halifax suggested 'some sweetener' for the USA to help the loan negotiations along (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,159). By 8 October the USA had provided a long list of strategic islands that they required (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,195). Bevin replied to Halifax the same day: It may be that what they really want is not outrageous but here also matter must be considered on its merits, and not as a possible bribe to get our financial contract. This applies equally to sentimental islands. If everything went well in thefinancialand economic talks we should certainly wish to try and find a way of tying an agreeable ribbon round the gift. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,199) By 29 November, at a crucial time in the loan negotiations, the full US request for bases had arrived at the Foreign Office. These included military bases on nine islands in the Pacific plus a request that Britain recognize US sovereignity over twenty-five further islands in which British claims were contested (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 399). Clearly, the USA was consolidating its Pacific 'Monroe' and attempting to clear out a possible rival. This request was circulated to the Defence Committee at the Foreign Office and the note concluded with the following request from Bevin: I would beg my colleagues to observe the strictest secrecy in regard to this matter and to give the strictest possible limitation to the number of the officials in their departments to whom the knowledge of this paper is disclosed. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986,401) The request was successful to the degree that no mention of these strategic matters appeared in the parliamentary debate on the Loan Agreement. Nevertheless there was plenty left to debate! An economic Munich or an economic El Alamein? Before analysis of the parliamentary proceedings it is worth remembering once again that the actors portrayed could not have the perspective that our hindsight provides. We know that under US economic leadership the worldeconomy was to experience its fastest ever growth phase in the twenty-five years after 1945. But such a Kondratieff cycle was by no means expected in the early post-war period. Rather, people looked back towards the failure of post-war plans after 1918. Peacetime Anglo-American collaboration on the Marshall Plan and NATO was not known, but peacetime Anglo-American economic competition in the 1930s was known. Remembering this helps make sense of the debate if not the result.

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

83

According to Gardner (1980, 225): 'The British debate was short and intense'. It was short because of the deadline set - ratification of the Bretton Woods Agreement, part of the deal, had to be completed before the Christmas recess. It was intense partly because of the secrecy surrounding the negotiations. In the House of Lords, Halifax, the US Ambassador who had been privy to the discussions, was quoted as saying that 'On this decision the pattern of the world economy during the coming years will be largely shaped' (Hansard, 1945c, 685). No wonder another member would complain of only IV2 days of debate after only 10 days notice for such great 'long term' issues (Hansard, 1945c, 750). Edmonds (1986, 102) is very critical of the parliamentary debate, arguing that 'The record of the debate in the House of Commons makes dismal reading. Logic was clogged by selfpity.' This seems to be entirely unfair. A vigorous debate took place in both Houses for the only time when these great world issues could be aired. Members responded accordingly with some memorable debating rhetoric. Of course, this was all that was left in the argument - rhetoric. The motion to accept the Loan Negotiations was supported by both government and Opposition so that there was no possibility of rejection. In the event there were rebels from both Labour and Conservative ranks. The former were left socialists arguing against US capitalism, the latter were right Tories arguing for the British Empire and imperial trade preferences. Between them they produced a lively debate. The proposers of the motion for the loan in both Houses emphasized the necessity for US collaboration for a safe and prosperous future. In the Commons, Dalton argued: Finally, and perhaps most seriously of all, the rejection of these Agreements would mean the dissipation of all hopes of Anglo-American co-operation in this dangerous new world into which we have moved. We and the Americans, if peace is to be assured, must learn to live and work together. The rejection of these Agreements would not only be an economic andfinancialdisaster for this country of ours, but it would be not less a disaster for the whole future of international co-operation. (Hansard, 1945 b, 443) The same message was conveyed to the Lords by the Secretary of State for India Pethick-Lawrence: I conceive it my duty, so far as I can . . . to help build a bridge between the Old World and the New, which are separated geographically by three thousand miles of ocean, and which might, if we are not careful, become grievously divided by commercial and economic antagonism. (Hansard, 1945c, 677) This 'one world' argument was backed up by the 'no alternative' position against the threat of a world of economic blocs. From the Conservative front bench the shadow Chancellor in the Commons warned that rejection would lead to 'a degree of austerity never before imagined' (Hansard, 1945b, 453). But it was Keynes speaking in the Lords debate that summarized the 'no alternative' argument best. He suggested that to prefer 'economic blocs' was 'surely crazy' and rhetorically asked 'do the critics really grasp the nature of the alternative'? He then spelt it out in no uncertain terms:

84

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

The alternative is to build up a separate economic bloc which excludes Canada and consists of countries to which we already owe more than we can pay, on the basis of their agreeing to lend us money they have not got and buy only from us and one another goods we are unable to supply. Frankly this is not such a caricature of these proposals as it may sound atfirst.(Hansard, 1945c, 793) The most memorable speech by one of the rebels was by the Conservative backbencher Robert Boothby. He recognized that the proposals were a return to nineteenth-century laissez faire capitalism with the purpose of breaking up and prising open the markets of the world for the USA. This accurate description of the US hegemonic project was capped with the oftquoted lines 'This is our economic Munich . . . [the government has no mandate] to sell the British Empire for a packet of cigarettes (i.e. access to US tobacco) (Hansard, 1945b, 467). The anti-Americanism was seized upon the Labour rebels. Stokes used a particularly apt geographical analogy: I regard this as an absolutely momentous occasion, because I believe that this loan hitches us to the American bandwagon, and may eventually land us in the position of being America's Heligoland off the coast of Europe. (Hansard, 1945b, 711) But the most savage attack came from Norman Smith, who asserted: The war of independence has begun. These proceedings in this House and the action that some of us are taking are, I assert, the beginning of the British War of Independence against the domination of American capitalism during the postwar period. (Hansard, 1945b, 479) The fact that these left-wing critics of the government were to vote with the Tory right exposed them to obvious attack from their own party ranks. Rhys Davies felt it necessary to state that 'we are not an Imperialist party, we are an international party' (Hansard, 1945b, 522). The best use of the 'cluster concept' of internationalism was by Jennie Lee. She expressed her socialist anxieties thus: 'What I fear is that the American government are going to be allowed to inaugurate not Henry Wallace's "Century of the Common Man" but Mr Henry Luce's "American Century" ' (Hansard, 1945b, 671). Despite this her 'internationalism' allowed her to support the government because 'I am speaking in this House as a Socialist and an Internationalist, without apologies for American workers as well as British workers' (Hansard, 1945b, 670). She dismissed Boothby as 'our Conservative Marxist' but it was in the Lords that a Labour loyalist confronted Boothby's arguments most explicitly. Frank Packenham argued that the loan agreement represented 'not an economic Munich nor an economic Dunkirk . . . rather an economic El Alamein' (Hansard, 1945c, 749). In other words, this was our last chance to break through a world logjam to prosperity. But Packenham's was not a typical voice in the House of Lords. It was here, of course, that the defence of the British Empire by Conservative peers became a main theme. Lord Beaverbrook directly rebuked Keynes's 'extra-

THE GEOECONOMIC DILEMMA

85

ordinary witty comment' we quoted above. He provided an argument for protection with Empire unity as the solution to Britain's crisis of power, pointing out that the Sterling bloc had contributed more to the war effort than US Lend-Lease and that this could be equally true in the peace (Hansard, 1945c, 804). But the most poignant speech came from Lord Bennett, who had been one of the framers of the Ottawa Agreement of 1932 setting up imperial preferences. He deplored 'our hurry, our undue anxiety and lack of courage', arguing that 'In fifty years time we will look back on this time and say "This was our darkest hour" ' (Hansard, 1945c, 824). He recognized the paradox with which we began this discussion - becoming a supplicant to be a great power: If we are concerned - desperately concerned as we must be - to make ends meet, how can we hope to play the part of a great Power in the world? How can we hope to look the United States and Russia in the face? (Hansard, 1945c, 832) But the final word should go to Lord Rennel, soon to be the Royal Geographical Society President, who made the hegemonic continuity argument: We have been offered by the protagonists of isolation and high tariffs, for the first time in history, a series of proposals which will make world trade and world financeflowfreely between nations once again. The stream may not be clean and may not flow freely for many years to come, but at any rate these proposals have been made by America, hitherto the protagonists of the opposite view, to see whether it is not possible to achieve what we in this country have always wanted to achieve and have been preaching to the nations of the world. (Hansard, 1945c, 853) The formal voting record shows the motion passed by 345 to 98 in the Commons and 70 to 8 in the Lords. With this Labour government victory a vital link was slotted into place in the US hegemonic edifice. Of course, the story did not end here. The agreement had to be passed by the US Congress which is itself another important tale - the measure was saved from defeat only by the rise of anti-communism as we have previously briefly related, quoting Kolko and Kolko's (1972) analysis. In fact this process was well appreciated by the British Embassy in Washington, who referred to the 'Red Menace' effect during the Congressional hearings (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 157) and on 20 July 1946 recorded the successful result as follows: the eventual outcome might still have been in jeopardy if thefinancialagreement had stood on its technical merits alone. Beginning with Speaker Rayburn, speaker after speaker was concerned during the concluding stages of the debate to emphasise the objective of promoting world economic revival by extending financial aid to Britain was intimately connected with the problem of combatting the spread of Soviet ideology. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 389) Hence in the period between the passage through Parliament and this successful conclusion in Congress, it seemed for most of the time that Congress would throw it out.

86

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

These months of uncertainty caused difficulties for the government and its supporters who had pushed the 'no alternative' line with all its dire consequences. The emphasis in their arguments had to be severely modified. Bevin, for instance, had discussions with two leading US Republican politicians on 24 January 1946 and his response to the question of the loan failing to get through Congress is reported as follows: The Secretary of State said that of course we should face it and win through just as we did in 1940. He went on to minimise the effects of the failure; it would mean no Virginian cigarettes, and the British public would have to get used to smoking Turkish, Egyptian and Greek tobacco; it would mean no American films, and we should have to be contented with our own; it would mean two years more of rationing, but no more than this. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 68) The 'most severe austerity' is not so bad after all. The most notable feature of Bevin's list of sacrifices, however, is that the Secretary of State envisaged only domestic financial savings. This is interesting in its contrast with the statements of Keynes after the successful parliamentary debate. Now, like Bevin, he found it no longer necessary to present a picture of such a serious financial crisis without the loan (Pimlott, 1985, 436). He believed the domestic austerity threat could be avoided but at external cost. Keynes now argued that 'The main consequence of the failure of the loan must, therefore, be a large scale withdrawal on our part from international responsibilities' (Pimlott, 1985, 436). Hence, what the loan really achieved was to allow Britain to build its welfare state and play a world-power role. The longer term consequences of this will be considered in Chapter 9. Before we come to that we need to consider the other half of the equation: Britain's geopolitical dilemma in 1945.

Chapter 7

The geopolitical dilemma

I am not at all sure that the rhetoric of great-power pride is the language of wisdom. Seen from Budapest, all sentiments of national grandeur seem irredeemably comic. The comical thing is that the citizen of a big power is in no way a big man; he is a little man, every bit as much as the resident of a small country. Linking the greatness of one's person with the greatness of one's country is an odd brand of idiocy. (Konrad, 1984, 62) The defeat of Germany in 1945 can be viewed at one level as the final episode in a series of great European 'civil wars' that date back to the beginning of the modern world-system. First the Hapsburg realms, then the French under Napoleon and finally Germany in the twentieth century have attempted to create great continental land empires in Europe. All were defeated by alliances headed by their respective hegemonic and sea-power rivals (the Dutch Republic, Britain and the USA, respectively). Germany's demise was different, however. It coincided with a change in the scale at which 'world power' was harnessed. The Second World War was much more than a European civil war. Not only was Germany defeated, in a sense, so too was Europe itself. Two great external powers, continental in scope themselves, stood astride Europe. The 'mighty continent' seemed mighty no more. It is in this context of the changing geographical scale of great powers that we can ask the question of how Britain could possibly win a 'world war' in the mid-twentieth century. As we have seen in Chapter three this was the problem that underlay Chamberlain's appeasement policy. In the end his dilemma was transformed into a choice between military defeat or economic defeat in the Second World War. Military victory did not, therefore, solve the problem but left the geoeconomic dilemma described in the last chapter. We cannot, of course, separate the economic from the political in the crisis of power that Britain was suffering. Everybody understood full well that without the economic resources of a great power Britain could not carry out the political role of a great power. Hence associated with the geoeconomic dilemma there was a geopolitical dilemma as Britain tried to come to terms with a world dominated by the 'two colossi'. The dilemma of Britain keeping up its great power status was tackled in two distinctive ways. The first was to align with the USA as the new

88

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

hegemonic power and become a junior partner in the grand project. This was a real drop in status from the recent past but seemed to be the only feasible way of maintaining a world role in 1945. The first two sections of this chapter deal with this policy in terms of reviewing the options and describing the operation of the 'American solution'. This is about the 'old politics' of alliance and blocs. The second way of tackling Britain's power crisis was to be found in the 'new politics' of atomic power. The emergence of the atomic bomb as a massive new weapon threatened to change the way in which international relations were conducted. In the event this was not to be. In the final two sections of this chapter we look at the contradictions endemic to the new politics and Britain's role in promoting traditional power politics. In short, possession of the atomic bomb becomes the passport to continued British great power status compensating for the size of this smallest of the 'Big Three'. Which way forward? The political decline of Britain in 1945 was probably much more traumatic than the severe financial difficulties described in the last chapter. After all, economic decline had been a matter of concern for over a half a century. Furthermore, lost economic hegemony had been compensated by political expansion producing the greatest empire the world had ever seen (Taylor, 1989b). Was not the second victory over Germany evidence of Britain's continuing political strength? But, as we know, wars, and the Second World War in particular, do not work out as simple as that. Britain's crisis of power in 1945 may have been easiest to measure in the geoeconomic sphere but it was no less critical in the more qualitative sphere of great power 'status'. The Foreign Office documents of this period are permeated by concern for Britain's declining status as a world power. Here is a sample of phrases describing Britain that express this concern: 'a second rate power' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 181), 'a secondary power' (1984, 182), 'junior partner' (1984, 743), 'an exhausted and rather second rate power' (1984, 879), 'joining the ranks of the "Little 45" [i.e. non-great power members of the UN]' (1984, 897), 'junior partner of the USA' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 67), 'being treated as inferiors' (1985, 319), 'weak and dependent' (1985, 349), 'in terms of power and influence is inferior' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 10), 'second class power' (1986, 37), 'a second rate power abroad' (1986. 189), 'inferior status' and 'reduced status' (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 38). All of these opinions of Britain were quoted by the Foreign Office to highlight what it saw as its basic task, to maintain Britain as a great power: but how? If there was a general impression that 'the future of the world lay between the two "colossi" America and Russia' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 793), then the only answer would seem to be for Britain to match them for power and size. This could be achieved, according to a Foreign Office Memorandum of 11 July 1945, by combining with others:

THE GEOPOLITICAL DILEMMA

89

because we are numerically the weakest and geographically the smallest of the Great Powers, it is essential that we should increase our strength . . . by enrolling the Dominions and especially France, not to mention the lesser Western European Powers, as collaborators with us in the tripartite system. Only so shall we be able, in the long run, to compel our two big partners to treat us as equal. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,182) This statement was part of the Foreign Office brief for the British delegation to the Conference at Potsdam. Less than three months later (on 8 November) Bevin's famous 'Monroes' memorandum effectively scuppered all such approaches to build up a separate British position within the 'Big Three'. Let us consider this demise of a policy of independence from the other two superpowers. The idea of continuing to build British power around the Commonwealth was the first casualty. The limitations of the British Empire and Commonwealth as a power bloc in 1945 were twofold. First, there was the fact that it was 'so scattered in its components' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 793) that it could not compete with its more compact rivals. Second, and more important, the components of the Commonwealth no longer necessarily operated in unity. One Foreign Office memorandum of 25 July complained that Australia and New Zealand 'tended to act, not primarily as members of a great Commonwealth of Nations, but rather as small or medium nations' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 896). This specifically referred to debates at San Francisco on the setting up of the United Nations. This type of behaviour on the part of the Dominions came to be called 'Evattism' after the Australian Labor government's Minister for External Affairs, Dr H.V. Evatt (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 38). Certainly, the Foreign Office thought this a problem for the future since 'it may not be possible to prevent the expression of dissenting views on some issues by one or other of the Dominions' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 896). Add to this the promise of independence to the most populous part of the Empire, India, and the idea of tieing Britain's future status as a world power to its imperial past did not seem to be at all sensible in 1945. The idea of a Western European bloc initially seemed a far better hook on which to hang Britain's great power pretentions. An Anglo-French alliance would be at the centre of the rival power bloc to the other super powers: with the world as it was, in which there existed an Eastern and an American bloc, England could not stand by herself and must unite with France and the other Western [European] Powers, but of course on a basis of friendship with the other two blocs. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 31) From the final sentence of this Foreign Office note of 9 July we can see that 'bloc' is actually too strong a word to describe the proposal. What the Foreign Office had in mind was a regional security arrangement as allowed under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. This can be traced back to proposals in the negotiations leading up to the United Nations and was the subject of an important brief for the Potsdam Conference (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 234-51).

90

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

The Potsdam brief of 12 July viewed the advantage of a 'regional association of Western Europe' as preventing the countries of Western Europe 'being eaten up "one by one" ' (1984, 238) as had occurred at the beginning of the Second World War and 'to provide depth to the defences of the UK' (1984, 238) in terms of air attacks. Of course, this was an antiGerman argument which was satisfactory to the suspicious USSR. But the idea was always more than this, as the Chiefs of Staff made clear. To provide the necessary depth of defence, Germany would have to be incorporated into the security arrangements (1984, 243). They concluded rather ominously that: We realize that we must on no account antagonise Russia by giving the appearance of building up the Western European block against her, and that for this reason the immediate object... must be the keeping down of Germany; but we feel that the more remote, but more dangerous, possibility of a hostile Russia making use of the resources of Germany must not be lost sight of, and that any measures which we now take should be tested by whether or not they help to prevent that contingency ever arising. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 243) It was considered that the Western European bloc might lead to Soviet hostility and in such circumstances might not be sufficient. The worry was that going down this route broke away from the British military tradition of avoiding peacetime entanglements in Europe. In a minute from the Conservative Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden the question of a continental standing army was broached although not seen necessarily as a problem (1984,247). It was a combination of these misgivings concerning both Commonwealth and Western Europe that led Bevin to conclude that there was no future for Britain to pursue its 'Monroe' alongside the USA and the USSR: If this sphere of influence business does develop it will leave us and France on the outer circle of Europe with our friends, such as Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, our Dominions and India, and our colonial empire in Africa: a tremendous area to defend and a responsibility that, if it does develop, would make our position extremely difficult. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 311) In this new world of 'power politics naked and unashamed' (1986, 312) the ideal 'one world' was turning out to be no solution at all to this three world nightmare. Hence the need for co-operation with the USA as proposed by the 'Britain hypothesis'. In this light let us explore this manoeuvering of Britain within the 'Big Three' in 1945.

Manoeuvering within the 'Big Three' Given the existence of the geoeconomic dilemma described in the last chapter there was no doubt about the need for close co-operation with the USA in all spheres in the early post-war period. As one Foreign Office note of 20 July described it: 'for a timely revival of our strength, and therefore

THE GEOEPOLITICAL DILEMMA

91

influence, we are dependent on the United States' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 792). The question was the form that this Anglo-American co-operation would take: a trilateral system including the USSR or a bilateral one ultimately aimed at the USSR. Of course, it takes two to build up a bilateral co-operative arrangement and for most of 1945 it seemed that the USA was set on the tripartite scheme. As we have seen, when the 'Big Three' met at Yalta and Potsdam the USA was scrupulous in avoiding collaboration with Britain against the USSR. There was to be no 'ganging up' on the communist ally at this stage. Rather, as Halifax reported from Washington on 9 July, the USA saw itself as a mediator between Britain and the USSR (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 64). The likelihood of a front against the USSR was very slim as Britain's motives were viewed with suspicion. Even the 'normally Anglophile east coast' establishment 'were bitterly complaining that Britain intended to manoeuvre the United States of America into war with the Soviet Union' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 66). In these circumstances Britain had no choice but to go along with the tripartite system but with rather mixed feelings, as illustrated in the documents prepared for the Potsdam Conference. In a Foreign Office memorandum of 11 July Britain's position in the 'Big Three' was evaluated in some detail. As the weakest of the three powers it was appreciated that there were advantages to Britain in the tripartite arrangement: it suits us that the principle of co-operation between the three Great Powers should be specifically accepted as the basis on which problems arising out of the war should be handled and decided. Such a co-operative system will, k is hoped, give us a position in the world which we might otherwise find it increasingly difficult to assert and maintain were the other two Great Powers to act independently. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,182) 'Big Three' meetings ensured Britain's interests were aired and asserted. It was Britain's first task, therefore, to prevent relegation from the top table that would occur if the USA and the USSR thought they could reach an understanding without Britain (1984, 182). Hence the conclusion: 'We must base our foreign policy on the principle of co-operation between the three World Powers' (1984,187). In between the original propositions and this conclusion, however, we find plenty of evidence that this is a tactical veneer on a rather less than cooperative attitude to the other powers. The USSR is portrayed explicitly in totalitarian terms, drawing parallels with Hitler and Mussolini, the main difference being that the Soviets are more dangerous because they are more secretive (1984, 183). Soviet plans for Eastern Europe are described as 'an ideological lebensrautrf (1984, 183) but the future of defeated Germany remained the key: the struggle for Germany, if it be engaged .. . will be decisive for the whole of Europe, for it is not overstating the position to say that if Germany is won over to totalitarianism this may well decide the fate of liberalism throughout the world'. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,184)

92

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

One can hardly imagine a more impeccable Cold-War-like statement - and as early as July, 1945! Hence, there is a second conclusion to this official evaluation of Britain's position in the 'Big Three'. The USA must be prevented from adopting 'a policy of appeasement towards Russian domination' (1984, 187). Britain may be able to achieve this by manipulating the USA: 'We must have a policy of our own and try to persuade the United States to make it their own' (1984, 183). It was doubted whether this could be achieved straightaway but in any case: it will not be too difficult for us to perform the double task of holding the Soviet Government in check in Europe and at the same time amicably and fruitfully cooperating with the United States and Soviet Government in the resettlement of Europe'. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,185) Here we find explicit reference to operating through a tripartite framework but with a bilateral arrangement as the final goal. This 'double task' must be kept in mind in all of Britain's moves within the 'Big Three'. At Potsdam, however, thefirsttask, maintaining three power co-operation dominated Britain's policy in the light of improved relations between the other two members of the 'Big Three'. On 10 July Britain's Ambassador in Moscow wrote to the Foreign Office: The renewed American-Soviet flirtation of course means more than a mere attempt to break a temporary deadlock. The Americans and the Russians alike are probably hoping to establish a direct relationship with one another which would avert the dangers of an Anglo-American bloc on the one hand or an AngloSoviet bloc on the other'. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,145) The dangers of this situation were clear: Britain's 'traditional' pivotal role in relations between the USA and the USSR was under threat. The Ambassador was pessimistic about the outcome: I think, therefore, that in the months immediately ahead we must expect the Russians and the Americans getting closer together, and we may if we are not careful, find ourselves playing a more modest role than we deserve in the exchanges between the three major allies. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 145-6) In fact this was not to be. Britain was to have the chance to carry out its second task of building a bilateral Anglo-American front much sooner than expected. One of the outcomes of the Potsdam Conference was the setting up of Conferences of Foreign Ministers to continue the work on the peace treaties and other business concerning the Great Powers. The first meeting was in London from 11 September to 2 October. The Conference was a failure and broke up in deadlock. It was also, however, a triumph for Britain in pursuing the other half of its 'double task'. We will consider some of the geostrategic disputes leading to the breakdown in the next chapter, here we concentrate on Britain's overall response to the Conference outcome. A Foreign Office memorandum on 2 October is enlightening on this matter. For Britain the basic result is clear: 'The Conference has sharply

THE GEOEPOLITICAL DILEMMA

93

illuminated an antagonism between the United States and Soviet policy' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 474). This opened up the possibility of an antiSoviet front and the memorandum looked forward to what was to become the Cold War: It may be that, in the face of ourfirmnessand solidarity with the United States, the Russians will see reason and become more co-operative. This conference was the first test of Russia's willingness to co-operate with Britain and the United States in the peace. It may prove to have shown that she is unwilling to do so. It may be the first open manifestation of a cleavage between the Great Powers which will lead to far-reaching consequences. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 476) No wonder 'the Russian counsels have been thrown into confusion by their first experience of being in a minority of one' (1985, 484). At last it seemed that the USA was coming round to Britain's way of thinking on the USSR. It was reported with satisfaction that 'There was no trace, from beginning to end, of the United States adopting or even seeking an intermediate position between the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom' (1985, 474). Furthermore, it was noted that Secretary of State Byrnes was the one being tough with the USSR and the report refers to a situation where 'controversy raged between Mr. Byrnes and M. Molotov' (1985, 475). In this context it was Bevin who 'throughout did his best to seek compromise solutions which would prevent a breakdown' (1985, 476). We may take the final sentence with a pinch of salt. Subsequently in reports to Dominion representatives on 3 October and to H.M. Representatives Overseas on 4 October Bevin said that 'on the whole he was glad that the present session of the Council had broken down' (1985, 480) and that 'In the long run this may be better than adoption of some face-saving formula' (1985,486). In this 'long-run', of course, the Cold War geopolitical world order was constructed; but not yet. 'In the short term', the 2 October memorandum concluded, 'the failure of the Conference is bound to increase the difficulties of our foreign policy' (1985, 476). No more Councils of Foreign Ministers were expected. But on 24 November Bevin received a telegram from the British Ambassador in Moscow which must have come as a most unpleasant surprise. Byrnes had secretly been in touch with Molotov to arrange a further Council of Foreign Ministers to be held in Moscow! The information had come from the US Ambassador, who said that Molotov 'beamed with pleasure' when he received Byrnes's message. This was a major snub for Bevin - the Ambassador asked that 'I much hope that you will overlook this lapse of Anglo-American good manners' (1985, 636). Bevin's anger is recorded in a telephone conversation with Byrnes on 27 November (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 639-41). He proposed waiting until the UN meeting in London in January 1946 but Byrnes insisted on the Moscow Conference/The implications of the US action were described by the British Ambassador to the USSR writing to Bevin on 29 November: By his failure to consult you before putting his proposal to Molotov, Byrnes has, it seems to me, got you into serious difficulty. Molotov was longing for a move by

94

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

the Americans or ourselves as a means of escape from the mess he got himself into in London. Mr Byrnes has given him exactly what he wanted and he is appropriately gratified. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 646) Nevertheless the British government could not ignore the proposed meeting since it might lead to bilateral talks between the USA and the USSR and 'Big Two' agreements were certainly not what Britain could allow (1985, 647). Hence, Bevin went to Moscow under protest for the Conference from 16 to 28 December. In terms of the 'Big Three' system the outcome of the Moscow Conference was a success. Again, we will leave some of the geostrategic details to the next chapter and concentrate on the British reactions. The main point is that agreements for proceeding were made on a wide range of issues which were of particular relevance to the USSR and the USA, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Far East. In contrast, no progress was made in areas where Britain felt vulnerable. The Soviet government, for instance, rejected British proposals for Persia and Bevin reported that he had considered very seriously whether he should withold hisfinalagreement on the other questions on the Agenda until some settlement of the Persian question was reached; but he had come to the conclusion that he would not be justified in sacrificing the other settlements on this account. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 923) Of course, he was in no position to do so. Once the USA and the USSR had obtained their immediate objectives in their spheres of interest Britain's weakness was revealed. The British Ambassador in Angara summed up the situation in terms of Turkish interpretations as follows: As might be expected these are anything but favourable. From our point of view the most unfortunate interpretations are (a) that which regards the Conference as an American-Soviet arrangement concluded at the expense of Britain, and (b) that which holds it to have been shown that Britain and America cannot stand up to Russian in this part of the world. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 918). Both interpretations signalled a British defeat. But all was by no means lost. The outstanding questions on Turkey and Iran were to become the litmus for the real beginning of the Cold War just a couple of months later as we earlier reported in delimiting our 'long 1945' (see Chapter five). If these issues could not be settled in the formal trilateral framework, then they were still available to be used to promote an anti-Soviet front. Hence, although the Moscow Conference broke the London deadlock it left unresolved Anglo-Soviet conflicts that were to grow from Harbutt's (1986) 'little Cold War' to the main event. We continue this story as part of the geostrategic dilemma of Britain in the next chapter.

THE GEOPOLITICAL DILEMMA

95

Atomic power: Gowing's paradox The one important area where Britain and the USA were intricately involved to the exclusion of the USSR was atomic power. British scientists had worked on the Manhattan project that had produced the atomic bomb and this represented, arguably, the most successful example of Anglo-American wartime collaboration. It involved two agreements; the Quebec Agreement of August 1943; and the Hyde Park aide-memoire of September 1944 whereby Roosevelt and Churchill devised a joint approach to atomic information and its use. The problem that was to arise was that these secret agreements by the US executive could not be endorsed publically by Congress so that post-war collaboration was to become problematic. When the two bombs were dropped on Japan in early August 1945 they were undoubtedly 'American bombs' although Britain was consulted before the air raids. Hence, one of the great geopolitical ironies of 1945 was that although 'Britian had been the midwife of the bomb', the bomb's final production and execution symbolized the changing relative status of the USA and Britain (Gowing, 1974, 1-2). The USA had the world monopoly of the most destructive weapon ever known. This was the situation facing the Labour government just a week after taking office. While negotiating the Quebec Agreement Sir John Anderson, the chief British representative, is quoted as saying that atomic weapons 'will give control of the world to whatever country obtains them first' (Groom, 1974, 9). The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed to confirm this evaluation of the bomb as 'the supreme weapon' since it could 'terrify into submission a country which did not possess it' (Gowing, 1974,1). This was realized immediately by Britain. In a Foreign Office memorandum of 8 August there is reference to 'the revolutionary consequences which the discovery [of the atomic bomb] probably involves for our whole outlook upon, and our conduct in, international affairs' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 519). But it was the new Prime Minister Attlee who was most insistent on the necessity for rethinking Britain's foreign policy in this 'new age'. A letter to President Truman on 25 September began: Ever since the USA demonstrated to the world the terrible effectiveness of the atomic bomb I have been increasingly aware of the fact that the world is now facing entirely new conditions. Never before has there been a weapon which can suddenly and without warning be employed to destroy utterly the nerve centre of a great nation.... The emergence of this weapon has meant, taking into account its potentialities, not a quantitative but a qualitative change in the nature of warfare. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 544-5) In short, a massive readjustment would be needed in international behaviour to match the new age ushered in by the quantum leap in war technology. This was a lot to ask of international statesmen, even those as perceptive as Attlee. The necessity for change was seen but the capability to produce such qualitative change was simply not available. The result was confusion. Reading the British documents on these issues it is sometimes difficult to fathom out what is going on. It is not a matter of

96

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

differences of opinion as in other debates but rather contradictions implicit within the actual decision-making process itself. Go wing (1974, 77) has described the position as follows: The profound consequences of atomic energy made logic almost unattainable. They inspired idealism but also fear, so the noble thoughts were accompanied by the most sober calculations of Realpolitik. The resolution of the 'paradoxes and dilemmas' facing world powers 'in the nuclear age' was to be, in fact, no change in behaviour and this culminated in the nuclear terror of the Cold War. In 1945 the key process leading to this end is what we might call 'Gowing's paradox' from its identification and description in Gowing (1984, 72-3). This paradox operates through the following logic. The starting point is the general agreement that wars were now unthinkable and hence there was a need to eliminate traditional power politics. But such behaviour could not be eliminated overnight, new international organizations had to be built and above all mutual trust had to be carefully constructed. In the meantime, while power politics still operated, major powers would have to look after their national interests. This could only mean having their own atomic weapons. But in developing the bomb they were inevitably endangering mutual trust and hence lessening the ultimate chances of developing international control. Given this paradox we would expect the decision-making on atomic issues in 1945 to incorporate an odd mixture of idealism and power politics. And it is this that makes reading the documentation so difficult. An example will serve to illustrate. In November 1945 Truman and Attlee (with Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King) met in Washington to clear up misunderstandings concerning Anglo-American post-war relations on atomic matters. Two major documents emerged from the meeting and there could hardly be a more different pair of statements on atomic policy. On the one hand, the public Washington Declaration signed by Truman and Attlee is full of idealist language calling for the ending of wars to save civilization (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 618-20). A UN Commission was proposed as an international solution to the unique problems posed by atomic bombs. On the other hand, the accompanying memorandum on policy by Sir John Anderson and Major-General Groves recommended the USA and Britain (with Canada) obtain a monopoly of materials needed for atomic energy: The three Governments will take measures as far as practicable to secure control and possession, by purchase or otherwise, of all deposits of uranium and thorium situated in areas comprising the United States, its territories and possessions, the United Kingdom and Canada. They will also use every endeavour with respect to the remaining territories of the British Commonwealth and other countries to acquire all available supplies of uranium and thorium (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 631) Not much idealism here! The contradiction between the anti-power politics of the Declaration and the monopoly behaviour of the memorandum is a direct result of Gowing's paradox.

THE GEOPOLITICAL DILEMMA

97

The atomic bomb as the great equalizer Let us now look at Britain's position in the context of Gowing's paradox. For idealistic language we need go no further than the Prime Minister. In a memorandum circulated on 29 August 1945 he argued The only course which seems to me to be feasible and to offer a reasonable hope of staving off imminent disaster for the world is joint action by the USA, UK and Russia based upon stark reality. We should declare that this invention has made it essential to end war. The new World order must start n o w . . . . All nations must give up their dreams of realizing some historic expansion at the expense of their neighbours. .. . This sort of thing has in the past been considered a Utopian dream. It has become today the essential condition of the survival of civilization and possibly of life on this planet. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 531) And yet on preparing for his Washington trip he could argue in a memorandum of 5 November that keeping one of the 'Big Three', the USSR, in the dark over atomic knowledge would not prejudice the necessary Utopia: The question of sharing not only the fundamental scientific knowledge with Russia, but also the practical 'know-how', has been ventilated. It would appear that the United States is opposed to this. In my view an offer to do this now would not be likely to effect a change of attitude to world problems by the USSR. It would be regarded rather as a confession of weakness. The establishment of better relations should precede the exchange of technical information. It is, I think, agreed that in a few years USSR will be able to produce the bomb. It is during these few years that a real attempt must be made to build a world organization upon the abandonment of power politics. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985,586) How mutual trust is to be built in a period of Anglo-American atomic monopoly is not spelled out. Clearly Attlee had not understood the paradox in his own arguments. The reality was that Britain more than either the USA or the USSR was caught in Gowing's paradox. Attlee's idealism was complemented by the most hard-headed power politics on atomic issues from within the 'Big Three'. Although Britain only formally made the decision to develop its own atomic bomb in January 1947 (Gowing, 1974,184), in actual fact there had been a general presumption of this decision from wartime onwards. Churchill had told Roosevelt at Yalta that Britain would want its own bomb after the war and all the chief scientists and statesmen involved in the wartime project 'accepted it as axiomatic that Britain would wish to make bombs after the war' (Gowing, 1974,163). Hence during 1945, throughout the financial crisis, 'all of the time there was steady progress in research and development in England, and the project was never hampered by lack of money' (Groom, 1974, 25). By New Year's Day 1946 the Chiefs of Staff were pressuring Attlee on the need for a nuclear deterrent, and the British bomb became inevitable after the breakdown of Anglo-American atomic collaboration in April 1946 and the passing of the McMahon Act by

98

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Congress in August 1946 which prohibited such collaboration. In any case as early as August 1945 the Foreign Office had argued that Britain was 'already too dependent on the Americans in other ways' and continued 'onesided' atomic collaboration could make Britain 'still more dependent' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 526). In these circumstances the power political argument for the 'British bomb' was very strong and its success seemed inevitable. In addition, it was Britain that seemed most 'lukewarm' on international control and dissemination of atomic information (Gowing, 1974, 91). Before the April 1946 discussions with the Americans, for instance, it was the British who were pushing for a secret military deal on atomic raw materials in violation of the UN Charter. For instance, a telegram from the Washington Embassy to the Cabinet Office in London on 19 February 1946 lamented: the Americans will probably now be unwilling to conclude a secret arrangement however it may be dressed up to escape the obligations of Article 102 [of the UN Charter]. It would, however, be worthwhile trying to find a procedure to overcome the obstacle of Article 102 of the charter. The supporting legal arguments to show that there is no conflict with this article will have to be strong (Bullen and Pelly, 1987,122) In fact no such satisfactory arguments could be found and the April meeting ended in Anglo-American disagreement as we have seen. The point is that this is hardly the action expected of a government led by an idealist Prime Minister who promotes international co-operation. Why is Gowing's paradox so strong in British government statements and actions? Groom (1974,9,17) argues that British thinking on atomic matters was greatly hampered by a gross exaggeration of the impact of the bomb on international relations. But this only begs the question why the overestimation of its importance? It all comes down to the fact that although Britain was the weakest of the 'Big Three' she was number two in terms of atomic knowledge. In these circumstances the atomic bomb offered Britain the easiest route to maintaining its world power status. In Groom's (1974, 18) terms it was 'a great equalizer'. Possession of an atomic bomb—Britain as an atomic power - would mean neither the USA nor the USSR would be able to ignore Britain. For both Gowing (1974) and Groom (1974) this was the overriding aspect of Britain's decision to have its own bomb. For Groom (1974, 39) the 'remarkable consensus' on the matter was because: Atomic weapons seemed to be a symbol of afirstclass status to the British policy makers of the time. It therefore became a matter of national pride and prestige that Britain should acquire them. For Gowing (1974, 184) the decision 'emerged from a body of general assumptions': It had not been a response to an immediate military threat but rather something fundamentalist and almost instinctive - a feeling that Britain must possess so climacteric a weapon in order to deter an atomically armed enemy, a feeling that

THE GEOEPOLITICAL DILEMMA

99

Britain as a great power must acquire all major new weapons, a feeling that atomic weapons were a manifestation of the scientific technological superiority on which Britain's strength, so deficient if measured in sheer numbers of men, must depend. Hence 'fundamentalist' power politics triumphed as a solution to Britain's power crisis in the long 1945. Was there no alternative? Certainly none was found by the most interesting figure in the story, Clement Attlee. He was badly trapped in Gowing's paradox, as we have seen. In addition, there was to be no resistance to the atomic policy from within the Labour Party at this time. As Gowing (1974,184) puts it, despite the ferocious debates on foreign policy the bomb itself 'was the big unmentionable'. Of course, this was largely engineered by the secrecy through which all the decisions were made, avoiding even most of the Cabinet. Atomic politics became the very 'highest' of 'high politics' in strengthening the executive branch of British politics. But there were interesting misgivings from one or two scientists. Sir Henry Dole was part of the wartime team and called for new thinking on atomic power's 'impact on geopolitics' (Groom, 1974,14). He saw that combining this new power with rockets would produce 'competitive annihilation of whole communities at long range' (Groom, 1974, 14). Hence, in order for politicians to get post-war co-operation of scientists, world domination would have to be sacrificed for international control for peace. No doubt here we have a source for some of Attlee's idealism. But more significant was the November 1945 memorandum of Professor P.M.S. Blackett reproduced by Gowing (1974,194-206). After carefully looking at different war scenarios he came to the devastating conclusion that: Taking into account, (a) the peculiarities of Britain's geographical position, (b) the actual military strengths of the Great Powers, (c) the actual political situation within the Great Powers, and (d) the particular properties of atomic bombs, it is probable that the decision to manufacture or to acquire atomic bombs now would tend to decrease rather than increase our long-term security. (Gowing, 1974,195) Basically he argued that Britain's concentrated pattern of population and industry made her particularly vulnerable to atomic attack compared with the USSR with its vast spaces. It was estimated that whereas Britain could be taken out of a war by just twenty-five bombs, the equivalent to remove the USSR was a thousand bombs (Gowing, 1974,189). Hence rather than being 'a great equalizer', the advent of atomic bombs actually discriminated against Britain due to her smaller size. Blackett was an important figure, an expert member of one of the key government committees dealing with atomic issues (Gowing, 1974, 25). His memorandum went to Attlee, who treated it unsympathetically: 'The author, a distinguished scientist, speaks on political and military matters on which he is layman' (Gowing, 1974,172). The Chiefs of Staff declared their disagreement and Attlee concurred. And, of course, in one sense Attlee was correct. Blackett had missed the main point for the British bomb: to keep

100

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Britain a great power. Even making the country a highly vulnerable atomic target was not too high a price to pay for this national self-esteem. The bomb was a solution to Britain's geopolitical dilemma and so its geostrategic implications could be ignored. Nevertheless, Blackett does seem to have had some influence on Attlee in this second sphere to which we can now turn.

Chapter 8

The geostrategic dilemma

By a process of removal and purification, a wholly 'natural' appearance is bestowed upon the realm of the social.... 'Strategic imperatives' and 'the natural interest' act like antiseptic and chloroform, deployed to achieve a euphoric clarity. State actions begin to take on all the unglamorous stability of natural self-explanatory facts. The basic lines of policy became self-evident - proverbial, commonsensical, that which 'goes without saying'. Everything seems obvious. (Andrews, 1984, 323) It is in the realm of geostrategy that vulgar political geography comes to life. Ernest Bevin illustrates this well. On 24 January 1946 the Foreign Secretary had dinner with two leading US Republicans, Senator Vandenburg and J. Foster Dulles, and the conversation turned towards Britain's attitude to the USSR after the successful Moscow Foreign Ministers meeting. Bevin used crude Cold-War-like imagery to support his argument. The USSR was designated a 'bear' trying to wrap its arms around Turkey (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 68). The Foreign Secretary illustrated his theory by pointing out 'the Straits' and 'the eastern end of Turkey' to his hosts on a world map. This allowed him to move on to the current Soviet activities in Persia. This was all part of the overall Soviet strategy, said Bevin, to 'further wrap the arm of the bear round the eastern end of Turkey' (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 68). Not surprisingly given this dramatic performance 'Senator Vandenburg and Mr Dulles were greatly interested by this exposition and pored for a long time over the map' (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 68). What were the policy implications of this simple geographical model? This is now quite familiar, but Bevin's early 1946 conclusions are worth quoting in full: The Secretary of State said that the moral was that over the Persian issue it was vital to stand up to Russia. The Russian technique, which was precisely the same as that followed with such success by Hitler, consisted in taking one position at a time. Appeasement must be avoided at all costs. If the Russians were rebuffed over their designs on Persia, Turkey could be saved. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 68) Here we have the classic totalitarian link plus domino theory and the containment model in what was to become a typical mixture of later 'get tough with Russia' type statements. Remember this is the British Foreign Secretary speaking before the Cold War.

102

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Given that a few months later Bevin was to assure the Labour Conference that he would never be party to 'any strategy, any alignment of forces' designed to attack the USSR (Labour Party, 1946, 168), it is not surprising that he personally insisted on the 'top secret' report of his meeting with Vandenburg and Dulles being further restricted even within the Foreign Office (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 70). The important point is, however, not Bevin's double dealing but the fact that the report reveals Britain, even 'socialist Britain', playing the 'Great Game' as the opening gambits of the Cold War. Whatever the urgency of the other elements of Britain's crisis of power in 1945, the Empire was alive and kicking in the Foreign Office. The Empire was not just a drain on resources from a geoeconomic perspective, or a failure to match up to the power of the USA and the USSR in geopolitical terms, it was a continuing state ideal and the heart of Britain's geopolitical code even in 1946. Geostrategy was formulated accordingly. Unfortunately for the British Foreign Office, geostrategy could not remain insulated from the geoeconomic and geopolitical dilemmas described in the previous two chapters. The inevitable result was a geostrategic dilemma whose resolution was to be the Cold War itself. Britain's geostrategic activities are therefore the key mechanism that underlies the 'Britain hypothesis'. In short, there is a direct intellectual link between Bevin's 'two arms of the bear' map interpretation and the Truman Doctrine of little more than a year later. Both the vital support of Senator Vandenberg in Congress and the President's reference to the obvious lessons of the world map in his address remind us of how infectious vulgar political geography can be. Britain maintained its traditional imperial geostrategy in 1945, therefore, despite the overwhelming changes manifest throughout the world. In this chapter we deal with this strategy and in so doing discuss some of the detailed discussions that were going on in the manoeuverings of the 'Big Three' described previously. In the tripartite discussions in 1945 we can see that each of the major powers had a particular additional concern in relation to the major three defeated Axis powers. For the USSR, Germany was central to all its policy; the USA took the lead with arrangements for Japan; Britain had a particular concern for Italy. These related, of course, to crucial regions in each country's geopolitical code - Central Europe, the Far East and the Mediterranean, respectively. Hence, for our more detailed look at Britain's geostrategy in 1945 we concentrate on Italy and the Mediterranean. This is the subject of thefirstsection of the chapter. The failure of British foreign policy to ensure the security of the Empire and its communications under the sheer weight of the greater power of the USSR produced the necessity for bringing in the USA to reset the balance in Britain's favour. The second section deals with this key process and the third section considers the outcome as a divided world. Finally, we conclude with a look at a challenge to the traditional imperial geopolitical code by none other than Prime Minister Attlee. The defeat of this alternative was a necessity for the Foreign Office and this they rather easily achieved: even Prime Ministers must not be allowed to interfere with the prime requirements of the state.

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

103

Britain, Italy and the Mediterranean Although we have previously emphasized Bevin's famous 'three Monroes' statement deploring a division of the world, in fact when dealing with the British Empire itself his attitude was much more ambiguous. On 17 October 1945, for instance, Bevin sent to Byrnes the text of a message from the senior imperial statesman and South African Premier Field Marshall Smuts which Bevin said he 'entirely' agreed with (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 504). Part of the message was a plea for the spoils of war, a 'British Monroe': Russia has been rewarded for her enormous efforts in Europe. Why should the British Commonwealth not have theirs for their immense efforts in Africa and the Mediterranean Basin and elsewhere? We are prepared also to concede to the USA much of a free hand by way of strategic bases in the Pacific. She should loyally support us in our vital African interests. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 505) This classic power politics approach to international relations was explicitly reflected in Britain's early post-war policies towards the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the traditional 'lifeline of the Empire'. The places under consideration are shown in Figure 5. The most controversial of British policies in the Mediterranean in the long 1945 was most certainly the support of rightist factions in Greece by the British army. But this was not of international importance in the tripartite system because Greece had already been 'conceded' by Stalin in his famous 'percentages' deal with Churchill (Yergin, 1978, 58-9). Instead the major strategic issue between Britain and the USSR in the second half of 1945 centred upon Italy and particularly her colonies in North Africa. These were occupied by British and French troops following the defeat of the Italians and Germans in this region, but the USSR made claims on Italy because the Italian army had fought on the eastern front. In particular they were to claim a UN Trusteeship over part of Libya. For Britain this was totally unacceptable. As the 14 July brief for the British delegation to Potsdam put it: We have a strategic interest in ensuring that these Italian overseas possessions do not come under the control of potential enemy states as they flank our sea and air communications through the Mediterranean and Red Sea. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,178) In the event decisions on the disposal of Italian colonies were deferred to the first Conference of Foreign Ministers in London. In a memorandum before the London Conference on 25 August Bevin set out his policy on these colonies in some detail. He repeated the point that they 'flank our main line of Imperial communication' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 27) and drew the same conclusions as above. However, resistance to Soviet claims would depend upon US support and as this was not forthcoming then 'the least dangerous area' for the USSR to have would be Tripolitania (western Libya) (1985, 35). But this was a last resort position, the policy suggested Italy remain as trustee power. On the other hand, 'In

Figure 5

o -^

The Mediterranean, the Middle East and the USSR 'threat'

u

s

o.

'The Straits'

GREECE

-fU

* *

• Malta Cyprus/ Tripolitania

• Major British bases

LIBYA

fc^ IRAN

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

105

view of the potential strategic value of Cyrenaica [eastern Libya] for His Majesty's Government, it is highly desirable that the territory should be brought under British influence' (1985, 30). The overall policy gave Britain 'the lion's share' (1985, 33) promoting fears of American public opinion resenting 'the painting of any further red on the map' (1985, 34) but this was considered the only viable option for the integrity of the Empire. At the London Conference there was much jockeying for position on this issue by Bevin and Molotov. Britain, as the occupying power, drew parallels with the Soviets in Eastern Europe and seemed to propose a simple tit-fortat agreement. At the Fifth Meeting of the Council, on 15 September, Bevin put the imperial security question into this context: The British Government had supported the Soviet Government in its claims for adjustments of her western frontier, and in other settlements which have since been made. In view of the vital interest of the British Government in the North Africa area, he was very much surprised that the Soviet Delegation had put forward this claim in respect of Tripolitania. The British claims in that area had been put forward on the same basis as had Russian claims in Eastern Europe, namely security - a perfectly legitimate basis. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985,174-5) This argument probably reflects the weakness felt by the British on this 'imperial' issue where US support was not expected. In one Foreign Office memorandum at the Conference on 24 September this almost reaches a state of paranoia: The main objective of the Russians is access to a base in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is therefore the real Russian challenge at the conference.... This is the opportunity for a power on the make to grab territory.... The Russians see that the war has left usfinanciallyand economically dependent upon the United States. They also know the American phobia about the British Empire and calculate that we cannot count fully on American support when defending our Imperial interests. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 349) In hindsight we can see that these fears were probably greatly exaggerated. Kolko and Kolko (1972, 47) even go as far as dismissing Soviet claims to Tripolitania as 'lackadaisical' and hence very far from the centre of Soviet goals. Contemporary evidence of Britain playing the 'Great Game' much more intensely than the USSR can be found in a conversation between Bevin and Molotov at the Soviet Embassy on 23 September during the Conference. Molotov attacked the British monopoly of the Mediterranean and asked plaintively: 'Could we not at least find a corner for the Soviet merchant fleet?' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 318). Bevin replied that Britain did not want a monopoly but 'had a tremendous fear of anything happening in the Mediterranean which might, so to speak, cut the Empire in half (1985, 319). After Bevin suggested Tripolitania for Italian trusteeship and Cyranaica for British trusteeship - a claim not for wealth, 'for the country was nothing but sand', but 'purely in terms of security' - Molotov readily conceded with a simple 'let us agree' (1985, 319) and they went on to other business. Subsequenty this issue got entangled in the London Conference

106

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

stalemate. Another meeting at the Embassy between Bevin and Molotov on 1 October produced an almost identical conversation but ended in bad feeling (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 454). Hence there was no early agreement on the matter but the issue was never a major stumbling block in subsequent negotiations. The USSR finally conceded their claim at the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers in June 1946 (Kolko and Kolko, 1972, 48). The discussions between the 'Big Three' on framing a peace treaty with Italy focused on much more than the disposal of colonies, of course. Italy itself was doubly important, for its Mediterranean location and as a potential 'Western' European state. This importance was reflected in the decision to maintain military control of northern Italy until December 1945. The problem was the domestic strength of the Italian Communist Party. In strictly Cold War terms, Italy vies with Greece as the first country to be 'saved'. The reason Britain was prepared to allow Italy, a defeated Axis power, to retain an interest in her colonies was quite straigthforward: The general aim of our policy towards Italy is . . . to build her up as a useful member of society, to encourage her to look to the West rather than to the East and to make use of her for our own purposes as 'a bastion of democracy' in the Mediterranean. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 26) This was part of Bevin's 25 August memorandum on the Italian colonies before the London Conference. This political policy had been set out in detail earlier (9 and 12 July) using almost identical terminology (Bullen and Pelly, 1984,112 and 231). In addition the Chiefs of Staff came to the same conclusions in a 30 August memorandum: 'Owing to Italy's strategic position in the Central Mediterranean it is most important that she should not again come under the control of a hostile or potentially hostile power' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 92), and in a 10 September report: 'Owing to her geographical position it is important that Italy should be friendly towards us and become a member of any Western European system that emerges after the war' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 90). Hence the potential contradiction in British policy towards Italy as both recent enemy and future ally. The Foreign Office realized that the resulting policy had to be a compromise between 'compulsion and punishment' and 'help and encouragement' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 7). In practice, this meant direct interference in the domestic affairs of Italy from choosing the date of elections, retaining troops to influence the elections and generally to provide, as one Foreign Office meeting of 9 July put it, 'the publicity and propaganda direction to spread an appreciation among Italians of "the democratic way of life" ' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 115). Britain had lost naval control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War, clearly she did not intend to repeat this painful experience.

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

107

Bringing in the USA In the last chapter we described Britain's geopolitical dilemma and how she attempted to compensate for relative weakness by manoeuvering the USA against the USSR within the 'Big Three' framework. We can now see how this works out in terms of geostrategy. In fact, Britain was determined to use its relative power decline for strategic advantage. In one Foreign Office note of 11 January 1946, for instance, it was argued that here was an opportunity to bring the USA to defend Britain's interests: As matters stand it does not however seem to us that we need be unduly worried by the prevalent American concept of our reduced status. In the Middle East, for example, the notion that we are no longer able to successfully bear the burden of our responsibilities may actually operate to our advantage, if it encourages the Americans to take an increasing share in the task of dealing with the problems created by the rising nationalism of the Arab States and the pressures of Soviet power politics. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 38-9) This opportunism had been important in the tripartite discussions on Italy and her colonies. As a recording of one after-dinner conversation on 9 August 1945 put it: The Foreign Secretary explained that in agreeing to the American plan for the Italian colonies we had been greatly influenced by the importance of seeing America bought into the Mediterranean. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985,196) Throughout the negotiations Britain had never wanted tripartite negotiation but favoured a bi-polar Anglo-America versus USSR situation. The preamble to the 14 July brief for the United Kingdom delegation to Potsdam, for instance, stated: Although it is not difficult to prepare a brief on Italy for purely Anglo-American discussion, tripartite discussion is more difficult since in fact our present policy towards Italy is largely directed to trying to ensure - and trying to get the Americans similarly to ensure - that Italy does not fall under Russian influence . . . The best way out of the difficulty would therefore seem to be to prepare two briefs on Italy, the first for Anglo-American-Russian discussion and the second for purely Anglo-American discussion. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 278) Clearly Britain was operating as if there were an Anglo-American front against the USSR even in the early days of the Potsdam Conference. In fact, the USA was most certainly not yet ready for such a policy. On 7 July, for instance, Halifax advised from Washington that 'it would serve no useful purpose at this moment to pursue discussions with the State Department over Italy' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 20). This was because of anti-British feeling in the country over the Allied treatment of Italy. Hence, even though 'Our aims towards Italy are . . . substantially the same' as the USA this is neutralized, Halifax thought, because 'British "imperialism" will always be a convenient whipping boy' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 20). 'Bringing in America' was not therefore an easy process. It came to fruition not in policies towards Italy but over Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

108

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Both Turkey and Iran shared borders with the USSR but in 1945 they were also important parts of Britain's sphere of influence. As Bevin saw it, this is where 'the USSR rubbed with the British Empire' (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 733-4). Whereas Soviet claims on Tripolitania could be relatively easily rebuffed, Soviet pressures on Turkey and Iran were of a different order. US help was essential. Let us look at the basic geostrategic clash between Britain and the USSR over Turkey. Soviet claims on Turkey at Potsdam were threefold. First, there was a demand for a revision of the frontier between the two countries in the east. Two provinces had been transferred to Russia in 1878, returned to Turkey in 1921 and now the USSR wanted them back. Second, the USSR wanted to establish a naval base on the Dardanelles. Third, the Montreaux Convention, which regulated 'the Straits' (meaning all the waterways from the Black Sea to the Aegean) and gave Turkey the power to close the waterways, should be revised to the USSR's benefit. In the Seventh Plenary Meeting at Potsdam Stalin described the Soviet position as follows: The result of this situation was that a small state (Turkey), supported by Great Britain, held a great state (Russia) by the throat. Imagine what a commotion would be raised in Great Britain if a similar regime existed at Gibraltar or the Suez Canal, and in the United States in the case of the Panama Canal. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 585) This simple power political argument was hard to refute when put in such a comparative context and in fact at the time both the USA and Britain supported revising the Convention covering the Straits. But on the first two demands Turkey made it clear that it would go to war if the 'Big Three' imposed them. Britain's reasons for supporting Turkey were equally strategic. Like Turkey, they suspected that there was a 'fourth Russian requirement' which was 'nothing less than a demand that Turkey enter Russia's orbit' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 171). For Britain this was out of the question, for as one Foreign Office letter put it: The withdrawal of Turkey from the German sphere of influence into which Turkey had fallen back even since the last war has been our work and represents a diplomatic feat of some magnitude and importance. Having got hold of Turkey we have not the least intention of letting her go. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 1221) During the war Britain had made use of Turkey as a neutral buffer zone between the Axis powers and the Middle East, now she saw the possibilities of continuing to use Turkey in the same buffer role, 'a valuable bulwark' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 1182) against the USSR. This was described from the British Embassy in Cairo as follows: Turkish friendship was essential to the maintenance of Britain's position in the Middle East. If Turkey was driven into the arms of Russia it would bring Russian influence down to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and the Arab League, even if we were successful in bringing it off, would offer no useful defence against Russian influence and penetration. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 38)

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

109

Here, therefore, we find the most explicit clash of strategic interests between the USSR and Britain. The situation in Iran was rather more organized. During the war Iran was divided into three zones with Russian troops occupying the north divided by a neutral zone from British troops in the south. The agreement required Allied troops to leave the country within six months of the end of hostilities. Since the Japanese formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, the evacuation date became 2 March 1946. This was very different from the Turkey situation, therefore, with two military occupations and in addition a key deadline to meet. In addition, of course, Iran's importance was based upon her oil resources which had been the original stimulus to bring her into the British sphere of influence before the First World War. Despite these differences in strategic circumstances, however, British overall tactics remained the same as in Turkey: to stop the USSR with the help of the USA. Because of the stationing of Russian troops on Iranian soil British worries were even more acute than in the case of Turkey. Before the Potsdam Conference on 11 July the British Embassy in Tehran cabled that 'There are many signs that the Russians are making a tremendous effort to obtain virtual mastery over this country before the moment of evacuation arrives' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 166). Eden later expressed the view that 'the Russian grip on Persia is getting tighter' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 263). In fact the main threat was in northern Iran where the USSR seemed to be supporting the establishment of a separate Azerbaijan state. The Foreign Office drew parallels with events in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 180); the situation had become serious, bring in the USA. At the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference, for instance, differences emerged between the USA and British delegations in terms of handling the Persian 'mess' but on 26 December, after criticizing Secretary of State Byrnes, Bevin goes on: I thought it as well to accept the American memorandum as it stood, since it is with some difficulty that they had been brought to accept a share of the responsibility and I am putting it to the Russians as my own. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 882) And basically the same policy of giving way to the USA was adopted for the Anglo-American Oil Agreement of 25 September. By 25 April 1946 Congress had still not ratified this agreement and in a Foreign Office Minute the reasons for Britain's concern are made clear: We are anxious that the Agreement should be ratified as early as possible. The main result to be achieved is close consultation and co-operation with the Americans on all oil problems. We are always likely to be up against the Russians, particularly in Persia, on oil questions and the more intimate our relations are with American oil interests, the less chance there will be of the Russians dividing us. Only afirmAnglo-United States front will prevail. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 265) The weakness of Britain's geostrategic position could hardly be better illustrated. The necessity for bringing in the USA seemed overwhelming, so

110

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

much so that Britain was even willing to forgo her sphere of influence. According to Anderson (1981,122): To obtain American support [Foreign Office] officials were prepared to make a major sacrifice: they would welcome the Americans on equal terms in an area they had long considered to be their special preserve - the Middle East. Anderson (1981, 122) even quotes one official as saying that Britain must 'genuinely encourage and not merely acknowledge in principle American attempts to develop their own interests in these countries'. The Weekly Political Summary sent by Halifax from Washington to the Foreign Office, on 10 March, is a remarkable document illustrating how events were moving in line with the British tactics (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 152-9). Here is the list of major items discussed: (1) The dispatch of USS Missouri and a strong task force to return the body of the Turkish Ambassador from Washington to Turkey (1987, 153); (2) the official US protest to the USSR on the continued presence of Soviet troops in northern Iran (1987, 155-6); (3) the attacks on the Secretary of State by Dulles and Vaudenberg for 'the feebleness of America's voice on international issues' (1987, 153); (4) Byrnes's reply in a radio broadcast which was interpreted as US policy-makers having undergone 'a change of heart' (1987, 155); (5) the appearance of the 'Red Menace' issue in the Congressional hearings on the British loan (1987,157); and (6) the fact that Churchill's Fulton Speech 'will set the pattern of discussion on world affairs for some time to come' (1987, 154). From this remarkable catalogue Churchill himself would probably have highlighted the USS Missouri trip. In a communication with Attlee before he delivered his speech he argued that by sending 'probably the strongest battleship afloat' the USA was conducting 'a very important act of State': From our point of view, I am sure that the arrival and stay of such a powerful Americanfleetin the Straits must be entirely beneficial, both as reassuring Turkey and Greece and as placing a demurrer on what Bevin called cutting our line through the Mediterranean. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 150-1) This is where our 'long 1945' finishes, of course. The Anglo-American front was by no means in place but events were obviously working in that direction. By the end of 1946 the USA had a fleet permanently stationed in the Mediterranean for the first time and was providing both Turkey and Iran with arms (Kolko and Kolko, 1972,235,241,244). The USA was most certainly joining in with Britain in this most traditional region of British imperial concern. Redividing the world? Bringing the USA into the Mediterranean and Middle East must be seen as part of a wider process of US expansion. Remembering US 'isolationism' after the First World War, it was British policy to encourage the USA to get

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

111

involved in all parts of the world: Halifax in a memorandum to Bevin on 12 December 1945 put it this way: It is, I submit, altogether to our advantage if, in the process of groping towards her responsibilities that have now fallen to her lot, America sees fit... to assume a share in the solution of vexed international questions . . . I conclude that, in the state of the world as it is today, it should be a major task of His Majesty's Government to encourage America to shoulder the burden of wider responsibility that is now hers. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 2) This policy was most rigorously pursued beyond the Mediterranean/Middle East region in terms of providing the USA with military bases. We came across this issue in Chapter six as a 'sweetener' for the British loan; here we consider the geostrategic implications. From a US viewpoint the new concern for military bases was a response to a newly felt vulnerability as new weapon delivery technology potentially threatened to make her oceanic isolation less of a protection; hence the request for island bases throughout the Pacific and Atlantic. These bases would effectively keep enemies further from the US mainland in the event of war. In Chapter six we mentioned the thirty-five Pacific islands; in addition in the Atlantic the USA wanted bases on Iceland, in the West Indies and on the Portuguese islands of the central Atlantic. Britain and the Dominions were requested to either hand over islands or otherwise help facilitate the US strategic plan. In the event there were several problems, especially concerning Australia in the South Pacific. But as Bevin communicated to Halifax on 22 February 1946 in terms of these negotiations: 'Our general aim will be to recognise to the full the importance of associating the Americans as closely as possible with us in common defence problems in the Pacific as elsewhere' (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 128). In this statement Bevin was harking back to the advice Churchill had given him months earlier when US interest in military bases was first mooted and which we have earlier identified as a key part of the 'Britain hypothesis' (Chapter two). By 'getting our affairs so interwoven with those of the United States' we would find our 'rock of safety' in a perilous world (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 317). Bevin subsequently used exactly Churchill's argument when presenting US proposals to the Defence Committee (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 400). In this way the US link came to override other considerations such as what Bevin, himself, referred to as the worries about 'the push of the United States right around us with bases' (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 383) and their desire 'to buy us out of the Western Hemisphere, including the West Indies' (Bullen and Pelly, 1087, 91). Geostrategically what is really going on here? In the new post-war circumstances Britain is drawing back from the US spheres of influence in what we have previously termed the USA's 'double Monroe' (Latin America plus East Asia). We have already referred to Bevin's ambiguous concern for 'Monroes'. Given his avoidance of an untenable and residual British 'Monroe', the outcome of his policies would seem to be a division of the world nevertheless into 'Monroes': the 'double' US one, a Soviet one and an

112

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

Anglo-American one where Britain's main interests lie in the Mediterranean/ Middle East. The power relations in terms of 'Monroes', therefore, would be USA. 2V2 USSR 1 and Britain Vi. In the circumstances, I guess, this was the best that Bevin could hope for. The geostrategic dilemma of the residual Monroe could be coped with by bringing in the USA as necessary. In addition, the arrogance of the British Foreign Office allowed for dreams of greater influence than half a Monroe would suggest. As late as 11 Janury 1946 messages from the Embassy in Washington could make assertions such as this: America, it might be added, is herself troubled in spirit: conscious that she has gained greatness but ruefully aware that she is inadequately equipped with gifts of leadership in many fields and confronted with serious domestic problems of her own. Here in itself is an opportunity for Britain to set an example of greater steadiness and sanity to the English-speaking world. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 40) After all, 'the English-speaking world' controlled three out of four Monroes. Of course, all of this was premised on there being no 'one world' whatever happened to the United Nations? An alternative foreign policy Bevin's original 'Three Monroes' memorandum of 8 November was written to expose the fragility of one world and the promise of the United Nations: I should be willing to pursue this policy of working in with the United Nations Organization on the ground that it gives the best hope for the world, if the facts of the situation allowed us to do it. (Bullen and Pelly, 1986, 310-11) But they did not. There were three Monroes emerging in a situation of 'power politics naked and unashamed' (1986, 312) so that people are deceived if they think the UN can 'protect them from future wars' (1986, 312). This statement does, of course, justify Bevin's own very 'realist' foreign policy, for instance in Britain's 'making use of Italy and 'not letting go' of Turkey in our previous discussions. Bevin was in fact an arch powerpolitician, as we have previously argued in Chapter two. A good illustration of this comes in the negotiations on US bases: Mr Bevin drew attention to the importance of constituting as many bases as possible in the form of civil air stations, which could easily be converted in an emergency: by doing so it would be possible to dodge the Security Council issues, and Mr Byrnes agreed with this. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 60) This report was from a note of a meeting on 1 January 1946 which shows Bevin disguising motives in order to avoid responsibilities towards the United Nations. It seems highly unlikely that Bevin could ever have been a Foreign Secretary that would pursue a UN-centred foreign policy. And yet this was what was widely expected of him. Jones (1977, 109) describes the situation in the Labour Party as follows:

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

113

by 1945 the leadership operated from 'realist' premises which were shared by only a minority of the rest of the party. Both sides looked out on different Russias, different Europes, different worlds. Both envisaged different foreign policies to deal with the problems perceived. Jones is concerned with the left rebellion in which Attlee rigorously supported Bevin. But there were important differences within the leadership itself for, as Smith and Zametica (1985, 37) point out, Attlee was 'Bevin's opponent on several fundamental issues'. For most of the first eighteen months of his premiership Attlee's foreign policy goal was nothing less than the complete overthrow of the traditional Foreign Office geostrategy. As in the case of relations between Truman and Byrnes in this crucial period of Cold War formation, memoirs and biographies are dangerous sources with respect to the Attlee-Bevin relationship. With the general acceptance of the Cold War Bevin is 'proven' to have been 'right' in his firm stance against the USSR, and other politicians naturally jump on the hero's bandwagon. Hence Attlee was, according to Smith and Zametica (1985, 251), 'in later years instrumental in projecting a view of himself as a Cold Warrior'. It is, not surprising, therefore, that Attlee's 'official' biographer should entitle his chapter on government foreign policy: 'Cold Warrior, 1945-9'. But this fundamentally devalues Attlee's early commitment to a central role for the United Nations in British foreign policy. Differences on these matters are firmly downplayed in the biographies by Harris on Attlee and by Bullock on Bevin. As Smith and Zametica (1985) clearly show, the Attlee-Bevin relationship at the beginning of the Cold War is sorely in need of re-evaluation. Attlee was a liberal internationalist as we defined earlier. But he was by no means a simple idealist; he was crucially concerned with changing military technologies and their meaning for the country's geopolitical code. Before the war he had been the party's chief defence spokesman and had established the Labour Party Defence Committee 'which was to display a particular concern for the impact of modern technology on defence strategy' (Smith and Zametica, 1985, 239). Towards the end of his period as Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition government, he had challenged the traditional imperial geostrategy. At the time the Foreign Office was able to dismiss his ideas as 'damned silly' (1985, 242) but on becoming Prime Minister the whole situation changed. The Foreign Office was 'shaken' (1985,243) and now had to reassess the debate. On 29 July a Foreign Office memorandum circulated the offending documents and began its discussion with the words: 'The attached exchange of minutes between Mr Eden and Mr Attlee raise issues of the greatest importance and affects our entire foreign policy' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 990). The debate was straighforward to begin with. Early in the Potsdam Conference Eden sent a note to Churchill about Soviet 'aggrandisement' and Britain's interests in the Mediterranean (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 352-3) to which Attlee replied:

114

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

We ought to confront the Russians with the requirements of a world organization for peace, not with the needs of the defence of the British Empire . . . the only realistic policy is placing all these strategic areas under international control... of the United Nations. (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 384) This is what set the alarm bells ringing in the Foreign Office. Attlee offered two related challenges to traditional geostrategic thinking, both of which led to the need to centre policy on the United Nations. The first challenge derived directly from Attlee's pre-war interests on the effect of air warfare on strategy. Now, as Prime Minister, he developed his ideas to attack the Foreign Office's accepted wisdom that the Mediterranean and Middle East were vital strategic areas for the Empire. Attlee argued simply that the Empire was not itself a defensible unit in an era of air power: It was the creation of sea power. With the advent of air warfare the conditions which made it possible to defend a string of possessions scattered over five continents by means of a fleet based on island fortresses has gone. In the nineteenth century the passage of the Mediterranean could be secured by sea power with Gibraltar, Malta and Egypt as its bases. In the air age the neutrality, if not the support, of all countries contiguous to the route are needed. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 42-3) This statement is dated 1 September and can only have been intended as imput to British preparations for the London Foreign Ministers Conference. Having disposed of the traditional policy, Attlee went on to provide for its replacement: The British Empire can only be defended by its membership of the United Nations Organization. If we do not accept this, we had better say so. If we do accept this we should seek to make it effective and not at the same time act on outworn conceptions. If the new organization is a reality, it does not matter who holds Cyrenaica or Somalia or controls the Suez Canal. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 43) Hence the geostrategy proposed is based upon a sort of strategic isotropic plain in a geopolitical code where there are no security commodities since all places become treated as equal. Smith and Zametica (1985,240) describe this as 'Attlee's heresy' and so it must have seemed to the traditionalists at the Foreign Office. They responded within two days with a rather dismissive minute: The ideas thrown out by the Prime Minister have all been examined before and have been disregarded.... There must inevitably be an element of reinsurance in our present attitude towards the World Organization. . . . The maintenance and strengthening of our position in the Middle East must thus remain a cardinal feature of Imperial Policy. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 47) In short, we cannot assume the United Nations will work. This position was endorsed by Bevin, no doubt to the relief of the Foreign Office, on 10 September: The security of the route through the Mediterranean and Middle East is vital to the safety of the British Empire. . . . In view of our strategic interests in this area,

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

115

which remains as vital with the advent of air power as it ever was before, we cannot disinterest ourselves from the arrangements made in those ex-Italian colonies (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 81) It is hard to imagine a more fundamental disagreement between a head of government and the person running the foreign policy. And yet Bullock (1983, 56) can write of the Attlee-Bevin relationship as 'one of the most successful political partnerships in English history' being 'undisturbed by any serious disagreement'. Foot (1975, 32) even goes as far as to say that 'often enough Bevin was Attlee', they were 'a composite figure'. In fact quite the opposite was the case. Attlee and Bevin were operating 'in two different worlds', as Jones terms it, in 1945. The second challenge to traditional Foreign Office thinking came from Attlee's attempt to incorporate the advent of the atomic bomb into the country's geopolitical code. The destructive capability of the new weapon meant that, once again, a geostrategy focusing on a worldwide network of bases was irrelevant: Nothing can alter the fact the geopolitical situation of Britain offers to a continental power such targets as London and the other great cities. . . . All considerations of strategic bases in the Mediterranean and East Indies are obsolete. The vulnerability at the heart of the Empire is the one fact that matters. Unless its safety can be secured, it is no use bothering about things on the periphery. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 530) The resulting overthrow of traditional policy needs pointed once more towards the United Nations as we showed in the last chapter. Attlee called for 'a new World order' and wanted to carry on 'much further' 'the world of the San Francisco Conference' that had set up the United Nations (Bullen and Pelly, 1985,531). For Attlee, the UN's promise of one world was now a necessity to 'save civilization' (1985, 531). The Foreign Office reply was muted as far as the strategic issues were concerned. Attlee may have been taking a grand global view but the policymakers were more attuned to the diversity of issues that they had traditionally had to cope with: we must expect world peace to be troubled and threatened by disputes and outbreaks of violence, possible in the Balkans, in the Middle East or Latin America or even nearer home, where the threat or use of the Atomic bomb will be inapplicable and milder measures required. Second-rate weapons will be required against second-rate nations; and with them some police stations in the shape of strategic bases (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 535) Hence, despite the new bomb British policy as a world policeman would have to continue undisturbed. One of the interesting things about this debate is the use by Attlee of 'realist' language, including his frequent references to geography. In fact the Foreign Office had dismissed Attlee as a naive idealist from the very beginning of the debate. In the Foreign Office memorandum of 29 July it was pointed out that Stalin in Potsdam had argued that 'international

116

PART THREE: BRITAIN'S CRISIS OF POWER

politics can only be an expression of power . .. and however much we deplore it it is impossible to contest the truth of his observation' (Bullen and Pelly, 1984, 991). Furthermore, the United Nations itself was based upon 'the physical power of the major states' (1984, 991). Attlee's proposals, therefore, made sense only in such a time when a World State existed. In the meantime 'Imperial Policy' was to continue. Attlee diligently pursued his arguments to the dismay of the Foreign Office throughout 1946. As late as 9 January 1947 Bevin was accusing Attlee of appeasement: 'It would be Munich all over again, only on a world scale, with Greece, Turkey and Persia as the first victims in place of Czechoslovakia' (Smith and Zametica, 1985, 250). But Attlee remained unimpressed and it seems that it took a threat by the military Chiefs of Staff to resign before Attlee was brought into line with imperial policy (Smith and Zametica, 1985,251). There is one intriguing footnote to this story of Britain's failure to produce an alternative strategic policy in 1945. After Labour's election victory on 27 July 1945, the new Prime Minister told Hugh Dalton to pack his bags because he would be going to Potsdam as British Foreign Secretary. Attlee then presented his Cabinet to the King and on returning informed Dalton he would be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Bevin was the man for Potsdam. What happened on 27 July to make Attlee change his mind is an unsolved problem. According to Martin (1962, 77) this was the last time a British monarch vetoed a ministerial choice of an elected Prime Minister. The interesting question is, of course, why? Pimlott (1985) discusses the matter in some detail and suggests Churchill's advice to the King as the departing Prime Minister plus the opinions Foreign Office officials relayed through informal Court channels as ways in which Bevin was made Foreign Secretary. Attlee's final story was that he thought Bevin would be better at 'standing up to the Russians' (Pimlott, 1985,412). That sounds like a rather typical Cold War post hoc rationalization. The intriguing suggestion that our discussion above suggests is that Bevin was eased into the Foreign Office to stand up to Attlee! As we have seen, Attlee's views were well known to the Foreign Office before the election, but now he had to be neutralized. Churchill and others knew Bevin to be a realist power-politician in contrast to Dalton, who seemed to have had his own personnel 'in training to take over key posts' at the Foreign Office (Pimlott, 1985, 413). The soundness of the Foreign Office instincts in this matter were to be justified. In Dalton's diary he has an entry for 22 March 1946 in which he describes a meeting earlier in March with Bevin. According to a shocked Dalton the Persian crisis and the US fleet in the Mediterranean had caused the Foreign Secretary to exclaim 'this means war' (Pimlott, 1986, 368). Dalton then met with Attlee, who told him of his plans for disengagement from strategic areas. The key point is that the Chancellor approved 'Attlee's heresy': 'This is a very bold and interesting idea and I am inclined to favour it' (Pimlott, 1986, 369). No wonder the Foreign Office did not want an Attlee-Dalton partnership running Britain's 'Imperial Policy'. /

THE GEOSTRATEGIC DILEMMA

117

This brings up the whole question of the importance of the individual in history again. This is an appropriate note on which tofinishPart Three since it has been organized around three dilemmas. Although we have argued that such dilemmas emanate from the underlying structures of the system we have shown that it is individual politicians who have to deal with the problems raised as best they can. The dilemmas cannot be wished away but there will always be the possibility of alternative responses. And this is where the individual may be important. In the Britain hypothesis Churchill and Bevin are central as we showed in Chapter two. Was the second member of this pair placed in a vital position of power by thefirst?Would a Dalton Foreign Office staffed by his own personnel in key areas have avoided the 'little Cold War' between Britain and the USSR that led on to the real thing? There was no necessity to continue to play the 'Great Game' in 1945 as Attlee appreciated only too well. Although there were certainly important trends towards the Cold War as we have seen, given the fluidity of the long 1945 it remains an intriguing possibility that an Attlee-Dalton axis during Britain's crisis of power may have contributed to the production of a very different world to the Cold War.

Part Four Discussion

Chapter 9

Questions of concern

Since politics has its origin in strife, political strategy deals with the exploitation, use and suppression of conflict... The conflict of conflicts explains some things about politics that have long puzzled scholars. Political conflict is not like an intercollegiate debate in which opponents agree in advance on a definition of the issues. As a matter of fact, the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power; the antagonists can rarely agree on what the issues are because power is involved in the definition. (Schattschneider, 1960, 67-8, emphasis contained in original) The purpose of this penultimate chapter is to consider some of the questions that arise when relating the evidence of Part Three to the strong version of the 'Britain hypothesis.' The story we have presented may be summarized as follows. Chapter six emphasized the weakness of Britain's position but hinted that a solution might lie in anti-communism. Chapter seven described the overall approaches Britain pursued to maintain its world-power status. Chapter eight focused upon particular implementation of the British strategy. Added together these arguments are most definitely supportive of the Britain hypothesis. But this is by no means conclusive. Certainly the US government did not consider the British Labour government to be the cause of the decline in the US-Soviet relations in 1946 (Harbutt, 1986,170). Furthermore, even where Britain was most definitely a trigger for US anti-Soviet policy in Truman's 1947 declaration to Congress, the ideological tone of the message surprised the British Foreign Office and, at the Treasury, Dalton was to note that his 'little push for a small economy [withdrawing British troops from Greece] in Whitehall released world forces more powerful than I ever guessed' (Anderson, 1981,180). Have we, therefore, merely produced what Groom (1974,i) calls 'a plausible fairy tale'? Groom (1974,i) poses this question for all historical reconstructions. He argues that it is 'easy for historians to create a world of their own, devoid of any but the most tenuous links with the data'. Is the 'world' I have created for 1945 such a travesty of reality? Obviously I think not but I cannot 'prove' it. We are operating in the realm of interpretations in which diversity of understandings is endemic. This is not to say that all interpretations are equally valid, far from it, but there will never be a final 'correct' view of any past world we choose to reconstruct. Such an objective history is a 'mythical goal' (Groom,. 1974,i; Carr, 1961).

122

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

What have we produced therefore? We have most certainly not tested our Britain hypothesis in any formal sense. Basically we have steered a particular political geography route through a set of documents underlying British decision-making in its relations with the rest of the world-economy in 1945. We have been lavish with quotations from original sources allowing the decision-makers to speak in their own words as it were, but we cannot claim to have recreated the world as they saw it. We have, of course, been highly selective and no doubt by taking quotations out of their context we have inevitably changed part of their original meaning. That is the nature of any interpretation. Therefore the validity and integrity of the historical reconstruction offered here must first of all be judged by the reader in terms of what Groom (1974,i) calls 'the plausibility, judgement and insight exercised in making the selection of the data, and in their interpretation'. Hence in this chapter I attempt partially to allay the reader's doubts by revealing some of the misgivings I have experienced in charting the chosen route. My first doubt concerns the structure of my story. Our interpretation has been organized around three distinctive dilemmas facing British politicians and senior civil servants in 1945. Of course, these dilemmas were not merely contemporaneous, they were manifestations of a single phenomenon, Britain's overall crisis of power. This was appreciated by contemporaries, as we have emphasized in the discussions of the loan, strategic bases, atomic power and the Mediterranean/Middle East region in Anglo-American relations. The same was true for Anglo-Soviet relations and this became particularly evident as the Cold War emerged. In a Foreign Office memorandum of 2 April 1946, for example, it was asserted that Russia's policy is normally co-ordinated over the whole field and she will no doubt direct her attack equally against our strategic, political and economic interest, using military, economic, propaganda and political weapons. (Lewis, 1988,360-1) Here we have all three dilemmas rolled into one and that, of course is how they must always be viewed. Why have we dealt with them sequentially in three different chapters therefore? The basis reason is a pedagogic one; it seemed to be the most efficient way of organizing the mass of material which confronted me. But it is worrying that my organization reflects the way in which the British state approached the problem - each dilemma was primarily the responsibility of three different organs of state: the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Clearly for a text that claims to be critical the organization of Part Three is very traditional and conformist. All I can say in defence is that the final product makes critical sense to me, the three chapters though focusing on different activities, do provide an overall picture of Britain's crisis of power. In short, Part Three was written with the holistic perspective of our world-systems approach uppermost in mind. The resulting interpretation is not, I think, bitty and uncoordinated. Integrated or not, our analyses above have been concerned largely with providing evidence for the 'Britain hypothesis' in the making of the Cold

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

123

War. It is aspects of this exercise that are of subject-matter of this chapter. I have chosen three topics that should worry readers about the hypothesis. First, we deal with the nagging question of how Britain as the weakest member of the 'Big Three' was able to assert enough power crucially to influence the nature of the geopolitical world order that was to emerge. This question of power is first of all a theoretical one in that we need to understand the subtlety of power beyond the practice of simply applying force or 'bullying'. We consider this in the first section below. Even more remarkable in the 'Britain hypothesis' is the idea that the US at its moment of maximum global powej; could be manoeuvered into a world order not to its immediate advantage. This brings us to the question of continuities in international relations that survive even the most severe geopolitical transitions. Further thoughts on how British imperial defence came to be transmuted into saving the world from communism are present in the second section. Finally, we consider the meaning of the 'Britain hypothesis' for Britain herself. Were Britain's actions before and after 1945 consistent with our interpretation of foreign policies in that year? We will argue that from the late nineteenth century Britain has been suffering from a 'post-hegemonic trauma' that provides assumptions for policy-making which are by no means necessarily in the best interests of either state or people. Reaction to the Falklands/Malvinas war in 1982 by both the state and the public confirmed that the trauma, as expressed in longings for the reproduction of past glories, is still afflicting British politics. It is this that makes the study of recent British history so important for understanding Britain today. The question of power The commonsense view of power relates to the ability to coerce, to force one's will upon another. Often this is interpreted from outcomes of events: if A prefers outcome x and B outcome y then if the real outcome is x we may assume A to be more powerful than B. It is this concept of power that makes the 'Britain hypothesis' seem so unlikely. Certainly, Britain did not coerce the USA into a combined front against the USSR. Hence, if we left our consideration of power at this level we would have to harbour very severe doubts over the validity of the 'Britain hypothesis'. Fortunately modern social theory provides us with a much more sophisticated approach to power. Lukes (1974) described the commonsense notion of power as one-dimensional with its emphasis on actual observable conflict while neglecting the overall context in which any conflict takes place. For instance, every observable conflict has a definite scope - who is involved and who is not. In all conflicts the weaker of the parties has a vested interest in changing the scope (Taylor, 1984). Hence, Schattschneider (1960,3) asserts that 'The most important strategy of politics is concerned with the scope of conflict.' In South-West and Central Asia after the Second World War, the USSR was more powerful than Britain. By making the

124

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

conflict global - bringing in the USA - Britain was widening the scope and hence negating its own original weakness. Such a power strategy clearly underlays Britain's foreign policy in 1945 but it still does not explain why the US should succumb to the attractions of British imperialism. The most important element of power for the Britain hypothesis is to do with agenda-setting. In a commonsense approach to power the issues are assumed to be given and the power battle ensues. In reality the issues themselves are never that clear cut. In any situation there are many different issues competing for the attention of decision-makers. Defining the issues is to choose which conflicts are expressed and which are not. Hence the power to set the agenda is the power to control alternatives. Schattschneider (1960, 70) in a famous statement describes this process as follows: All forms of political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. (emphasis in original) It is in this spirit that we must view the Britain hypothesis. In Chapter four we described the five alternative worlds in 1945. The one world option seemed to be the most favoured but was considered too fragile to be relied upon. Of the other four options only one - the USA and Britain versus the USSR - suited Britain. The fact that this was the actual post1945 outcome does not indicate overt British power but does reflect to some degree both Britain's opportunity and capacity to contribute to the making of the world political agenda in 1945. Britain was able to manage the issues in such a way that, first US isolationism and the three world option, second, anti-Americanism and the left-alliance option, and third, anti-imperialism with the resulting isolation of Britain - all important possibilities as we have seen - were not allowed a global political platform on which to develop. Obviously Britain was not able to manipulate the agenda without the other two members of the 'Big Three' having their say on the issues. But the fact that Britain was a member of the 'Big Three' gave her an input into the agenda-setting that was greater than her actual physical power. This was part of the organizational bias of the Grand Alliance and is the reason why it was so important, for instance, for Bevin to attend the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference in December 1945 even though Britain was against its convening as we saw in Chapter seven. The Moscow Conference represents the nadir of Britain's influence in the 'Big Three' in the 'long 1945'. But even in such circumstances the agendasetting process can be managed. This method consisted largely of Britain accepting US proposals on minor issues so that other matters, primarily just simple US involvement, became an accepted part of the overall discussions. This was very clearly happening in the geostrategic issues discussed in the last chapter. In terms of Britain's overall geopolitical dilemma the key event is usually taken to be Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech of 5 March 1946. Halifax's comments at the time, in his Weekly Political Summary, of 10 March, are

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

125

very interesting because although he records a general disagreement with the speech in the USA, he thought its importance lay in the fact that 'it has given the sharpest jolt to American thinking of any utterance since the end of the war' (Bullen and Pelly, 1987,53). In short, he thought it was going to change the geopolitical agenda: The Americans really listened to Mr Churchill and there is little doubt that the speech will set pattern of discussion on world affairs for some time to come. (Bullen and Pelly, 1987, 54) Harbutt (1986) has carefully examined the direct influence of the speech. Although he identifies four sets of reactions, only one of which was wholly favourable to Churchill's thesis, Harbutt (1986. 204) is clear about the agenda-setting: Churchill's unequivocal and harsh analysis of Soviet intentions, moreover, exposed a widespread sense that it was time for a debate on American policy toward the Soviet Union. Walter Lippmann authoritatively predicted 'one of the great debates of modern times'. This inevitably placed the Soviet Union (and liberal Left) on the defensive, for, whatever the justification, the fact of Soviet expansionism was undeniable. Polls in the USA now began to show that 60 per cent thought US 'too soft' toward the USSR with only 3 per cent thinking it too tough! In one months the percentage favouring an Anglo-American alliance rose from 18 per cent to 85 per cent (Harbutt, 1986, 204). Churchill seems to have narrowed down the range of alternatives; the debate on US foreign policy had become a Cold War debate. The question of continuity At first sight this question may seem a strange one in a book on geopolitical discontinuity or transition. But for Britain in 1945, of course, continuity was the fundamental goal for foreign policy. By keeping international affairs as they had been, Britain could stem her decline from world-power status. This proved to be an impossible goal but enough continuity survived to ease the transfer of the mantle of world leadership from Britain to the USA. Finding a 'just peace' was the public priority of all three members of the Grand Alliance in 1945. What this actually meant varied greatly between the three powers. In the case of Britain peace and Empire were wholly compatible - what else was Pax Britannia} - and they were expected to continue in harmony after 1945. Bevin expressed the argument for continuity in a letter to Halifax in Washington on 17 October 1945: The future of the world will depend in large measure on present territorial arrangements and on safeguarding the vital communications of a scattered maritime group like the British Commonwealth. It should be appreciated by America that ours is not a mere selfish interest but a vital necessity of future world balance and world peace. (Bullen and Pelly, 1985, 505)

126

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

In this argument Bevin was merely reflecting, once again, traditional British Conservative thinking which understood no contradiction between the British Empire and an internal liberal order. At the 1945 Conservative Party Conference, for instance, Churchill resurrected the old Tory slogan of Imperium et Libertas, telling the delegates forthrightly that 'Without freedom there is no foundation for our Empire; without Empire there is no safeguard for our freedom' (James, 1974, 7130). But such rhetoric could have only a domestic appeal, of course. In fact it was just such imperial pleading that would repel the USA and might even stimulate an AmericanSoviet front. Hence, whereas this conservatism in British thinking is easy to understand, the way in which the USA fits into such continuity is much more difficult to make sense of. The most common way of approaching this problem is to use Mackinder's Heartland thesis as a link between British imperialism and US Cold War policies. Mackinder's great geopolitical model was first introduced to an audience at the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1904. He propounded a grand theory of land power versus sea power. In the 'Columbian age' (since 1492) sea power had united the world as one political unit, but this predominance would not last forever. In the pre-Columbian era the European and Asian littoral civilizations had been regularly overwhelmed by the mobility of horsemen representing the land power of the continental interior. This vast region was what Mackinder called 'the pivot area' of history. In the post-Columbian age this land power could be harnessed by new technology to reassert its pre-eminence in global politics. The pivot area, subsequently called the Eurasian 'Heartland', was defined as a

Boundary of Mackinder's Pivot Area (1904)

Figure 6

••••••Boundary of additions to create Mackinder's Heartland (1919)

Mackinder's definitions of land power

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

127

strategic land fortress within the 'World Island' (Eurasia plus Africa) beyond the reach of the sea power (Figure 6). It is this Heartland that, in Cold War terms after 1945, could be equated with the USSR. It is important to note the original date of the Mackinder thesis. The early years of this century were times when Britain remained the leading world power but her relative decline was widely recognized. Mackinder was one of many leading British academics and politicians of the time who were concerned with this decline (Parker, 1985, 28). He promoted imperial unity and tariff reform to produce a British Empire economic bloc as a means of stemming decline. It is in this political atmosphere that the Heartland thesis must be considered: Mackinder and his listeners were fully aware that he was not dealing in hypothetical cases when he spoke of insular powers joining to oppose the expansion of the pivot-area power. Throughout most of the nineteenth century Britain had opposed Russian attempts at expansion in the areas of the Turkish Straits, Iran, the central Asian approaches to India and China. (Hall, 1955,110) What Mackinder achieved, therefore, in 1904 was a geographical codification of the 'Great Game', the military stand-off between the British and Russian Empires in Asia which Edwardes (1975) revealingly terms the 'Victorian Cold War'. The connection from this 1904 academic society meeting to the midtwentieth century Cold War is not a particularly direct one, however. Almost as soon as Mackinder had proposed his thesis, the Russian threat subsided with their defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. Subsequently Russia allied with Britain, bringing together two major sea and land powers against the middle threat on land and sea of Germany. In fact before the advent of the Cold War the only time the sea power versus land power alignment occurred was in the last year of the First World War when the USSR had withdrawn from the conflict. The Grand Alliance of the Second World War repeated this sea power-land power alliance so that in his final world model Mackinder (1943) effectively abandoned the 'Great Game' framework (Hall, 1955,120) to provide a one world scenario centred on the 'Big Three'. This last statement of Mackinder's has always been a disappointment to his supporters in the Cold War. W.H. Parker, one of Mackinder's biographers, describes it thus: The Round World and the Winning of the Peace is often described as his 'third statement' of the Heartland idea. However, it was not a spontaneous essay, but written on the insistence of others: he was now 82 years old, and writing in the midst of the confusion of a great war. (Parker, 1982,143) When not a prophet of Cold War, it seems that Mackinder is dismissed as a senile dupe of US idealists! In fact Mackinder's final foray into the geopolitical minefield was entirely in keeping with the US geopolitics of the period. In reaction to German geopolitics, geopolitics became 'something of a national fascination' in the USA during the Second World War which Parker (1985, 102) refers to as

128

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

'the age of "barbershop geopolitics" '. Parker (1985) has described the debates between realist and idealist US political geographers at this time and the only thing they all seemed to have agreed about was the necessity to continue the Grand Alliance after the war. In other words, this first US geopolitics was in no way a direct harbinger of Cold War geopolitics. Mackinder's Heartland thesis became relatively well known but was not interpreted as pointing towards a need to 'contain' the USSR. This would suggest that it was not formal geopolitics that informed the trend towards the Cold War but rather informal geopolitics such as Bevin's 'two arms of the bear' model and, of course, Churchill's 'Iron Curtain'. George Kennan has confirmed to Stephen Jones (1955, 497) that he developed his containment concept completely independently of the Heartland thesis despite the superficial similarities in spatial configuration. Rather, Kennan's analysis was a US interpretation of traditional informal British geopolitics. As Anderson (1981, 108) describes the situation: [Britain] had been containing Russia since the Congress of Vienna. Churchill's military and diplomatic aims since 1943 were an application of [the containment] concept. The British did not call it containment but 'holding the line'. Geopolitically, therefore, the making of the Cold War reduces to a resurrection of Britain's 'Great Game' but with a new team captain. If the Heartland thesis was not crucial in our 'long 1945', how does this formal geopolitics fit into our story? Sloan (1988, x-xii) has recently suggested 'three types of link' between geopolitical theories and strategic policy. First, the 'fundamentalist' link is where there is a direct connection between formal geopolitics and policy. Second, the 'perceptual' link is where geopolitical theory indirectly influences decision-making through a general knowledge that 'moulds' the actions of policy-makers. Third, there is the possibility of no link, that is to say formal geopolitics has no role to play in the decision-making although it may be a 'convenient way to justify political decisions taken on other grounds' (Sloan, 1988, xii). Which of these situations exists will vary over time as Sloan tries to show for US strategic policy between 1890 and 1987. For the early Cold War period Walters (1974) has posited a fundamentalist link arguing that the West's nuclear deterrent was premised on neutralizing the 'naturally' superior 'Heartland' location of the USSR. His sources all refer to the period slightly after our transition, however, when we have argued that the Cold War was already in place. Sloan (1988, 129-31) seems to favour a perceptual link in the making of US containment strategy but again he begins where our transition ends. However we have already noted that Kennan claims independence from Mackinder's ideas for his containment concept. Hence while acknowledging the difficulty of distinguishing between a perceptual link and no link, we will develop the latter position. This is not necessarily to devalue the influence of Mackinder. Rather we will argue that he is important in the output of policy and not for the input: the Cold War generated a new Mackinder-like thesis rather than Mackinder's theory creating Cold War strategy. This interpretation remains consistent with

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

129

Walters (1974) post-transition sources. Let us now trace how Mackinder achieved his exalted Cold War prominence. One of the ironies of Mackinder's success is that he posited land power versus sea power just before the advent of air power. Hence, there has been much debate in political geography on the relevance of the Heartland concept in modern circumstances of warfare. Parker (1985, 126-31) reviews the range of options and concludes that The Heartland concept, in one form or another, had proved sufficientlyflexibleto survive into the new age of aeroplanes, nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. (1985,131) This has been achieved largely by demoting the Heartland's status as a 'fortress' and re-evaluating its vast resource potential (Hall, 1955,125). But most important of all has been the usefulness of the geographical model in Western propaganda terms. Parker (1985,135) refers to the Heartland idea as moving 'from the rational towards the irrational' encompassing 'an almost mystical aura'. It provided a geographical confrontation framework to complement the Iron Curtain imagery; the Heartland was the threat that lay behind the curtain. In this way Mackinder's model could become the geographical basis for the new world order and come to be incorporated into the geopolitical codes of an era. Parker (1985, 133) presents the case well: Perhaps the truth is that it is not so much its real attributes which account for its persistence as its role in the international scene as perceived from the West since World War IL From the late 1940s this had come to be dominated by the global confrontation of the two antagonistic superpowers, and the Heartland theory took on a new lease of life in this context. At a time when it was again coming under strong, and frequently disapproving scrutiny by political geographers, it was seized upon as a method of giving a new explanatory dimension to the world scene. Hence formal geopolitics was to be used only after the formation of the Cold War. It gave geopolitical meaning to the anti-communist mobilization. This is confirmed, in a negative way, by the documents used in this research. In Britain, at least, there is no evidence of Mackinder-style language in the Foreign Office documents of the 'long 1945', despite the numerous anti-Soviet statements. At this time it would seem that the USSR and Heartland were not linked in the minds of policymakers. By 1948, however, in Bevin's famous memorandum entitled 'The threat to world civilization', we are informed that the Russians were aiming for 'physical control of the whole World Island' (Bartlett, 1984, 274). By 1949, according to Bartlett (1984, 294), Mackinder-style language was becoming common in both London and Washington. The Cold War was solidly in place and accompanying it was a formal geopolitical model dreamt up in another world but now so appropriate for spatially rationalizing the new world order. If formal geopolitics has a post-hoc role in Cold War strategy how can we

130

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

account for the geostrategic continuity from Britain's nineteenth century 'Great Game' to the USA's twentieth century Cold War? Quite simply we have to look beyond strategic patterns to the material basis of both geopolitics. The continuity is to be found in their common requirements as global hegemonic powers. Laisez passer in an open world-economy was the aim of both. 'Holding the line' and 'containment' in their different ways came to express the geographical limits of the two hegemonic projects. This, in most general terms, accounts for why the USA, whose anti-imperialism has always been more important in rhetoric than action (Williams, 1980), could so easily fit in alongside Britain as world policeman. Mackinder appears in the stories of both hegemonic projects but he most certainly cannot be indicted for either. A case of post-hegemonic trauma? Ernest Bevin has had an extraordinary good press. Even while still in office the influential Observer newspaper described him as a 'great' Foreign Secretary (Bullock, 1983, 72). His biographer lists a wide range of political tributes to Bevin (Bullock, 1983, 91-6) and to his Foreign Office officials he was 'a big man doing a big job' (Bullock, 1983, 109). Within a year of his death a short biography appeared entitled 'Ernest Bevin: Portrait of a Great Englishman', to which Attlee provided a preface to assure readers that 'He was a very great man' (Williams, 1952, 7). Bullock (1983, 857) concludes his mammoth three-volume biography with the quotation that includes 'He was a great Englishman', to which he adds 'There are no words which better sum up his career.' Of course, Bevin had his contemporary critics especially on the Left, as we have seen, and his contributions to Britain's foreign policy have continued to be criticized from that quarter (Saville, 1984). But from our perspective the most interesting debate is that between the traditionalists and revisionists in the Cold War historiography that we introduced in Chapter two. In this context Bevin is undoubtably 'the Cold Warrior's Cold Warrior'. As early as February 1946 US Right-wing politicians wanted to 'swap' the British Foreign Secretary for their 'soft' Secretary of State James Byrnes (Anderson, 1981,108-9). Bevin's good press, therefore, is itself a feature of the Cold War and the initial domination of the traditionalists in its historiography. To the revisionists, on the other hand, Bevin and the Labour government are indicted for failing properly to equate Britain's world role with its economic resources: Britain's dilemmas in the post-war world stemmed from an inability of its leaders to make clear strategic choices about the relative importance of the traditional world role, as against modernization of society and the economy. (Gamble, 1981, 102) According to Blank (1977) there was no serious attempt to cost the dual

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

131

commitments of the post-war Labour government both to building a welfare state and maintaining a global role. The result was Britain's notorious 'stop-go' economy which accelerated the country's relative economic decline. As Gamble (1981, 112-3) has pointed out, Britain's military burden after the Second World War was greater, in relative terms, than in the mid-nineteenth century when she was the undisputed world leader. This was of concern to Keynes, as we reported in Chapter 6. The list of military commitments in 1945-6 was quite remarkable: first, military occupation of Indo-China, Indonesia, north Italy, the British zone in Germany, Libya, Greece, Syria, Lebanon and Iran plus large garrisons in Egypt and Palestine and other imperial needs (Dockrill, 1988, 22; Groom, 1974, 23); and, second, treaties with potential military commitments with Portugal, Iraq, Egypt, TransJordan, Turkey, Iran, the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Belgium, the USA and Ethiopia (Lewis, 1988, 368-9). And yet, after Keynes, there was no serious costing of this great effort. It was Bevin, above all, who saw to it that 'The Foreign Office view of Britain's place in the world prevailed' (Gamble, 1981,112). The result was that unlike its economic rivals, apart from the USA, the British economy has had to service a world role that in the end it could not sustain. But this was certainly not just a Foreign Office view. To the Treasury this overseas expenditure was considered necessary to provide for a world in which the economy could prosper and expand. Hence, with the USA, Britain was guaranteeing political stability and liberal economic conditions across the world. Bullock (1983, 84-7) picks up this argument in his defence of Bevin: Far from agreeing therefore that Bevin saddled Britain with a world role she could not sustain, I suggest that what he did was to provide his successors with the indispensable basis of security in the Western Alliance on which they could then proceed to make whatever adjustments were necessary and to adopt such options as entry into Europe and withdrawal from the Middle East and from east of Suez. Leaving aside the possible circularity that Bevin contributed to the insecurity for which he provided a solution, this does not answer the question as to why Britain had to take such a role in the post-war world and hence disadvantaged itself with competitors. One answer is that Bevin's solutions operated successfully in the courte àuree at the expense of Britain in the moyenne àuree. This certainly seems to be the case, but still it does not begin to explain how such a myopic set of policies, generally popular and carried out by such a 'great' Foreign Secretary, could have so easily been slotted into place yet have such disastrous consequences. We need to move away from events to look at the real nature of Britain's moyenne àuree about 1945. As well as being 'great', Williams (1952,9) emphasizes that Bevin was 'a representative Englishman'. What did this mean in the mid-twentieth century? Four years earlier the Observer had portrayed Bqvin as 'a working class John Bull' (Bullock, 1983, 82). Whatever else John Bull was, he most certainly was not ordinary. John Bull had come to symbolize Britain's world

132

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

role. The point is that Britain's foreign policy in 1945 would have had to maintain the aura of a great power no matter who was in charge. Certainly the making of the Cold War was not the only way that this could be achieved, but the promotion of a 'little England' policy was never a possibility. International commitments were part and parcel of what Britain was about. In hindsight we can see that 1945 fits into a broader picture of British politicians grappling with the economic and political decline of their country. The American loan debate which we described in Chapter six, for example, should be viewed as one of a series of such key Parliamentary debates about policies designed to re-establish Britain's economic competitiveness in the world. In 1903 there was the tariff reform debate, in 1932 the imperial preferences debate, and, after the debate we have described, in 1972 there was the European Community debate. All four debates are about how the British state is to relate to the rest of the world. To make the tasks of the politicians particularly difficult they all had the legacy of Britain's hegemony with which to contend. Britain's nineteenth-century role as world leader, and the early twentieth-century position as the greatest Empire in the world, had produced a particular set of public expectations that no politician would be able to satisfy. The general problem is that the particular roles that a country maps out in its relations with the rest of the world-economy will continue to be pursued even after their original functions have objectively ceased. Such past roles are a concern to foreign policy-makers in all countries, but the more exalted and distinctive the role the greater its legacy. There can be nothing more exalted than hegemony and hence Britain's nineteenth-century legacy was the greatest of twentiethcentury burdens. In short, Britain has spent the twentieth-century suffering from post-hegemonic trauma (Taylor, 1989b). The major symptom of this affliction is a failure of both public and politicians to face up to the full implications of their reduced status in the world. Clinging on to the vestiges of world power is to look backwards at the expense of the future. The problem for the post-hegemonic state is that its future cannot be adequately scrutinized from its recent past. Rather, a creative leap of imagination is required to break out of the hegemonic assumptions. This was not forthcoming in 1945, despite the fact that as a crucial turning point, a year of geopolitical transition, it offered particular opportunities for such a change. Instead, as we have seen, the dilemmas were generally universally interpreted as dangers to 'traditional British interests'. How does the 'trauma' operate, in general terms, to weaken a state? To begin with a hegemonic power incurs the additional cost of 'running the world' because it understands that it will make a net gain from the arrangements it is able to impose on others. Hence this hegemonic 'selfsacrifice' is in reality self-interest although it is, as we have previously noted, masked under a language of universality. For a country caught in a posthegemonic trauma, however, it contributes to the 'hegemonic self-sacrifice' - it remains a global policeman - but without fully reaping the benefits. In

QUESTIONS OF CONCERN

133

fact it provides for the conditions in which its rivals prosper. For Britain after 1945 this meant a second round of its rivals 'catching up and overtaking'. Thefirstround was during its initial hegemonic decline before the First World War. This was compounded after the Second World War in very clear post-hegemonic circumstances that saw Britain tumble down the economic league table after 1950 to become 'the sick man of Europe'. But the hegemonic illusions are never easily wiped away. As late as 1964 Prime Minister Harold Wilson could state that 'we are a world power and a world influence or we are nothing'. (Taylor, 1989b) After further traumatic troubles, a decade later Frankel (1974, 582) thought that 'it seems likely that Britain's power position has now decisively stopped being unique'. Had Britain learned, at last, to be 'ordinary'? Alas no, as 1982 and the Falklands/ Malvinas campaign was to illustrate clearly. Finally, therefore, if we wish to provide a defence for Bevin it is simply that he followed the same line as all other Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries in the twentieth century in trying to maintain Britain's world role with dwindling resources. His problem was that at the 'turning point' when he came to power he was surprisingly successful in a position of overt reduced status. The paradox of this 'great Englishman' is that he was too successful in the courte àuree for his country's good in the moyenne àuree.

Chapter 10

The salience of the geopolitical transition concept

History can only be written about the present and the future. When we analyse historical situations that are presumed to have occurred prior to the instant analysis, we are speaking to the metaphysical question, where are we? We are writing of the present. When we analyse the instantaneous historical situation in which wefindourselves, we are making guesses about the likely trajectory of social life. We are thus speaking to the metaphysical question, where will we be? and where would we like to be. We are then writing of the future. (Wallerstein, 1984c, 3) We began this final Part Four of the book with a question about fairy stories. The last chapter tried to allay readers fears on this account; this chapter proceeds on the assumption that we have indeed produced something more than a fairy tale. But such stories are at least entertaining, what use is our more solid narrative? Groom (1974, ii) is very clear on this: 'the major value of historical research lies in what it can reveal about the present and the future'. It is in this spirit that our final discussion is composed. It is, of course, no coincidence that our story of a geopolitical transition has been written just as we seem to be approaching another such transition. The important events of 1989 seem set fair to make it another of this century's key dates, a turning point to where we do not yet know. In one sense therefore this book is as much about the 1980s, and groping our way towards the 1990s, as it is about the 1940s. All our ideas about the present and the future can only take the form of historical analogies since all our experience is captured in our history. The question that arises is therefore, whether our concept of geopolitical transition, and its specific application to the long 1945, is useful for understanding our current international predicaments. In what ways can our interpretation of Britain and the Cold War be of relevance today? Having survived the 'Second Cold War' (Halliday, 1983) with its virulent New Right vulgar geopolitical renewal (Dalby, 1990) - US geopolitics out of the barbershop, as it were - the advent of President Gorbachev seems to have cut the ground from under the Western hardline Cold Warriors. The Cold War might not yet be dead but it has 'melted' to a degree that goes beyond the mere detente of the 1970s. Today the basic assumptions of the

THE SALIENCE OF THE GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION CONCEPT

135

Cold War geopolitical world order are coming under scrutiny as never before. As I am writing these words, a thousand miles away in Warsaw a non-communist government is being formed for the first time for nearly half a century; and with the blessing of the communist Polish President and presumably of the USSR. Here is a classic case of a recent 'unthinkable' becoming actuality, a sure sign of a world in flux. Furthermore by the time this chapter is being made ready for the printers even the Berlin Wall, the ultimate symbol of the Cold War, has been breached. Nobody can seriously doubt that we are now in the midst of another geopolitical transition. In this contemporary situation, history without hindsight as Braudel would say, we are experiencing a cascade of events about which it is difficult to make proper sense. To have any chance of understanding we have fo move beyond the courte àuree and consider the longer time spans as contexts for our present. This was very much on President Reagan's mind when he left office in January 1989. When asked what he wished to be remembered for he eschewed particular events to claim that 'we won the Cold War'. Whether we agree with this assessment depends on who his 'we' are. If defined, as I am sure the ex-President intended, as the USA, then we may demur and suggest Japan as a far more likely winner; but if we think in terms of 'West', then equally clearly the communist threat has faltered and 'market forces' have prevailed. This means that a particular structural challenge to the longue àuree, the building of an alternative civilization to capitalism, is no more. Although recently there may still have been debates about this matter (Chase-Dunn, 1982), today little doubt remains that we all live in one capitalist world-economy which incorporates the Communist countries. This has recently been celebrated as afinalvictory of 'freedom' in the form of liberal democracy heralding 'the end of history' in the sense that fundamental conflicts will no longer occur (Fukuyama, 1989). This is a classic cold warrior's interpretation of the end of the Cold War relying as it does on the original 'great contest' rhetoric of the clash of civilizations. If, on the other hand, we see through the Cold War ideology to find just the latest geopolitical world order after 1945 then we can bring our discussion down to moyenne àuree terms. The 'threat to civilization' might have been what made the changes after the Second World War seem so special and hence ease popular mobilizations, but in reality the Cold War geopolitical world order was always a phenomenon of the moyenne àuree. The geopolitical transition at the end of the Second World War, therefore, can be viewed as one of several such episodes that separate distinctive and different world orders. Its usefulness as an historical analogy should be assessed first of all in terms of its similarities anà differences with previous transitions. This is the subject-matter of the first section of the chapter. Our ideas from this discussion then become the input for the second section that considers the evidence for, and nature of, the geopolitical transition we may expect in the 1990s. In the final section we speculate on what new geopolitical world order might emerge from that transition.

136

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

The previous transition The participants in the conferences to design the post-war order in 1945 naturally looked back to 1919 and Versailles as the events against which their actions would be compared. The peace created after the First World War was a false peace; Versailles was a failure, hence the Second World War. In 1945, therefore, the main concern was to avoid the mistakes of the last generation of politicians and diplomats who met to design a new postwar world. With the benefit of hindsight, however, Edmonds (1986, 1) has suggested that this contemporary comparison was actually rather less apt than that between Potsdam and the Congress of Vienna some 130 years earlier. This 'downgrading' of the 1919 Peace Conference is now rather common. Both Modelski (1987) and Wallerstein (1984b) lump the First World War and the Second World War together as one long conflict - the German wars - in world-systems terms so that 1919 becomes merely the beginning of a wartime interlude rather than a peace. We followed this approach in Chapter one by designating nearly all the first half of the twentieth century as the geopolitical world order of the British succession with no break in 1919. Here we elaborate this argument in terms of geopolitical transitions. Edmonds (1986) chooses 1814-15 for his alternative comparison to 1945 because it also marked the end of a great war. We do not, however, have to limit our identification of geopolitical transitions to the conclusions of major wars. Although early post-war conditions may be highly fluid, it does not mean that the politicians in this scene will successfully create a new world order. They palpably failed in 1919 but succeeded in 1814-15 and, eventually, in the 'long 1945'. Hence, we can accept the salience of Edmonds's comparison but without its limitations. There will be other periods of fluidity and profound changes that may follow less than major wars or no wars at all. The beginnings of the world order of the British succession are just such a transition. The century of 'long peace' that followed the Congress of Vienna was organized through an informal institution called the 'Concert of Europe' whereby major European powers met irregularly to maintain the political stability of Europe (Holbraad, 1970). This international arrangement was initially premised upon two factors - a relatively even distribution of power among the major states in Europe, and a geographical limitation of its operations to a defined area covering Europe alone (Langhorne, 1981, 4-5). The first assumption was severely disrupted by the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 and by the end of the century the global nature oi international politics, especially rivalries in the Far East, had undermined the second assumption. It was in this general context that Britain found it necessary to re-evaluate its foreign policies as the new century pawned. At the beginning of the century the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, continued to operate the so-called 'free hand' policy that avoided involving Britain in any foreign alliances. Threats to Britain's security were still largely viewed as they had been throughout the nineteenth century with

THE SALIENCE OF THE GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION CONCEPT

137

France and Russia as the perceived enemies (Bartlett, 1984, 41.) But the Boer War had heightened concern for the increased vulnerability of Britain as its long decline began. As well as rivalries with France in Africa and Russia in Central Asia, two new regional powers had emerged in East Asia (Japan) and the Americas (the USA) which were potentially even greater threats. But above all, since the unification of Germany in 1871, Britain's ability to balance powers to its own advantage in Europe had gone. At the turn of the century therefore, the Empire had never looked so vulnerable and the free hand policy so untenable. It was this situation, of course, which stimulated Mackinder's original geopolitical model discussed in the previous chapter. In general the time was ripe for a British reassessment of its relationship with the rest of the world and this was to generate the geopolitical transition. We can broadly date the outside range of the transition in the changing British attitude to the Berlin-Bagdad railway. In 1901 the project was welcomed as a obstacle to Russian ambitions in the Middle East; by 1907 the railway was considered a threat because it represented expanding German influence in the region (Bartlett, 1984, 42 and 52.) What happened between these dates was nothing less than 'a diplomatic revolution' (Kennedy, 1987, 252) that produced 'a rigidification of alliance blocs' (Kennedy, 1987, 249) that were to last through most of the first half of the century. The early signs appear in 1902 with, for instance, the British Admiralty's first expressions of concern over the expansion of the German fleet and the motives that lay behind it (Bartlett, 1984, 42.) In that year Britain signed a defence alliance with Japan, so ending its traditional free hand policy. But in early 1904 France is still viewed as a potent foe so much so that The improvements in Anglo-French relations was sudden and took everyone, especially the Germans, by surprise' (Bartlett, 1984, 44). The Anglo-French Entente - what Langhorne (1981, 85) calls 'the first "impossible" agreement' - was signed that year. There was still confusion in the ranks of the British Chiefs of Staff, however. Whereas the army paid little attention to Germany in its war planning before 1905, in the winter of 1904-5 the Admiralty redeployed its Mediterranean fleet to Gibraltar to be available for duties in either the Mediterranean or the North Sea (Bartlett, 1984, 45). By 1905 Germany was the main enemy. In the meantime Russia had been demoted from first-rank status by her defeat by Japan. This smoothed the way for the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 - what Langhorne (1981, 93) calls 'the second "impossible" agreement' - thus setting into place the European alliance system that was to confront Germany through most of the two world wars. All these diplomatic moves by Britain were means by which different parts of the global Empire were secured, leaving Britain to face the main continental danger without over-commitment overseas (Gilpin, 1981, 1967.) This began with the Anglo-American rapprochement of 1901 where Britain conceded its position to the USA in disputes in Central America and Alaska. The alliance with Japan helped secure the Asian Empire. The Entente with France settled African rivalries with Britain supporting France

138

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

in Morocco in exchange for confirmed dominance in Egypt. Finally, the Russian Entente secured British spheres of influence in southern Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Behind all this diplomatic activity there was the fear of Germany as the former great continental power turned towards Weltpolitik. This was most provocatively expressed by the German Emperor in terms of the new century becoming the 'German Century' (Kennedy, 1987,252.) And this, of course, is what it was all about. Although we know now that history had the 'American Century' in store for us, by 1907 the rigidity of the alliance system meant that a new world order had emerged that was to prepare the way for the 'succession to Britain'. What were similarities and differences between this transition and the one we have detailed? The most obvious similarity is the rapidity with which new allies are created out of old enemies. The crucial elements of the diplomatic revolution at the beginning of the century occurred in 1904-5, a period similar in length to our 'long 1945'. Although contemporaries may not realize the full implications of their actions, in hindsight we can see that in both cases the world was being recast to dominate the lives of future generations. The second similarity follows from the first —. the final outcome when viewed across the whole transition is quite surprising. The AngloFrench-Russian Entente was as unthinkable in 1900 as NATO was in 1940. These two features seem, to me, to be very profound lessons to be applied to analysis of our contemporary situation. The differences between the two transitions are equally interesting. The most obvious is the ideological mobilization for the Cold War which has no equivalent in the earlier transition. In fact there was a premonition of such concern in 1907 when liberal opinion was not totally satisfied with the British Liberal government allying with the most autocratic regime in Europe (Bartlett, 1984,52). Subsequently the First World War was portrayed by the Allies as a crusade for freedom (including Tsarist Russia and before the entry of the USA) but this never reached the ideological intensity of either the Second World War or the Cold War. The 1904-5 transition was in fact much more in keeping with the traditions of 'high politics' whereby state security overrode all other considerations. Hence, in 1907 British liberals had to accept the necessity of a Russian alliance for combatting the main enemy, Germany. We will not describe other transitions here (see the brief descriptions in Taylor, 1989a), but both in 1814-15 and in 1870-1 transitions can be identified which were much more like 1904-05 than our 'long 1945'. In this sense the transition we have studied is exceptional and this should be borne in mind in considering the contemporary situation. We may expect the return of high politics without ideological encumbrances. Ideological fracture and a new transition Wallerstein (1988) views the Cold War at the ideological level as the culmination of the nineteenth-century intellectual battle between liberals and Marxists. Both streams of thought were rich and varied up to the point

THE SALIENCE OF THE GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION CONCEPT

139

when they became the competitive doctrines of a bi-polar world. In the Cold War the ideologies have been revised to become highly simplified, dogmatic and intolerant and hence extremely brittle. Without the flexibility necessary for adaption to changing circumstances, the ideological certainties have become practical absurdities. The result has been ideological fractures in the Cold War which have exposed it as being of the moyenne durée rather than of the longue durée as its devotees had so virulently proclaimed. Evidence for the fractures have cumulated to become overwhelming. The two key dates are usually taken to be 1956 and 1968 for the communist bloc and Western world respectively (Wallerstein, 1988). In 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow, Stalin's crimes were exposed; in 1968 throughout all Western countries worker and student rebellions undermined the liberal consensus. Although very different in many ways, both events legitimated a scepticism that would be vital in later years. In this sense, therefore, they broke the ideological mobilization of the early postwar years. The Cold War could never again be as simple as the Cold Warriors asserted. These ideological movements do not occur in a material vacuum, of course. Towards the end of the 1960s the long 'post-war boom' came to an end as the world-economy moved from an A-phase to a B-phase of slower growth. B-phases are always periods of economic reshuffling, geographically and by sectors, with concomitant social stress and political responses. All this was clearly true of the 1970s and 1980s. It is in this context that the scepticism could be translated into political movements. Although these movements were initially controlled by US-Soviet detente, the 'second Cold War' of the early 1980s precipitated major resistance to Cold War assumptions in both East and West. Eastern dissidents and 'prodemocracy' groups and Western anti-nuclear and 'green' groups are both, in their different ways, expressions of the ideological fracture in the Cold War. At the inter-state level the first important fracture was the break between the USSR and the People's Republic of China and the latter's accommodation with the USA in 1971. But much more significant is the end of US hegemony with the A-phase so that the B-phase represents the beginnings of US relative decline. This means that in the B-phase the key contests are likely to be 'West-West' as Kaldor (1979) first called them. Wallerstein (1984a, 63) concurs: The most difficult issues that confront US policy makers in the coming decades are neither East-West issues (notwithstanding Afghanistan) or North-South issues (notwithstanding Iran). Rather they are West-West issues that are based on the great economic and therefore political threat of the two significant US rivals, western Europe and Japan. The degree to which West-West issues move to centre stage on the world agenda is a direct measure of the erosion of the Cold War geopolitical world order. Recent events confirm this position. To the degree that the end of the Cold War represents a victory for the 'West', it follows that the new world

140

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

order will have to be carved out of the West. Let us now speculate on what form this might take. What future geopolitical world order? Given our previous identification of 'surprise' as being an important characteristic of geopolitical transition, to speculate about a future world order may seem particularly foolhardy. But, of course, the surprises are already upon us. In fact given the certainties of the Cold War itself, the very fact that geopolitical change is widely discussed is itself the big surprise for all Cold Warriors. There is now a large literature that attempts to chart ways through to the future from our present uncertainties. In this final discussion I will describe four future scenarios identified by Inoguchi (1989) and relate them to our previous arguments. The simplest scenario is a continuation of US hegemony, what Inoguchi (1989) calls pax Americana, phase II. There are several authors who have cast doubt on the ending of US hegemony (Russett, 1985; Strange, 1987) by pointing out that the USA is still by far the largest economy and the greatest political power in the world. This argument misses the point about hegemony, however. Hegemony is much more than relative power; hegemony involves widespread acceptance of leadership built upon undisputed material primacy. This the USA has lost. Can it be regained? Certainly Modelski (1987) implies this if the USA can build a second 'American century' just as he believes Britain has had two 'centuries' of world leadership in the past. Certainly the 'second Cold War' and Reagan's anticommunist rhetoric reminded the world that politically the USA remained indisputably number one. But this did not alter the fact that contemporary USA represents a classic case of what Kennedy (1987) has termed 'imperial overstretch' in the sense that domestic resources and overseas commitments are badly out of balance. This is, of course, a symptom of the posthegemonic situation. The example of Britain hanging on to vestiges of its past greatness well after its material base could support such a policy does not augur well for the USA extricating itself from its current dilemmas and building a new US-led world. The second scenario is a return to a more pluralistic world in the aftermath of US hegemony. This is Inoguchi's (1989) pax Consortis, and broadly coincides with what Gilpin (1987, 366) refers to as 'the need for pluralistic leadership'. The search for this world order has been going on since President Nixon identified a pentarchy of world powers in 1971: the USA, the USSR, China, Japan and Western Europe. Historically the portents for this scenario are equally as pessimistic as for the first. The demise of British hegemony did not generate any such international co-operation but rather witnessed the drift into economic and political blocs. This is the great fear behind the West-West conflicts. Both US economic arrangements with Canada and Mexico and economic developments in the European Community can be interpreted as regional bloc formation in response to

THE SALIENCE OF THE GEOPOLITICAL TRANSITION CONCEPT

141

Japanese economic penetration. Of course, the world is much more integrated than a century or so ago, but when we watch even the limited G7 group (the USA, Japan, Britain, West Germany, France, Italy and Canada) fail to provide any semblance of world 'capitalist' leadership then we can see we are clearly a long way from global co-operative institution to replace US hegemony. The world moves more rapidly today than in the past. Therefore our paired-Kondratieff model of Chapter one may be adjusted to allow for a rapid movement into a new hegemonic era. Inoguchi (1989) refers to this as pax Nipponica. Certainly all the material evidence in terms of production efficiencies, commercial expansion and growing financial dominance points to Japan as the next hegemonic power. But such extrapolation from the past can be extremely naive. Gilpin (1987, 378), in particular, argues that the Japanese economy requires a major restructuring before it can assume any sort of leadership role in the world: Export-led growth is no basis for dominating the world-economy. In addition, there is the related question of geographical scale. Hegemonic states have become gradually larger as the world-economy has expanded. It is unlikely that medium-sized Japan can take over the role of continental-size USA. But here we have a hint for the most likely scenario. Inoguchi (1989) proposes a completely new type of world order for his fourth scenario called Bigemony. Its alternative name 'Amerippon' identifies it as the joint leadership of the world-economy by the USA and Japan. This extrapolates current co-operative projects between US and Japanese corporations to produce an integrated economy with the most advanced research and development ensuring joint economic leadership well into the twenty-first century. The main loser in such an arrangement would be Western Europe. Wallerstein (1988) considered that this might provide the outside shock to draw back the Iron Curtain from across Europe. In the event this has happened through internal popular movements within Eastern Europe in 1989. The end result is the same: a possible new bi-polar world with a reinvigorated Europe facing a rival power bloc centred on the Pacific Rim (the USA-Japan-China). Only with this arrangement will Western Europe be able to confront US-Japanese bigemony on approximately equal terms. Whether such an economic bi-polar world would be as stable as its political bi-polar Cold War predecessor cannot be predicted. The fourth scenario fits into the ideological fracture route to geopolitical transition. Both economic blocs include 'capitalist' and 'communist' countries and Wallerstein (1988) does not envisage any need for changes in ideological allegiances. The new arrangement does not require a Soviet takeover of Western Europe or any collapse of communist China, for instance. Hence, this new world order would make an ideological nonsense in terms of Cold War assumptions and, in fact, of the longer term liberalMarxist 'competition of the progressives' dating from the nineteenth century. It would be in Wallerstein's (1988) terms 'a theatre of the absurd'. But such productions are the raison d'etre of geopolitical transitions: this

142

PART FOUR: DISCUSSION

new world would just seem to be that more ridiculous because of the particular ideological emphasis of the previous geopolitical production. In Wallerstein's version'of this final scenario the major industrial power left out on a limb is Britain (Wallerstein, 1984a, 67). With the global dividing line shifting to the Atlantic, Britainfinallyhas to make the choice between Europe and her wider interests. Wallerstein predicts Britain will stay with the USA but, despite British support in the US bombing of Libya for instance, the economic signs are that Britain will become integrated into the European Community after 1992. Once this has happened the Atlantic political option will have been cut off and Britain may at last be able to settle down to ordinary status within the wider European bloc. But this is all speculation, remember. Certainly, the power associated with the two great nuclear arsenals of the USA and USSR are not easily accommodated. In fact the worst-case scenario for the USA would be a bigemony with Japan that maintains the current division of labour, leaving the latter with the economic growth and the USA continuing its security duties. One thing we can probably be sure of is that the pentarchy of world powers identified by Richard Nixon will continue as the major focuses of power with no major rivals in the foreseeable future. If this is the case then we must also recognize that allfivehave their geopolitical and geoeconomic dilemmas. There are no smooth futures ahead. Kennedy (1987) has illustrated this in his assessment of the pentarchy. For the USA there is, of course, the imperial overstretch similar in nature to the dilemmas that have faced Britain. For the USSR as challenger the overstretch dilemma seems to be even more acute. It is not surprising, therefore, that these two powers are in relative decline in the pentarchy. For Japan dilemmas arise from its sheer dependence on the rest of the world for maintaining and increasing its status. Hence, on current form it has both the most potential and yet is most vulnerable. Western Europe's dilemmas will centre on the lack of a unified state to direct any international strategy. China's dilemmas are related to her being by far the poorest of the Big Five. She will suffer the acute 'growing pains' associated with the inevitable mismatching of economic performance and political change. The tragic events of 1989 confirm this. Dilemmas galore - that is the world-system as we approach our fin de siede. That is what makes political geography and political studies in general so fascinating at this time just as they were for Halford Mackinder nearly a century ago. Surprises will abound. What if the Japanese Socialist Party can produce the Ernest Bevin of the twentyfirstcentury?...

Bibliography

Adamthwaite, A., 1984, 'Britain & the world, 1945-9: the view from the Foreign Office', International Affairs, 61,223-35. Adler, L.K. and J.G. Paterson, 1970, 'Red Facism: the merger between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American image of totalitarianism, 1930s1950s', American Historical Review, 75,1046-64. Agnew, J. and S. Corbridge, 1989, 'The new geopolitics: the dynamics of geopolitical disorder' in Johnston, R.J. and P.J. Taylor (edr.) A World in Crisis? (Oxford: Blackwell) Anderson, T.H., 1981, The United States, Great Britain and the Cold War 19441947 (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press). Andrews, B., 1984, 'The domestic content of international desire' International organization, 38, 321-7. Baker, A.R.H., 1984, 'Reflections on the relation of historical geography & the Annales school of history' in Baker A.R.H. and D. Gregory (eds), Explorations in Historical Geography (Cambridge: University Press). Barker, E., 1983, The British between the Superpowers 1945-50 (London: Macmillan). Bartlett, C.J., 1984, The Global Conflict, 1880-1970 (London and New York: Longman). Blank, S., 1977, 'Britain: the politics of foreign economic policy and domestic economy, and the problem of pluralist stagnation', International Organization, 31, 673-722. Boulding, K.E., 1956, The Image (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Bowman, 1., 1942, 'Geography versus geopolitics' Geographical Review, 32, 646-58. Bowman, I., 1948, 'The geographical situation of the United States in relation to world polities', Geographical Journal, 112,129-42. Braudel, F., 1980, On History, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Chicago: University Press). Bullen, R. and M.E. Pelly, 1984, Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, Volume I (London: HMSO). Bullen, R. and M.E. Melly, 1985, Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, Volume II (London: HMSO). Bullen, R. and M.E. Pelly, 1986, Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, Volume III (London: HMSO). Bullen, R. and M.E. Pelly, 1987, Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, Volume IV (London: HMSO). Bullock, A., 1983, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary (London: Heinemann). Carr, E.H., 1961, What is History} (London: Macmillan). Chase-Dunn, C.K., 1981, 'Interstate system and capitalist world-economy: one logic or two?' in Hollist, W.L., and J.N. Rosenau (eds), World System Structure (Beverly Hills: Sage).

144

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chase-Dunn, C.H., 1982, Socialist States in the World-System (Beverly Hills: Sage). Cohen, S., 1973, Geography and Politics in a World Divided (New York: Oxford University Press). Cox, R.W., 1981, 'Social forces, states and world orders: beyond international relations theory', Millennium, 12,162-75. Cox, R.W., 1983, 'Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method', Millennium, 10,126-55. Dalby, S., 1990, The Coming of the Second Cold War (London: Pinter). Davis, L.E., 1974, The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict over Eastern Europe (Princeton: University Press). Deighton, A., 1987, 'The "frozen front": the Labour government, the division of Germany and the origins of the cold war, 1945-7', International Affairs, 63, 449-65. Dockrill, M., 1988, British Defence Since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell). Edmonds, R., 1986, Setting the Mould: the United States and Britain, 1945-1950 (New York: Norton). Edwardes, M., 1975, Playing the Great Game: a Victorian Cold War (London: Hamilton). Etzold, T.W., and J.L. Gaddis (eds), 1972, Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy 1943-1950 (New York: Columbia University Press). Fawcett, C.B., 1949, 'Life Lines of the British Empire', in Weigert, H.W., Stefansson, V. and R.E. Harrison (eds), New Compass of the World (London: George G. Harrap). Fletcher, R., 1984, Revisionism and Empire: Social Imperialism in Germany, 18971914 (London: George Allen & Unwin). Foot, M., 1975, Aneurin Bevan, Volume 2 (London: Paladin). Frankel, J., 1974, 'Britain's changing role', International Affairs, 50, 574-83. Fukuyama, F., 1989, 'The end of history?', National Interest, 16, 3-18. Gaddis, J.L., 1972, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, (New York and London: Columbia University Press). Gaddis, J.L., 1982, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press). Gaddis, J.L., 1987, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press). Gallup, G.H., (ed.), 1976, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls. Great Britain 1937-1975, Volume One: 1937-1961 (New York: Random). Galtung, J., 1979, The True Worlds (New York: Free Press). Gamble, A., 1981, Britain in Decline (London: Macmillan). Gardner, R.N., 1980, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press). Gilpin, R., 1981, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: University Press). Gilpin, R., 1987, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: University Press). Goldstein, J.S., 1988, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press). Gordon, M.R., 1969, Conflict and Consensus in Labour's Foreign Policy, 19141965 (Stanford: University Press). Gowing, M., 1974, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945-1952 (London: Macmillan). Graham, J., 1970, 'The ego-politics of Nixon', The Spectator, 7423 (3 October 1970), 356. Gray, C.S., 1977, The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartlands, Rimlands and the

BIBLIOGRAPHY

145

Technological Revolution (New York: Crane, Russak). Groom, A.J.R., 1974, British Thinking About Nuclear Weapons (London: Pinter). Hall, A.R., 1955, 'Mackinder and the course of events', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 45,109-26. Hall, P. and P. Preston, 1988, The Carrier Wave: New Information Technology and the Geography of Innovation, 1846-2003 (London: Unwin Hyman). Halliday, F., 1983, The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso). Halliday, F., 1988, Three concepts of internationalism', International Affairs, 64, 187-98. Hansard, 1945a, The Parliamentary Debates, 413 HC DEB 5s (London: Hansard Society). Hansard, 1945b, The Parliamentary Debates, 417 HC DEB 5s (London: Hansard Society). Hansard, 1945c, The Parliamentary Debates, HL5 138 CXXVIII (London: Hansard Society). Harbutt, F.J., 1986, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America and Origins of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press). Harris, K., 1982, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Hathaway, R.M., 1981, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press). Hepple, L., 1986, The revival of geopolitics', Political Geography Quarterly, 5 (Supplement), 21-36. Hill, C., 1981, 'Public opinion and British foreign policy since 1945: research in progress?', Millennium, 10, 53-62. Holbraad, C, 1970, The Concert of Europe (London: Longman). Hollist, W.L., and J.N. Rosenau (eds), 1981, World System Structure (Beverly Hills: Sage). Hopkins, T., 1978, 'World-system analysis: methodological analysis', in Kapan, B.H. (ed.) Social Change in the Capitalist World Economy (Beverly Hills: Sage). Hufton, O., 1986, 'Fernand Braudel', Past and Present, 112, 208-13. Inoguchi, T., 1989, 'Four Japanese scenarios for the future', International Affairs, 65,15-28. Isaacson, W., and E. Thomas, 1986, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World they Made (London: Faber & Faber; New York: Simon & Schuster). James, R.R., 1974, Winston S. Churchill: his Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Volume VII 1943^9 (London: Chelsea House). Jessop, B., 1980, The transformation of the state in post-war Britain', in Scase, R. (ed.), The State in Western Europe (London: Croom Helm). Jones, B., 1977, The Russia Complex: the British Labour Party and the Soviet Union (Manchester: University Press). Jones, S.B., 1955, 'Global strategic views,' Geographical Review, 45, 492-508. Kaldor, M., 1979, The Disintegrating West (London: Penguin). Kelly, P.L., 1986, 'Escalation of regional conflict: testing the shatterbelt concept', Political Geography Quarterly, 5,161-80. Kennan, G., 1967, Memoirs 1925-1950 (New York: Pantheon). Kennedy, P., 1987, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House). Kolko, J., and G. Kolko, 1972, The Limits of Power (New York: Harper & Row). Konrad, G., 1984, Antipolitics (London: Quartet). Labour Party, 1945, Report of the 44th Annual Conference, (London: Labour Party).

146

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Labour Party, 1946, Report of the 45th Annual Conference, (London: Labour Party). Lacoste, Y., 1987, 'The geographical and the geopolitical', in Girot, P. and E. Kofman (eds), International Geopolitical Analysis: a Selection from Herodote (London: Croom Helm). Langhorne, R., 1981, The Collapse of the Concert of Europe (London: Macmillan). Lewis, J., 1988, Changing Direction: British Military Planning for Post-war Strategic Defence, 1942-1947 (London: Sherwood). Lukes, S., 1974, Power: a Radical View (London: Macmillan). Loth, W., 1988, The Division of the World (London: Routledge). Lundestad, G., 1986, 'Empire by invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952', Journal of Peace Research, 23,263-77. McCallum, R.B., and A. Readman, 1947, The British General Election of 1945 (London: Oxford University Press). McCauley, M., 1983, The Origins of the Cold War (London and New York: Longman). Mackinder, H.J., 1904, 'The geographical pivot of history', Geographical Journal, 23, 421-42. Mackinder, H.J., 1919, Democratic Ideals and Reality: a Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London: Constable; New York: Holt). Mackinder, H.J., 1943, 'The round world and the winning of the peace', Foreign Affairs, 21, 595-605. Mandel, E., 1986, 'The role of the individual in history: the case of World War Two', New Left Review, 61-77. Martin, K., 1962, The Crown and the Establishment, (Boston: Little, Brown). Mastny, V., 1979, Russia's Road to the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press). Meinig, D.W., 1956, 'Heartland and rimland in Eurasian history', Western Political Quarterly, 9, 553-69. Merrick, R., 1985, 'The Russia Committee of the British Foreign Office and the Cold War, 1946-47', Journal of Contemporary History, 20, 453-68. Miliband, R., 1972, Parliamentary Socialism, second edition (London: Merlin). Miliband, R., 1980, 'Political action, determinism and contingency' in Zeitlin, M., (ed.), Political Power and Social Theory (Greenwich, Conn.: Jai Press). Miliband, R., and M. Liebman, 1984, 'Reflections on anti-communism', Socialist Register, 1984, 1-22. Modelski, G., 1987, Long Cycles of World Politics, (London: Macmillan). Naylor, J.F., 1969, Labour's International Policy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Northedge, F.S., 1974, Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy, 1945-1973 (London: GAU). O'Loughlin, J. and H. van der Wusten, 1988, 'The political geography of panregions', paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers, (Loughborough). O'Sullivan, P., 1982, 'Antidomino', Political Geography Quarterly, 1, 57-64. Ovendale, R., 1985, The English-speaking Alliance: Britain, and the United States, the Dominions and the Cold War, 1945-1951 (London and Boston: Allen and Unwin). Parker, G., 1985, Western Geopolitical Thought in the Twentieth Century (London: Croom Helm). Parker, W.H., 1982, Mackinder: Geography as Aid to Statecraft (Oxford: Clarendon).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

147

Paterson, J.H., 1986, 'German geopolitics reassessed', Political Geography Quarterly, 6,107-14. Phillips, P.D., and I. Wallerstein, 1986, 'National and world identities and the interstate system', Millennium, 14,159-71. Pimlott, B., 1985, Hugh Dalton (London: Cape). Pimlott, B. (ed) The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918-40, 1945-60 (London: Cape). Range, W., 1959, Franklin D. Roosevelt's World Order (Athens: University of Georgia Press). Research Working Group, 1979, 'Cyclical rhythms and secular trends of the capitalist world-economy: some premises, hypotheses and questions', Review, 2, 483-500. Reynolds, D., 1981, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (London: Europa). Reynolds, D., 1989, 'Rethinking Anglo-American relations', International Affairs, 65,89-111. Rothwell, V., 1982, Britain and the Cold War 1941-1947 (London: Cape). Russett, B., 1985, 'The mysterious case of vanishing hegemony: or is Mark Twain really dead?', International Organization, 39, 207-31. Rustow, D.A., 1967, A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute). Ryan, H.B., 1982, The Vision of Anglo-America (Cambridge: University Press). Saville, J., 1984, 'Ernest Bevin and the Cold War, 1945-1950', Socialist Register 1984,68-100. Schattschneider, E.E., 1960, The Semi-Sovereign People (Chicago: Dryden). Schurmann, F., 1978, 'Selections from The Logic of World Power', in Maier, C.S. (ed.), The Origins of the Cold War and Contemporary Europe (New York: New Viewpoints). Shlaim, A., Jones, P. and K. Sainsbury, 1977, British Foreign Secretaries Since 1945 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles). Sloan, G.R., 1988, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, 1890-1987, (Brighton: Wheatsheaf). Smith, R., 1988, 'A climate of opinion: British officials and the development of British Soviet policy, 1943-47', International Affairs, 65, 631—47. Smith, R., and J. Zametica, 1985, 'The cold warrior: Clement Attlee reconsidered, 1945-7', International Affairs, 61, 237-52. Spykman, N.J., 1944, The Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace). Strange, S., 1987, 'The persistent myth of lost hegemony', International Organization, 41, 551-74. Taylor, P.J., 1982, 'A materialist framework for political geography', Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, N7,15-34. Taylor, P.J., 1984, 'Geographical scale and political geography', in Taylor, P.J. and J.W. House (eds), Political Geography: Recent Advances and Future Directions (London: Croom Helm). Taylor, P.J., 1989a, Political Geography. World-economy, Nation-state and Locality (London and New York: Longman). Taylor, P.J., 1989b, 'Britain's changing role in the world-economy', in Mohan, J. (ed.), The Political Geography of Contemporary Britain (London: Macmillan). Taylor, P.J., 1990, 'Nationalism, internationalism and a "socialist geopolitics"', Antipode. Thomas, H., 1986, Armed Truce. The Beginnings of the Cold War, (London:

148

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hamish Hamilton). Thompson, D., 1965, England in the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin). Thompson, E.P., 1987, 'The rituals of emnity', in Smith, D. and E.P. Thompson (eds), Prospectus for a Habitable Planet (London: Penguin). O'Tuathail, G., and J. Agnew, 19&7, 'Geopolitical order and domesticated space: towards a critical historiography of American geopolitics', paper presented to International Studies Conference, Washington, DC. Wallerstein, I., 1983, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso). Wallerstein, I., 1984a, The Politics of the World-Economy (Cambridge: University Press). Wallerstein, I., 1984b, 'Long waves as capitalist process', Review, 7,559-75. Wallerstein, I., 1984c, 'Which historical present for which historical future?', Cencrastus, 17, 3-5. Wallerstein, I., 1988 'European unity and its implication', in Hettne, B. (ed.), Europe: Dimensions of Peace (London: Zed). Walters, R.E., 1974, The Nuclear Trap: An Escape Route, (London: Penguin). Walton, R.J., 1976, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War (New York: Viking). Watt, D.C., 1965, Personalities and Politics (London: Longman). Watt, D.C., 1978, 'Rethinking the Cold War: a letter to a British Historian', Political Quarterly, 49,51-53. Watt, D.C., 1984, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain's Place, 1900-1975 (Cambridge: University Press). Weiler, P., 1988, British Labour and the Cold War (Stanford: University Press). Williams, F., 1952, Ernest Bevin: Portrait of a Great Englishman (London: Hutchinson). Williams, W.A., 1980, Empire as a Way of Life, (New York: Oxford University Press). Yergin, D., 1978, 'Shattered peace', in Maier, C.S. (ed.), The Origins of the Cold War and Contemporary Europe (New York: New Viewpoints).

Index

Acheson, Dean 4,11, 28 Adler, L.K. 4,11,21 Agnew,J.9,10,ll,13 Anderson, John 81, 95, 96 anti-communism 20-21, 54, 85,110, 121,129,138 Anderson, T.H. 25, 28, 30,54, 59, 60, 110,121,130 Andrews, B. 101 appeasement 17, 21, 87, 92,101, 116 Atlantic Charter 51, 72 atomic power 88, 95-100,115-116 Attlee, Clement 45, 53-54, 61, 64, 65, 66, 74, 80, 81, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99-100,102,110,113-117, 130 Australia 15, 89 Baker, A. 34 Barker, E. 28, 55, 59, 60 Bartless, C.J. 12,14,18, 37, 46,49, 60,129,137,138 Beaverbrook, Lord 84-85 Bennett, Lord 85 Bevan, Aneurin 81 Bevin, Ernest x, 22, 26, 27, 28-30, 42, 51,53,62,63-64,66,67,74, 80, 82, 86, 89, 90, 93, 94, 101-102,103,105-106,108, 109,111,112,113,114,116, 117,124,125-126,129, 130-133,142 Big Three x, 18, 20, 25,27,50,52,55, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 88, 89, 90-94, 97, 98,106,108,123, 124 Blackett, P.M.S. 99-100 Blank, S. 130 Bloch, Joseph 66 Bohlen, Charles 47-48, 53

Boothby, Robert 84 Boulding,K. 11, 12,13,14 Bowman, I. 1, 10 Braudel, F. ix, x, 33, 34, 35, 36,42 'Braudellien time trap' 72, 75-79 Bretton Woods 20, 40,41,42, 74, 77, 83 Britain election of 1945 56, 61 geopolitical code 15,102,113 hegemony 38,40,45, 87, 88,132 and panregions 51,103 pivotal position 57-60 Britain hypothesis x, 25-26, 55, 56, 90,102, 111, 121-123,124 strong version 25-26 weak version 25 British Empire and domino theory 4 andfinancialcrisis 75 and geopolitical code 15,102 and geopolitical world orders 17 and panregions 48 as power bloc 89,127 traditional life line xi, 15, 60,103, 110,114 and USA 14,47, 51-52, 58-59 Bullen, R. xi, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97,98,101,103,105,106,107, 108,109,110,111,112,113, 114,125 Bullock, A. 29, 42, 51, 53, 64,113, 130,131 Byrnes, James 44, 52, 93,109,113, 130 Canada 15, 16, 96,140,141 capitalist world-economy ix, 35, 36

150 Carr, E.H. 23, 121 Chamberlain, Neville 9,17, 18, 87 Chase-Dunn, C. 35,135 China 15,16, 20, 51, 64,139,140, 142 Churchill, Winston vii, x, 12, 18, 19, 20,22,26-28,41,45,51-52, 53,54,58,59,61,80,81,95, 103,110,111,117,124-125, 126,128 Cohen, S. 49 Concert of Europe 136 containment model 3,14,128,130 Corbridge, S. 11 courte durée 34, 41-43, 45, 76, 77, 131, 133,135 Cox, R. 39, 72 Cripps, Stafford 74, 80 Czechoslovakia 1,9,11,16,116,131 Dalby, S. 134 Dalton, Hugh 71, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 81,83,116-117,121 Davis, L.E. 9 Deighton, A. 25, 26, 29 detente 2, 14, 24, 134 domino theory 3-4 Dulles, J. Foster 101-102, 110 Dumbarton Oaks Conference 19 'an economic Munich' 72 Eden, Anthony 53, 90, 109, 113 Edmonds, R. 51, 58, 72, 83,136 Edwardes, M. 59, 60,127 Eisenhower, Dwight 3 El Salvador 3 Etzold, T.W. 16,42 Evattism 89 Fawcett, C.B. 15 'afinancialDunkirk' 72, 73-75, 77 Fletcher, R. 66 Foot, Michael 62,115 France 13,14,16,40, 48, 64, 89,137, 141 Frankel,J. 133 Freeman, John 80

INDEX Fukuyama, F. 135 Gaddis, J.L. 11,13,14,16, 24, 25, 42, 44,60 Gallup, G. 37, 55 Gamble, A. 18,130,131 Gandhi, M. 36 Gardner, R.N. 72, 75, 83 geographical scale 2-3, 56 geopolitical code 13-16, 62,102, 113 geopolitical transition 9-17, 134-142 to the Cold War 17-21 and mass images 12 geopolitical world order 16-17 British Succession 17,136 Cold War 17, 93, 135 future 140-142 geopolitics ix formal 10-11,128-129 German 1, 4, 49 new 2-3, 4 practical 10-11 and political geography 2-3 as a reasoning process 10 revival 1, 5 Germany 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 40, 48-49, 59, 60, 71, 87, 88, 90, 91,127,131,137,138,141 Gilpin, R. 137, 140,141 Goldstein, J.S. 38 Gorbachev, President 134 Gowing, M. 95, 96, 97, 98, 99 Gowing's paradox 95-96, 97 Gordon, M.R. 61, 62, 63, 66 Graham, K. 1 Grand Alliance 18-20, 23, 25, 29, 45, 57, 63,124, 125, 127-128 Gray, C. 4 'the Great Game' 59-60, 102, 105, 117,127,128 Greece 3, 4, 13,16, 42,103, 116,131 Groom, A.J.R. 95, 97, 98, 99, 121, 122, 134 Halifax, Lord 74, 78, 82, 83, 91,107, 110,111,124-125 Hall, A.R. 129 Hall, P. 38

INDEX Halliday, F. 64,134 Harbutt, FJ. 26, 27, 41, 44, 48, 52, 54, 57, 59, 94,121,125 Harris, K. 67,80,113 Hathaway, R.M. 25, 37, 41, 47, 52, 54, 58, 59, 60, 72, 75, 76, 77 Healey, Dennis 65, 67 heartland thesis 126-130 hegemony 38, 39, 72, 76-77, 85,130, 140 Henderson, Arthur 61 Hepple, L. 1, 2, 5 'high polities' 12, 55, 60, 138 Hill, C. 12 historiography and Britain hypothesis 25 orthodox viewpoint 23 post-revisionist interpretation 24 revisionist critique 23-24 Holbraad, C. 136 Hufton, O. 34 Hull, Cordell 72 Hyde Park meeting 19, 95 imperial overstretch 140,142 India 15, 40, 49, 63, 89 Inoguchi, T. 140-142 internationalism as a cluster concept 64, 67 hegemonic 64 and the Labour Party 64-65, 84 liberal 64-65, 113 and nationalism 39—40 revolutionary 64 Iran 15,16, 19, 41, 42, 94, 101, 107-110,116,131,138,139 Isaacson, W. 3, 4 , 1 1 , 28, 48, 52, 60 inter-state system ix, 35 Italy 16, 21, 59,102, 103-106,107, 112, 131, 141 James, R.R. vii, 27,126 Japan 13, 15, 16, 19, 40, 48-49, 51, 95, 102,135,137,139,140, 141, 142 Johnston, Lyndon 4 Jones, B. 63,64, 112-113 Jones, S. 128

151

Kaldor, M. 139 Kelly, P.L. 4 Kennan, George 3 , 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 9 , 20, 23, 41, 42, 54, 57, 128 Kennedy, P. vii, 137, 140, 142 Keynes, John Maynard 59, 72, 73-75, 77-79, 83-84, 85, 86,131 King, Mackenzie 96 Kissinger, Henry 1, 2 Kolko, G. see Kolko, J. Kolko, J. 37, 47, 50, 51, 54, 75,16, 85,105,110 Kondratieff cycle 34, 38, 43, 82 Konrad, G. 56, 87 Labour government xi and atomic weapons 12 elected 19, 33 and left-wing critics 81-82,113 secrecy 80-82 Labour Party Conference 63-64 and internationalism 64-67 and socialist foreign policy 61-67 and the USSR 53, 62, 65, 61 Lacoste, Y. 2 Langhorne, R. 136, 137 Laski, Harold 61-64 lebensraum 1, 91 Lee, Jennie 84 lend-lease 18, 51, 72, 73-74, 75, 8 0 81,85 Lewis, R.J. 122 Libya 42,103-105,131 Lippman, Walter 52, 125 London Foreign Ministers Conference 19,92-93,103-106,114 longue àuree 34, 35-37, 45, 135,139 Loth, W. 3, 22, 23, 24, 33,42 Lukes, S. 123 Lundestad, G. 46 McCallum, R.B. 56, 61 McCauley, M. 15, 20, 22, 24, 33, 37 McCloy, John 52 Mackinder, H. xii, 126-130, 137, 142 Mandel, E. 42-43 Martin, K. 116 Masaryk, Jan 9

152

INDEX

Marshall Plan 19, 20, 29, 82 Mastny, V. 42 Mediterranean xi, 15, 4 1 , 42, 75, 102, 103-106,110,111,113-114, 115, 121, 137 Meinig, D.W. 10 Merrick, R. 54, 63 Middle East xi, 15, 42, 57, 75, 107-110,111,115,121,137 Miliband, R. 21,43 Modelski, G. 38,136, 140 Molotov 53, 93,105-106 Monroe Doctrine 14, 15, 46, 49 'monroes' 50, 89, 90, 111-112 Morrison, Herbert 74, SO, 81 Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference 19, 93-94,109, 124 moyenne àuree 34, 37-41, 45, 71, 76, 131, 133, 135, 139 Nayler,J.F. 61 Nixon, Richard 1,140, 142 Northedge, F.S. 1 7 , 3 7 , 5 1 , 5 2 O'Sullivan, P. 3 OTuathail, G. 9,10, 11,13 Ovendale, R. 30 one world 45-48, 83 Packenham, Frank 84 panregions 48-49 Parker, G. 127,128, 129 Parker, W.H. 127 Paterson, J.G. see Adler, L.K. Patterson, J. 2 pax Americana 24, 28, 64, 140 pax Britannica 28, 64, 72, 125 Pelly, M.E. see Bullen, R. Persia see Iran Pethick-Lawrence, Lord 74, 83 Phillips, P.D. 39 Pimlott, B. 71, 77, 79, 80, 86, 116 Poland 1, 15, 16,42, 131, 135 political geography and geopolitics 2-3 vulgar 3, 4, 5, 66, 102 post-hegemonic trauma 123, 130-133, 140

Potsdam Conference 19, 20, 28, 29, 30,33,45,52,53,89,90,91, 92,103,107,108,116,136 Preston, P. 38 Quebec Agreement 95 Range, W. 46 Readman, A. see McCallum, R.B. Reagan, Ronald 135 Rennel, Lord 85 Reynolds, D. 17, 30, 48, 58, 59, 72 Roberts, Frank 54, 57 Roosevelt, Franklin 18, 19, 45, 46-48, 52, 72, 78, 95 Rothwell, V. 2 5 , 4 1 , 4 8 , 5 1 , 57, 60, 63 Russett, B. 140 Rustow, D.A. 39 Ryan, H.B. 26, 27 Salisbury, Lord 136-137 San Francisco Conference 19, 20, 33, 115 Saville, J. 130 Schattschneider, E.E. 121, 123, 124 Schlaim, A. 54, 66 Schurmann, F. 46 second Cold War 2, 134 security commodities 11-12, 13 Shinwell, Emmanuel 81 Sloan, G.R. 10, 128 Smith, Norman 84 Smith, R. 25, 113, 114, 116 Smuts, Field Marshall 103 social democracy 61, 63 South Vietnam 3 'special relationship' 27, 58-59 Spykman, Nicholas 4 Stalin 4 1 , 45, 52, 103,139 Strange, S. 140 Taylor, P.J. 14, 17, 18, 35, 39, 66, 123, 132, 133, 138 Tehran Conference 19, 20 Thomas, E. see Isaacson, W. Thompson, D. 9 Thompson, E. vii totalitarianism 21, 23

153

INDEX

Truman Doctrine 11,15, 16, 19, 20, 31, 102, 121 Truman, Harry 4, 10-11, 19, 27, 37, 44,45,52,53,95,96,113,121 Turkey 13, 15, 16, 42, 94, 101, 107-110,112,116,131 United Nations 19, 20, 33, 37, 39, 51, 64,89,112,114-116 USA and British Empire 17, 58-59, 72, 107-110,125-130 and domino theory 3 and Eastern Europe 9 geopolitical tradition 1 hegemony 39, 40, 45-48, 71-72, 84, 87-88, 140-141 island bases 82, 103, 111 and panregions 48—49, 50-51 USSR geopolitical code 15,102 and panregions 48-49, 50 as totalitarian state 21 and the Second World War 23-24

USSR - cont. and 'the Straits' 104, 108 Vandenburg, Senator 101-102, 110 Wallace, Henry viii, 36, 53 Wallerstein, I. ix, 35, 36, 38, 60, 134, 136,138-139, 141-142 Walters, R.E. 128, 129 Walton, R.J. viii, 4, 36, 53 Watt, D.C 17, 25, 58, 71 Weiler, P. 28, 53, 61, 63, 66, 67, 82 Williams, F. 130,131 Williams, W.A. 130 Wilson, Harold 133 Wilson, Woodrow 27, 46, 64, 71 world-systems analysis ix, 122 Yalta Conference 19, 20, 33, 45, 52, 91 Yergin, D. 103 Zametica,J. 113,114,116 Zilliacus, Konni 65

i

i

i

i

i