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“Retreat from World Power”: Processes and Consequences of Readjustment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Harold  and
Margaret Sprout
Margaret Sprout
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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World Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , July 1963 , pp. 655 - 688
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1963

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References

1 Anthony Hartley, deputy editor of The Spectator, is a literary intellectual, generally right of center, whose viewpoint is strongly pro-European.

2 Doubts of this sort do not prevent Hartley and others from advancing numerous general hypotheses about Britain's declining international position; nor are they prevented from asserting or implying that declining empires present numerous similarities. (See Hartley, 226; Shanks, 16; Sampson, 620–21.)

3 We are aware that Hans Morgenthau and others have tried to meet this issue by redefining power in such a way as to include much besides coercion and threats thereof. This is commendable, but we see no indication that the effort is succeeding. On the contrary, evidence accumulates that the word power continues to evoke images predominantly of destruction, coercion, and threats thereof, often to the virtual obliteration of non-violent connotations.

4 Lord Strang is a retired Foreign Service official whose career culminated as Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. His book is addressed primarily to British readers; his theme, “our country's place in the world.” This book is not, and does not pretend to be, a product of exhaustive research. It is rather a long interpretative essay. Strang depends heavily upon the works of leading historians, especially Sir Llewellyn Woodward. But Lord Strang himself “comes through” clearly, especially in the later chapters, which deal with events in which he was for many years a participant.

5 Here it is necessary to distinguish two meanings of the noun potential. One is the concept of latent capacity, a concept more sharply denoted by the noun potentiality, or the ADJECTIVE potential: for example, the military potentiality of Britain is so-and-so; or the potential resources of the country are such-and-such. In physical science the NOUN potential carries another meaning: the actual or observed (not latent) pressure, or pull, or attraction, or simply effect which one physical system exerts on another. By analogy one can derive a concept of political potential to express the total or aggregative effect of one political community's behavior, or even presence, on the behaviors of other communities.

6 British experience may have pragmatic as well as purely intellectual interest for Americans. Every political community in the past has exhibited a phase of rising political potential, followed by a short and catastrophic, or an insidious, long-drawn-out decline. It is probably next to impossible for most Americans to imagine the United States in a predicament even remotely resembling Britain's today. But it would be naïve optimism to suppose that the United States or any other member of the contemporary international system has been singled out for a uniquely favored destiny.

7 With reference to the unexpected Russian “first” in launching a satellite into outer space, C. M. Woodhouse, then Director-General of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said: “The jolt which a chemical solution sometimes needs to precipitate crystallization is matched in human affairs by the kind of shock which the Russians gave us last October. It is what Marxists call a ‘dialectical lead.’ It may not be a great change in itself, only a signal drawing attention to changes that have already happened unnoticed. … At the very least, it jerks people into thinking afresh and furiously. …” (“Facing the Issues,” The Observer, January 12, 1958.)

8 On this issue, see our Foundations of International Politics (Princeton 1962), chap.

9 The Coal Question (London 1865), 305.

10 One of the more explicit statements of the official British image was that by Eyre Crowe, a Foreign Office official, in his well-known “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany,” January 1, 1907; reprinted in British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, edited by G. P. Gooch and H. Temperley (London 1928), III, 397ff.

11 See also, for a retrospective French view, Siegfried, André, England's Crisis (London 1931), 11–26.Google Scholar

12 Europe: The World's Banker, 1870–1914 (New Haven 1930), 87.

13 For various versions of this hypothesis, see, for example, ibid., 87–117; Imlah, A. H., “The Pax Britannica,” South Atlantic Quarterly, L (January 1951), 12–24Google Scholar; Imlah, , Economic Aspects in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 1; Siegfried, 11–20; King-Hall, Stephen, Our Own Times (London 1935), 15–29.Google Scholar

14 Admiral Lord Fisher once said: “Five keys lock up the world”—Dover, Gibraltar, Suez, Cape of Good Hope, and Singapore—and Britain held all five. (Quoted in Marder, A. J., The Anatomy of British Sea Power [New York 1940], 473.)Google Scholar In this grand design, the master position was the island of Britain itself, which “stood like a gigantic breakwater across the [sea approaches] to Germany [and the rest of northern Europe], narrowing down the channels of access to and egress from [most north European] ports to the Strait of Dover in the south and the area between Scotland and Iceland in the north.” (Comdr. Grenfell, Russell, Sea Power in the Next War [London 1938], 4.)Google Scholar

15 See also Strang, 158, 386–87.

16 The Hon. C. M. Woodhouse, author of British Foreign Policy Since the Second World War, was formerly Director-General of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and more recently Conservative M. P. for Oxford, and a junior minister in the Macmillan Government.

17 F. S. Northedge, author of British Foreign Policy: The Process of Readjustment, 1945–1961, is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

18 British Security: A Chatham House Study Group Report, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1946.

19 Great Britain Since 1688: A Modern History (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962), 370.

20 This conclusion may hold just as rigorously for France as for Britain. Despite President de Gaulle's reiterated views to the contrary, it is said that “French military and industrial figures … seriously doubt France's ability to build a meaningful nuclear force,” or even to maintain “economic expansion … as long as the nuclear program siphons off men, money and material.” (New York Times, April 9, 1963.)

21 For a similar view, see Schonfield, Andrew, British Economic Policy Since the War (London, Penguin Books, 1958), 94ff.Google Scholar

22 On November 22, 1947, the New York Times quoted a political party document as follows: “Before 1914 the people of [Britain] were owed by the rest of the world a debt equal to £100. Today [1947] each one of us … owes the rest of the world £100.”

23 For example, Schonfield, op.cit.; Crosland, C. A. R., Britain's Economic Problem (London 1953)Google Scholar; Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development, Britain's Economic Problem and Its Meaning for America (New York 1953)Google Scholar; various reports of the ECA Mission to the United Kingdom, 1948; Cole, G. D. H., The Postwar Condition of Britain (London 1956).Google Scholar Many other items dealing with this issue could be cited.

24 How this retreat on many fronts was carried forward with a minimum of confusion, disorder, and recrimination is described in all three books under review. But none of them considers in any detail how much Britain's form of government and political mores may have contributed to this generally orderly process. Yet that issue would be central to any comparative study of the phenomena of decommitment and disengagement.

25 See Schonfield, 93–94.

26 See Cole, 177.

27 Strauss, Erich, European Reckoning (London 1962), 112, 113.Google Scholar

28 See, for example, Growth in the British Economy (London, Political and Economic Planning, 1960), 147, 149.

29 Britain and the Tide of World Affairs (Oxford 1955), II.

30 ibid., 12.

31 See Strange, Susan, “British Foreign Policy,” in Year Book of World Affairs, 1955 (New York 1955), 49.Google Scholar

32 “Facing the Issues,” The Observer, January 12, 1958.

33 “What Is the Commonwealth?” World Politics, XI (July 1959), 583, 586.

34 New York Times, October 30, 1962.

35 New Statesman, October 26, 1962.

36 New York Times, October 30, 1962.

37 The reference to Mr. Acheson is, of course, to his controversial speech at West Point, in December 1962, in which he characterized Britain as having “lost an empire and … not yet found a role.”

38 Daily Express, March 29, 1962.

39 Thus far there has been a great deal of press reporting and superficial commentary and disputation about British neutralism and unilateralism, but remarkably little painstaking analysis. By far the most sophisticated commentary that has come to our attention is Hedley Bull's short article, “The Many Sides of British Unilateralism,” in The Reporter, March 16, 1961.

40 Hartley is identified in note 1 above; Shanks is industrial editor of The Financial Times; Sampson is a feature writer on The Observer.

41 Quoted in Sampson, 99.

42 “The Common Enemy,” in The Spectator, November 16, 1962.

43 Shanks, Michael and Lambert, John, Britain and the New Europe (London 1962), 13.Google Scholar

44 Twenty years ago, the British historian, Sir Llewellyn Woodward, observed that British adjustment to the changes of the twentieth century “might have been easier and more rapid if our educational system had concentrated less upon an uncritical view of the ancient world.” (Short Journey [Oxford 1942], 40.)

45 “The Cost of Force,” in The Observer, February 28, 1960.

46 Woodhouse, 245.

47 The Guardian, May 21, 1962.