SUEZ AND BRITAIN'S DECLINE AS A WORLD POWER

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 1073-1096 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. C. PEDEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Reaction

ABSTRACTThe Suez crisis is widely believed to have contributed significantly to Britain's decline as a world power. Eden's miscalculation of American reaction to the attack on Egypt was damaging to Britain's reputation and fatal to his career. However, his actions were contrary to received wisdom in Whitehall. The crisis merely confirmed Britain's dependence on the United States and had no lasting impact on Anglo-American relations. Britain's relationship with its informal and formal empire was already changing before 1956, and the turn from the commonwealth to Europe owed little to Suez. Examination of policy reviews in Whitehall before and after the Suez crisis shows that the Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, and Colonial Office were slow to accept the need for change in Britain's world role. Insofar as they did from 1959 it was because of Treasury arguments about the effect of high defence expenditure on the economy, and slow growth of the United Kingdom's population compared with the United States, the European Economic Community, and the Soviet Union.

scholarly journals The strokes that killed Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. E7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohaid Ali ◽  
Ian D. Connolly ◽  
Amy Li ◽  
Omar A. Choudhri ◽  
Arjun V. Pendharkar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Hemorrhagic Stroke ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Early Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
British Prime Minister

From February 4 to 11, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met near Yalta in Crimea to discuss how post–World War II (WWII) Europe should be organized. Within 2 decades of this conference, all 3 men had died. President Roosevelt died 2 months after the Yalta Conference due to a hemorrhagic stroke. Premier Stalin died 8 years later, also due to a hemorrhagic stroke. Finally, Prime Minister Churchill died 20 years after the conference because of complications due to stroke. At the time of Yalta, these 3 men were the leaders of the most powerful countries in the world. The subsequent deterioration of their health and eventual death had varying degrees of historical significance. Churchill's illness forced him to resign as British prime minister, and the events that unfolded immediately after his resignation included Britain's mismanagement of the Egyptian Suez Crisis and also a period of mistrust with the United States. Furthermore, Roosevelt was still president and Stalin was still premier at their times of passing, so their deaths carried huge political ramifications not only for their respective countries but also for international relations. The early death of Roosevelt, in particular, may have exacerbated post-WWII miscommunication between America and the Soviet Union—miscommunication that may have helped precipitate the Cold War.

The Spy (K.G.B. General Alexander Orlov), the Dupe (Bertram D. Wolfe), and the Documents (The Stalin Resolutions)

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-417
Author(s):  
Jennifer McDowell ◽  
Milton Loventhal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Bright Light ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
The Web

Two-hundred and forty-two consecutive, Soviet Politburo resolutions on foreign policy covering 1934–1936, some built on reports by Stalin with his actual words, and 34 pieces of 1934 espionage correspondence that traveled between the Moscow Foreign Office and its branch in the Soviet Embassy in Vienna, were purchased clandestinely by German intelligence, at the time, and as they were written. A German Sovietologist named Dr. Georg Leibbrandt authenticated them right at the time. Adolf Hitler read them. They influenced his decision to attack the Soviet Union in 1941. Captured by the U.S. Army in Germany (OMGUS) at the close of World War II, they were brought to the United States, to the National Archives and Hoover Institution. Milton Loventhal and Jennifer McDowell translated and authenticated them, using both sets of copies. The story of their authentication sheds light on the 1960–1961 machinations of one of Stalin’s foremost secret agents, master spy K.G.B. General Alexander Orlov, who fled to the United States in 1938 to escape Stalin’s terror. But this “loyal Soviet dropout” (Stanley G. Payne’s term) was in reality a cloaked agent who had never renounced his loyalty to the Soviet state. Asked by Bertram D. Wolfe to comment on the resolutions’ authenticity, Orlov informed Milton Loventhal and Wolfe that these documents were forgeries, using arguments that were proven worthless in their entirety. Untangling the web of deception Orlov wove around these detailed, complex documents is the focus of this article, shining a bright light on the power a mesmerizing secret agent can have when the rules of research are abandoned by influential experts.

German Documents in the United States

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard L. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Joint Control ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Office

At the end of World War II, vast quantities of German documents had fallen into the hands of the Allies either during hostilities or in the immediately following weeks. Something will be said near the end of this report about the archives captured or seized by the Soviet Union; the emphasis here will be on those that came into the possession of the Western Allies. The United States and Great Britain made agreements for joint control and exploitation, of which the most important was the Bissell-Sinclair agreement named for the intelligence chiefs who signed it. The German naval, foreign office, and chancellery archives were to be physically located in England, while the military, Nazi Party, and related files were to come to the United States. Each of the two countries was to be represented at the site of the other's holdings, have access to the files, and play a role in decisions about their fate. The bulk of those German records that came to the United States were deposited in a section of a World War I torpedo factory in Alexandria, Virginia, which had been made into the temporary holding center for the World War II records of the American army and American theater commands. In accordance with the admonition to turn swords into plowshares, the building is now an artists' boutique.

Anglo-American Nuclear Weapons Cooperation After the Nassau Conference: The British Policy of Interdependence

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Middeke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Value ◽  
East West

The Anglo-American summit at Nassau in December 1962 did not strictly separate Britain's deterrent from the proposed Multilateral Force (MLF). As a result, Conservative governments in the 1960s tried to safeguard maximum British independence in nuclear relations with the United States. The British tried to thwart American initiatives on the mixed-manned MLF; some British officials even hoped to preserve an “independent British deterrent” through nuclear cooperation with France. For the United States, the British deterrent had political value in an intra-alliance or East-West context, but no military or political significance in itself. The MLF idea of bilateral nuclear cooperation with Britain and France was a means to contain French and German nuclear ambitions and to settle Cold War disputes with the Soviet Union. In London, however, leading officials believed that Britain's future as a great power was inextricably linked to the possession of an independent nuclear deterrent. When nuclear independence was lost, the appearance of independence became more important.

A New Look at Churchill'S ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 895-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry B. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
New Look

Churchill's ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946, was a major effort to promote both a strengthened Anglo-American combination and a firmer western front against the Soviet Union. In the months between his electoral defeat and his talk at Fulton he had viewed Soviet consolidation in Europe with continuing concern, probably coupled with despair at his own inability to do very much about it. This presidential invitation, however, to deliver an address at an American college could provide a means to push to the fore the policies that he believed in. Certainly, the effect of his talk can be overestimated, but, despite its failure to create the very close alignment Churchill hoped for with the United States, it undoubtedly contributed to hardening western positions towards the Soviets.

Russian Emigration and the USA. F. Stepun and M.M. Karpovich (Preface to the Publication of Letters from F.A. Stepun to M.M. Karpovich)

2021 ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Vladimir K. Кantor ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Second World

The author examines a geopolitical line in the development of Russian philoso­phy in emigration. Not only the Russian revolution of 1917, not only the Nazi revolution of 1933–1935, but the Second World War changed the balance of power on the intellectual map of the world. Hitler was defeated by the Soviet Union with the help of the Anglo-American allies. As a result, two blocks emerged. They got a taste for the disposal of Europe and other countries of the United States, the USSR also strengthened, expanding the area of its influence (“Eastern bloc”). Should emigrants return to Russia? Bunin tried, but at the bor­der he turned back after reading articles about Akhmatova and Zoshchenko in the Pravda newspaper. Remain in a devastated and half-starved Europe, which has no time for emigrants? Or choose the third path where the track has al­ready been paved. Russian intellectuals from Germany have already settled in the United States, many have taken root there, some have returned. This, in essence, was the second emigration, the continuation of the first. There was already an experience of flight, but there was also a craving for German culture, which, despite the German Nazism sweeping through the world, Russian thinkers highly valued. They – as it should be in trouble – held on to each other. An example of this intellectual collaboration is Karpovich and Stepun.

Status and Identity after the Cold War

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-231
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
Alexei Shevchenko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Competition ◽  
Peaceful Rise ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First World

This chapter analyzes the varying responses of China and Russia to the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union—the most serious threats to Chinese and Russian identities and status since the First World War. Frustrated with lack of recognition and respect by the United States and other Western powers, both China and Russia briefly pursued policies of social competition, but learned that efforts to compete with the United States were embarrassingly futile. China and Russia then adopted social creativity strategies for acquiring prestige—China as a responsible world power, and Russia as a partner with the United States in the War on Terror. China's “peaceful rise” strategy was welcomed by the United States, whereas Putin's cooperation after 9/11 was not reciprocated. Russia began to assert its right to a droit de regard in neighboring areas and to advocate a multipolar order, culminating in the 2014 takeover of Crimea and destabilizing of Ukraine.

British Labour and the Cold War: The Foreign Policy of the Labour Governments, 1945–1951

1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Weiler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

Labour took office in 1945 amid high hopes that its socialist message could be applied abroad as well as at home. Although Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, and other Labour leaders had had almost as much responsibility as their Conservative counterparts for Britain's wartime foreign policy, it was widely believed that once on its own Labour would play a different role in world affairs. Let Us Face the Future, the party's election manifesto, pledged to “apply [a] Socialist analysis to the world situation.” Bevin's famous “Left understands Left” remark was widely taken to mean that Labour would be more sympathetic to revolutionary developments throughout the world but above all to the Soviet Union. For many in the Labour movement, a socialist foreign policy and sympathy for the Soviet Union also implied distrust of the United States and its attempt to create what the New Statesman called a capitalist “economic empire.” For the Labour movement as a whole, the story of these years can be summarized simply: the reluctant abandonment of hopes of Anglo-Soviet friendship and the grudging acceptance of an Anglo-American alliance.Labour leaders, of course, did not fully share the assumptions of their more enthusiastic followers, and they made clear from the start that they intended no radical break with the foreign policy of the wartime coalition that they had helped to shape. Ernest Bevin told the Commons in his first major speech as foreign secretary that he accepted the foreign policy of his predecessor, Anthony Eden. But a commitment to continuity in foreign policy did not immediately entail complete hostility to the Soviet Union or a special relationship with the United States.

United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Byrnes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control

The signing in Helsinki of the agreement on security and cooperation in Europe has led to bitter criticism of President Ford and of the policy under which the United States drifted into recognizing Soviet acquisition of 114,000 square miles of Finnish, Polish, German, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territory, apparently sanctified as well Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and recognized the “permanent” division of Europe. In return for endorsing these Soviet conquests, the Western states received some vague promises that the Soviet Union and the East European states would take a “positive and humanitarian attitude” towards applications from their citizens to rejoin their families in the West, would “facilitate the improvement of the dissemination” of publications from other countries, would provide three weeks' notice of large military maneuvers within 156 miles of frontiers, and assured that every European state would be free from “external influence.” All these phrases seem small recompense for such great concessions and from two years of negotiation by 492 diplomats, especially when hope in Western Europe in particular had been high for an end to jamming, censorship, and control over travel. Critics noted in particular that the formal summit agreement awarded the Soviet Union prizes it had sought since 1954, while the parallel discussion of reducing military forces in Eastern and Western Europe, in which the Soviet Union and its associates maintain immense superiorities, has long been stalled. Indeed, now that the West no longer has the lever of the Geneva talks, it has little pressure to persuade the Soviet Union to discuss mutual balanced force reductions. Many now fear that the Soviet Union will press instead for a collective security agreement, which would have no meaning, but which would totally demolish NATO, while leaving the Soviets on the commanding military heights in Eastern Europe.

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