The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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in a memo
for his Cabinet colleagues that the Americans were at last taking a part
in international European affairs
and they will soon begin to realise what vast
power they have. He noted that if America accepts our point of
view in these
matters, it will mean the dominance of that point of view in all international
affairs.
Cecil was hopeful that this could be achieved because, though the
American people are very largely foreign,
both in origin and in modes of thought,
their rulers are almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon, and share our
political ideals. “1
As the United Kingdom created the institution
of the Commonwealth as a means
to hold to the old ties, and the United States contributed to the
decolonisation
process, it would be natural for an observer to believe that the British political
elite
looked at America as an immature new super power having only one thing
in common with Britain, defence
against Communism.

It had been for some time,
however, as the book will indicate, that the
British Empire had been undergoing various pressures, but it was
the impact of
World War Two that was crucial. Although Britain and her Empire survived the
war, the
United Kingdom simply could not afford the costs of defending her
empire. Apart from the costs of
reconstructing the damage from the war, a further
development had taken place during the war, the discovery
of the atomic weapon.
In addition to the difficulties that Britain had been facing before and during
the
war, two new super powers emerged after the war, both of which possessed the
atomic weapon. Even
though Britain and the technology to develop such a
weapon, along with all the other post-war economic
pressures The cost of
competing in nuclear weapons, to the extent that the new super powers were
able,
was astronomical. The British political elite was now facing fundamental
challenges to its
economic position. They had to seek solutions to, firstly, the
socialist-inspired propaganda coming from the
Soviet Union, which pointed to
the exploitativeness and repression of the colonial system; and
secondly,
American objections, following the Second World War in which Americans had
fought for liberty
and democracy, to the continuance of colonial rule, which they,

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