The Importance of Being English: Eyeing the Sceptered Isles

On December 22, 1941, only a fortnight after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his entourage flew to a three-week conference in the New World code-named Arcadia. In the course of Arcadia, the two countries agreed to establish a combined Joint Chiefs of Staff to direct their armed forces worldwide, and the British agreed that these supreme commanders should be located not in London, but in Washington. It was a partnership weighted toward the Americans: day-to-day military decisions for both countries were to be made in the United States.

In September 1943, Churchill proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that after victory had been achieved, the wartime arrangement -- a joint high command located in the United States -- should continue, initially on a ten-year renewable basis, but in the hope that one day it might become permanent. "Roosevelt liked the idea at first sight," the prime minister reported to his colleagues and to King George VI.

Although Churchill often was derided as a romantic reactionary, addicted to empire and unwilling to recognize the harsh realities of the twentieth century, he showed himself on this point able and willing to face facts. He saw that the United Kingdom was losing its place as the world's foremost power -- permanently. Relative economic decline was the main cause; it also was part of the price that fate exacted from Britain for having fought the German wars from start to finish. Changes in the ranks of great powers are normal in history. What is unusual -- perhaps even unique -- is that Britain relinquished its top position to its successor consciously and, to the extent that it had a choice, voluntarily.

At the time, not all British officials agreed that global supremacy had been lost. In 1945 it was the view of the Foreign Office that Britain "possesses all the skill and resources required to recover a dominating place in the economic world." But Sir Henry Tizard, chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defense, came closer to the mark a few years later when he wrote, "We persist in regarding ourselves as a great power, capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. [But] we are not a great power and never will be again."

Churchill had evidently hoped to maintain his country's global dominance by leaning on the Americans. But his Labour successors in office (1945-51) chose instead to wind down Britain's commitments when they found they could no longer afford them.

ONE FINE DAY

Surprisingly, the exact date and place at which Britain handed over leadership to the United States has been pinpointed both by participants and by historians. It was in Washington in the late afternoon of Friday, February 21, 1947 -- a cold, gray, and rainy day -- that the first secretary of the British embassy delivered to the Department of State a note that later was to become famous. The note told then Secretary of State General George C. Marshall that Great Britain no longer could shore up the free world's positions in the eastern Mediterranean in the face of a threatening Soviet Union. British aid to Greece and Turkey would terminate on March 31. If the United States wished to take Britain's place, it should prepare to do so effective April 1.

In a burst of energy and creativity, the American government took hold of the torch and ran with it, formulating the Truman Doctrine, the Greek-Turkish aid program, and the Marshall Plan. Europe reacted positively, for which a major part of the credit must go to Britain's Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary in Clement Attlee's Labour administration. Like many Western European and American leaders at the time, he feared that the United States would withdraw into isolation after the Second World War, as it had after the First. It was Bevin who initiated the European response to the Marshall Plan. It was Bevin, too, who organized a European mutual defense league; and after Norway asked for support when threatened by the Soviets in 1948, it was Bevin who drew in the Americans to form NATO. For a few episodes in 1947-48, Britain played the role in world affairs that the United States wanted it to play, and America played the part that Britain wanted for it.

But from there on, their paths diverged. The role of the United States grew over the years. Before long America had a presence in most parts of the world. Instead of believing, as they once had, that nothing outside the western hemisphere concerned them, Americans came to believe that almost everything everywhere was their business. They entered a global conflict with the Soviet Union, one superpower against another, and ultimately emerged as the leader not just of the West, but of the world.

LORD OF THE RINGS

Less well explored, until now, is the story of how Britain missed its chance to adopt a new role in world politics as Europe's leader. The distinguished British journalist Hugo Young has provided a definitive account of how successive prime ministers, other politicians, and civil servants failed to meet that challenge. It should become the authoritative narrative, the point of reference in its field.

As Young tells it, Churchill left Britons a dazzling vision -- but one that became an excuse for strategic indecision. In Churchill's view, Britain was to be at the center of three concentric circles: a Europe that would unite, a commonwealth and empire that would cohere, and a United States that would serve as Britain's partner.

Yet by the war's end, one of the options was on the verge of becoming untenable. The Attlee government embarked on a program of dissolving the empire. India received independence. Later the Tory government of Macmillan and Macleod pushed forward decolonization in Africa as well.