ABSTRACT
Anglo-American relations since 1945 have exercised an enduring fascination for historians of British decolonization and international relations more generally. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the emphasis, unsurprisingly, tended to be on the closeness and intimacy of the relationship between Britain and America. With the opening of official records on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s, however, a different picture began to emerge which stressed that Britain and America were, in Christopher Thorne’s memorable phrase, ‘allies of a kind’.1 D. C. Watt suggested that American pressure on the British and other European empires artificially hastened decolonization, rendering the transition from colonial rule to independence more problematic than otherwise would have been the case.2
Although more recently the theme of Anglo-American co-operation has been re-stated, attention has been paid to the unequal nature of the relationship.3 Drawing on the theme of co-operation and applying it to the Middle East, Ritchie Ovendale contends that the 1958 Anglo-American intervention in Lebanon and Jordan ‘marked the assumption by the United States of Britain’s traditional role in the Middle East’.4 ‘It was America in Britain’s place’, he concludes. ‘But this is what Britain wanted.’5
Ovendale’s interpretation is open to question, however. Indeed, the tameness with which Britain accepted American leadership, and the alacrity with which America assumed this leading role in defending Western interests, is doubtful. Britain clung on tenaciously to its assets in the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia, while America demonstrated little interest in actively supplanting the British. Only in situations where Britain could no longer provide area security did America tend to become more heavily committed. Equally, the post-war reverses in the Middle East did not engender a defeatist attitude on the part of the British. ‘As the British were gradually forced out of Iran and Egypt,’ observes Tore Petersen, ‘they tried to regain lost ground in those countries by expanding their influence to the Persian Gulf and even into Saudi Arabia proper.’6 By so doing, they clashed with competing American interests.
