ABSTRACT
Roosevelt was right, Churchill only half right. The USA had to become the great arsenal of democracy, but Britain, while needing tools, could not finish the job alone. Britain’s dependence on US supplies, and the need for the USA to play a more decisive and larger role than Britain in the defeat of the Axis powers, did much to mould Anglo-American relations and elevate the USA to a pre-eminence some have regarded as hegemonic in relation not just to Britain but to the postwar Western Alliance as a whole. However, just as Britain was unable to finish the job alone in the Second World War, so the USA discovered that it could not consummate the Cold War alone. That had impact on US policy and its relations with Britain, and brings into question its purported hegemony.
