ABSTRACT
So just how did dissolution happen? Once ‘Use of Force’ had unsettled the shared “reality” of kindred, freedom-loving democracies and had demagnetized the attraction between the United States and Britain, dissent from the Anglo-American Special Relationship became thinkable. It became a collective possibility. That possibility was seized upon by leaders and bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic and, in fact, broke down more or less along national lines. British state leaders and bureaucrats tended to identify with the Lion and its interests, so they authored with other Britons against the Americans, and vice versa. Because authorship broke down more or less along national lines, I refer to the authors discussed in this analysis as either British or American. However, this signification is a simplification justified by the empirical condition of the Suez Crisis, rather than a theoretical claim about the unity of state actors and their capacity to speak with a single voice. In fact, the dissolution of the Special Relationship was not carried out like a coordinated onslaught enacted by a unified group of singleminded dissidents-on either the British or the American side. While each political leader and bureaucrat involved was purposeful about what he narrated and certainly each took cues about what to say from each other, my theoretical claim is that each dissented for reasons related the configuration of his own subjectivity, identity, and therefore, interests. This is precisely why most authorship of dissenting phrases broke down along national lines-most people working for the U.S. government formed identities and subjectivities that reflected some interest in sustaining the Eagle, while most in the British government acquired some interest preserving in the Lion.
