ABSTRACT
Many of the political and military events the countries of North and South America found themselves involved in during the war and later and also much diplomatic activity and international perceptions were influenced by the cardinal concepts. Given that the British Empire continued to hold its dominion over a quarter of the world, the bases were just one of the many problems in Anglo-American power relations. Some members of the State Department favored decolonization and independence for British territories, but the General Board of the Navy the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Strategic Survey Committee all felt it was imperative to keep the British Empire alive in its entirety. American "seniority" was no longer simply an external buttress to the European system caught in a moment of crisis, but the cornerstone of a new global structure of international relations centered on the Atlantic and the common Anglo-Saxon heritage.
