Losing an Empire, Finding a Role
An Introduction to British Foreign Policy since 1945
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20 Result(s)
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Chapter
Conclusions
Given that each of the preceding chapters ended with a ‘summary and conclusions’ section, this chapter does not provide a summary statement of the major developments in Britain’s postwar external policy. It do...
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Before 1945
In the mid-seventeenth century, when the emerging European states system was in its infancy, England was a relatively unimportant regional power with primarily European interests. Over the next 250 years, with...
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The Road to Suez: British Imperialism, 1945–56
Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain’s dominance as an imperial power extended well beyond those territories that were administered from the Colonial Office and the India Office. In addition to the formal E...
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The Search for a New Role: The European Circle after 1956
As noted in earlier chapters, throughout the postwar period successive British governments found it increasingly difficult, in the face of Britain’s long-term relative economic decline, to sustain the strategy...
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The Relevance of Foreign Policy ‘Theory’
In the introduction to this book it was indicated that the present study would seek to explain the major developments in Britain’s postwar foreign policy at two different levels. On the one hand, it would exam...
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The International Economic Dimension
In some respects it might appear unnecessary to delineate a separate area of a nation’s foreign policy and designate it as ‘economic’. After all, not only are self-evidently ‘political’ strategies frequently s...
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Introduction
Shortly after the Second World War, Winston Churchill observed that Britain’s primary overseas interests lay in three interlocking ‘circles’: in Europe, in the Empire and in the ‘special relationship’ across t...
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From Potsdam to Cold War: Relations with Europe and the Superpowers, 1945–55
This chapter examines the development of Britain’s foreign policy in Churchill’s ‘Atlantic’ and ‘European circles’ in the decade after 1945. The simultaneous examination of these two areas of policy is by no m...
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The Wind of Change: The Empire Circle after 1956
In the years after 1956, Britain progressively withdrew from the Empire ‘circle’. Although the pace of withdrawal varied — at times accelerating and on occasion even going into temporary reverse — it none the ...
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The Changing ‘Special Relationship’, 1956–88
As was seen in Chapter 2, the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States was forged during the vicissitudes of the Second World War. Yet as Chapter 2 also showed, in the late 1940s that relat...
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Defence Policy
Defence policy is that aspect of external policy concerned with maximising the nation-state’s security interests. It consists in the construction of alliances and the development of military strategy designed ...
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Book
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Chapter
Introduction: Lawmaking, Co-operation and Peace
Contemporary decision-makers in both the East and the West are faced with a continuing dilemma: while the necessity of avoiding nuclear war impels them towards a broad strategy of mutual co-operation, the need...
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Conclusion: Reconstructed Idealism and Revised Realism
This study has attempted to demonstrate empirically that in certain limited contexts in the interwar years, the pursuit of co-operative treaty-making strategies by nation-states significantly reduced the proba...
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The Idealist Tradition and its Modern Variants
Idealism or, to its critics, ‘utopianism’ — the view that international law can and should be constructively employed to reduce nations’ ability and willingness to resort to violence — was a pervasive influenc...
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Treaty-making, War and Peace: Preliminary Empirical Findings
In an attempt to assess the extent to which international lawmaking may have played a latent political role in the interwar period, the broad operational hypothesis of this chapter is that, ceteris paribus, more ...
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A Case-study: Anglo-Turkish Relations during the Interwar Years
In the preceding chapters it has been suggested that in certain limited but specifiable circumstances, the pursuit of strategies of co-operation — operationalised in this context as participation in the bilate...
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Background to the Empirical Analysis: The Data and the Data Analysis Strategy
In Chapter 1 an attempt was made to identify a number of mechanisms through which international law and lawmaking might contribute to the maintenance of international peace. Chapters 3 and 4 offer an empirical...
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Treaty-making, War and Peace: Further Empirical Evidence
The results which were reported in the previous chapter demonstrated a complex but consistent pattern of correlation between international lawmaking and war-avoidance that is clearly supportive of what has for...
