A Reflection Upon Trans-Atlantic Relations

One of the primary goals of The Resolute Group is to examine the past in an attempt to glean information that may assist in the formulation of policy both in the present and in the years ahead. When doing so, it is informative to reflect upon Great Britain’s relations with the United States, to more fully appreciate the nuance of the partnership that has so long endured, in both good times and in ill. In light of the events that have come to pass during the presidency of George W. Bush, The Resolute Group felt it appropriate to reflect upon the history of the relationship and discern the changes that it has undergone over the years….

____________________________________________________________

For over six decades, Great Britain has nurtured a partnership of unparalleled trust with the United States of America, referred to by successive generations of politicians as the Special Relationship. Yet this is a relationship that is not dependent on treaties of friendship or cooperation and whose very existence is hard to define. Historical bonds and the comradeship of two world wars are often acknowledged as the rationale behind the relationship, whilst the long-standing links between the military and intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic have played a vital and often hidden role in its continued evolution. For much of the past five decades, members of the Diplomatic Service on both sides of the Atlantic have a tradition of operating together and on a number of occasions, “American diplomats have turned first to ascertain Britain’s reaction, before evaluating matters of international consequence.”[i]

The relationship between Great Britain and the United States has been one that has survived a reversal of fortunes of the former superior power, coupled by the meteoric rise of the other. The formative years of the Twentieth Century saw the ascension of America and the decline of the United Kingdom, as the cost of modern war bankrupted the once mighty Empire. After a brief interlude of peace, the Second World War altered power relationships throughout the globe and “Britain finally and unalterably slipped from the ranks of the leading nation states, into a secondary position.”[ii] Winston Churchill under- stood that whilst Britain could no longer dominate world affairs, an Anglo-American Alliance could be all-powerful and brought the term “Special Relationship” to prominence during his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech of March 5, 1946. The only certain way to prevent war in the future, he declared, was through a “fraternal association of English speaking peoples.”[iii] Since then, the British participants in the relationship have used the term predominantly, whilst the expression is rarely heard in Washington, except as a gesture to make visiting British dignitaries feel at ease, as “rhetoric about relationships can be poured out automatically regardless of reality.”[iv]

Yet it was Churchill’s continuing presence that aided Great Britain’s standing with America during the early 1950s, due to President Eisenhower’s deference. The President felt however, that the old British Prime Minister was “trying to relive the days of World War Two”[v] and that, “any hope of establishing such a relationship is completely fatuous.”[vi] In his diaries Eisenhower portrayed Winston Churchill as being “on the verge of senility”[vii] and as Churchill’s health deteriorated, so did Great Britain’s status in the relationship, as the decision was made that “American policy should be one of ‘humour Prime Minister Winston Churchill.’ ”[viii]

Since then, the Special Relationship has enjoyed good times and endured the bad. Even the most ardent exponents of the relationship however, felt it may have been extinguished, following the bitter clashes between American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden over the Suez Crisis in 1956. “By October 1957, the greatest Empire the world had ever seen had sunk beneath the waves it once ruled.”[ix] From now on, it was suggested, “Britain’s role had been reduced to that of an aircraft carrier, a staging post for American planes on bombing raids to Moscow.”[x]  Within two years, however, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had restored the relationship, due to his relationship with President Eisenhower. The Soviet launch of Sputnik allowed Macmillan to convince Eisenhower that no nation could stand alone to the Soviet threat. For Macmillan however, the final months of Eisenhower’s Administration were filled with personal sadness, alarm and annoyance. The President gave the appearance of an aged monarch, escaping with increasing regularity to the golf course and without the recently deceased John Foster Dulles to manage America’s foreign policy.

This sense of concern was echoed in January 1960 by Arthur Schlesinger, who attacked Eisenhower’s America and looked forward to the new decade with “a sense of motion, of leadership and hope.”[xi] Yet Macmillan did not share Schlesinger’s optimism for the future. Instead he grew increasingly concerned as the presidential election hung in the balance, fearing that “if the Republicans win, one might begin some work before Christmas. If the Democrats win, nothing will be done until the spring of 1961.”[xii] Macmillan’s early view of Democratic candidate, Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, was that he was young, inexperienced and given to attacks on British Imperialism. In July 1957, Senator Kennedy called for a revision of U.S. foreign policy: America should end its alliance with the colonial allies and recognise the rising aspirations of the developing world. “The most powerful, single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism. It is man’s desire to be free and independent.”[xiii]

Macmillan’s primary reservation however, concerned the character and influence of the Senator’s father, former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy. “We regarded him with contempt. It was generally thought that he was unfriendly, and defeatist.”[xiv] The influence of such a dominant father was also feared in America, where former President Harry Truman declared, “it’s not the Pope I’m afraid of, its the Pop.”[xv]   Yet neither had reason to be concerned. In office, Kennedy proved to be his own man, and his past provided the basis for a close Anglo-American relationship. In 1939, John F. Kennedy had taken six months off from Harvard to act as his father’s courier in Britain, where he became captivated by the elegance of the British upper classes. Their approach to politics was light hearted, but as David Nunnerly observed in his book ‘President Kennedy and Britain’, “this idea of politics invigorating rather than dominating society, appealed to Kennedy.”[xvi]

The relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt had been forged in the Second World War, as had Macmillan’s friendship with Eisenhower. Yet with Kennedy, Macmillan had nothing of the kind to draw on. “We must therefore, make our contacts in the realm of ideas. I must convince him that I am a man who, although advancing in years, has young and fresh thoughts.”[xvii] Macmillan however, was about to enter a relationship which, although different, would be closer than that which he had had with Eisenhower. Harold Macmillan would come to regard this as one of the most fulfilling passages of his life, despite its moments of misunderstanding and its tragic brevity. “I had with two Presidents this extraordinary relationship; I was sort of son to Ike and it was the other way around with Kennedy.”[xviii]

Macmillan exploited his family connection by sending his wife’s nephew, Andrew, the Duke of Devonshire and younger brother of Kathleen Kennedy’s dead husband, to attend the President’s Inauguration. “To the Duke’s astonishment, he was put on the platform next to the President.”[xix] Kennedy’s Inaugural Address stirred the nation, and captured the imagination of a generation, with a rhetoric and a style that heralded the arrival of the New Frontier. Alastair Horne has written that “the first year of a new President is spent learning the job; then follow two years of business; while the forth year is spent preparing for the election.”[xx] President Kennedy’s first year allowed little room for on the job training. As Arthur Schlesinger noted, “each day seemed to bring a new crisis; Laos, Cuba, the Congo, the Soviets in space, the death of Trujillo, Soviet support for ‘national-liberation wars’, the Vienna summit and Soviet resumption of nuclear testing.”[xxi] Little wonder that Robert Kennedy referred to 1961 as being “a very mean year.”[xxii]

Due to the weakness of his political base and his lifelong interest in world affairs, Kennedy concentrated on foreign policy, where he best demonstrated his affinity for activism. “Like Macmillan, Kennedy regarded peace as being too important to be left to diplomats, and so took foreign policy into his own hands.”[xxiii] On July 4, 1962, President Kennedy issued a ‘Declaration of Interdependence’ in Philadelphia, in which he looked forward to “a concrete Atlantic Partnership, a mutually beneficial partnership between the new union now emerging in Europe and the old American Union founded here 175 years ago.”[xxiv] The President tended to view the Western Alliance as “a necessary but not always welcome partner, whose co-operation he could not always obtain, whose opinion he could not always accept and with whom an uneasy relationship seemed inevitable.”[xxv] Despite this, Kennedy realised that preservation of the Allied unity was indispensable to the achievement of his aims and “recognised that Western Europe was America’s foremost area of vital interest.”[xxvi]

The Western leader that Kennedy “saw first, liked the best and saw most often, four times in 1961 alone, was Harold Macmillan.”[xxvii] Kennedy regarded Macmillan as a reliable ally, and enjoyed his style, his often-eloquent letters, their frequent telephone conversations and his sense of humour. Whilst each recognised in the other a keen understanding of history and politics, Macmillan was more eager for summits with Khrushchev and less eager to prepare for war in West Berlin. “He was not sure whether his government could go along with American plans for NATO and Kennedy knew his government could not go along with the UK recognition of Red China.”[xxviii] No differences of opinion or age prevented a fondness developed between them, which went beyond the necessities of alliance. “Kennedy found Macmillan a true delight, primarily because he made the president laugh at his troubles, which was the truest way to Kennedy’s affection.”[xxix] 

Kennedy claimed that his historic trip to Western Europe in the summer of 1963 was not to negotiate with governments, but to discuss with the public “the relationship between the US and Western Europe. This is a matter of the greatest importance to us and I hope to the people of Europe.”[xxx] In the Berlin square soon to be renamed in his honour, Kennedy addressed the German people from City Hall, declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner.”[xxxi] Afterwards he spent time in London, where he had audiences with both the Queen and the Prime Minister. Upon his return to Washington, the President felt that he had been particularly successful in reaching the younger generation. “He had enjoyed the advantage in the contrast between his youthful vitality and the weary pessimism of most older leaders, and the adoption of Kennedy campaign techniques such as motorcades, local humour and maximum TV coverage.”[xxxii]

Anglo-American Relations In An Aggressive World

Until recently, accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis assumed that Britain was kept in the dark until the official communication from Kennedy to Macmillan dated October 22, 1962. This, however, is now in dispute. On October 16, 1962, Sir Kenneth Strong, Head of the Joint Intelligence Bureau at the Ministry of Defence, was visiting CIA headquarters, where “he was informed…that photographic evidence had been delivered to the White House, which revealed the Russians had sited offensive missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy had been informed only an hour before.”[xxxiii] Missiles based in Cuba, with ranges of up to twenty-two hundred miles, would have greatly reduced the American warning time and exposed the entire territory of the continental United States, save a corner of the Pacific Northwest, to a Soviet first strike.[xxxiv] “Our unswerving objective,” President Kennedy later told the nation, “must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.”[xxxv] The United States was in an excellent position to achieve this objective. At the time, the United States had 250 land based Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, in addition to 144 nuclear missiles aboard Polaris submarines, and 5,000 nuclear warheads.

Despite being alerted by Sir Kenneth Strong in person on October 17, Macmillan did not reveal the news to his Cabinet until October 23, the day President Kennedy revealed the news to the world. Macmillan had received an official message from Kennedy on the evening of October 21, before any other Western leader had been contacted. This underlined the importance the President attached to close cooperation with Great Britain.[xxxvi] Letters would be sent to other leaders, including de Gaulle and Adenaeur, “However, I wanted you to be the first to be informed of this grave development in order that we should have the opportunity to discuss the situation between ourselves”, Kennedy wrote. Understanding the natural European concerns over a possible Soviet move into the heart of Berlin, Kennedy stressed the importance of Anglo-American relations. “It is a source of great satisfaction to me, that you and I can keep in touch at a time like this, and I intend to keep you informed of my thinking as the situation evolves.”[xxxvii]

Their relationship was enhanced by the close personal ties and mutual respect between President Kennedy and Macmillan’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir David Ormsby-Gore.  He had been an inspired appointment as Ambassador to America by Macmillan, for not only did he know the workings of the Foreign Office, but he was also a member of the Kennedy family. As a cousin of Kathleen Kennedy’s husband, who was killed in World War II, he was a long time friend and contemporary of President Kennedy and was a frequent weekend guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. The British Embassy noted that apart from when the President was out of the country, there were only three or four weekends when the Ormsby-Gores were not with the Kennedys. The Ambassador knew both the President and the Prime Minister so well that he was ideally equipped to interpret or even predict each one’s reaction to the other’s proposals. Indeed Kennedy often consulted with, or confided in the Ambassador and remarked, “I would trust David as I would trust my own Cabinet-after all, he’s Bobby’s best friend.”[xxxviii]

After the crisis had passed, Macmillan reported that Britain had played “a helpful and active role” in the outcome. However, “in public little has been said, and the impression has been that we had played a purely passive role,” the Cabinet record stated.[xxxix] Indeed many wrote Macmillan off as being a mere witness to history.  This, however, is discredited by the disclosure that Macmillan was given secret information by Sir Kenneth Strong, whose inclusion in the small trusted circle of close advisers, can be seen as proof that in times of crisis in the Cold War, the British were not left on the outside. Every night Kennedy and Macmillan discussed the day’s developments and “although the President made the decisions, the Prime Minister’s input to Kennedy, through Ormsby-Gore, justified Macmillan’s pride on being part of the process.”[xl] Macmillan observed that Kennedy would achieve greatness because of his skill in resolving the crisis. The Prime Minister declared, “It was a test of wills and yours prevailed. I am proud to feel that I have so resourceful and firm comrade.” Kennedy replied, “Your heartening support publicly expressed and our daily conversations have been of inestimable value in these past days.” The Cuban Missile Crisis, Macmillan told the Commons, represented “one of the greatest turning points in history.” Kennedy felt, “future historians may well mark 1962 as the time when the tide began to turn.”[xli]

Two months later the Cuban Missile Crisis was history and a new breech occurred in the Special Relationship, which Dean Rusk, the American Secretary of State, referred to as “a painful and temporary disturbance in US-British relations.”[xlii] Once again missiles were at the heart of the debate, but this time they were American, not Soviet. Having spent $350 million on developing the Skybolt missile, President Kennedy and Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, decided to replace it with the Polaris Missile system. This came as a shock to Prime Minister Macmillan, since America had previously agreed to provide Britain with Skybolt if it was produced. This had been seen by Britain as a promise to produce the missile, which Macmillan had referred to as “the key to the Special Relationship,”[xliii] The timing could not have been worse for Macmillan: de Gaulle was blocking British membership of the European Community and his handling of the economy was under attack by the Labour Party. America seemed to misunderstand the political implications of this, with both Rusk and MacNamara viewing the situation as “primarily a military matter with only incidental political overtones.”[xliv]

President Kennedy “could see no point to a small independent British deterrent”,[xlv] and was growing increasingly concerned over the spread of nuclear proliferation. The British press argued that America “was either insensitive to an ally’s pride or wanted to push her out of the nuclear club.”[xlvi] The Skybolt Affair dominated the sixth meeting between the President and Prime Minister in Nassau at the end of December 1962. Macmillan argued that if America wanted to prevent Britain from being a nuclear power, then such a move could bring down his government and lead to a prolonged period of anti-American resentment. Kennedy was left in no doubt that the Western alliance could not last if the United States were to insist on being the West’s sole authority in nuclear defence. “Britain would be an ally, but not a satellite.”[xlvii] President Kennedy was determined to supply Britain with a replacement for Skybolt, but in such a way as to not annoy other European allies.

The Nassau summit ultimately led to the decade’s most significant achievement in international relations: the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear proliferation had become Kennedy’s main concern and Macmillan fortified him in his determination to bring nuclear weapons testing to an end.[xlviii] “A new round of testing”, Macmillan argued, could spur the arms race on a path “so retrograde, so sophisticated and so barbarous, as to be almost incredible.”[xlix] On April 15, 1963, Kennedy and Macmillan sent a joint letter to Khrushchev suggesting a summit leading to a test ban treaty. In May 1963, Kennedy wrote that “I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four. I regard that as the greatest possible danger.”[l]

Kennedy’s Commencement Address at the American University finally declared that a re-examination by both sides of their attitudes was needed and instead of a catalogue of complaints about the Soviet record, Kennedy appealed for genuine coexistence. “If we cannot now end our differences at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”[li] America, he declared, would stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Rejecting much of the rhetoric that had characterized his election and first two years in office, Kennedy told the American University audience that the time had come to seek peace that would allow men, women and children to live in security. [lii] Kennedy referred to this as “an important first step. A step toward peace, toward reason, a step away from war.”[liii] No other single achievement in the White House gave Kennedy greater satisfaction. The President believed that this Treaty epitomized everything positive about the institution of the Presidency, and its ability to accomplish good for humanity. In his last, undelivered speech, the President defined his sense of historical mission;  “We in this country, in this generation, are, by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of freedom.”[liv]

The President toured the nation in an effort to gain support for his endorsement of détente. As he declared, “the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. We are only six percent of the world’s population; we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind. We cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity, and therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”[lv] Both men saw the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as a peak in their partnership. Two months after the Treaty was signed, Harold Macmillan resigned and two months later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The assassination affected America and the world unlike any other single event in modern history. The President’s death was profoundly felt in Great Britain where the American Ambassador reported, “Great Britain has never before mourned a foreigner as it has President Kennedy.”[lvi] Thousands gathered to sign the official condolence book in the Grosvenor Square Embassy; a memorial was created at the historic Runnymede site, and a statue was erected to his memory in Great Portland Street, London, joining those of Lincoln, Washington, and FDR in the British capital. In the House of Commons, Harold Macmillan stated, “President Kennedy was a man of the highest physical and moral courage, tested and proven in war and in peace. When things were difficult, he was both resourceful and resolute.”[lvii] Alistair Cooke noted, “the essence of the American mood this very dark weekend, is this deep feeling that our youth has been mocked. Along with sorrow, there is a desperate and howling note over the land.”[lviii] The murder also affected the Special Relationship. By the mid-1960’s much of the gloss had faded. Regardless of the rhetoric dispensed by President Lyndon Johnson in a public relations exercise for the benefit of Harold Wilson, “the wide gap between the two statesmen over Vietnam left the relationship virtually in limbo.”[lix]

Other leaders would have just as little luck in getting along. The relationship between Richard Nixon and Edward Heath makes an interesting counterpoint to the Kennedy-Macmillan years. President Nixon had a high regard for Heath and “during the British election, Nixon had been an unabashed partisan of the Tories.”[lx] Yet they never managed to establish a personal rapport. Of modern British leaders, Heath was the least committed to the United States, believing that Britain’s future lay with membership of the European Common Market. Heath saw the ‘special relationship’ as an obstacle to British acceptance in Europe and was content to lessen ties with Washington accordingly.

Heath was offered for nothing the preferred status in consultation for which his predecessors had struggled. His rejection of this both smoothed Britain’s entry into Europe and complicated the relationship with the United States. When Heath visited Washington in December 1970, for his first formal consultation with Nixon, he stressed that Britain would not be America’s Trojan horse in Europe. No previous British Prime Minister would have considered making such a statement to an American President and nothing could obscure this temporary revolution in Britain’s post-war foreign policy.[lxi] It was not until the Reagan-Thatcher era that transatlantic relationship was fully resuscitated and became ‘special’ again. “For almost the entire decade of the 1980’s the United States and Britain collaborated across a wide spectrum of international issues with an identity of views only previously achieved during their wartime alliance.”[lxii]

The inauguration of President Clinton symbolized the transition to a new era of international politics, as the Cold War passed into history. It was not only a time of change in America however, but was also a transatlantic turning point. Many of Bill Clinton’s policies were going to clash with those of John Major. That this was compounded by the Conservative efforts to aid George Bush’s re-election only served to weaken transatlantic ties. A London paper reported that Bill Clinton hated John Major. He replied, “I don’t hate anyone. I forget the people I’m supposed to hate.”[lxiii] This was hardly a ringing endorsement of John Major by President Clinton, and it is perhaps indicative of the true nature of their relationship, which was strained at best.

Yet another new era in Anglo-American relations began following the election of Tony Blair. Having adopted many of Bill Clinton’s speeches and policies, it was clear that Blair saw Clinton as a role model, just as Harold Wilson once viewed President Kennedy in the 1960’s. In an unprecedented move, Blair invited Clinton to become the first American President to address the British Cabinet at 10 Downing Street on May 29, 1997.

These five examples; Kennedy and Macmillan, Nixon and Heath, Thatcher and Reagan, Clinton and Major and Clinton and Blair, demonstrate the importance of personality in the field of international relations. In terms of political orientation Kennedy and Macmillan should have had little in common. Coupled with the age gap, this should have prevented a decent relationship from developing, but it did not. Nixon and Heath certainly had more in common politically, yet their personal relationship was all but non-existent. Now we are in an era in which the President and the Prime Minister are of a similar age, educational and professional background, and are of the same political background. It shall make for a very interesting and hopefully fruitful blossoming of the special relationship, not seen since the Thatcher-Reagan days.

Conclusion

The Kennedy-Macmillan relationship was underpinned by a degree of friendship that had not existed since the days of Roosevelt and Churchill. Both men appreciated each other and their respective nations. John F. Kennedy’s anglophilia was expressed in his particularly close relationship with Harold Macmillan, “who became a father figure, an ironic kindly substitute for the harsh Joe Kennedy.”[lxiv] Robert Kennedy remarked that “Macmillan mistrusted the idea of Jack being President because he was so young and thought that Jack would think he was so old that he wasn’t worth talking to. So he entered the relationship with a good deal of concern and trepidation.”[lxv]  Like Roosevelt and Churchill, both Kennedy and Macmillan were men of stature, whose agendas went beyond the present moment. As the junior partner, Macmillan had greater reason to keep the friendship intact. However his notion that Britain’s best interests lay in an improved Anglo-American relationship, was enhanced by the conviction that Kennedy was a true friend.

In 1980 Macmillan wrote that he and Kennedy, “had a very special relationship.”[lxvi] “Recently, it has been the weakening of this friendship which has accounted for the reality of the Special Relationship falling so far behind the rhetoric.”[lxvii] Henry Kissinger has referred to the Special Relationship as, “a productive and creative relationship, perhaps one of the most durable in the history of nations.”[lxviii] It is impervious to abstract theories, does not depend on formal arrangements and America’s cultural diversity quashes talk of any cultural indebtedness. Undoubtedly there is a unique quality to Anglo-American relations, but its raison d’être should be sought in the passage of history, rather than in any shared heritage.[lxix] The Special Relationship is extraordinary because it rests on no legal claim and was formalized in no document. Yet it has been carried forward by succeeding British governments, as though no viable alternative is conceivable. The Special Relationship is built upon a wide range of agreements, on essential national security assumptions and upon specific policies. The relationship has developed through a number of official, semi-official and un-official contacts. Some of these are institutionalised, such as NATO or United Nations Resolutions. Others however, are made at a personal level between Presidents and Prime Ministers.  Perhaps the primary characteristic of the special relationship has been the role of Britain as America’s most trusted and loyal aide.

As Henry Kissinger declared, the relationship is based on “the value of intangibles, and the ability to communicate informally.”[lxx] It reflects the common language and culture of two sister peoples. The relationship provides great opportunities for British influence, and by working close together at a range of governmental levels, the US has established a pecking order among its NATO allies and given Britain the pride of second place. British governments have gained from the special relationship; fuller intelligence briefings, Polaris and Trident, but the unsurprising truth about influence is that it flows mainly from Washington to London. The relationship does not demand that Britain answer Washington’s clarion call on every occasion, and Britain’s refusal to become embroiled in Vietnam is an example of this. It is arguable that the illusion of influence in Washington is the greatest cost of the special relationship. It created a mental block against joining the EEC from the 1950’s until the 1970’s. “It still creates delusions of grandeur. As long as they are useful to Washington, so long will they be encouraged.”[lxxi]