Anglo-American relations after Suez,the rise and decline of the working group experiment,and the french challenge to NATO, 1957-59

This article explores the establishment of a number of Anglo-American working groups at the Washington Conference of October 1957, and explains how the British regarded the groups as an attempt to institutionalize the principle of consultation in Anglo-American relations. American and British officials were anxious that the existence of the groups be kept secret for fear that they would be a cause of resentment to other close allies. De Gaulle's attacks on an Anglo-American monopoly within NATO, and disruptive calls for institutionalizing tripartite cooperation following his assumption of power in June 1958 underlined this point, and helped to cool US attitudes to any notion of formal machinery that by-passed established alliance structures. Practical problems associated with the functioning of the groups, as well as the potential for political embarrassment they could represent, meant that their role had largely by the spring of 1959, yet their brief history was illustrative of the tensions that exclusivity in ANglo-American relations could bring to the Western alliance.     

Anglo-American relations after Suez, the rise and decline of the working group experiment, and the french challenge to NATO, 1957-59

This article explores the establishment of a number of Anglo-American working groups at the Washington Conference of October 1957, and explains how the British regarded the groups as an attempt to institutionalize the principle of consultation in Anglo-American relations. American and British officials were anxious that the existence of the groups be kept secret for fear that they would be a cause of resentment to other close allies. De Gaulle's attacks on an Anglo-American monopoly within NATO, and disruptive calls for institutionalizing tripartite cooperation following his assumption of power in June 1958 underlined this point, and helped to cool US attitudes to any notion of formal machinery that by-passed established alliance structures. Practical problems associated with the functioning of the groups, as well as the potential for political embarrassment they could represent, meant that their role had largely by the spring of 1959, yet their brief history was illustrative of the tensions that exclusivity in ANglo-American relations could bring to the Western alliance.     

'Arming the key battleground': German rearmament, 1950-55

Saki Dockrill, Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament, 1950-1955, Cambridge Studies in International Relations No 13, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, £27.50.

Thomas Alan Schwartz, America's Germany. John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany, Cambridge, USA, Harvard University Press, 1991, £23.95.     

Britain and the Collapse of Egypt's Constitutional Order, 1950-52

Britain's longstanding practice of intervening in the struggle between King Farouk, the Wafd and the constitution was one of the main causes of the demise of parliamentary politics in Egypt. Indeed, the sharp deterioration in the political situation in the winter of 1951-52, which paved the way for the Free Officers' coup on 23 July 1952, was the result of a breakdown in the Anglo-Egyptian defence negotiations. The Wafd government used the 'British question' as a distraction from its own internal shortcomings. Britain responded by pursuing a policy of toppling the Wafd and replacing it with a more amenable administration. To this end, British officials manipulated the United States into co-sponsoring the Middle East Command proposals of October 1951, aware that American backing would be required during imminent disturbances in Egypt. The subsequent Ismailia incident of January 1952 hastened the collapse of Egypt's constitutional order and also transformed British perceptions of the usefulness of the Suez base.     

Hanging the Kaiser: Anglo-Dutch relations and the fate of Wilhelm II, 1918-20

The flight of the German Kaiser to the Netherlands at the end of the First World War led to a crisis in Anglo-Dutch relations. Prime Minister David Lloyd George made the trial of the Kaiser a key issue in the British general election campaign of December 1918. Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles called for the Kaiser's surrender by the Netherlands government for trial before an international tribunal, a request the Dutch repeatedly refused during the period January to March 1920. Using both British and Dutch sources, this article highlights the internal Dutch debate over the fate of the Kaiser, and the confusion and hypocrisy with which the problem was handled by the British government.     

Determinants of civil war in post-colonial Asia, 1950-1992: the role of trade openness and economic development

Although Asia has experienced civil war about as often as Sub-SaharanAfrica during the post-World War II era, there have been fewsystematic investigations into the determinants of civil warin Asia. This article examines the effects of trade opennessand economic development on the onset of civil war in post-colonialAsia, controlling for political, demographic, and geographicfactors. Analyzing data on post-colonial Asian states between1950 and 1992, we find that the onset of civil war is less likelywith increased trade openness. However, when taking into accountinteraction between trade openness and economic development,we discover that increased trade openness reduces the likelihoodof civil war onset significantly only in the context of higheconomic development. This result is robust with different modelspecifications.     

Our Arms in Havana: British Military Sales to Batista and Castro, 1958-59

When the United States—the traditional supplier of arms to Cuba—decided not to supply Fulgencio Batista's government after March 1958 and the dictator approached Britain, this presented a dilemma for Harold Macmillan's administration so soon after the 1956 Suez crisis. Whitehall was keen to sell arms but wary of doing business with a country so firmly located in the United States' sphere of influence. It will be seen that the Foreign Office conferred with Washington at every stage in its decision process, both in deciding to arm Batista after gaining US acquiescence, and later in acceding to pressure and not supplying military hardware to Fidel Castro's nascent regime.     

The cost of containment: The Cold War and US international drug control at the UN, 1950-58

This article explores the influence of the Cold War on the formulation and application of US narcotic foreign policy at the UN. Examination of Washington's approach toward drug control in South East Asia and the Middle East reveals how the ideologically rich and longstanding US international crusade against narcotics was often subordinated to the containment of communist expansionism. The article demonstrates how both individual and systemic factors combined to deflect US attention away from the sources of illegal narcotics. This produced a confused and contradictory policy despite increasing fears during the 1950s that drugs from abroad posed a real threat to the American way of life.     

Keeping Cyprus off the agenda: British and American relations at the United Nations, 1954-58

From 1954 to 1958, the Greek government sought to raise the issue of self-determination for Cyprus at the United Nations as a means of pressing for the union of the island with the Greek state - enosis. The British government's objective was to ensure if possible that Cyprus was not debated using the legal argument that it was a domestic issue in which the UN had no rights. The British accepted, however, that other political and strategic arguments would be needed to defeat the Greeks and looked to the US government to support them in the UN forums. This article examines the positions of the British and Americans governments and shows the difficulties which the issue created for both in the UN in the period.     

国际冷战初期的一个地方热点 ——1945年至1950年间的中越边境跨国革命区

自1920年代起,东亚各国,特别是中国、朝鲜和越南的共产主义运动即互相交织并连成一片。东亚三国共产党之间的合作,促成了南北两个跨国革命区的形成,本文探讨的即是1945年至1950年间南方中越边境跨国革命区形成的条件、中越双方合作的方式,以及1950年前与1950年后中越同盟关系的区别。学术界对于1950年后的中越同盟关系已多有论述,但1950年前中共与印支共之间的合作则未引起同等重视。1950年前的中越跨国革命区值得探讨,一是因为这一时期的中越革命同盟关系实际上是第二次国共内战和第一次印支战争的延伸,也是这两场战争的连接点。这种联系突显了这两场战争的国际性,进一步证明第二次国共内战和第一次印支战争都是与冷战密切关联的热战,中越跨国革命区因此成为冷战初期的一个地方热点,并代表了国际冷战的一种地方形态;二是因为这一阶段两党之间的合作为1950年代至1970年代末期的中越关系奠定了基础。在国共内战期间,中共不仅得到了苏联共产党和朝鲜共产党的支持,也得到了印支共产党的援助,中共对于胡志明和越南革命运动的支持也是从印支战争爆发之日起即已开始,1950年后只是扩大了援助的范围,并提高了援助的规模和合作的级别。1950年前两党关系中发生的一些问题也将在1950年后重复出现并带来严重后果。     

A western cold war: the crisis in Iceland's relations with Britain, the United States, and NATO, 1971-74

The article explores the crisis in Iceland's relations with the Western Alliance following a left-wing government's decisions, in 1971, to expand Iceland's fishery limits and to demand the withdrawal of US military forces. This sparked a cod war with Britain and a diplomatic stand-off with the United States, with NATO in the middle. It analyzes the motives behind Iceland's behaviour - especially the tension between a pro Western foreign policy course and a domestic anti Western nationalism - the Western response within the context of alliance politics and the democratic peace theory, and the role of international mediation and domestic political realignments in diffusing the crisis.