Abstract
David Dilks devoted a lifetime to exploring the history of British foreign policy, especially during the twentieth century. Naturally that led him to consider the historical experience of dismantling the British overseas empire, formal and informal. The other side of that coin was the decline, relative and absolute, of British power in the world. Dilks began one of his more influential volumes by citing celebrated public comments made by Dean Acheson, retired former American Secretary of State, on 5 December 1962. Acheson asserted that ‘Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role’, a dilemma aggravated by the fact that the British effort to maintain their role as a global power by leveraging ‘based on a “special relationship” with the United States … is about to be played out’,1 The controversy this speech provoked, especially in the United Kingdom, was quickly addressed by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s (JFK) administration, which two days later formally declared `US-UK relations are not based only on a power calculus, but also on deep community of purpose and long practice of cooperation …“Special relationship” may not be a perfect phrase, but sneers at Anglo-American reality would be equally foolish.’2 The very next day, 8 December 1962, Acheson’s assertion, and the quick ‘clarification’, were challenged by an event in Southeast Asia that severely tested British power and policy, and the British-American strategic relationship.
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Notes
David Dilks, Retreat from Power: Studies in Britain’s Foreign Policy of the Twentieth Century, Vol. II: After 1939 (London, 1981), p. 35. Acheson made the remarks during a speech delivered at the US Military Academy, West Point NY, on the subject of strengthening NATO, and singled out British confusion as a problem in this regard: DGA to General Maxwell Taylor, 30 July 1962. Series I, box 30, folder 385, DGA-Yale.
Dean G. Acheson, ‘Our Atlantic Alliance: The Political and Economic Strands’, in Vital Speeches of the Day, 24, 6 (1 January 1963) pp. 162–6.
David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) p. 329.
Brian P. Farrell, ‘What Do They Want and How Can We Respond? Commonwealth Intelligence and Confrontation with Indonesia 1963’, in Malcolm H. Murfett (ed.), Imponderable but Not Inevitable: Warfare in the 20th Century (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011) p. 78;
Tan Tai Yong, Creating Greater Malaysia: Decolonization and the Politics of Merger (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008) ch. 1.
Australian War Memorial (AWM), 125, Item 2, CBB4/12/1, Report by MajGen. W.C. Walker, Director of Operations Borneo, on The Operations in Borneo 22 December 1962 to 15 March 1963; H.A. Majid, Rebellion in Brunei: The 1962 Revolt, Imperialism, Confrontation, and Oil (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007);
Nicholas van der Bijl, The Brunei Revolt 1962–1963 (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2012).
Important studies include: H. Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Singapore: Equinox Publishing, 2007 (1978));
J.S. Djiwandono, Konfrontasi Revisited: Indonesia’s Foreign Policy under Soekarno (Jakarta: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 1996);
J.D. Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 2003 (1972));
C.L.M. Penders and U. Sundhaussen, Abdul Haris Nasution: A Political Biography (St Lucia, QD: University of Queensland Press, 1985);
U. Sundhaussen, The Road to Power: Indonesian Military Politics 1945–1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982);
F.B. Weinstein, Indonesian Foreign Policy and the Dilemma of Dependence: From Sukarno to Soeharto (Singapore: Equinox Publishing, 2007 (1976)).
Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012).
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (London: Penguin, 2006).
United States Government, Public Papers of the President of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954 (Washington: USGPO, 1958), Press Conference, 7 April 1954; Office of the Historian, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1952–54, Vol. XII, Part 1, East Asia and the Pacific (Washington, USGPO), Documents 137, 150, 164;
James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000);
Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
John Prados, Operation Vulture (New York: IBooks, 2002).
David Goldsworthy (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A Volume 3: The Conservative Government and the End of Empire 1951–1957, Part I (London: HMSO, 1994, Documents 61–62 [hereafter BDEE Conservative Government];
Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941–68 (Richmond: Curzon, 2001) pp. 110–13;
Nicholas Tailing, Britain, Southeast Asia, and the Impact of the Korean War (Singapore: NUS Press, 2005) chs. 3–5.
Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia, and the Impact of the Korean War, chs. 3–5; Damien Fenton, To Cage the Red Dragon: SEATO and the Defence of Southeast Asia 1955–1965 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012) ch. 1.
Archives New Zealand (ANZ), EA1, W2668, Department of External Affairs (Australia and New Zealand) (DEA) Brief, Relations between SEATO, CENTO and NATO, 3 April 1963; FRUS, 1952–54, Vol. XII, Part 1, East Asia and the Pacific, Documents 250–261; BDEE Conservative Government, Part I, Documents 63–65; Brian P. Farrell, ‘Alphabet Soup and Nuclear War: SEATO, China and the Cold War in Southeast Asia’, in Malcolm H. Murfett (ed.), Cold War Southeast Asia (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2012) pp. 84–6; Fenton, To Cage the Red Dragon, ch. 1; Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia, chs. 5–6.
A.J. Stockwell (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B Volume 3: Malaya, Part 3 (London: HMSO, 1995) Documents 341–343, 356, 394, 404–406, 409, 411–412, 421, 426, 438–439, 448, 467;
Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945–60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency (Melbourne: Monash Asia lnstitute, 2008) chs. 9–12;
Anthony Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats: The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (Singapore: Cultured Lotus, 2001 [1975]) ch. 19. See also the essays by
Hack and Kumar in Richard J. Aldrich et al (eds.), The Clandestine Cold War in Asia 1945–65: Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations (London: Frank Cass, 2000) chs. 10–11.
UKNA, C01035/164 JICFE Weekly Review of Current Intelligence, 14 June 1963; M. Dee (ed.), Australia and the Formation of Malaysia 1961–1966 (Canberra: Department of External Affairs, 2005);
Matthew Jones, Conflict and Confrontation in Southeast Asia, 1961–1965: Britain, the United States and the Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ch. 6;
John Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno: British, American, Australian and New Zealand Diplomacy in the Malaysian-Indonesian Confrontation 1961–65, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) ch. 3.
UKNA, Foreign Office (UK) F0371/169703, Note of Meeting between the Commonwealth Secretary and Malayan High Commissioner to London, 24 June 1963; NAA, A1209, 1963/6637 Part 2, Australian Mission Singapore to DEA, 421, 8 August 1963; David Easter, Britain and the Confrontation with Indonesia 1960–66 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2004) ch. 3;
Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Prentice-Hall, 1998); Tan Tai Yong, Creating Greater Malaysia.
UKNA, D0169/67, British High Commission Canberra to CRO, 5 July 1963; NAA, A4940, C3389, DEA to Australian High Commission London, 3067, 4 August 1963; FRUS, 1961–63, Vol. XXIII, Southeast Asia, Documents 309–315; Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (New York: Dell publishing Co., 1967 [1964]);
Stig Aga Aandstand, Surrendering to Symbols: United States Policy Towards Indonesia 1961–1965 (Oslo: Self-published revised PhD thesis, 2006 (1999)) ch. 3.
FRUS, 1961–63, Vol. XXIII, Southeast Asia, ably documents the Kennedy administration effort to manage simultaneous escalating challenges in Vietnam and Indonesia; Hilsman, To Move a Nation; Subritzky, Confronting Sukarno, ch. 1; Aandstand, Surrendering to Symbols, ch. 2; Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
UKNA, CO1035/165, JICFE Weekly Review of Current Intelligence, 6 September 1963; ANZ, AAFD-811-W3738, 235/1/2, Part 1, JIC Intelligence Review, 4 September 1963; Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics 1959–1965 (Singapore: Equinox Publishing, 2006 (1974)); Crouch, The Army and Politics; Sundhaussen, The Road to Power;
Lorenz M. Luthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
FRUS, 1964–68, Vol. I, Vietnam, 1964, Documents 255–308; E.E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
AWM, 121/233/D/1, Secretary to COSC, 23 July 1964; UKNA, CAB21/5075, Mountbatten to Thorneycroft, 14 July, Trend to Home, Butler to Home, 21 July 1964; PREM11/4908, British Embassy Washington to FO, 2361, 26 June 1964; Brian P. Farrell, ‘Escalate to Terminate: Far East Command and the Need to End Confrontation’, in Peter Dennis and Jeff Grey (eds.), Entangling Alliances: Coalition War in the Twentieth Century (Canberra: Australian Military History Publications, 2005).
The rich literature analysing this lengthy British Labour government effort to combine economic stimulus with strategic foreign policy divides over the most basic question: in the end, was it all because of the economy? Different arguments are presented by Jeffrey Pickering, Britain’s Withdrawal from East of Suez (London: Macmillan, 1998);
Saki Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez: The Choice between Europe and the World? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; and
P.L. Pham, Ending ‘East of Suez’: The British Decision to Withdraw from Malaysia and Singapore 1964–1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
For an analytical summary, see Malcolm H. Murfett, ‘“The Times They Are A-Changin”: Britain’s Military Commitment to Singapore, 1967–1971’, in Brian P. Farrell (ed.), Churchill and the Lion City: Shaping Modern Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011).
See the global summary presented to the new Labour government in UKNA, DEFE5/155, COS295/64, Appendix 1, Disposition of UK Fighting Units on 29 Oct 64; see also Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989).
Ronald B. Frankum, Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam 1964–1975, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
It remains unclear who orchestrated the coup and why such an obvious target as Soeharto was not attacked. The roles and knowledge of Sukarno and the PKI remain especially controversial, driven by the very heavy loss of life that ensued, in Java especially, over the next months, as army units dismantled the PKI. Subsequent political changes in Indonesia only added to the controversy, there and abroad. Significant studies include: Benedict R. O’G Anderson and Ruth T. McVey, A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia (Singapore: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2009 (1971, 1965));
J. Hughes, The End of Sukarno: A Coup that Misfired, A Purge that Ran Wild (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 2002 (1967));
John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’état in Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006);
Helen-Louise Hunter, Sukarno and the Indonesian Coup (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007);
Jusuf Wanandi, Shades of Grey: A Political Memoir of Modern Indonesia 1965–1998 (Singapore: Equinox Publishing, 2012).
NAA, A1209/1965/6595 Part 6, Defence Consultations: Summary of discussions 1–2 Febmary 1966 and ANZ, ABHS-7148-W4628, LONB106/5A Part 2, Report of the New Zealand Delegation, 3 February 1966. See also the account in P.G. Edwards, A Nation at War: Australian Politics, Society and Diplomacy during the Vietnam War 1965–1975 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997) pp. 89–91.
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Farrell, B.P. (2014). Quadruple Failure?. In: Murfett, M.H. (eds) Shaping British Foreign and Defence Policy in the Twentieth Century. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431493_10
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