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Before the Special Relationship: The Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Foundation and the Rumour of an Anglo-American War

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Notes

  1. Andrew Williams, Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century, Manchester U.P., 1998

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  2. Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Princeton University Library Box 72, November 7 1928

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  3. Fiona Venn ‘“A Futile Paper Chase”: Anglo-American Relations and Middle East Oil, 1918–1934 in Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 1 No 2, July 1990, pp 165–184, here p. 167 and 172.

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  4. See also: Nicholas Cull, “Selling Peace: The Origins, Promotion and Fate of the Anglo-American New Order During the Second World War”, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 7, No. 1, March 1996, pp 1–8.

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  5. For a brief summary of this see Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order, Oxford U.P, 1992, Chapter 4 “The Political Origins of Progressive and Conservative Internationalism” and

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  6. David S. Patterson, Towards a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887-1914, Bloomington Indiana, University of Indiana Press, 1976

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  7. Roland C. Marchand, The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898-1918, Princeton U.P., 1972

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  8. See for example Inderjeet Parmar, ‘Lord Lothian’s Moment: The Anglo-American Establishment and the Saving of Britain, 1939–1941’, paper presented at the University of Edinburgh, May 2001 and, by the same author, “Anglo-American elites a-in the interwar Years: Idealism and Power in the Intellectual Roots of Chatham, House and the Council on Foreign Relations”, International Relations, Vol. 16, Number 1, April 2002, pages 53–76. The quote is on page 53.

  9. Parmar, “Lord Lothian’s Moment...”, pages 6–7.

  10. Knock, To End All Wars, page 57.

  11. Lucian M. Ashworth, “Did the Realist-Idealist debate ever happen? A Revisionist History of International Relations”, International Relations, vol. 16, No. 1, April 2002, page 34.

  12. This debate is well described by Martin Ceadel in Thinking about Peace and War, Oxford U.P., 1987. See also: David Long and Peter Wilson (eds) Thinkers of the Twenty Years Crisis, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995

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  13. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, London, Macmillan, 1939

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  14. For a fascinating recent account of the intellectual climate of the inter-war years see: David Edmunds and John Eidinow, Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, London, Faber and Faber, 2001.

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  15. See Williams, Failed Imagination?, Chapters 1 and 2, and George Conyne, Woodrow Wilson: British Perspectives, 1919-21, London, Macmillan, 1992.

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  16. Michael J. Hogan, Informal Entente; The Private Structure of cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1977. This tendency in American historiography is often referred to as ‘corporatist’.

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  17. Punch, or the London Charivari, February 12th 1991, page 123.

  18. Punch, May 28, 1991, page 415

  19. Punch, March 5 1919, page 175

  20. Punch, May 21 1919, page 403

  21. Quoted from (the then junior Treasury official) Sir Frederic Harmer’s diary, 8 October 1945, in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937–1946, London, Macmillan, 2000, page 418.

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  22. David Hunter Miller, “Sovereignty and Neutrality”, in International Conciliation, No. 220, May 1926, quoted in the Bulletin of the Foreign Policy Association Information Service, Vol. IV, No. 2, March 10, 1928, Armstrong Papers, Box 72.

  23. Armstrong to Benes, 6 April 1923, Armstrong Papers, Box 7

  24. Minutes of the Anglo-American Group of 1937, Council on Foreign Relations Papers, Box 239.

  25. Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Box 72, November 7 1928, pages 1–2.

  26. Meetings of the Anglo-American Group of the CFFR, 16 November 1928 and 26 December 1928, Final report of January 1929, Armstrong Papers, Box 72.

  27. “The Anglo-American Naval Question: Report of a Study Group of Members of the CFFR”, 12 November 1929, Armstrong papers, Box 72.

  28. Minutes of the Anglo-American Group, meeting of 16 November 1929, Council for Foreign Relations Papers, Princeton University Library, Box 238

  29. James T. Shotwell, “Diary during the Making of the Geneva Protocol”, 87 pages 1924, Shotwell Papers, Columbia University Library Box A.

  30. Shotwell, Diary Entry for 10 September 1924, Shotwell Papers, Box A

  31. Shotwell met Salvador de Madariaga, already Head of the Disarmament Section of the League’s Secretariat

  32. For a summary discussion of this see my “Sir John Bradbury and the Reparations Commission, 1920–1925”, Diplomacy and Statecraft, September 2002, pp 81–102.

  33. Cf. David Carlton, MacDonald versus Henderson: The Foreign Policy of the Second Labour Government, London, Macmillan, 1970, and

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  34. Andrew J. Williams Labour and Russia: The Attitude of the Labour Party to the USSR, 1924–1934, Manchester U.P., 1989, Chapter 9.

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  35. The expression is Paul Rich’s, whose “Alfred Zimmern’s Cautious Idealism: The League of Nations, International Education, and the Commonwealth” can be found in: Long and Wilson, Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis, op.cit., pages 79–99.

  36. Shotwell Diary, 31 August 1924, pages 31 and 35.

  37. Byrne to Armstrong, 11 August 1928, Armstrong Papers Box 72.

  38. Henry Stimson, Diary, “Memorandum of a Trip to Rapidan”, 5 –7 October 1929, Stimson Papers, Reel 126.

  39. Stimson Diary, ibid.

  40. Henry Stimson, Diary, “Memorandum on the World Court”, dated 1929, Stimson Papers, Reel 126

  41. As a footnote, Stimson’s views on the Court are not echoed in current (2003) United States objections to an International Criminal Court. The current American Administration objects to the dangers posed by such a court to the sovereignty of the United States and the bringing of spurious politically motivated claims. It was British Prime Minister Tony Blair who tried to persuade the American President to drop his objections, a debate that is ongoing as this is written. See for example, the Financial Times for 1 July 2002

  42. Minutes of the Anglo-American Group, meeting of 7 November 1929, doc.cit.

  43. For details on Ottawa, see my Trading With the Bolsheviks: The Politics of East-West Trade, 1920–1939, Manchester U.P., 1992, Chapter 4

  44. See for example, “The War Debts: A British View”, Chatham House, September 1937 and the CFR’s response “The British War Debts: An American View” of April 1938; CFR Volume VI, Box 239

  45. Meeting of the Anglo-American Group, 15 March 1937, a dinner meeting, CFR Box 239.

  46. Minutes of the Anglo-American Group, meeting of 7 November 1929, doc.cit.

  47. Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, page 91.

  48. See for example: Department of State’s Department of Special Research, February 19 1943, Armstrong papers, Box 72

  49. Department of State, Department of Special Research, Memorandum of Official Statements of Post-War Policy, 3 January 1942, Berle Papers, Roosevelt Library.

  50. Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, passim.

  51. Williams, Failed Imagination?, page 274

  52. Universities Committee on Post War International Relations, n.d. probably 1943, Shotwell Papers, Box 242

  53. Isaiah Bowman, Meeting of the Political Committee at the State Department, June 12 1943, Berle Papers, Box 65.

  54. For many examples see: Williams, Failed Imagination?, Chapter 5.

  55. Report by Stettinius to Hull, on a visit to London, April 7 to 29, 1944, Berle Papers, Box 70.

  56. Cf. Williams, Failed Imagination?, Chapter 4

  57. Harriman Papers, Library of Congress, 1948–1950, Box 267.

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  1. Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Andrew Williams

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This paper first presented to the founding conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association, July 8–10, 2002. I would like to thank several people for commenting on an early draft of this paper, especially two anonymous reviewers for the Journal, as well as George Conyne, and for members of the audience at the conference who gave me ideas for the present version, especially Jill Edwards, Priscilla Roberts, Fiona Venn, and Donald C. Watt.

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Williams, A. Before the Special Relationship: The Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Foundation and the Rumour of an Anglo-American War. J Transatl Stud 1, 233–251 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794010308656801

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