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political capital out of it [and] some are calling for a witch hunt. 2 Kenneth Younger, 1951 The Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ was an important dimension of Attlee’s foreign and defence policy. Stemming from wartime collaboration, relations with Washington were fraught and served to provide the Labour government with
Four questions stand before the historian of the cold war and the Arab-Israeli conflict: 1) Did Israel and the US have a 'special relationship'? 2) Were Soviet-Israeli relations destined for failure from 1948? 3) Was the Arab-Israeli conflict insoluble because of the cold war or in spite of it? 4)Was detente between the superpowers the key to solving the Arab-Israeli conflict? Israel failed to get a security guarantee from the US because if it were granted ally status the Arab states would turn to the Soviets. Instead of a security guarantee Kennedy used the nebulous term 'special relationship', which did not bind America politically or militarily. Relations with the USSR looked promising at first, but the Zionist ideology of the Jewish state made it inevitable that relations with would worsen , since the Kremlin rejected the notion that Soviet Jews were by definition part of the Jewish nation, and therefore candidates for emigration to Israel. As for the Arabs, they were adamant that the Palestinian refugees return en mass, which meant the destruction of of Israel. No compromise suggested by the US was acceptable to to the Arabs , who were always supported by the USSR.The Soviets demanded detente cover not only the Arab states and Israel, but Turkey and Iran as well. Consequently the Middle East remained a no-man's-land between the superpowers' spheres of influence, inexorably paving the way for the wars in 1956 and 1967.
Drawing extensively on recently released documents and private papers, this is the first extensive book-length study to examine the intimate relationship between the Attlee government and Britain’s intelligence and security services. Often praised for the formation of the modern-day ‘welfare state’, Attlee’s government also played a significant, if little understood, role in combatting communism at home and overseas, often in the face of vocal, sustained, opposition from their own backbenches. Beneath Attlee’s calm exterior lay a dedicated, if at times cautious, Cold War warrior, dedicated to combatting communism at home and overseas. This study tells the story of Attlee’s Cold War. At home, the Labour government implemented vetting to protect Whitehall and other areas of the Cold War state from communists, while, overseas, Attlee and his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin authorised a series of highly secret special operations in Eastern Europe, designed to erode Soviet influence, told here for the first time in significant detail. More widely, Ministers also strengthened Imperial and Commonwealth security and, responding to a series of embarrassing spy scandals, tried to revive Britain’s vital nuclear transatlantic ‘special relationship’ with Washington. This study is essential reading for anyone interested in the Labour Party, intelligence, security and Britain’s foreign and defence policy at the start of the Cold War.
demographics and it would cease to be a Jewish state, for which the US administration would bear the blame. Kennedy promised the balance of power would be maintained, adding that the United States had a ‘special relationship’ with Israel: ‘We made it clear to the Arabs repeatedly that those special relationship [sic] are not negotiable.’ Although it had no official alliance with Israel, it felt like its ‘most
State Department: no policies regarding Israel could be divorced from US regional and global strategies. Thus, the ‘special relationship’ of the Kennedy era conflicted with the US realpolitik and was meant to satisfy both American Jews and Israel, and keep Israel from feeling that it was being sacrificed on the altar of Western Cold War interests. The term ‘special relationship,’ never wholly
development of the modern-day welfare state and the creation of the National Health Service – and, overseas, the start of decolonisation and the development of the transatlantic ‘special relationship’. Yet many endorsing Attlee for the so-called ‘Spirit of ’45’ overlooked his support for Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, Cold War foreign policy and, importantly for this study, the
oversight was thus in Israel’s own interests, he said, it would gain by demonstrating its peaceful intentions. 3 The United States and Israel disagreed on the interpretation of the special relationship. Israel maintained they shared common goals, such as regional peace, but the problem was achieving them. Things would be different, Israel said, if it belonged to NATO or had a security guarantee or deterrent
common EU foreign policy line, or if the established players still find it easy to join with other states when they think fit, hence bypassing the common EU position. In relation to Russia, the answer is clear: key EU member states – the UK, France, Italy and Germany – have been surprisingly active on their own account in relation to Russia, each attempting to forge a ‘special relationship’ with Putin
establish a ‘special relationship’ that the United States did not want. It could make the United States a ‘semi-combatant,’ and cause problems regarding its obligations to countries in the region. 72 With the Eisenhower administration’s opposition to a defense treaty with Israel and the fear of a war between Israel and its neighbors, the State Department drafted a plan called Project Alpha
billion per year. 7 http://egypt.usaid.gov/en/aboutus/Pages/budgetinformation.aspx (accessed 16 October 2011). 8 P. Arthur, Special Relationships. Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland Problem (Belfast