Family spats: Perception, illusion, and sentimentality in the formation of the modern Anglo-American special relationship, 1950--1976

In this dissertation I explain the role played by elite perceptions of cultural affinity in the operation of the Anglo-American special relationship between 1950 and 1976. The existing literature on the subject of the special relationship does not directly engage the issue of cultural affinity, and thus my work fills a significant gap in the study of Anglo-American diplomacy. Drawing upon analysis of both British and American archival records and public opinion polling data, I demonstrate that perceptions of fundamental societal bonds did influence Anglo-American relations as well as the respective governments' wider foreign policy concerns and domestic political realities. Case studies of the 1956 British Suez invasion and the more protracted American war in Vietnam are used to demonstrate the evolution of the modern special relationship. In establishing how Anglo-American cultural affinity has influenced the special relationship, I explain the alliance's fundamental nature, its strengths and weaknesses, and its operational dynamic.; Both case studies detail frequent and serious foreign policy divergences between the American and British governments. However, I also demonstrate that the Suez crisis led the British policy elite to recognize that their nation's foreign relations were strictly and uniquely linked to those of the United States. Likewise, the Vietnam War reinforced the American elite's desire for allies, and persistent cultural affinity ensured that the U.K. remained the most effective and significant ally for the U.S. government to tout before its citizenry. In this way, by 1976, the modern operational dynamic of the Anglo-American special relationship had become clear. Cultural affinity and the elite sentimentality it inspired were forces that kept Britain and America close through periods of diplomatic tension and distinctively united throughout the postwar years in general. The respective capabilities and limitations of each partner has changed since 1950, but due to widespread cultural affinity, each government still needs the other and consequently the special relationship, though altered and unequal, has survived into the 21st century.