Graduation Semester and Year

2011

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in History

Department

History

First Advisor

Joyce S Goldberg

Abstract

The purpose of this transatlantic dissertation is to produce a new post-revisionist history of Anglo-American relations from 1953 to 1956 that seriously re-assesses Eisenhower's "middle path" foreign policy and the differing responses to it from Churchill and Eden. This reexamination challenges the notion that Eisenhower's foreign policy represented a mere continuation of Truman's containment policy or a "middle path" between Democrats and far-right Republicans. Instead, Eisenhower intentionally adopted a distinctly far-right Republican foreign policy that overwhelmed two Conservative British prime ministers and accelerated the end of the British Empire. This transatlantic history argues that American foreign policy went from one of accommodation and cooperation with the British to one that proved intrinsically hostile to the British Empire. The Eisenhower administration's anti-communist ideology set aside a balance of power model of diplomacy, in favor of a policy of rolling back communism, while severely undermining British national security and economic interests in both the Middle East and the Far East. Eisenhower and Dulles engaged in a new confrontational "brinksmanship" that diametrically opposed long-term British diplomacy and interests. Their unilateral use of American power against perceived communist threats and their new anti-colonial policies in the Third World put them on an inevitable collision course with Churchill and Eden.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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