National Affairs: The Wider Causes

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The summary of specific conflicts between Britain and the U.S. is expressed in specific causes. But the range of opposition is so wide as to suggest that more general causes of U.S.-British conflict are also driving the two nations apart.

The widening split is not a "conflict of interest." It is not essentially a struggle for commercial or other material advantages nor is it a struggle for "power" as such. In the Far East, neither nation has a big economic stake. In fact, the U.S. could wish the British stake in Pacific Asia were heavier; that might bring British policy down out of the Nehrunian clouds. British suspicion to the contrary, the U.S. Government has no desire to replace British Middle East commercial interest with American.

If the U.S. and Britain are not rivals for money or power, what are they in conflict about? Ideology? The British say they haven't any ideology. The Americans say the British have, too, an ideology, and further, that the Americans are proud and grateful to share it with them. This foolish argument is hardly the basis for widespread conflict. What are the other possibilities?

The Doctrinaire Left. The Eisenhower Administration thinks of its foreign policy as progressive in that it seeks to thwart the Communist drive by expanding the political freedom and the economic life of peoples everywhere. This aim might be expected to appeal especially to the Socialists, who heavily influence British thought.

But the Socialists reject it on the ground of Socialist dogma: capitalist nations cannot be progressive; the U.S. is capitalist: therefore, the U.S. is an anti-social exploiter, Q.E.D. British Socialists have a special resentment against American capitalism: it works. A decaying American capitalism could be treated with the tolerance and condescension that is the hallmark of the Fabian spirit. But neither Fabius nor Sidney Webb would know what to do with a capitalist enemy that really achieves its ends. The success of American capitalism in raising American living standards can neither be believed nor forgiven. It can only be evaded by talking of "the American treasure house of resources" (as if mass-produced automobiles came out of mines) or by ascribing U.S. success to the New Deal.

The Muted Right. The Eisenhower Administration is also profoundly and explicitly conservative, and it rises specifically to the defense of ancient verities. But this awakens no more friendly response from British conservatives than American progressivism evokes from the left. With the conservatives, the trouble is not dogma but politico-sclerosis.

The two main camps of the Tory Party are the Socialists-who-won't-go-upstairs and the Colonel Blimps. The former have the usual Socialist view of the U.S. and the Colonels are of even less help. They resent the fact that the Americans have taken over the power if not the glory that was the Empire's. They wanted to settle Mossadegh with gunboats and Naguib with the Hussars.

But nostalgia for the brave old days is not conservatism. It is the conservative's business to find how unchanging principles apply to the ever-changing facts of life, not to deny that the facts have changed. British conservatism today rarely speaks in terms of principle; consequently, the British right is scarcely heard in public debate, leaving the field to the anti-American leftists, from Attlee to Bevan to Driberg.