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Britain's elusive role in world politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

Generalisation about foreign policy is inevitable. It is the external face of a country, turned toward the world and taken by others to characterize the society behind it. Politicians and commentators continually search for ways in which to describe the essence of their nation's foreign policy, partly for themselves, and partly to convey its direction and values to interested parties at home or abroad. One of the most natural and time-honoured solutions they have hit upon has been the concept of ‘role’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1979

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References

page 249 note 1 The Times, 10 December 1975.Google Scholar

page 251 note 1 Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, 1976)Google Scholar provides voluminous documentation of this point.

page 252 note 1 Acheson's remark about Britain having “lost an Empire but not yet found a role” was made in a speech at West Point on 5 December 1962. For a discussion of what flowed from this judgement, see Frankel, J., British Foreign Policy 1945–73 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 151–173.Google Scholar

page 253 note 1 Callaghan, Jim, Challenges and Opportunities for British Foreign Policy, Fabian Tract December 1975, p. 10.Google Scholar (Italics in the original).

page 254 note 1 Quoted in Young, K., Sir Alec Douglas-Home (London, 1970), p. 191.Google Scholar The Earl of Home also said, in the same 1963 passage: “I believe that Britain has a fine part to play on the world stage. … We cannot lead from behind or from the middle ranks – we must be in front”.

page 254 note 2 Tindemans, Leo, European Union: Report to the European Council (Brussels, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: External Trade and Cooperation in Development, 1976), p. 17.Google Scholar

page 254 note 3 Heath, Edward, A British Approach to European Foreign Policy (Leeds University Press, 1976)Google Scholar, p. 12. (The 33rd Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations given at the University of Leeds).

page 255 note 1 Callaghan, op. cit. p. 1.

page 255 note 2 In 1975, Britain's defence expenditure at 4·9 per cent of GNP was higher than all other European members of NATO other than the special cases of Greece, Portugal and Turkey. French expenditure stood at 3 · 9 per cent and West German at 3 · 7 per cent. (Source: Military Balance 1976–77, London. International Institute of Strategic Studies).

page 256 note 1 Sir Kenneth Berrill was Head of the Central Policy Review Staff which produced the Review of Overseas Representation (HMSO, 1977). Here the reference is to paragraph 2.22.

page 256 note 2 Any more than Britain's diplomatic influence depends crudely on her degree of economic strength, which was the assumption made by the Berrill Report so strongly attacked by the Report about Berrill itself issued by the House of Commons Expenditure Committee, viz.: Fourth Report from the Expenditure Committee: The Central. Policy Review Staff Review of Overseas Representation (Vol. I, HMSO, 7 March 1978).

page 257 note 1 May, Ernest R., ‘Lessons1 of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy’ (New York, 1973), p. xi.Google Scholar

page 257 note 2 Heath, op. cit. p. 13.

page 258 note 1 The emphasis on problems regardless of state boundaries is of course characteristic of many writers about international relations in the twentieth century. John Burton has been one of the most articulate of recent expositors of this tradition, and in his World Society (Cambridge, 1972), see pp. 108–120 discusses roles and decision-making from this point of view.

page 259 note 1 See, among others, Christina Lamer, ‘The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’, in The Management of Britain's External Relations, Robert Boardman and A. J. R.Groom (eds.) (London, 1973), p. 70.

page 259 note 2 A point well developed by Max Beloff in his The Future of British Foreign Policy (London PP.