Britain's withdrawal from east of Suez : the politics of retrenchment

has been a wonderful series editor, providing every manner of assistance and advice. Michael Dockrill, Saki Dockrill, and Michael Kandiah deserve much thanks as well, for they were extremely generous and helpful while I researched parts of this book in Britain. I would also like to express my appreciation to those participants who were kind enough to discuss the events with me, particularly Sir Frank Cooper, Sir Patrick Nairne, and J.K. Wright. Of course, much thanks must go to my family, especially John D. Pickering, Susan Pickering, and Jane Pickering, whose love and encouragement have sustained me in this as in so many endeavors. My mother, Susan, deserves special mention, for she has often had more faith in my writing than I have. Finally, it is to my wife, Rachel, that I owe the deepest debt of gratitude, for putting her career on hold and allowing me the time and solitude to complete this book. xi Britain's Withdrawal from East of Suez retreat from overseas power may also, of course, have significant political and economic repercussions in the retrenching state. If nothing else, such a transition will likely be a tremendous psychological rite of passage for a people weaned on the privileges that international might can bestow. This topic also has much contemporary relevance. In the United States, for example, questions are increasingly raised over whether that country should maintain, or indeed is capable of maintaining, farflung military commitments. 1 Although US retrenchment is unlikely in the foreseeable future, merely raising the possibility underscores the significant role that a major power's overseas military network may play in shaping global affairs, and the potentially wide-ranging consequences of its abandonment. If such a withdrawal were to take place, even if paced slowly, the after-effects would substantial. Diplomatic, economic, and strategic reverberations would be felt across the globe, and the entire architecture of world politics would be radically transformed. The purpose of this work is not to detail what such reverberations might be, for they will vary greatly depending on international circumstances. Rather, it is to delineate the factors that can compel the leaders of a powerful nation to take this dramatic step. In other words, it explains the influences that can convince policymakers to relinquish something which surely has enormous symbolic importance at home and strategic importance abroad -the nation's overseas military network. Of course, what holds true for post-1945 Britain may not hold true for other nations at other times. Yet it should be remembered that Britain possessed the most extensive overseas military network the world had ever seen throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. There is little question that Britannia truly did rule the waves for over a century and a half, controlling key strategic waterways and littorals throughout the world. No other country derived such immense benefits from its overseas role as Britain did at this time, and perhaps none ever has. No other power wielded the same amount of global influence. And undergirding it all was a sprawling chain of naval stations and military complexes, the barbicans of world power. Given Britain's relatively recent departure from this network of military outposts and the vast scale of the nation's overseas commitments in comparison to all prior examples, an understanding of the British case should allow us to see the essential elements of the retrenchment process in action. By doing so, it will provide insight into other examples of the phenomenon, particularly Britain's Withdrawal from East of Suez for example, its strength of 160 000 fighting troops was one-half of Britain's peacetime worldwide military strength. 6 Yet, Indian independence and the loss of what had been the undergirding of empire, the Indian Army, in 1947, did not mark the end of Britain's international ambitions. A dense, but thinning, network of British fueling stations, air-bases, and military complexes continued to straddle the Indian Ocean after 1945. After the departure from the Indian subcontinent, the three key nodes on the east of Suez network became the Suez base in the Middle East, Singapore in the Far East, and the Trincomalee naval station in Ceylon as a midway point. When Britain was forced from its Middle Eastern and Indian Ocean strongholds in the wake of the Suez crisis in 1956, British military planners simply adapted the groundplan, with Aden and the Maldive Islands soon established as the first two nodes in the network. Of course, the chain consisted of dozens of smaller outposts as well -in the Persian Gulf, Hong Kong, Borneo, Kenya, and Indian Ocean islands such as Diego Garcia and the Seychelles. Overall, the east of Suez network after 1945 was a vast, sprawling, interconnected chain of bases which policymakers felt to be necessary to safeguard British interests in the postwar world. It must be emphasized that after the loss of the nation's most prized imperial possession, India, these interests were principally strategic and economic, not colonial. 7 In essence, Britain's time-honored system of imperial defense was refashioned to fit the Cold War context in the late 1940s. The network of bases in the Indian Ocean area was considered a valuable bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Middle East and Africa as well as being a potential launching pad to attack more peripheral, and seemingly more vulnerable, areas of the Soviet Union during a global war. 8 Yet, its utility in the struggle against communism was not this network of bases' chief strategic purpose. As DeWitt Armstrong explains, postwar statesmen continued to feel that 'Britain's foremost vital national interest [was] to keep the sea communications of the island with the supplying regions of the world continuously open.' 9 Conscious of the central role that overseas commerce played in the nation's past economic success, Britain's postwar policymakers felt that without access to food, raw materials, and oil from abroad, the British economy would grind to a halt. Supporting this belief was Britain's dependence on oil from the Middle East, which is illustrated in the import figures for 1949-50. In that year, Britain imported £22.1 million worth of crude petroleum coalition-building process which eventually culminated in the east of Suez decision. Chapter 8 concludes the study. In this chapter, the theoretical threads woven into this work are tied together, offering an analytical framework which provides a comprehensive explanation of Britain's withdrawal from the east of Suez role and offers considerable insight into similar transitions from world power. Keep Left group 76, Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction: Perspectives on the Withdrawal from World Power....Pages 1-17 Decline and the Politics of Retrenchment....Pages 18-42 The Return to Normalcy: Postwar British Strategy....Pages 43-59 Holding Course: The Labour Government of 1945–51 and the Struggle over Strategy....Pages 60-87 Reappraisal: The Suez Crisis and its Aftermath, 1957–60....Pages 88-117 Setting the Stage: Longer-Term Implications of Suez....Pages 118-149 Relinquishing World Power: Britain’s Financial Crises of 1966–7....Pages 150-176 Conclusions: Politics, History, and the East of Suez Decision....Pages 177-193 Back Matter....Pages 194-230 After 1945, Britain maintained a great chain of overseas military outposts stretching from the Suez Canal to Singapore. Commonly termed the `east of Suez'role, this chain had long been thought to be crucial for the country's security and its vitality. Nonetheless, British leaders eventually decided to abandon this network of bases. This study provides the most comprehensive explanation of this pivotal decision to date, while also offering insight into the processes of foreign policy change and the decline of great powers.