Diplomas and Diplomacy

The History of the Marshall Scholarship

Aroop Mukharji

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137586537
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

The first published work to chart the history of the Marshall Scholarship, this book details the origins of the Scholarship in the British Foreign Office and subsequently traces the award's evolution through the careers and narratives of a range of Scholars. It further explores the complex and dynamic interaction between education and diplomacy through the broader lens of Anglo-American relations by way of extensive primary-source document research, interviews, and statistical analysis.

© The Author(s) 2016

Aroop MukharjiDiplomas and Diplomacy10.1057/978-1-137-58653-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Special Relationship

Aroop Mukharji¹

(1)

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

End Abstract

In a small city in the middle of the country, over 3000 people woke up early one Saturday morning for the event of the season. Some had lined up the night before to get a good seat. The town had cleared out an old train station, festooned it with flags and royal streamers, and packed its tables with sumptuous spreads of Britain’s finest teas, biscuits, and cakes. The sartorial ensembles were striking. The women resplendent in white gloves, pearls, and extravagant hats of all colors, shapes, and sizes. The occasional tiara. The Guardian, one of Britain’s major national newspapers, reported on the “frenzied and frenetic” local anticipation of the big day: 29 April 2011—“The Royal Wedding” of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The train station was hosting a “watch party,” telecasting the celebration on a massive 25′ × 30′ screen in its central hall.¹

The festivities in question were not held outside of London, nor were they even in the UK: they were in Kansas City, MO, otherwise known as the “The Heart of America.” Revelers began assembling at 3 a.m. local time because they were six time zones away from Westminster Abbey. The same Guardian article noted, “It’s like the war of independence never happened.”²

The monarchy of today is vastly different from the monarchy of 1776, but America’s fascination with British royalty remains both a reality and a political curiosity. At the time of the royal nuptials in 2011, the Queen’s favorability among Americans polled higher than their approval of their own president.³ Yet for much of their shared history, the USA and the UK were not even allies. During the War of 1812, in the fourth decade of the new republic, British troops actually set fire to the White House. Though outright hostility was rare for the rest of the nineteenth century, relations between the two countries were characterized by reticence and mistrust.⁴

Two world wars in the twentieth century brought the countries closer, but wartime alliances did not cement a permanent friendship. British historian David Watt describes the relationship during World War I as intense but distant: “President Wilson, in order to avoid accusations of foreign entanglement, invariably insisted that the United States was not an ally of the Allies but an ‘associate’.”⁵ The interwar years did see an improvement in Anglo-American relations relative to the previous century, but they also included a naval rivalry and the US Senate’s unwillingness to ratify the Western-led League of Nations. America was not yet ready to build robust peacetime alliances or to assume collective security obligations.

The US–UK alliance of World War II changed all that. It represented the closest bilateral wartime relationship the USA has ever had. On matters related to intelligence and atomic research, the connection was without modern precedent. “No two sovereign states have identical interests,” historian David Reynolds writes. “Accepting, then, that no alliance is perfect, we can acknowledge that this one was much less imperfect than most.”⁶ The two countries shared intimate intelligence and a Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff for closer military coordination. At one point during the war, Churchill spent several weeks running his country from the White House.⁷

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the two countries continued to share intelligence, but transatlantic relations cooled. The Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff was dissolved, the White House abruptly halted its Lend–Lease policy,⁸ and the 1945 US loan to the UK was made with unfavorable conditions. The USA even went so far as to pass an act of Congress that shut out the British from American nuclear research and technology, despite the close cooperation on such matters in the last 2 years of the war.⁹

Grand strategy rekindled the romance. Containment of communism and safeguarding American strategic and economic interests abroad dominated American foreign policy imperatives over the ensuing four decades, and the USA saw a partner in the UK toward that end in constructing a new international economic and security order. Furthermore, as the younger nation grew more involved abroad (in the Middle East and Asia in particular), it sought coordination with its more diplomatically experienced peer.¹⁰ “[For] some years the notion of a torch being handed on cast a something of a sunset glow over the relationship, as seen from Washington, and enhanced the arguments against undermining the British by too many hard choices or bullying tactics,” Watt writes.¹¹ Celebrated historian Ernest May and co-author Gregory Treverton note the advantage of “a sense of company in a confusing, unfriendly world.”¹² Even during the Eisenhower administration, when Anglo-American relations reached a nadir, American policymakers continued to intimately collaborate with the British on matters of international affairs.¹³

Writing personally to Churchill in December 1953, President Eisenhower stated:

I know that you realize that there are in this country many people who believe that the United States has treated the Arab countries shabbily and, because parts of the Arab holdings are vital to the Western world, this segment of our citizenry asserts that we should work to improve our relationships with the Arab countries. But this government has always refused to do this at the cost of anything we believe detrimental to Anglo-American best interests. In spite of outrageous and irresponsible criticism of each other on both sides of the Atlantic, American governmental policy and popular sentiment recognize the great value to the free world of keeping Anglo-American relationships coordinated with respect to the rest of the world and friendly as between themselves.¹⁴

Earlier in the same letter, Eisenhower referenced withholding aid from Egypt (and postponing it several times) at the explicit request of the British due to its adverse relations with the Middle Eastern country: “I repeat in our actual dealings with Egypt, we have gone to great lengths to meet your convictions and opinions. We certainly want to continue to do so.” Presumably alluding to the CIA and Mi6-supported coup of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953, Eisenhower continued, “We think we proved that in Persia, and I hope we shall together make that effort seem worthwhile.”¹⁵

Additionally, economic aid to Europe was employed by the USA as a bulwark against the spread of communism. Senior officials in the Truman administration feared the unlikely event of a Soviet attack less than they did the impending reality of “famine, disease, anarchy, and revolution.”¹⁶ It was believed that countries in dire financial straits would be vulnerable to political change. This fear led to an American assumption of Greek and Turkish debt in the late 1940s, efforts to revive Japan, and, more significantly, the European Recovery Program (also known as the Marshall Plan or ERP), a defining feature of US containment policy in Western and Central Europe.¹⁷ Under the Marshall Plan, the USA gifted $13 billion to European economies for postwar reconstruction from 1948 to 1951.¹⁸ The USA offered to help the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies as well, but they refused to accept the aid. Urging Congress to approve funding for the Marshall Plan in 1948, Secretary of State George Marshall said without American aid there would be “no escape from economic distress so intense, social discontents so violent, political confusion so widespread, and hopes for the future so shattered that the historic base of Western civilization, of which we are by belief and inheritance an integral part, will take on a new form in the image of the tyranny that we fought to destroy in Germany.”¹⁹

On the other side of the Atlantic, Britain had been in a state of relative decline since the late nineteenth century. The two world wars took a great toll on the nation’s economy, and by the end of the second, the government had to resort to, among other dire measures, bread rationing to stay afloat.²⁰ Partnering with its former ally and the world’s new hegemon would help Britain to both recover and to sustain its international influence. High-ranking British officials, such as Secretary of State Ernest Bevin, perceived their country’s economic health to hinge on the American relationship.²¹

In an attempt to forge closer ties, British leaders (especially Churchill) made public and roseate appeals to a common heritage, culture, and “unity of purpose” between the USA and UK. “Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States of America,” Churchill famously said in his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946. “There is however an important question we must ask ourselves,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. The Special Relationship
• 2. Diploma Diplomacy
• 1. Conception to Enactment
• 2. Opinion Formers
• 3. Community
• 4. The Unanticipated
• Backmatter