Wilson and Washington continued intend his role to be, in this massive drama ? What forces and interests determine the evident British wish to have a leading part in the reform of the Atlantic Allisnce ?
Only two weeks before Mr.Wilson's departure for America, the world saw the true basis of British power displayed before it, in humiliating nudity. Great Britain, at first sight indicated by history as the main opponent of American imperialism, is in reality less able to challenge Johnson's designs than any other major European power. Her foreign interests and commitments are still the greatest, among the European nations; but - as the events of November showed once again - these have turned into an intolerable burden. From being an extension of metropolitan power, they have become a frustration of : that power. Trapped in her anachronistic web of relationships, her internal economy profoundly distorted by their influence, Britain alone has not shared fully in the great capitalist boom of the fifties £ and sixties. The weight of half the world's commerce still rests upon the pound sterling, and through the vound sterling upon a feeble economy unable to generate the most modest economic progress. Periodically, the weight proves too much, and threatens to crush British capitalism altogether, It was the fashion in Victorian England to sneer at Turkey and her decaying empire as "the sick man of Europe"; now England herself has become the sick man of Europe and the West, a verpetual island anchored only in the past, a question-mark on the edge of the Atlantic.
Unable to challenge America, Britain is compelled to support her, Tradition (including notably the traditions of the first vost-war Labour government), sentiment, comuon culture, and a precarious presence alongside American imperialism in many varts of the world, all combine to define a role of faithful ally. This necessity was brutally underlined in the recent economic crisie, Lixe an elderly prostitute the town has become somewhat ashamed of, Great Britain is still of some use to others: rather than lose the convemience of the pound sterling, the world's bankers preferred to raise for her one of the largest loans in financial history. But only through American initiative, and on a solid dollar basis. The solid foundation of Wilson's negotiating position in Washington was a suitcase-full of freshly contracted debts to the mighty dollar, and an internal economic crisis from which (as yet) no escape seems possible.
Britain has no real aims comvarable to the great strategic : designs of American policy. She only has nroblems. No British Prime Minister feels properly dressed without resounding affirmations of Britain's greatness, Britain's independence, Britain's leadership. Like Macmillan and Churchill before him , Harold Wilson repeats the ritual phrases. But the political reality behind them is, necessarily, ‘of the narrowest kind. Having no real power behind them, and no real vision before them, British governments cannot function in the intricate game of international diplomacy as a force. They can only act as intermediaries between the various real forces. This is the classic role of the “honest broker", first fully defined by Macnillan with his efforts at mediation between Moscow and Yashinzton. Wilson's visit to Washington was another, more recherche, nhase of the same function,