“The Quality of the Ordinary”: Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Third World 1975- 1980 Andrew J. Whitford Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Andrew J. Whitford All rights reserved ABSTRACT “The Quality of the Ordinary”: Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Third World 1975- 1980 Andrew J. Whitford The recovery of the Anglo-American relationship in the late 1970s took place in the Third World. The “Special Relationship” between the United States and Britain reached its post World War II nadir in the decade between 1964 and 1974. Simultaneous to this decline in the relationship was the growing power and influence of the Third World in international institutions. By the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, both the United States and Britain were suffering political and economic turmoil brought about by increased oil prices, labor unrest, and inflation. The two countries worked together to navigate a broad array of problems to include the Third World’s increasing hostility to Israel and calls for a New International Economic Order in the United Nations, a growing refugee crisis in southeast Asia, the spread of the Cold War to southern Africa, and questions about decline and disorder at home. In the United States, neoconservatives began to assert a greater role in international affairs by questioning both the future of British socialism and the wisdom of appeasing the Third World. Within these constraints, British and American statesmen acted to end white rule in Rhodesia to contain communist expansion, care for refugees while upholding international law within real fiscal constraints, and free American hostages held in Iran. Through both their actions and their improved mutual understanding, intellectually and politically diverse statesmen such as Henry Kissinger, Anthony Crosland, Andrew Young, and Peter Carrington established a balance in the Special Relationship that allowed the United States and Britain to cooperate in the Third World while respecting the other’s independence. Table of Contents Illustrations ii Acknowledgements iii Dedication iv Chapter 1: An Alliance No More? The 1970s and the Special Relationship 1 Chapter 2: The Dialogue of Decline: American and British Perceptions Of 29 Decline Across the Atlantic in the 1970s Chapter 3: “If You Want an Audience, Start a Fight”: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 72 the United Nations, and the Limits of Public Diplomacy Chapter 4: The War that Would Not End: Britain, Refugees, and the Aftermath 133 of the Vietnam War Chapter 5: From Grimsby to Lusaka: Henry Kissinger, Labour, and 175 Decolonization in Southern Africa in 1976 Chapter 6: Division and Discontent: The Limits of Anglo-American Cooperation 234 on Iran and Rhodesia 1977-1980 Chapter 7: “Stubbornly Democratic”: The Aftermath of the 1970s on 299 Anglo-American Politics References 317 i Illustrations Editorial Cartoon from the Austin-American Statesman , 5 February 1976 125 Foreign Secretary James Callaghan in North Vietnam, 1973 142 Clara Maersk , circa 1975 150 Ambassador Andrew Young on the Cover of Newsweek , 28 March 1977 250 ii Acknowledgements This project grew out of my Masters Thesis on the role of the United Nations in British politics before and during the Falklands War. I could not have balanced my roles as a husband, father, student, teacher, and Army officer without a great deal of help, guidance, encouragement, and support. My first and most important thanks go to my family who endured three moves, four jobs, writing during holidays and weekends, and multiple odd vacations and trips. Angie and I moved to New York to start my graduate studies with about a week to prepare. Jack and Oliver joined us along the way from Columbia to West Point to Kansas to Texas. Their love, support, and patience mean the world to me. My parents David and Nancy and my in-laws Jim and Shirley have also been supportive and encouraging every step of the way. The staff and faculty at Columbia University fostered an environment that was simultaneously intellectually challenging and socially welcoming. The faculty and staff were utterly committed to passing on the best traditions of the profession of history. Professor Susan Pedersen was the best adviser any student could ask for, and her generosity, professionalism, and mentorship was invaluable over the years. Professors Christopher L. Brown, Kenneth Jackson, Matt Connelly, and Anders Stephenson helped me prepare for orals and to make sure interest in the “Special Relationship” translated into a focused and interesting project. At the London School of Economics, Nigel Ashton helped me frame the project and better understand the Anglo-American relationship. Classroom time with Professors Alan Brinkley, Carol Gluck, Victoria de Grazia, Mark Mazower, Caterina Pizzigoni , and Emma Winter sharpened my thinking and my writing. I owe a debt of gratitude to my fellow graduate students who were the best kind of intellectual compatriots: Carolyn Arena, Hannah Barker, Melissa Borja-Westin, Sayaka Chatani, Joanna Dee Das, Claire Edington, Arunabh Ghosh, Matt Gomlak, Toby Harper, Justin Jackson, Abhishek Kaicker, Julia Del Palacio-Langer, Tom Meaney, Ariel Mercik, Julia Nordmann, Omar Sarwar, Simon Stevens, Simon Taylor, and Tamara Mann Tweel The staff and faculty at the Department of History at the United States Military Academy were incredibly supportive of my endeavors. Brigadier General Lance Betros (Ret.), Colonel Gian Gentile (Ret.), and Colonel Kevin Farrell (Ret.) all fostered a culture of academic and military excellence. My fellow instructors were some of the best sounding boards imaginable for teaching, research, and writing. I would especially like to thank Colonel Greg Daddis, Major Casey Doss, Major Geoff Earnhart, Dr. David Frey, Dr. Matt Flynn, Major Josiah Grover, Dr. Jonathan Gumz, Dr. Eugenia Kiesling, Dr. Bill Leeman, Major Tom Moore, Matt Muehlbauer, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Musteen, Major Bill Nance, Major Joe Scott, Dr. John Stapleton, Dr. Charlie Thomas, Dr. Steve Waddell, Major Jay Warren, Dr. Jacqueline Whitt, and Lieutenant Colonel Gail Yoshitani. The view presented herein are mine alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or its components, including the United States Military Academy and the United States Army Command and General Staff College. iii Dedication For Angie, Jack, and Oliver. We ask you to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push back the future In strength, courage, hope, and love. Francis Drake iv “It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It’s a quality to be proud of. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.” Gerald Ford, 1973 v Chapter 1: “An Alliance No More? The 1970s and the Special Relationship” In 1975, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America were wary rivals in a global ideological and political struggle over which hung the pall of nuclear weapons. The British Empire had dissolved and in its absence Britain had fallen from the top tier of world powers into a “State of Emergency”. 1 For the liberal democratic victors of the Second World War, the post-war social and economic consensus that had eased the problems of the 1930s had unraveled during the “shock” of the 1960s and early 1970s as the Keynesian balance between inflation and unemployment had morphed into “stagflation”. 2 The socialist model of politics and economics was gaining increasing international acceptance. 3 The 1970s were a period of multiple domestic and foreign crises that forced the United States and Britain to operate in an uncertain world. 4 The alliance known as the “Special Relationship” between the British 1 Dominic Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 8–13 is a good recounting of the fall of the Heath government in the aftermath of the Oil Shock of 1973. 2 Niall Ferguson et al., eds., “‘Malaise’: The Crisis of Capitalism in the 1970s,” in The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 27–38. 3 The best starting point for a comparison of the different Soviet and American approaches in the Third World during the Cold War is Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Post-Stalin Soviet approaches to the Third World are covered in Alvin Z Rubinstein, Moscow’s Third World Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988). 4 Recent scholarship on the 1970s in general includes Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2011). Michael J Allen, Until the Last Man Comes Home : POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics , Reprint (Da Capo Press, 2002); Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (University Press of Kansas, 2004). Philip Jenkins, Decade of nightmares : the end of the sixties and the making of eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) specifically identifies 1975 as a turning point in American history where fear and anxiety became the dominant drivers of behavior. The domestic economy is surveyed in Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class , First Edition (New Press, The, 2010). and Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (Yale University Press, 2010). For the British side, see Dominic Sandbrook, State of emergency: the way we were: Britain, 1970-1974 (London: Allen Lane, 1 and the United States had survived war and peace, but the accumulated crises of the past decade shook it as much as they shook both countries.