Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Srdjan Vucetic is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. He teaches international relations theory and American foreign policy.

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The Anglosphere

Stanford University Press

Contents

1 What Is the Anglosphere?................................................12 Empire, Venezuela, and the "Great Rapprochement"........................223 ANZUS, Britain, and the "Pacific Pact"..................................544 Suez, Vietnam, and the "Great and Powerful Friends".....................745 Empire, Iraq, and the "Coalition of the Willing"........................1016 The Anglosphere and Its Limits..........................................128Appendix: Note on Primary Sources.........................................159Notes.....................................................................165References................................................................201Bibliography..............................................................211Index.....................................................................245

Chapter One

The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm; the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude ... each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. —Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), Vol. 1, p. 434

If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealth be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security ... If we are together, nothing is impossible. —Winston Churchill, The "Iron Curtain" speech, 1946

Now Mr Churchill is starting his process of unleashing war (like Hitler) with a racial theory, declaring that only those people who speak English are full-bloodied nations, whose vocation it is to control the fate of the whole world ... Mr Churchill and his friends in England and in America are presenting those nations who do not speak English with a kind of ultimatum—recognize our supremacy over you, voluntary, and all will be well—otherwise war is inevitable. —Stalin, a Pravda interview concerning Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, 1946

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" and the "Airstrip One." ANZUS and the "deputy sheriff." NORAD and the "51st state." These are some of the many representations, official designations, and popular caricatures of the special relationships between the United States on the one hand and Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand on the other. The relationship between the United States and Britain began with a revolutionary war in the eighteenth century, in which the former violently seceded from the latter. This germinal Anglo-American enmity is now all but forgotten, having been replaced with a remarkably durable alliance and a close friendship. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand established their special relationships with the United States more gradually, as they gained more and more sovereignty from Britain. Together, these special relationships are said to constitute a "core" of a distinct international, transnational, civilizational, and imperial entity within the global society, currently known as the "Anglosphere."

Winston Churchill used to describe this entity as the "English-speaking peoples." As far back as the late seventeenth century, as he observed in his hefty History of the English-Speaking Peoples, the proverbial Anglos have been constantly winning wars, expanding trade, and promoting freedom, security, and welfare—all of this thanks to their liberal political culture and institutions. As Churchill explained in his famous "Iron Curtain" speech delivered at a small college in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946:

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

For Churchill the "great man of history," this speech evoked a moment of victory for the English-speaking peoples against the Nazi-Fascist axis just as they were about to embark upon another war against Soviet communism. For Churchill the historian, however, this juncture was a mere chapter of modern history centered on the expansion of the Anglo experience. The English-speaking peoples were doubly special, to each other and to humankind, because the progress of liberal modernity depended on their unity and cooperation. The newly minted United Nations (UN), Churchill explained at Fulton, could provide collective goods only in one context:

Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our over-riding loyalties to the World Organization? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organisation will achieve its full stature and strength.

Churchill's theory of history continues to claim adherents, many of whom like to point out that Churchill was right. The processes of secession, dedominionization and decolonization destroyed the British empire but left behind a distinct yet loosely bounded community of peoples, who were fiercely committed to, among other items, freedom, democracy, the rule of (common) law, and the English language. This community's lack of formal institutional actorness merely disguises its exceptional longevity and power. Centered first on London and then on Washington, D.C., the Anglosphere has dominated international politics for the world for the past 200 years, perhaps longer. Its agents—companies, empires, states, nations—colonized and industrialized large swathes of the planet and moved millions of its inhabitants, often by force. They also acted as the market and lender of the last resort, the guardian of the reserve currency, and the bulwark against various revisionists and revolutionaries. As a result, the world has now gone Anglobal. Though Australians, Americans, British, Canadians, and New Zealanders make up less than 7 percent of the world's population today, the standard triumphalist argument is that "their" language is the global language, "their" economies produce more than a third of the global gross domestic product (GDP), and "their" version of liberalism in society and economy defines most human aspirations. If he were alive today, Churchill might well be pleased with the state of the Anglosphere. One can imagine him making a swift autocitation: "I told you so long ago: If we are together, nothing is...