Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2019. 288 pp. US$49.95, cloth. ISBN 9781501741845.
Divided Allies shines a much-needed spotlight on relations between the four Anglo-Saxon/Celtic powers within the Asia-Pacific region—Britain, the US, Australia, and New Zealand—during the early Cold War. Picking up the story in 1945, the authors probe into the thorny question of intra-alliance politics between these countries to explain why the close allied bonds forged in the Pacific War began to unravel as more specifically nationally orientated interests began to resurface in peacetime. They elucidate how the wartime alliance became “disorganized” after the defeat of their common Japanese foe, but then explain how cooperation was rapidly reconstituted as the Communist threat of the Cold War began to crystallize.
The introduction begins with a statement of the book’s argument, which focuses on six “insights” designed to “help us understand a crucial period in the early Cold War” (9). These include the (1) “use of rhetoric on race and imperialism as a tool of diplomacy,” (2) “the importance of trade policies and financial considerations,” (3) “the competitive nature of relations between these four states,” (4) “the influence of domestic politics,” (5) the “domino theory,” and (6) “the significant influence of smaller powers on alliance structures.” These insights are applied throughout to frame the following seven empirical chapters, which are loosely thematic, but also correspond to a chronological narrative from 1945 to the late 1950s, entitled National Interests; Crisis and Cooperation; A Negotiated Alliance; Selective Membership; An Unwelcome Ally; Divided Action; and The Costs of Compromise—capped with an (extremely brief) conclusion.
Essentially the material covers two major issues in quadrilateral relations between the Anglo powers in the early Cold War. First, it sheds light on the acrimonious debates over the foundation of the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) security pact. ANZUS, despite wishful thinking here in Canberra that persists to the present day, was never a fully-fledged trilateral military alliance on the model of NATO or other US-bilateral alliances in the Asia Pacific (i.e., “a functioning security alliance,” 9). The brief foundational document commits the parties to do no more than to “act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes” (text of ANZUS treaty). Nevertheless, this book explains in detail how Canberra and Wellington, despite their misgivings, assented to the exclusion of the UK from the treaty, given their overriding desire to secure some form of American commitment to their postwar security in the face of the potentially resurgent Japanese threat. Second, once the strategic landscape began to deteriorate with the emergence of what was perceived of at the time as a monolithic Sino-Soviet expansionist agenda, the UK was actively sought out to join a wider Pacific pact that included a number of Asian allies. The resultant SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organisation) was now seen as a necessary instrument, despite the assertions elsewhere in the literature that Washington’s master plan was to forge only bilateral security alliances with its Asian partners.
For those concerned with theoretical aspects, there are some allusions to the dedicated alliance politics literature of international relations (IR), and these are chiefly manifested in the “insights” set up in the book’s introduction. For specialist alliance theorists, however, these insights are not entirely commensurate with what that literature would recognize as “drivers” or “dynamics” in intra-alliance bargaining, since some are generic (2, 3, 4, 6) and others policy or case-specific (1 and 5). That is, from a purely theoretical point of view, greater precision would have been welcome to avoid conflation of theoretical and empirical facets. The insertion of “race and imperialism” as the first insight is novel, and slightly curious, and though arguably valid, may be a sign of the times in current academia: can we find any policies in the imperial age that could not putatively be framed this way? Indeed, the authors themselves admit that “[i]deas about Asian states, race and colonialism informed but rarely drove the development of foreign policy” (46). Moreover, some crucial alliance drivers, such as values/ideology, balance of power and threat perceptions, are not explicitly adopted as insights, and their absence will duly register with alliance theorists. And yet, perhaps theoretical purity need not detain us too much, given that the work is intended primarily as international history rather than international relations, and therefore the application of IR theory in its perfect form is not critical to its function. Indeed, any scholarship working in an interdisciplinary space always treads a fine line as regards satisfying all of its multiple audiences.
On the empirical front, the rich archival research and the authors’ mastery of secondary sources is evident in the cogent analysis presented throughout. But while the authors adequately emphasize the cleavage between the American and British Empire objectives, especially at the beginning of the period under study, perhaps more attention could have been given to Britain’s temporary resurgence as a world power in the first decade after the Pacific War. The overall story is of course one of sustained decline, but in the immediate postwar period, London did launch a number of impressive initiatives to restore its imperial power. In particular, the efforts to recreate some form of “Fourth British Empire” by tapping the resources of the Dominions in order to buttress its global power—through industrial development, significant scientific and defence personnel exchanges, joint missile and nuclear experimentation (chiefly with Australia, but initially also with Canada)—are given scant treatment (see 31, “a ‘third way’”). Likewise, I thought the significance (at the time) of the ANZAM plan (Anglo-New Zealand-Australia-Malaya) was underplayed in terms of its actual defence/military/strategic mechanics, instead largely confined to being a policy issue in alliance debates. The fact that Australia sought to acquire and base a strategic bombing force in Malaya, ideally armed with “off the shelf” nuclear bombs from the UK, could perhaps have been given more detailed treatment in this respect.
In sum, slight theoretical and empirical quibbles aside, the study is undoubtedly an impressive piece of scholarship in both its scope and execution. This reader was particularly satisfied with how the authors overcame the difficult task of rendering a composite, rather than heretofore compartmentalized, account of allied cooperation. Therefore, this volume comes highly recommended for scholars working in the space of Anglo-alliance relations during the Cold War, and I eagerly await a follow-up volume that would continue the story where it left off by moving into the 1960s and 1970s, when Britain finally withdrew from “east of Suez.”
Thomas Wilkins
The University of Sydney, Sydney