Although emphasis was placed on controlling the process, the logic behind the Anglo-American coalition in the Cold War pointed towards the need to build up Japan as a counterweight to communist China. ![]() Yet, notwithstanding doubts and fears expressed by some British business leaders and public servants, British policy played an important role in the re-emergence of Japan as an economic force in South East Asia. Backed by the United States, Japanese economic expansionism represented a new threat to British commercial and financial interests in a region much coveted by British policy-makers. The needs and direction of the recovering Japanese economy over the 1950s affected significantly British connections with Empire and Commonwealth (English-speaking or otherwise), the crucial relationship with the United States, and, naturally, relations between the British and Japanese home islands themselves.ĭespite Japan's military defeat in 1945, Japanese economic interests returned to South East Asia remarkably rapidly in the post-war era. With Churchill’s return to power in 1951, this concept was installed as the basis of the Conservative government’s foreign policy and even used in the publicity of diplomatic missions.2 Equally, given this almost celestial self-appointment as ‘the very point of junction’,3 it was inevitable that the impact of Japanese economic resurgence and trade would also have to be faced in each circle. ![]() Indeed, if one were to envision the three interlocking circles, it would become immediately apparent that Britain was ‘the only country which has a great part in every one of them’.1 While not equal to the superpowers, the United Kingdom’s global interests would at least partially compensate for diminished capabilities. British links with each circle of Commonwealth and Empire the English-speaking dominions, Great Britain and the United States and a United Europe purportedly reinforced British might in the remaining two. In October 1948, for the benefit of the annual Conservative Party Conference, Winston Churchill spoke assuredly of the ‘Three Circles’ upon which Britain’s future as a world power was based. As Saki Dockrill demonstrated in her first book, this new reality meant that Britain had soon to contemplate and approve the rearmament of its recent German foe.1 Moreover, in order to seal the security of Western Europe, it was necessary for Britain to encourage the development of a military alliance in the form of NATO that would see Italy join as a founder member in 1949, with West German entry coming in 1955.2 These were undoubtedly tough decisions to take, for memories of the recent war naturally led many amongst the British elite and public to view these new allies with distaste and suspicion, but the exigencies of national security meant that sentiment could not be allowed to trump pragmatism.3 Indeed, the denial of all three of these countries to the Soviet bloc was one of the most important strategic goals in the post-war world. ![]() One of the great ironies of the Cold War was that the new strategic paradigm created by the need to contain Soviet expansion meant that many members of the ‘free world’, including Britain, now found themselves ranged alongside their former enemies from the Second World War in the shape of West Germany, Italy and Japan.
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