Britain, America and the Transition from Economic to Military Assistance, 1948-51

Between 1948 and 1951 a transition took place in American foreign policy from containment in its economic form, particularly the Marshall Plan, to containment in its military form, particularly NATO, the military assistance programme and western rearmament, with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 acting as a catalyst in this process of change. This transition was disapproved of by the father of containment, George F. Kennan, who felt that the overmilitarization of western foreign policy was dangerous and selfdefeating.1 The opening of the British Foreign Office and Cabinet papers for the late 1940s and early 1950s, in accordance with the thirty-year rule, has produced a vast amount of revealing material on the British perspective of the beginning of the Cold War. It is valuable, therefore, to examine how far the British agreed with Kennan's criticism of the over-militarization of western foreign policy in the years 1948-51 or to what extent they tended rather to agree with the main trends and assumptions of US foreign policy as pursued by President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson

Economic history · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Transition (genetics · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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