UK-US relations and the South Asian crisis, 1971.

Abstract:

This thesis investigates UK-US relations with regard to the South Asian Crisis of 1971. Through a focus on an understudied point of disagreement within the relationship between Prime Minister Edward Heath and President Richard Nixon, the thesis sheds further light on Anglo-American relations in the early 1970s. Through analysis of archival documents on both sides of the Atlantic, this thesis contributes to the growing revisionist literature that has moved away from a focus upon Heath’s pro-Europeanism as the cause of problems in the Anglo-American relationship at the time. Rather, a more nuanced approach that also investigates the impact of the secretive foreign policymaking style of the Nixon White House is taken into account. The thesis reveals the issues in communication and differences of interests that, in December 1971, led the UK and US delegations at the UN Security Council to tacitly advocate for opposite sides of a hot war in South Asia. The thesis assesses the effect that these heated disagreements had upon the Anglo-American relationship going into 1972 and 1973.

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