Paper: US-UK Foreign Relations & Divergence in Vietnam and Iraq

This paper was submitted for “Honors Collegium 30: The Vietnam War and American Culture” with Professor James Goodwin in Spring 2008.

I have set the parameters for my analysis from the Vietnam War in 1965 to 1968, also the time of Labor Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s term, and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2007, also the time of Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair and George W. Bush’ term. In both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, a United States president pressed a Labor Party Prime Minister to commit forces to a war that was highly unpopular in the United Kingdom. Why then, did Wilson refuse President Johnson’s repeated pleas while Blair sent troops unquestionably? Undoubtedly, there are a bevy of circumstantial reasons to the divergent outcomes, but those reasons are heavily hinged on alliance dynamics, domestic politics, and the personality of the respective leaders.

The apparent proximity of the diplomatic ties between Britain and the US was essentially built upon history, tradition and mutual understanding. The relationship is also largely the result of circumstance: the Second World War and Cold War basically galvanized a common response to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Anglo-American relationship stemmed from the intimate cooperation against the Axis powers during the Second World War and rested upon a nexus of continued institutional ties in the fields of defense and intelligence, as well as frequent and prominent dealings between presidents and prime ministers. The relationship formed in a framework such that Britain was the junior ally to the senior United States. In both WWI and WWII, Britain was among the first involved, and both times, “at the point of exhaustion, she [was] saved by the United States … although undefeated, Britain’s power [was] diminished and her economy weakened” (Colman 2). Long before the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, the relationship between the US and UK was already set in place.

The Labor government of Harold Wilson coincided with the Democratic presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson during the years of 1965-68. Those years saw disagreement in ideologies at the highest levels of Anglo-American bonds, caused to a significant extent by differences over America’s war in Vietnam. In Britain, Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson came to power in October 1964, an especially keen advocate of close Anglo-American ties. The US Ambassador to London, David Bruce, explained to President Johnson in 1965 that the Prime Minister was eager to establish a similar relationship between Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy. “Those two leaders had established a political friendship of great cordiality, frequent consultation and mutual respect” (Coleman 1). This would prove difficult as America’s involvement in Vietnam increase.

America, for the most part, fought in Vietnam alone because many of the world’s powers were recovering from the adverse effects of two lengthy conflicts. Leaders at the time had to question where their political obligations resided. Prime Minister Wilson had to assess whether his loyalty to his people could somehow be expressed in sending Britain’s finest to the jungles of Vietnam. Evidently he had trouble finding this expression. In 1965, as US forces escalated in Vietnam, Wilson was also determined to “resist what he terms the ‘fanatical pressures’” of Johnson (Costigliola 186). Opposition to the war within the Labor Party and among the British general public meant that the Wilson government could not satisfy the United States’ desire for support; certainly, London had to reject the frequent American requests for combat troops. During his April 1965 visit to Johnson, Wilson gave the President “an extensive run-down of the domestic obstacles to a British contribution and felt LBJ was left ‘in no doubt about the problems’” (Dyson 659). Wilson resisted repeated attempts from Johnson to commit troops—only offering moral, but not military help. In June 28, 1966, Wilson ‘dissociated’ his Government from Johnson’s bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The British felt that a military solution would lead to a confrontation with either the Chinese or Soviets, and therefore favored a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Wilson paid a price for his public support of the United States since most Europeans and members of the Commonwealth opposed the war. In the absence of direct British participation, the Johnson administration tended to regard Wilson’s various attempts to moderate the war largely as an irrelevance or even as a downright nuisance. “When he [Wilson] offered to fly to Washington for talks in 1965, fearing further escalation, Johnson told him to mind his own business. ‘I won’t tell you how to run Malaysia and you don’t tell us how to run Vietnam’” (Danchev 56). Tensions over Vietnam helped ensure that the Wilson-Johnson relationship was probably the worst between any British prime minister and US president.

Opposite to the Vietnam War, “sympathy was not enough [for the US]. The chiefs of staff swallowed their scruples and decided to send a brigade group of British troops to fight alongside the Americans—Nothing less would do” (Danchev 55). The situation in Iraq has numerous military and political contrasts to the situation in Vietnam. Whereas America fought a war in Vietnam in order to prevent an Asian domain from turning red, they also fought a costly and bloody war in which many European powers refused to back the American effort in Vietnam. Most leaders realize that involvement in such a costly movement is paid not only in currency but also in blood. Wilson recognized the risky political investment that could be made and the consequences that had the potential to blanket the rest of his political reign. In turn, he made a conscious political decision by refusing to align himself completely with Johnson. The current situation in Iraq has managed to polarize political relations across the world; many have accused an American regime of permanently destabilizing NATO.

One explanation is the theory of alliance dynamics. This theory implies that during the time of both events, the UK would submit to the demands of its senior ally in order to ensure the continuation of a beneficial alliance. The working relationships between past presidents and prime ministers are all indicative of a functioning and burgeoning Anglo-Saxon relationship. Generally, strong alliance dynamics would normally assume that the British would support America in most circumstances. However, this is confounded in the situation of the Vietnam War; Harold Wilson’s behavior proved to be contrary from what we could expect from a junior partner. His decision indicates that he ultimately “weighted the political constraints higher than alliance maintenance benefits in considering whether a British contribution was possible” (Dyson 660).

Moreover, his actions and decisions reveal a different driving force: domestic politics—the domestic pressures and constraints that can influence the governing ideologies of a leader. This political pattern is true for the Iraq case: Blair’s choice is more consistent with the theories that reflect the dynamics of an alliance. Blair reached his decision to support America by weighing the costs and benefits. In the process, he ignored a domestic backlash, but in the end he played a significant role in securing longevity in an American-British alliance.
In Britain and within the Labor Party, Wilson was in a much more precarious position than Blair, and hence had to give more attention to the left wing, anti-war part of the Labor Party than did Blair. Opposition to the war within the Labour Party and among the British general public meant that the Wilson government could not satisfy the United States’ desire for support. In the US, however, Johnson had just won a large electoral victory. He complained “‘about the troubles which [Wilson] had already given’ him … ‘our folks were damned tired…solv[ing] all the world’s problems…alone.’” (Costigliola 189)

When Tony Blair became prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1997, he took on a full plate. “At stake was how to sustain economic prosperity and increase social equality, … and how to balance ties to Europe and the special relationship with the United States” (Kramer 1). While Wilson won by a small majority, Blair enjoyed multiple terms. Blair was simply in a stronger domestic position than Wilson and so able to ignore domestic constraints more easily.

In the US, there was initially mounting support for the Iraq War from the Republican Party. However, as the two circumstances under which the war was fought: the absence of weapons of mass destruction and the absence of a UN resolution explicitly authorizing force were absent, the mounting support shifted towards caution and skeptism. “This is the Tonkin Gulf resolution all over again,” West Virginia Democratic senator Robert Byrd warned his colleagues. “Let us stop, look, and listen. Let us not give this President or any President unchecked power. Remember the Constitution.” Criticisms have been voiced concerning the Bush Administration’s course of action. An unlikely alliance of the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Conservative Union have come together and raised objections to restrictions placed on individual freedoms in the power given, in particular, by Congress to the executive branch.

An important facet of domestic politics is, of course, both countries’ economies. Cooperation between the two countries at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 produced the framework for the operation of the Western international system, including a scheme of fixed exchange rates. In the years following the Bretton Woods conference, both Labor and Conservative governments were committed to retaining a strong pound and preserving the sterling area, despite having limited reserves. However, “Wilson’s stance against committing troops remained firm even in spite of the perilous British financial situation, and the consequent reliance upon the US for loans to stabilize the sterling” (Dyson 649). Conscious of Wilson’s decision, Johnson charged, “Wilson’s Labour budget ‘with its heavy emphasis on social security’ increased the burden of the bolstering the pound sterling and the speculative pressure on the dollar’” (Costigliola 189) as more leverage to commit troops in exchange for economic support. The economic climate in Britain was not comparable to the one that prevails in the UK right now. Britain was in recalibration mode during the 70s—it needed to revitalize its economy in order to rebound from the loss of precious colonial possessions that had propped up its economic superiority dating back to the 17th century. In the US, the failure to increase taxes produced inflation, which produced, a squeeze for money for the Great Society instead of an expanding market, as Johnson had promised. Diversion from the Great Society was not only a question of economic resources though; the war was draining in all aspects.
In turn, Blair was able to support bush’s movement because he was more financially prepared to deal with a loss. Now, the British economy not only reaps the high reward of a valued British pound, but its economy is grounded into the European Union. It is not likely to experience a sudden recession or depression as its economic policies are interlocked in a European framework that has reaped many benefits for EU members alike.

In the US, “expert opinion varies wildly on the relevance of U.S. war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to the health of the U.S. economy” (Teslik 1). Soaring oil prices in 2005-2007 threatened inflation and unemployment, yet the economy continued to grow through year-end 2007 (CIA Factbook). Aside from focusing on the direct expenditure, Teslik writes, “international debt accrued to sustain war costs, volatility on the global oil markets in part attributed to violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the geopolitical uncertainty engendered by a war that remains widely unpopular outside the United Sates” and within the United States have a consequence of their own (1).

Finally, the theories of alliance dynamics and domestic politics only do not account for the divergent outcomes in the two cases. It has often been suggested that foreign policy crises and wars involve conditions that favor the influence of personality, and that individuals’ distinctive policy preferences, decision-making styles, and relationships to advisors are crucial elements in accounting for outcomes (Dyson 290). Some individuals are more responsive to the wishes of their constituents while others make foreign policy based on strategic alliance regardless of the political atmosphere.

Margaret G. Hermann devised a framework to analyze personality traits of leaders throughout the world based interviews and verbatim minutes from meetings called Leadership Trait Analysis. The seven traits have been found to be particularly useful in assessing leadership style: (1) the belief that one can influence or control what happens, (2) the need for power and influence, (3) conceptual complexity (the ability to differentiate things and people in one’s environment), (4) self-confidence, (5) the tendency to focus on problem solving and accomplishing something versus maintenance of the group and dealing with others’ ideas and sensitivities, (6) an individual’s general distrust or suspiciousness of others, and (7) the intensity with which a person holds an in-group bias (Margaret). Words taken from those transcripts were put into an extensive library to correspond with each of the seven traits, and given a high or low score for the corresponding trait. The leader’s verbal output was then scanned and compared against this database. The result is a “score on each trait being the ratio of words tagged as ‘low’ or ‘high,’ for a final score between 0 and 1” (Dyson 291).

In the past, this process was long and arduous, but with new technology, this can be done through a computerized method, allowing for more volumes of text and also eliminating scorer bias. Of course there is “doubt on the utility of analyzing interviews to obtain measures of foreign policy makers’ personality attributes. Further attention must be devoted to the multiple problems of source bias, situational circumstances, and temporal inconsistency” (Rasler, Thompson 47). However, Stephen Dyson has refined this by using the Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates series: a verbatim record of every word spoken in the British House of Commons as a basis for Tony Blair’s personality score. This not only eliminates the possibility of possible interviewer-interviewee conditions and pre-written answers and speeches, but “they are from a single source, [also] eliminating the possibility of differential audience and venue effects” (Dyson 291).

Unfortunately, there has not been an analysis done on Johnson’s personality. However, using past writings, I can compare Johnson using the same seven traits. The relationship between Wilson and Johnson was an especially interesting one. Johnson was renowned for his dominating personality and the arm-twisting of powerful politicians, fittingly known as the “Johnson Treatment.” In response to his critics, Johnson fired, “I am a dominating personality, and when I get things done I don’t always please all the people.” He also blamed the press, saying they showed “complete irresponsibility and lie and misstate facts and have no one to be answerable to” (Dallek). Personality attributes that were useful in his successive and multiple senate terms were “not suited to achievement within a particular institutional framework”—that being the presidency. According to this knowledge and general information, one can infer that Johnson rated high in (1) belief in ability to control events, (2) need for power, and (“Even his possession of the most powerful office in the country did not diminish his need to extend control or increase his capacity to deal with certain kinds of conflict or resistance. All this newly acquired ability to command did not reduce his drive to coerce” (Kearns 408). Johnson’s ability to focus on national attention upon his every word was a source of power that eventually turned on him. “The cabinet was his cabinet, the Great Society his program, the Congress his instrument” (Kearns 409). This classification, however, made every mistake and miscalculation in Vietnam his mistake.

Wilson, an economics master at twenty-one, a junior minister at twenty-nine, President of the Board of Trade at thirty-one, Wilson is at 48 above all, a pro… a first-rate administrator and a brilliant debater. Wilson’s administration operated through more open procedures. Wilson scores significantly lower than Blair on both beliefs in ability to control events and need for power. Wilson is close to the mean on belief in ability to control events, and substantially below the mean on need for power. David Bruce, US Ambassador to London 1961-69 noted, “Seldom if ever have two heads of state been such long-time master politicians in the domestic sense as those two” (Colman 1).

To maintain consistency in my analysis, I will use the same traits Dyson adapted from Hermann to compare Bush. However, there have not been any official papers using the same methods to analyze Bush partly due to records and minutes that have yet to be released to provide a comprehensive personality reading. Since Bush is president in our current time, I am able to offer my personal opinion, with the same seven traits, based on public statements available. The Bush administration is known for its secrecy and caution in dealing with the press and public. It was quickly clear that policymaking in the White House was limited to a handful of selected advisors, all of whom were noted for their loyalty to Bush. Two of the key traits from Hermann’s analysis that seems to be present with Bush are his general distrust in others and his in-group bias, illustrated in his reliance on his core of advisors. Another trait where Bush and Blair may share similarity in rating is conceptual complexity. Bush was quoted saying, after September 11th, “This will be a monumental struggle between good and evil” and “They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate”—the same Manichaean approach as Blair (Crotty 458). As Bush told it, as soon as he heard about the attack on the World Trade Towers, “I made up my mind at that moment we were going to war” (Crotty 457).
Using Dyson’s work, Blair scored more than one standard deviation above or below the average on three particular qualities: Belief in ability to control events, conceptual complexity, and need for power. His high belief in ability to control events hypothesizes a more proactive policy orientation and that barriers can be overcome. Those who score low on conceptual complexity are more apt to “operate with a more black and white view of events and actors, [and] are comfortable with relatively straightforward binary classification schemes” (Dyson 295). British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the speech as a show of solidarity with the United States, and subsequently issued his own ultimatum to the Taliban: “Surrender bin Laden or surrender power,” Blair warned. Closed advisory system, insulated him from the opposition of most of the foreign policy bureaucracy to the war. Lastly, his high score in need for power reveals a need for greater personal control and “an increased concern that the policy output reflect [his] preference, rather than a consensual group decision” (Dyson 295). These traits paired with the situation resulting from September 11th led Blair to cling to Bush and adopt his views undoubted.

War critic Howard Zinn said, “Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home” (Crotty 460). How could two situations have such glaring similarities, but also glaring differences simultaneously and produce such divergent outcomes? Simply focusing on simple models of alliance dynamics and domestic politics fails to address the complexities of both issues at hand. Public opinion and political opposition are not sole determinants, but are circumstantial to a leader’s personality and response. It is this inclusion of personality analysis that adds another layer to the multifaceted decision-making of our leaders. Using all three paradigms, we can finally draw upon a more comprehensive answer to the different outcomes in both wars by our four leaders. Only the future will reveal the impact behind Blair’s decision.

Works Cited

Colman, Jonathan. A ’Special Relationship’?: Harold Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and Anglo-American relations ’at the Summit’, 1964-8. Manchester University Press, 2004.

Coleman, Jonathan, Prifysgol Cymru, and Aberystwyth. “Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, 1964-68.” 2005. http://www.americansc.org.uk/online/Wilsonjohnson.htm (accessed May 15, 2008).

Costigliola, Frank. “From Lyndon B. Johnson, Germany, and ‘the End of the Cold War’” In Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy 1963-1968, Edited by Warren I. Cohen and Nancy B. Tucker, 173-210. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1994.

Crotter, William. “Presidential Policymaking in Crisis Situations: 9/11 and Its Aftermath” The Policy Studies Journal 31, no. 3 (2003): 451-
Danchev, Alex. “’I’m With You’: Tony Blair and the Obligations of Alliance: Anglo-American Relations in Historical Perspective” In Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam Or, How Not to Learn from the Past, Edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Marilyn B. Young, 45-58. New York: The New Press, 2007.

Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant, pp. 391–396.

Dyson, Stephen B. “Alliances, Domestic Politics, and Leader Psychology: Why Did Britain Stay Out of Vietnam and Go into Iraq?.” Political Psychology 28, no. 6 (2007): 647-663.

Dyson, Stephen B. “Personality and Foreign Policy: Tony Blair’s Iraq Decisions.” Foreign Policy Analysis (2006): 289-306.

Ellis, Sylvia. Britain, America, and the Vietnam War. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.

Hermann, Margaret G. “Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders.” International Studies Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1980): 7-46.

Hermann, Margaret G. “Assessing Leadership Style: Trait Analysis.” The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders, Edited by J. M. Post. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Kearns, Doris. “Lyndon Johnson’s Political Personality.” Political Science Quarterly 91, no. 3 (1976): 385-409.

Kramer, Steven P. “Blair’s Britain After Iraq.” Foreign Affairs, Aug. 2003, http://fullaccess.foreignaffairs.org/20030701faessay15407/steven-philip-kramer/blair-s-britain-after-iraq.html?mode=print (accessed May 2, 208).

Rasler, Karen A, William R. Thompson, and Kathleen M. Chester. “Foreign Policy Makers, Personality Attributes, and Interviews: A Note on Reliability Problems.” International Studies Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1980): 47-66.

Teslik, Lee H. “Iraq, Afghanistan, and the U.S. Economy.” Washington Post, 4 Feb. 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/