When Churchill declared to the House of Commons in November 1942, "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," he knew that that was what was in the cards.
The Americans knew, too. Already by 1942 the State Department was engaged in what was called "Grand Area Planning" -- viz., what post-war US domination would look like. So it wasn't a bolt form the red, white and blue but rather the result of more than five years' planning when George Kennan, who had created and headed the State Department's internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff, wrote in 1948,
"...we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction...
"In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
--CGE
B. wrote:
> FWIW, the FDR bio I read last Xmas, HW Brands's _Traitor to His Class_, gets
> into Churchill a bit, as his relationship dovetailed with FDR during WWII.
>
> Brands repeatedly makes the point that Churchill was very anxious to persuade
> the US to join WWII with an eye to helping England preserve its colonial
> holdings, which America did not have an appetite for. He chafed esp at losing
> India & parts of the Near East; he constantly lobbied for the US to intervene
> in those areas specifically.
>
> To hear Brands say it, Churchill also chafed at some of the language FDR &
> Eleanor wanted included in the UN's founding principles, about peoples'
> rights to self-determination, as he felt that was a not-so-subtle dig at the
> British Empire, again especially re: India, which was starting to implode by
> the 40s. He was a committed imperialist, with a stubborn sense of entitlement
> but also resentment towards those under the British flag, like pretty much
> all imperialists, British, American, or no.
>
> -B.