In 1962, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson dealt a crushing blow to the British foreign policy establishment. With a wry phrase he created a Sisyphean task. It was the latter part of Acheson’s much-used aphorism that “Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a new role” that stung. Given that he would go on to criticize Britain’s attempts to provide openings for dialogue with the Soviet Union, while praising Britain’s application to the Common Market, it is likely Acheson did not intend to touch a nerve as much as he did. But both then and afterward, the statement was a source of existential angst for Cabinet ministers and Whitehall alike. Failing to find a role implied that Britain still had a role to fill. The search for this role hardwired itself into British officialdom and seeped into public consciousness (the two most popular responses to a recent poll on what Global Britain means was that Britain was a “champion of free trade and globalisation” and “a diplomatic powerhouse”).
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