Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis

In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With French forces reeling, the United States planned to intervene militarily to shore-up the anti-communist position. Turning to its allies for support, first and foremost Great Britain, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to create what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called a “united action” coalition. In the event, Winston Churchill's Conservative government refused to back the plan. Fearing that US-led intervention could trigger a wider war in which the United Kingdom would be the first target for Soviet nuclear attack, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was determined to act as Indochina peacemaker – even at the cost of damage to the Anglo-American “special relationship”. In this important study, Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones revisit a Cold War episode in which British diplomacy played a vital role in settling a crucial question of international war and peace. Eden's diplomatic triumph at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina is often overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis which led to his political downfall. This book, however, recalls an earlier Eden: a skilled and experienced international diplomatist at the height of his powers who may well have prevented a localised Cold War crisis escalating into a general Third World War.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Fallen Idol - Anthony Eden and the Verdict of History PART I: THE ROAD TO 1954 2. Britain, the United States, and the Asian Cold War, 1945-1951 3. Containing China: The Cold War Defence of South-East Asia, 1951-1953 4. Backing France: Britain and the Vietnam War, 1951-1953 PART II: THE CRISIS BREAKS 5. Korea Wanes, Vietnam Waxes, 1953 6. Countdown to Crisis, January-March 1954 7. From United Action to Disunited Inaction: April 1954 PART III: THE CRISIS RESOLVED 8. The Fall of Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference, May 1954 9. Special no More ...: The Breakdown of the Anglo-American Relationship in Asia, May-June 1954 10. Eden and the Settlement of the First Vietnam War, July 1954. PART IV: REFLECTIONS 11. Saving the Peace, 1954-1956. 12. The Shadow of Suez

About the Author :
Kevin Ruane is Professor of Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. Matthew Jones is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Review :
This is the most important treatment of the Dien Bien Phu crisis that has appeared in a very long time. Do not miss it. The authors offer a brilliant, sophisticated account of Eden's diplomacy during the Indochina Crisis, which most British and American scholars consider a crucial turning point in the Cold War. This is an impressively researched, detailed, and argued book ... [it] is not only stimulating and thought-provoking; it is also enjoyable to read. Written in a style accessible to both scholars and a broader audience interested in the history of the Cold War and crisis management ... [A] timely and excellent monograph. [The] definitive study on the subject of Eden and Indochina. A lively and incisive account by two of Britain's leading international historians, this book sheds new light on many aspects of the 1954 Indochina crisis but, most importantly, draws a close link between Anthony Eden's successful diplomacy and the looming danger of thermo-nuclear war. Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones have written a meticulously researched and eminently readable account of arguably the high-point of British influence in the so-called Anglo-American “special relationship” during the Cold War, when Anthony Eden played a vital part in preventing a possible world conflict. Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis brilliantly upends the view of Eisenhower and Dulles as responsible stewards of nuclear weapons. Comprehensively researched and elegantly written, it convincingly argues that Anthony Eden's shrewd and heroic efforts at the 1954 Geneva Conference saved the world from the war that the unbridled nuclear adventurism and brinksmanship of the Eisenhower administration was likely to cause.