understand why I have been asked not to confine myself to
those world security problems of most immediate concern to
us here in these off-shore European islands but to touch,
even if only briefly, on problems arising in other parts of
the world.
3.
Many of us, brought up on history books dating from
the days when the Royal Navy was equal to the next two
strongest navies in the world, and when, backed by the
forces, resources and bases of a united, world-wide British
Empire, Britain could, outside the mainlandof Europe and
North America, exert a pre-eminent influence, were slow to
note the way in which the traditional foundations of that
influence were disappearing.
4. The development of Japan and the United States, and
their increasing involvement in world affairs, were already
early in this century bringing to an end the period when the
European Great Powers dominated the world. The rise during
and after the second World War of the United States and the
Soviet Union to the status of super-powers, commanding
forces infinitely more formidable than those previously
possessed by any of the other Great Powers, or than any of
these, excepting the USSR, could now afford, made it no
longer possible for Britain to pursue to the old advantage
the balance of power policy which had been so effective
when rivalries between the Great Fowers on the mainland of
Europe could be exploited by us here in such a way as to give
us an influence equal to, and sometimes exceeding, that of
mainland European states with populations and armies very
greatly exceeding ours.
/5.
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