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.The United States proved crucial to British economic recovery byproviding the Anglo American loan and by providing Marshall aid in1948.In later years, America also provided support for the pound ster-ling on several occasions, particularly before it was devalued by PrimeMinister Harold Wilson in 1967 and during the IMF crisis of 1976.Eco-nomic cooperation was also noticeable in 1948 when the United Statesand Great Britain were both founding members of the General Agree-ment on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later the World Trade Organization(WTO), which was set up to promote free trade and reduce protection-ist measures amongst its membership.The most pressing factor urging the continuance of a strongAnglo American relationship was the emergence of the Cold War.De-spite the United States nuclear superiority, very quickly it became ap-parent that Washington was faced with an ideological and strategic bat-tle with its former ally, the communist Soviet Union.Former prime INTRODUCTION " 17minister Winston Churchill made it clear in his Fulton, Missouri, speechin March 1946 that both Britain and America would not only benefitfrom the continuance of the wartime cooperation but that a special re-lationship was a necessity in order to combat the threat to the Westernworld from communism.The cash-strapped postwar Labour govern-ment, led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, could no longer afford toprovide economic and military assistance to Greece and Turkey and en-couraged the United States to take on this financial burden, as thesecountries were facing communist insurrections.The resultant TrumanDoctrine issued by the president to Congress on 12 March 1947 for-malized the policy of containment of communism.In the zero-sum atmosphere of the Cold War, Washington decidedthat Britain would be its key ally.The rationale behind this decision wasclear: Britain was a stable democracy; it was well placed to act as aleader in Europe, and certainly act as a bridge between America and theother European allies; it had important strengths overseas, including asignificant military capability; and it had its Commonwealth links.Thecontinued defense cooperation between the two nations remained themost striking example of real, practical cooperation.The willingness ofGreat Britain to allow a foreign power, however friendly, to retain andgrow military bases on its soil was a staggering development.Signifi-cantly, the two nations also demonstrated their willingness to work to-gether to deal with the communist threat during the Berlin blockade cri-sis in 1948 when they operated a joint airlift.During the crisis in Berlin,British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin s decision to invite the UnitedStates to station B-29 bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, atRAF air bases was another acknowledgment of how much London feltit needed a U.S.military commitment to safeguard the security of Eu-rope and in September 1954 Britain became a crucial forward-base for possible strikes against the Soviet Union with the arrival of the firstU.S.nuclear weapons in Britain.Berlin also pushed Bevin and U.S.Secretary of State Dean Acheson to work together closely to completethe formation of the military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-zation (NATO) on 4 April 1949.The United States was now involved inan entangling alliance. In the first decade of the Cold War, Anglo American defense collab-oration did not extend to cooperation in the nuclear field.In August1946 the U.S.Congress had prevented the sharing of nuclear secrets 18 " INTRODUCTIONwith the passage of the McMahon Act.By the time the act had been re-pealed in 1958, Britain had developed its own atomic and hydrogenbombs.Anglo American nuclear cooperation resumed with the passageof the U.S. U.K.Mutual Defense Agreement, under which the two par-ties worked together to aid each other s nuclear planning and develop-ment processes, and embarked on joint nuclear testing.In effect,Britain s independent nuclear deterrent was increasingly dependent onAmerican assistance as they came to rely on sharing of technology, mis-siles, information, and materiel.During a meeting with Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan in Bermuda in 1957, President Eisenhower agreed tostation American Thor missiles in Britain as Britain struggled to deliverits own Blue Streak missiles.This dependence on U.S
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