A Korean conflict: the tensions between Britain and America. By Ian McLaine

Abstract

Anyone reading this book should begin on page 318, where the reader will find the statement that ‘in the time between his death and the publication of this monograph, Dr Ian McLaine's footnotes cardfile was lost. The [nineteen] notes below are either the results of archival crosschecks by a posthumous editor or marginal notes that could be confirmed’. This is a great pity because Ian McLaine clearly consulted a wide range of British and American sources—the only major gap being the valuable diary of Kenneth Younger, the Minister of State at the British Foreign Office throughout the period covered by the book—and, as his fellow-Australian, Robert O'Neill (author of the official history of Australia's role in the Korean War), justifiably states in the blurb: ‘This is an extremely well-written and important book on a major episode in international relations’. This is not a strictly chronological study; the book is divided into seven often chronologically overlapping chapters, each one dealing with a particular theme. Indeed, the first chapter, which covers events until the end of 1950, does not concentrate on the Far East at all, but deals mainly with American suspicions of Britain's ‘socialist’ government and pressure for increased British and west European rearmament. There is no discussion of the communist insurgencies in Malaya or Indochina, which were an important backdrop to the decisions taken when the Korean War broke out.