Keep the Peace at Home to Shape the Peace Abroad: A Study of Elite Influence on Winston Churchill and British Foreign Policy at the Yalta Conference, 1945

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the end of World War II and a parliamentary election approached, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s wartime authority diminished. The erosion of influence at home could not have come at a worse time for Churchill abroad, who sought to rebuild a postwar world order at the February 1945 Yalta Conference to resurrect Britain’s global influence. Exploiting the erosion of Churchill’s unprecedented wartime powers, formal and fringe political elites pressured Churchill to align his postwar preferences at Yalta with prevailing elite views on major geopolitical issues. In doing so, these elites – which included senior government officials, newspaper editorialists, and members of Parliament – ultimately compelled Churchill to advocate for the United Nations and a free and democratic Poland at Yalta, despite his belief that both plans would undermine Britain’s postwar influence. In examining the critical role elite-leader relations played in shaping Cold War history, this paper seeks to improve the study of democratic foreign policy analysis by emphasizing Kenneth Waltz’s “first image” (the role of a leader’s motivations and intentions) and the role of non-government (or “fringe”) elites. Finally, it concludes that parliamentary democracies are more receptive to elite influence because elites have greater opportunities to drive policy debates and challenge political authority.