#65 Controlling the Peace: Loss, Re-establishment, Chaos and Hunger

It is worth pausing in this narrative to consider the loss of world power. Britain had not been militarily defeated in 1945. Her ruling elites have never admitted publicly that they had lost the most important item that they had fought for: the opportunity to extend their global colonial power alongside the USA. That statement alone is of course contentious. It was easier to glorify in being on the winning side and to argue in public that they had fought for high principled reasons to maintain the islands freedoms.

Both Britain and France had fought for 400 years to obtain 'global world power'. French and British ruling cadres were immensely proud of this history. The French fought the Vietnam and the Algerian wars in the 1940s to retain their self-image as a great nation. The British had attempted to retake the Suez Canal after it was nationalised by Nasser in 1956. This all ultimately failed and ended in humiliation.