Choose your weapons : the British Foreign Secretary : 200 years of argument, success and failure

The argument between the noisy popular liberal interventionist approach and the more conservative diplomatic approach concentrating on cooperation between other nations has run for two centuries, and is at the heart of heated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic today. Hurd concentrates on personalities and circumstances. He begins with the dramatic antagonism after Waterloo between Canning and Castlereagh—the last occasion on which ministerial colleagues fought a duel. A generation later comes Palmerston vs Aberdeen, from which Palmerston, the noisy interventionist, emerged the victor. Salisbury and then Edward Grey wrestled with the same dilemma in the context of imperialism and the European balance of power. Finally Eden and Bevin, from wholly different backgrounds, combined with the Americans to create a post–war compromise, which served its purpose for half a century, but is coming apart today as the old questions resurface in new and savage forms in an era of terrorism and racial conflict.