The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 America, Britain, and Swaraj: Anglo-American Relations and Indian Independence, 1939-1945 (monograph) Eric S. Rubin, India Review , 10:1, 40-80, 2011, $34, paperback, 41 pages. Having the British Empire as its clos- est ally in the Second World War complicated America’s foreign policy in a number of ways, perhaps most espe- cially with regard to colonial policy and national self-de- termination. As Eric Rubin writes in this outstanding monograph from the February issue of India Review , “Franklin D. Roosevelt was torn by the need to reconcile ideological and moral sentiments with the practical exigencies of war.” As long as the war raged on, the United States could not afford a break with the British. Likewise Britain, even more than America, could ill afford a deterioration of re- lations with its principal ally. But as it became increas- ingly clear that the conflict over decolonization would outlast the fight with the Axis powers, Roosevelt was wary of placing himself and his country on what he, in the American anticolonial tradition, considered to be the wrong side of history. As the struggle against fascism settled into the Cold War, the shifting wartime interests of the two powers with respect to India, and by extension colonies and soon-to- be-independent states worldwide, would lay the founda- tion for American foreign policy. Rubin demonstrates with analytic precision how this interplay of interests con- tributed to Indian “Swaraj,” or self-rule. Eric S. Rubin is a career FSO whose most recent post- ing was as deputy chief of mission in Moscow. He is cur- rently a deputy assistant secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. India Review , an aca- demic peer-review journal based in Philadelphia, Pa., publishes social science research on Indian politics, eco- nomics and society. To purchase this monograph, go to www.tandfonline. com/toc/find20/current. C OVER S TORY