1950-54 period (Morgan, 1990, p.88)--under American pressure was only one of a number of doubtful consequences of the Anglo-American alliance. Historian Peter Hennessy is one of a number of experts who believe that the Korean War overstrained the British economy by turning what would have been a surplus into a severe balance of payments deficit:
The dramatic turnaround, from a payments surplus of ú307 million in 1950 to a deficit of ú369 million in 1951 was especially tragic as this was the golden opportunity in the entire postwar period for a sustained export-led boom which, with luck might have put the British economy on to a higher and sustainable trajectory before Germany, in particular, recovered to the point where our export markets were once more highly vulnerable . . . there are powerful reasons for supposing our best hope for the kind of postwar miracle enjoyed by so many western European countries was scattered in fragments in the committee rooms of Whitehall, on the hills above the Imjin . . . and along the Rhine (Hennessy, 1993, p. 415).
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