Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Struggle for the Buraimi Oasis, 1952–1957

Some French writers, most notably Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and André Tardieu, have argued that French strategic interests during the early decades of the twentieth century had been seriously harmed because, alone among the Great Powers of Europe, France lacked a ‘diaspora’ in the United States. As a result of this, they have claimed, France had no advocacy group prepared to defend the interests of the European ‘kin state’ at a time when France’s great rival, Germany, was amply endowed with a sizeable demographic presence in the United States, willing to speak out in defence of Germany and its foreign policy. Moreover, a second large European diaspora had become established in the United States, whose numbers would swell after the mid nineteenth century: the Irish. Not necessarily committed to promoting German interests, the Irish-Americans did militate strongly and consistently against British interests, such that by the time France and Britain had become close security partners preceding and during the First World War, what worked against British interests would also work against French ones. This article constitutes a critical examination of the Duroselle-Tardieu thesis regarding France's allegedly ‘missing’ diaspora, and cautions against attributing too much geo-strategic influence to either the German-American or Irish-American ‘lobby’.