Even as policymakers in both the United States and Britain agreed that decolonization should be gradual, the principles and institutions that the Americans advocated undermined the very prospect of the sort of gradual change they claimed to prefer. At the heart of the matter was the notion of political accountability to an international organization. While American policymakers assumed that such accountability would—and should—be established after the Second World War, British policymakers recognized that the mere assent to the principle of international political accountability would lead to the pressure to decolonize more rapidly. American policymakers would constantly reassure their British counterparts that the commitments to international accountability which they had undertaken under American pressure were safely restricted to the moral and legal realm and would therefore not undermine their ability to govern in the colonies. But policymakers in Britain accurately predicted that once admitted in principle, the moral commitment to political accountability to the international community would become a political weapon against the colonial powers. The American conviction—which stemmed from a thoroughgoing liberal internationalism—that the colonial powers could persuade the anti-colonial powers to moderate their stance and sympathize with the dilemmas of decolonization was refuted time and again.

尽管美国和英国的政策制定者都同意非殖民化应该是渐进的，但美国人倡导的原则和制度破坏了他们声称更喜欢的那种渐进变革的前景。问题的核心是对国际组织承担政治责任的概念。虽然美国政策制定者认为这种问责制将——而且应该——在二战后建立，但英国政策制定者认识到，仅仅同意国际政治问责制的原则就会导致更快地去殖民化的压力。美国决策者会不断向英国同行保证，他们在美国压力下对国际问责的承诺安全地仅限于道德和法律领域，因此不会削弱他们在殖民地的治理能力。但英国的决策者准确预测，一旦原则上承认，对国际社会承担政治责任的道德承诺将成为对抗殖民列强的政治武器。美国的信念——源于彻底的自由国际主义——即殖民大国可以说服反殖民大国缓和他们的立场并同情非殖民化的困境，这一信念一次又一次地被驳斥。