Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State, used this line in the early 1960s while commenting on Britain’s postwar position after rapid decolonization and the Suez Crisis. The remark is most closely associated with his assessment of the United Kingdom’s strategic uncertainty as it adjusted from imperial power to a medium-sized state seeking influence through the “special relationship” with the United States and through Europe. The phrase circulated widely in diplomatic and journalistic discussion of Britain’s attempted entry into the European Economic Community and its search for a new international identity in the Cold War order dominated by the U.S. and USSR.

The quotation compresses a major geopolitical transition into a single judgment: Britain’s imperial framework—once the basis of its global reach—had collapsed, but no equally coherent replacement strategy had yet emerged. Acheson implies that prestige and influence cannot be sustained by nostalgia or rhetoric; they require a clear role anchored in institutions, alliances, and economic realities. The line also carries an American perspective: it urges Britain to stop acting as if it still possesses imperial leverage and instead define itself either as a European power, a junior partner in U.S.-led security arrangements, or some hybrid. Its sting comes from treating “role” as something a state must consciously choose and convincingly perform.