page_title: Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel
section_title: Diplomatic career
hierarchical_section_title: Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel / Diplomatic career
caption_attribution_description: Lot 11597-7: Tehran Conference, November 28-December 1, 1943. Standing outside the Russian Embassy, left to right: Unidentified British officer; General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, USA, shaking hands with Sir Archibald Clark Keer, British Ambassador to the USSR; Harry Hopkins, Marshal Stalin’s interpreter; Marshal Josef Stalin; Foreign minister Molotov; General Voroshilov. Originally an U.S. Army photograph. Office of War Information Photograph (2016/01/15).
context_page_description: Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel GCMG PC, known as Sir Archibald Clark Kerr between 1935 and 1946, was a British diplomat. He served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union between 1942 and 1946 and to the United States between 1946 and 1948.
context_section_description: Clark Kerr entered the Foreign Service in 1906. Early on, he made the mistake of challenging the Foreign Office over its Egyptian policy. Consequently, he found himself posted to a series of capitals in Latin America. He was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to various Central American republics between 1925 and 1928, to Chile between 1928 and 1930, to Sweden between 1931 and 1934 and to Iraq between 1935 and 1938.
  He distinguished himself enough in these posts to secure a prestigious appointment as Ambassador to China between 1938 and 1942 during the Japanese occupation.
  In the ensuing years, he developed a close relationship with Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek and spent most of his posting explaining why Britain could not offer him any substantive aid in his struggle against the Japanese invaders.
  He argued for British aid to China based upon humanitarian concerns, the preservation of British economic influence, and the principle of national self-determination. Despite the lack of aid from Britain, he impressed the Chinese with his interest in Confucian philosophy. He also impressed the Chinese with his determination. After the British consulate in Chungking was almost completely destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1940, other diplomatic missions evacuated, but he kept the Union Jack flying close to Chinese government buildings. He regularly swam in the Yangtze River, and after meeting American writer Ernest Hemingway he dismissed him derisively: "Tough? Why, I'm tougher than he is!"
  He was moved to Moscow in February 1942 where he forged a remarkable relationship with Stalin and facilitated a number of Anglo-Soviet diplomatic conferences. His work there and at the Big Three Conferences (such as Yalta and Potsdam) put him at the centre of international politics during the final, pivotal years of the Second World War. Throughout his posting in Moscow he sought clearer direction from the Foreign Office in London. Lacking it, he often fell back upon a directive received from Churchill in February 1943: "You want a directive? All right. I don't mind kissing Stalin's bum, but I'm damned if I'll lick his arse!"
  As the war neared its end, Kerr became increasingly concerned about Soviet plans for the post-war world. He did not think that they planned to begin spreading world revolution, but he did think that they were preparing to exert their influence well beyond their pre-war sphere of influence. He voiced deep-seated concerns about Soviet expansionism for the first time in a lengthy memorandum on Soviet policy dated 31 August 1944. In the memo, he forecast three likely results of the war: the removal of any immediate threat to Soviet security, the consolidation of Stalin's dominant position, and the Soviet use of Communist Parties in other countries to serve interests of "Russia as a state as distinct from Russia as a revolutionary notion." This closely resembled the conclusions that George F. Kennan included in a telegram to Washington a few months later.
  After the war Clerk Kerr was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a post he held until 1948. An acquaintance of Guy Burgess and Donald Duart Maclean's superior in Washington, he took their defection to the USSR badly. The affair cast a shadow over Inverchapel's career. He died in 1951.
  Clark Kerr was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1935 New Year Honours and a Knight Grand Cross in 1942 and was sworn of the Privy Council in 1944. In 1946 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Inverchapel, of Loch Eck in the County of Argyll.
caption: Kerr shaking hands with George Marshall at the Tehran Conference
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