Goldman - Thinking About Strategy Absent The Enemy

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Thinking About Strategy Absent the

Enemy
a
Emily O. Goldman
a
University of California , Davis
Published online: 09 Jan 2008.
To cite this article: Emily O. Goldman (1994) Thinking About Strategy Absent the Enemy,
Security Studies, 4:1, 40-85, DOI: 10.1080/09636419409347575
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Thinking About Strategy Absent the Enemy
Emily O . Goldman
H E UN ITE D S TA TES stands at the brink of the twenty-first century, facing

T a world that holds many more questions than answers. For u.s. politi-
cal and military leaders the challenge is to anticipate the future security
environment. It is an uncomfortable position after the forty-five years of
relatively blissful certainty provided by the So viet threat. It is not, however,
a situation the United States has never been in before. It may only be that
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 17:52 13 February 2015
u .s. leaders are more acutely aware of their predicament, so much in contrast
to the relative certainty of the cold war context that shaped their formative
political and military experiences.
u.s. leaders are confronting a period of "peacetime strategic uncertainty."
These periods emerge after intense conflict and rivalry when previous align-
ment patterns have dissolved, the security dilemma has been ameliorated,
and a new distribution of power has yet to congeal. No "systemic" impera-
tive exists to compel leaders down a particular strategic path. Those who
emerge victorious from the preceding period of intense rivalry or conflict
face the challenge of managing the uncertainty that has devolved from the
disappearance of the prior, traditional, or familiar threat pattern of the past,
and from the absence of a clearly defined enemy for the foreseeable future.
Managing peacetime strategic uncertainty means orchestrating economic,
diplomatic, and military strategies to preserve the capacity to respond to
future, unforeseen dangers and challenges during a lengthy period of rela-
tive peace. It embraces those tasks Liddell Hart ascribes to the realm of
grand strategy in wartime:
Grand strategy should both calculate and develop the economic
resources and man-power of nations in order to sustain the fighting
services. Also the moral resources - for to foster the people's willing
spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of
power. Grand strategy, too, should regulate the distribution of power
between the several services, and between the services and industry.
Moreover, fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand
strategy - which should take account of and apply the power of finan-
Emily O. G oldman is assista n t professor o f political scien ce at the University o f California ,

D avis.
I would like to th ank Jan Br eemer , Eliot Cohen, Michael Desch, Christopher G acek, Samuel
Huntington, Chaim Kaufman, John Maurer, Patrick Morgan, and Miroslav Nincic for their
helpful comments and suggestions.
SEC U R IT Y STU D IES 4, no. I (Autu m n 1994): 40-85

Publi shed by Fran k Cass , Lo ndon
THI NKI N G A BOU T STRATEGY ABSENT TH E ENEMY 41
cial pressure, of diplomatic pressure, of commercial pressure, and , not

lea st of ethical pressure, to w eaken the opponent's will. '
The closest historic ana logue to the uncertainty facing u.s. leaders in th e
post -cold war period is that which confronted th eir Br iti sh counterparts in
th e period between the two W orld Wars.
Like Great Britain after th e First World W ar, th e United States today
must reset priorities, m ake st ra teg ic and forc e st ructu re ch oices, and devel-
op a g ra nd strategy to g u ide its decisions in the absence of a threat as a cen -
tral o rga n iz ing principle. O ne might query whether a "st ra tegy" is reall y
necessary if no serious threats exist. Gi ven an uncertain international
sec urity env iro nm ent, perhaps muddling through and responding to various
minor and major contingencies as they arise is the best one can hope, pre-
se rv ing above all th e flexibility de sirable in uncertain times. Every country
is st ruggling to find its bearings with the demise of the Soviet threat, but the
United St at es is different, ju st as Britain was between the wars. Because the
United States is a prominent player in the post-cold w ar world, percei ved by
m any acro ss the globe as th e m ost consequential player, st rateg ic drift
m atters m ore than th e di sorientation of less influential actors. Today, th e
Europeans look to th e United States for direction on policy toward Russia
and Bosni a, and th e Japanese to the United States for the reassurance that
justifies perpetuating non -nuclear statu s in th e face of a nuclear North
K orea . The Ukrainians so ug h t rea ssurances fr om the United St ates against
th e threat of a resurgent Russia just as the French soug h t Br iti sh su ppo rt
after th e First World War against th e threat of renewed G erman aggression.
The success of United N ations pe ace-keeping ope ra tions also hinges on u .s.
logi stical an d intelligence capabilities. So a perception ab road that the
United States lacks direction, priorities, and a sense of when and how to
commit military force risk s undermining confidence in the u .s. willingness
to act, diminishing u .s. influence on issues difficult to anticipate at present,
and tempting others to exclud e the United States. Strategic drift could prove
to be very costly in the long run if the United States is com pelled to respond
to a situation that festered under benign neglect yet th at m ay ha ve been
ni pped in the bud earlier on . An international syste m in flux is not one of
deep peac e so thinking strat egicall y a bou t long-term dangers is important.
Simply reacting with ad hoc policies as each new crisis arises is short-sight-
ed because its near-term focus deemphasizes analysis of potential mid -term
and longer-term challenges, and underplays effo rts at shaping the inter-
national env iro nm en t to promote a stable world o rder.
There is a consensus in the literature that states find it relati vel y easy to
formulate rational grand strategies during times of significant external
threat.' However, little research has been produced on how states plan for
42 SECURITY STUDI ES 4, no . 1
their security in the absence of threats, or on whether states can develop

coherent grand strategies during peacetime.' Few research themes could be
more important today. By returning to an earlier period when the security
environment was characterized by peacetime strategic uncertainty, I exam-
ine alternative hypotheses about individual, organizational, and state
responses to uncertainty. Exploring how political and military leaders in the
past thought about strategy absent the enemy provides insights and precau-
tions for dealing with the new and highly uncertain international environ-
ment of today.
THE NATURE OF UN C ERTAINTY
Uncertainty may be defined generically as a lack of information. In the

realm of grand strategy, uncertainty possesses four dimensions: threat or
adversary, alliance, resource, operational. Threat uncertainty refers to the
absence of the prior, traditional, or familiar threat pattern, or the absence of
a clearly defined threat. Threat uncertainty reflects a lack of necessary
knowledge about both the goals and capabilities of potential adversaries, and
about the time when threats will arise. For the British after the First World
War, there was no single clearly defined threat and new loci of potential
threat had to be factored into strategic calculations. In the 1920s the United
States and Japan emerged as important actors on the world stage. For the
first time, the British confronted potentially formidable naval competitors in
the Atlantic and Pacific, as distinct from the empire's traditional continen-
tal opponents. Threat uncertainty appears particularly acute today because
the criteria for assessing the relative distribution of power are also unclear.
The heart of the heated contemporary debate over whether the United
States is a great power in decline is really a disagreement over the criteria
for assessing relative power.' Confusion over which criteria should be used
to assess the distribution of power also lies at the heart of the academic
debate over whether the contemporary international system may be most
accurately characterized as multipolar, bipolar, or unipolar.
Alliance uncertainty may exist in the presence or absence of threat uncer-
tainty and is managed largely through diplomatic strategies. With alliance
uncertainty, the overriding concern is not the absence of a clear and known
threat, but the presence of a number of potential allies and adversaries.
Opponents can be identified with the source of uncertainty being which
potential opponents to plan against and which potential allies to plan with.
Alliance uncertainty existed in its purest form during the classical balance of
power period in Europe where allies today were often adversaries tomor-
row. Such " m ob ility in the direction of policy" was in fact necessary to the
THI NKI N G A BOUT ST RATEG Y ABSENT TH E ENEMY 43
functioning of the balance system wherein "enemies come together for

common defense, and allies momentarily separate for the same reason.I"
Alliance uncertainty describes the a m b ig u ity around the desirable and/or
possible composition of future alliances, counter-alliances, and coalitions.
Alliance uncertainty takes on added dimensions of complexity during peri-
ods of peacetime strategic uncertainty where the problem is not only who to
ally with and against, but whether o ne 's security is served best by permanent
a llian ces, ad hoc coalitions, or a form of collective security.
Resource uncertainty often accompanies threat uncertainty an d is managed
by in large through economic or resource allocation strategies, but may be
managed as well through diplomatic strategies like relying on allied support.
The overriding concern raised by resource uncertainty is how best to man-

age the economy during peacetime to preserve the ability to wage future
wars when the natural political inclination is to divert resources from
defense toward social and domestic policy initiatives. Leaders must always
balance the military risks facing the state, for which defense assets provide
insurance, against the opportunity costs of devoting scarce economic
resources to unproductive armaments. The difficulty of balancing those con-
cerns ri ses during periods of peacetime because financial risks are percei ved
to overwhelm military ri sk s, an d strategic insurance appears to depend di s-
proportionately upon economic strength at the expen se of military strength.
One of the biggest resource uncertainty issues confronting the United States
is the trade-off between current spending to retain the capability to meet
unanticipated threats in the short run, and long-term economic growth to
meet unanticipated threats in the more distant future. If n ear-term threats
appear se rio us or if current expenditure will h ave little negative impact for
the long run, it makes sense to maintain capable forces in being. However,
if potential long-run threats loom greater than short-run threats, or if the
costs of fail ing to in vest a re high , it becomes m ore sensible to trim forces in
being as much as possible and channel resources into long-term economic
growth an d into research and development for the future.
Operational uncertainty describes a lack of necessary knowledge about the
type of conflict to prepare for. Operational uncertainty is managed primari-
ly through military st ra teg ies, but may also be handled through diplomatic
st ra teg ies, such as reliance upon allies to perform certain missions or to par-
ticipate in combined operations. History abounds with examples of military
leaders preparing for the last war, not carefully weighing the lessons of the
previous conflict, or failing to recognize the ways technological changes have
altered the battlefield. The First World War has received the lion's share of
attention as a case of military and political leaders failing to anticipate the
type of war they got because technological developments had shifted the
advantage to the defense." More often than not, considerable debate ensues
44 SE CURITY STUDIES 4, n o. I
about the future complexion of the battlefield. Examples include debates in

the American Navy between the World Wars about how the submarine and
independent carrier task forces would reshape the war at sea , in the British
Army during the same period about the ways independent armored forma-
tions would reshape the war on land, and in the post-Second World War
period about how nuclear weapons redefined the very nature of warfare
itself.
Operational uncertainty, however, encompasses more than the ambiguity
that arises when new technologies challenge existing doctrines. It is a
problem of high level political-military decision-making that requires the
fundamental reconsidering and reevaluating of service roles and missions, or
the main methods of the organization, its place among organizations that
carryon related activities, and the organization's goals (for example, deter-
ring general conflict, intervening in limited conflicts, peacekeeping).' Any
reconsideration of service roles and missions involves a process of organiza-
tional self-assessment and self-redefinition to accommodate both the orga-
nization's internal commitments and its external responsibilities. The
challenge for the military leader is to "specify and recast the general aims of
[the] organization so as to adapt them, without serious corruption, to the
requirements of institutional survival.?"
Operational uncertainty grows with the diversification of threat types,
particularly during periods of acute financial stringency when competing
threats often translate into conflicting service priorities. Operational uncer-
tainty has taken on added dimensions of complexity for the United States
today, facing as it does not only novel, diffuse and unfamiliar dangers like
small peripheral states armed with weapons of mass destruction threatening
regional and global security, but unconventional challenges posed by narco-
terrorists, religious fundamentalist movements, and ethnic and nationalist
violence.
RESPONDING TO UN CERTAINTY
Uncertainty may be thought of as a systemic condition and a product of per-

ceptions. At the systemic level, it is possible to distinguish periods of peace-
time strategic uncertainty from periods of peacetime strategic certainty. The
post-Congress of Vienna, post-First World War, and post-cold war security
environments display the qualities associated with peacetime strategic
uncertainty: previous alignment patterns end; the security dilemma among
the major powers is significantly reduced; no new distribution of power
rapidly solidifies; and no hegemonic challenger looms on the horizon. The
1920s provide the most recent historic example of peacetime strategic uncer-
THINKING ABOUT STRATEGY ABSE NT THE ENEMY 45
tainty and Great Britain in that decade offers a striking resemblance to the
United States today. Britain was indeed weaker than the United States is
today and more deeply mired in overstretched imperial commitments. In
the 1920s, the British also faced a number of potential threats over the hori-
zon while the United States does not confront any, even at a distance. Yet
both represent global, maritime, and democratic powers confronting impor-
tant strategic choices and with little external imperative to guide those choic-
es. Most critically, both hold the most consequential positions in the
international system of their day, possessing the influence to shape future
developments more than any other state. Some scholars contend that the
strategic environment after the Second World War closely resembles that
confronting the United States today." The services in the immediate post-
Second World War years did face problems of operational uncertainty, but
on the whole, this period provides more contrasts than parallels to the
general phenomenon of peacetime strategic uncertainty. In 1943 American
military leaders began planning for the postwar world and by 1946, the
Soviet Union emerged as the primary threat and focus of u .s. national
security strategy. With rapid movement toward strategic clarity, the post-
Second World War period was only briefly characterized by peacetime
strategic uncertainty.
At the perceptual level, examining uncertainty poses a problem because
the international system may be characterized by uncertainty but state
leaders may be convinced of the identity of the most probable enemy. In
other words, peacetime strategic uncertainty may coexist with threat or
adversary certainty, a problem illustrated by French convictions after the
First World War that a resurgent Germany was the prime strategic threat.
D. C. Watt recounts, "French military thought was obsessed with the single,
potentially more powerful enemy. British thinking, by contrast, was dis-
tracted, literally, by commitments all over the world. " 1lI Though perceptions
of uncertainty will vary, the structural conditions associated with peacetime
strategic uncertainty can be identified and responses analyzed.
How do individuals and organizations respond to uncertainty? How do
state policies evolve to manage uncertainty? How do those responses affect
the capacity of the state to adjust when uncertainty gives way to certainty?
Several bodies of literature address these questions.
Cognitive Theory
Cognitive theory examines how individuals, because of their limited
capacity to process information, use cognitive heuristics, or decision-making
shortcuts, when judging the likelihood of future events under uncertainty. "
Social psychologists initially attributed the errors made by individuals
46 SECURITY STUDIES 4 , no . I
engaging in complex social judgements under uncertainty to motivational

factors and irrational needs. I ! Over the years, evidence accumulated that
questioned this rationalistic bias, suggesting that not all errors could be
traced to motivational factors. "Even in the absence of motives, judgements
are often made on the basis of scant data, which are seemingly haphazardly
combined and influenced by preconceptions.'?' Psychologists revised their
views of the cognitive system and the individual emerged as a satisficer
rather than an optimizer."
Kahneman and Tversky, pioneers in the study of judgement under
uncertainty, examine the errors and biases that result from the use of heuris-
tics in making judgements. Though their work focuses on judgements
about objects and non-social events, Taylor argues that heuristics are likely
strategies for making social judgements under uncertainty as well." Social
judgements include new sources of uncertainty because information about
people is more ambiguous, less reliable, and more unstable; because people
have intentions that are not explicit; and because people's motives change
over time and from one situation to another. Reliance on judgmental heuris-
tics enables individuals to make inferences from scant information, but leads
to predictable cognitive biases. According to Tversky and Kahneman,
"These biases are not attributable to motivational effects such as wishful
thinking or the distortion of judgement by payoffs and penalties.?"
For our purposes, the most important heuristic is availability, a procedure
for assessing the frequency of a class or the likelihood of an event by the ease
with which instances are constructed and retrieved ." Availability is the cue
used to assess frequency. A future event should be judged likely if past
occurrences of the event are easy to recall. "In other words, judgements of
the likelihood of an event are based on the availability of past occurrences in
memory.'' " Frequently occurring events should be easier to recall than those
that occur infrequently, and instances of large classes should be recalled
better and faster than instances of less frequent classes. While availability
should be a good way to judge probability, the ease of constructing instances
does not always reflect their actual frequency. Because availability is affected
by factors other than frequency, use of the heuristic leads to predictable bias-
es. Easily retrievable or more familiar instances, recent occurrences, highly
salient events, and dramatic vivid experiences may be easier to recall and
judged to occur more frequently than they in fact do. The availability
heuristic also highlights the vital role experience plays in determining per-
ceived risk. If one's experiences are biased , than one's perceptions of risks
and assessments of probability are likely to be inaccurate." In short, factors
other than frequency may increase the availability of events in one's memo-
ry and as a result, use of the availability heuristic may distort judgements of
probabilities.
THINKING ABOUT STRATEGY ABSENT THE ENEMY 47
Whether in peace or war, "one of the tasks of grand strategy is to set

priorities among threats and opportunities in the environment, and to set
priorities among forces to match these threats and opportunities."20
Cognitive theory leads us to expect predictable biases in the ways civilian
and military leaders interpret the external environment, set priorities, and
assign risk under conditions of uncertainty. We should expect familiar,
recent, and highly salient experiences to be given higher priority, and for
direct experience to enhance the level of perceived risk associated with like
situations. A basic assumption underlying research on heuristics is that the
cogniti ve structures and processes of decisionmakers explain a significant
portion of the va r iance in strategic decisions." As Schwenk cautions, "The
validity of this assumption depends on the characteristics of the organization

and the power configuration of the decision-making group."
Organization Theory
A large body of organization theory focuses on the ways organizations adapt
o r fail to adapt to their environment. Posen hypothesizes that in times of rel-
ati ve international calm when statesmen and soldiers perceive the probabil-
ity of war as remote, organizational dynamics should flourish and we should
expect a high degree of organizational determinism." However, evidence
indicates that organizations often misperceive the level of uncertainty in
their environments." Furthermore, organization theory has reached no deci-
sive conclusions about how organizations respond to uncertainty in the envi-
ronment. Organizational responses to environmental changes are neither
au toma tic nor necessarily rational. In some cases , the environment might be
determinati ve while in other cases a great deal of strategic choice exists."
"C on tingency theory st rong ly suggests that th ere is no single best way to
cope with environmental pressures. The specific stance that an organization
takes derives from choices that are made within it. The decision-making
process is a political one in the sense that different particular options are sup-
ported by different factions within the decision-making structure.':" Hence,
Posen's notion of organizational determinism begs the important questions.
While organizational su rvival is the ultimate test of an organization, unless
death is imminent, "w hat goes on in an organization is based on both envi-
ronmental pressures and goals.?"
How do military organizations respond to the uncertainty th at results
from changes in their external en viro n m ent ? Relevant external changes
include the contraction of resources, disappearance of the primary threat
that defined the roles and missions of the organization, and the emergence
of novel threats and new technologies that upset previous assessments of the
type of war to be fought. For military organizations, the absence of a clear
48 SE CURITY STUDIES 4 , no. I
or traditional threat jeopardizes the ability of the organization to conduct

business as usual. But how should we expect a military organization to
respond to environmental change and uncertainty?
Two strains in the organization literature offer competing explanations."
One strain sees organizations as excessively rigid, incapable of purposeful
adaptation, and constrained by inertia, whether due to habit, sunk costs, or
vested interests." Organizations, in this view, do not adapt in flexible and
far-sighted ways to external changes, but change incrementally at most.
Organizations may try to avoid the uncertainty they face by negotiating
alliances and compromises with other actors in the environment, with other
services over budgets or missions for example." Where negotiating the envi-
ronment proves infeasible, organizations may rely on standard planning sce-

narios, analogous to standard operating procedures, that are established
within the broad guidelines of national policy." Under conditions of peace-
time strategic uncertainty, however, national security policy guidelines may
be ambiguous and in flux . A strategy of insulating or hedging against uncer-
tainty by planning for all possible events is one that Lang contends military
organizations are predisposed to pursue.
Military needs are always uncertain, and there is no clear utilitarian
criterion by which to justify the magnitude of the investment in mili-
tary defenses.... Hence, the military organization gears its practices to
anticipate every possible contingency. To do otherwise would be to
court defeat in war as a consequence of unpreparedness."
Lang concludes that building routines on the abnormal and expectations

on the unexpected "reflects a calculus that can be taken as axiomatic for all
military organizations." Such an approach may be the preferred one, but it
is immensely costly and likely to prove infeasible when resources are scarce.
A cheaper strategy may be to simply monitor external sources of uncertain-
ty and react after the event." Or, organizations may turn inward to pursue
strategies that increase the organization's control over its external environ-
ment. For example, Posen argues that military organizations opt for offen-
sive doctrines to reduce uncertainty over the organization's wealth,
autonomy, and operations in war." Finally, organizations may simply cling
to current practices," a strategy that may result in maladaptation or "dis-
placement of goals" whereby an "instrumental value becomes a terminal
value.?" Accordingly, the internal commitments of the organization, such as
enlarging the scope or protecting the flank of the organization, are pursued
at the expense of the organization's external responsibilities, namely prepar-
ing for the types of conflicts the service will be expected to fight in the future.
If they do occur, "organizational changes are seen as relatively unplanned,
adaptive responses to threats to organizational equilibrium."37
A second strain assumes organizations try to adapt in far-sighted ways to

changes in the environment, but responses are contingent on choices made
within the organization. Organizations make strategic decisions about
adapting to their environment but "the range of means available through
strategic choice mechanisms is limited by the environmental constraints, the
perceptual and cognitive predispositions of organizational decision makers,
and the existing form of the organization.':" Choices, or strategic decisions,
depend largely on the internal power distribution within the organization,"
and are influenced by the cognitive predispositions of individual decision-
makers. From the strategic choice perspective, organizations function as
political communities in which decisions are reached based on the selective
perception of the environment by the organization's power holders."

Strategic choices are not optimal choices, but rather the consequence of
political processes within the organization."
Organization theory leads to several observations about tendencies in the
behavior of military organizations experiencing threat and operational
uncertainty. First, in the presence of peacetime strategic uncertainty, in the
absence of a clearly articulated national security strategy, and with strategic
priorities in flux, military organizations should be driven more by internal
commitments than external responsibilities. Particularly given a lean
resource environment, military leaders should be concerned first with pro-
tecting, maintaining, and if feasible, expanding the missions of their organi-
zation. This may manifest itself in creating or seizing opportunities for new
missions for which the service is ideally suited, manufacturing new threats,
or marshalling evidence for the continued relevance of traditional missions.
Newly formed organizations will be driven by the need to define
autonomous roles and establish organizational legitimacy," Existing services
may fall back on peacetime missions if they exist. The key point is that orga-
nizational preservation, rather than intelligence about foreign military com-
petitors or analysis of past wars, overwhelmingly influences the definitions
of service roles and missions.
Second, without clearly established strategic priorities set by civilian
leaders, military strategy is likely to become "decentralized" with each
service focusing on its "preferred" threats, preparing to fight the type of war
most amenable to that service and most likely to provide an autonomous and
dominant role for that service." There should be less integration across the
services, and less willingness for services to devote resources to supporting
missions, like combat air support or strategic lift.
Third, military management at the highest levels should remain con-
cerned with strategic contingencies. Some reassessment of external respon-
sibilities and adaptation in light of dramatic changes in the external
environment will occur. As a result, higher level strategic concepts adapt
50 SECURITY STUDIES 4, no. I
more readily than lower level standard operating procedures." The nature
and direction of adaptation depends upon leaders and dominant coalitions
in the organization.
Geopolitical Theory
In 1942 Nicholas Spykman wrote, "it is the geographic location of a country
and its relation to centers of military power that define its problem of
security.?" Geography, according to Spykman, is the most permanent, and,
thus, fundamental factor in strategy." Accordingly, geography exerts a
strong, direct, and continuous impact on strategy and policy in both war and
peacetime. Geography also exerts an indirect influence on strategy by shap-

ing perceptions of security. As Wolfers clarifies, "To say that insularity leads
a country to neglect their military defenses can mean only that decision-
makers are more likely to consider their country safe if it enjoys an insular
position and that they will tend, as a result, to become more complacent in
matters of preparedness.l'" The debate between the isolationist geopolitical
pole, that embraces hemispheric defense, imperial defense, and regionalism,
and the interventionist geopolitical pole, that encompasses collective security
and internationalism, framed the discourse of the debate about grand strat-
egy in Britain after the First World War as it does in the United States
today."
Geography influences the responses of political and military leaders to
peacetime strategic uncertainty in several ways. First, maritime powers
should respond to uncertainty differently than continental powers. Because
they enjoy the luxury of broad oceanic borders and greater distance from
powerful and potentially hostile neighbors, maritime powers can more eas-
ily withdraw politically and militarily, an option foreclosed to continental
powers. For these reasons, maritime powers, like Great Britain of the 1920s
and the United States of the 1990s, experience greater difficulty in setting
strategic priorities during peacetime than continental powers. Geopolitics
also suggests a different type of variation across the services in their
responses to uncertainty than does organization theory, one that depends on
the type of military power judged to be more strategically significant. For
example, the army in a maritime state should experience the greatest
pressure among the services to downsize during peacetime, the most disad-
vantages in the fight for scarce resources, and the gravest obstacles to defin-
ing peacetime missions.
Second, global powers should respond to uncertainty differently than
regional powers because they perceive a broader range of potential threats
than regional powers, whose strategic purview is more narrowly circum-
scribed. Because the locus of potential threats appears larger and more dif-
fuse, the global power possesses a weaker hierarchy of strategic priorities.

Global powers should also favor decentralized diplomatic strategies that rely
on fluid, ad hoc coalitions or collective security, rather than strategies built
on formal alliances. Decentralized diplomatic strategies presume no
particular threat and the locus of responsibility for the authorization to use
force is also decentralized.
In sum, global and maritime powers should have a more fluid and less
compelling set of diplomatic and military strategies because they have weak-
er strategic imperatives. Regional and continental powers, by contrast,
should develop more focused and specifically targeted diplomatic and mili-
tary strategies. Global and maritime powers should feel less compelled to
develop economic strategies to preserve the ability to wage future wars

because they lack a specific and highly salient focus that is strong enough to
generate a consensus for preserving the defense industrial base, particularly
given competing social and domestic pressures. Continental and regional
powers should develop targeted economic strategies in preparation for the
type of conflict they are more confident will confront them in the future.
The hypotheses derived from the literatures are summarized in the chart
below.
HY POTH ES ES ON U N C ERTAI N T Y
D ep endent Va ria ble = Strategic Resp on se"

In d ep endent
Va ria bles
Diplomati c Economic Military
Cogn itive! su ppo rt former preserve pr epare for general

Lead ersh ip allies; capabilities w ar a nd HI C
m onitor former for general
adversa rie s war and HI C
O rga n iza tio n n/ a nla internal focus,

(M ilitary) decentralized,
strategic reorientation
Geopolitics
glo ba l d ecentrali zed none peacetime missions, LIC
regi onal centrali zed targeted spe cific war
m ar itim e d ecen tral ized; non e peacetime missions

withdra wal
contin ental centrali zed targeted total , long, sustai ned , HI C
(H IC= hi gh-inten sity conflict; LIC = low-inten sit y conflict)

D ep endent va ria bles refl ect predi ct ion s of the theori es
52 SECURITY STUDI ES 4 , no. I
A robust literature, grounded in organization theory, suggests that left to

their own devices, complex organizations, like militaries, will be guided by
bureaucratic rather than national interests in the acquisition of weapons and
formulation of doctrine." Drawing on organization theory, Posen contends
that in times of relative international calm, the imperatives of military orga-
nizations for survival and expansion of wealth, power, and autonomy will
decisively influence strategic responses to uncertainty." In contrast, I hypoth-
esize that even under conditions of uncertainty, organizational imperatives
are influenced by broader geopolitical conditions. A geopolitical perspective
also provides insights into the diplomatic and economic, as well as military,
dimensions of grand strategy during peacetime. The British case provides a
first cut at tracing the geopolitical imperatives on grand strategy under con-
ditions of uncertainty, and exploring the extent to which geopolitics provides
greater or lesser insight than alternative cognitive and organizational expla-
nations.
Geopolitical theory predicts that the post-cold war strategic orientation of
the United States will mirror in important respects that of Great Britain in
the 1920s because both possess a global, maritime perspective on security.
Recent experience lends significant credence to the possibility. The pressures
that influenced British policy in the 1920s bear remarkable resemblance to
those currently shaping u .s. national security policy. Understanding British
responses to uncertainty then provides an historical context for the present
period which many believe to be an era without precedent. British responses
to the fog of peace between the wars also provide cautionary lessons for those
navigating the fog of peace today.
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR:

BRITAIN IN THE 1920s
Threat Perception without a Threat

The British had difficulty thinking about strategy absent the enemy and
were inclined to avoid it." In Ferris's words,
Any grand strategy would necessarily be speculative, an approach
which Whitehall disliked. In 1920, the Foreign Office sought to avoid
departmental responsibility for advising on Britain's strategic respon-
sibilities since these "depend so entirely upon the future direction of
British policy that it would be dangerous for us to make any forecast.?"
Civilians provided very little direction in the form of "high policy," reduc-
ing the War Office in 1921, according to Wilson, Commander of the
Imperial General Staff (eros) from 1918 to 1922, "to having to select our own
enemies without even the approval of the Foreign Office.?" Britain's
response to peacetime strategic uncertainty wavered back and forth among
a set of diffuse potential threats. In the absence of a highly salient enemy -
one that is actively threatening, strong, proximate, or ego-relevant" - civil-
ian debate ranged the gamut of possibilities, asserting a threat one year,
denying its existence the next. In response, the services attempted to chart
their own courses, constrained by only one overriding strategic imperative
imparted from the politicians, namely that service budgets would be cut to
bolster the economy.
If we remember that managing peacetime strategic uncertainty means
orchestrating diplomatic, economic, and military tools during peacetime, the

absence of an overriding threat did not preclude the emergence of a limited
strategic consensus among civilians. In the 1920s, economic strength was
identified as the most critical element of national power to the detriment of
the strength of the services and defense industries. Yet the prioritization of
economic over military strength had its merits at the time. A valid lesson
from the previous war, which the British drew, was that the side with the
greater overall military-industrial, resource, and financial strength would be
more likely to prevail in future conflicts. Given that their economy had been
severely damaged by the war, and given that investment funds were sorely
lacking, devoting scarce resources to military readiness and production, the
British believed, would leave them in an even more precarious situation
when real dangers arose. It is difficult to fault the British for their parsimo-
ny given the diplomatic climate of the 1920s and the international econom-
ic climate of the early 1930s. However, this strategic consensus among the
civilian leadership provided a weak basis upon which to develop a coherent,
integrated, forward looking military strategy, driven as it was by a "nega-
tive" priority, that of reducing service budgets, rather than a "positive" pri-
ority, that of shaping military strategy from above to be able to respond to
future challenges to world order. In Ferris's estimation, the British failed to
appreciate an equally important lesson of the First World War, namely that
"blood and iron had been essential components of its strength, which hinged
more on the shape of the services than of sterling.?" Bond, as well, laments
that "there was not any systematic attempt to grapple with the greatest
strategic lesson of the war; that Britain's security was inextricably involved
with that of western Europe.?" By the late 1920s, British strategic policy
favored the economic over the military dimensions of power. While
this strategy was pursued at little cost to the services during the mid-1920s,
by the end of the decade it was pursued to their detriment. As Ferris
recounts,
54 SECURITY STUDIES 4, no . 1
Between 1926 and 1933 [British governments] cut first their projected
and then their actual service spending, so to free resources for other
purposes and to increase British power by assisting economic growth.
They subordinated service policies to social, financial and diplomatic
considerations; they deferred programmes for Britain's security until
threats actually became imminent."
If any single policy captures the essence of peacetime strategic uncertain-

ty, it was the British cabinet's decision in 1919 to direct the services to draw
up their annual budgets with the assumption that "the British Empire will
not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years." The ten year
rule was one of several strategic principles designed to guide the develop-
ment of Britain's military strategy and service policies." Though the ten year
rule did not exert a decisive influence on service policies until 1925, it reflect-
ed a consensus among civilian leaders about the most desirable policies for
providing strategic insurance in peacetime. Along with the ten year rule, the
other principles - that the Royal Navy should not build against the
American Navy; that Imperial policing should be the primary mission of the
services; and that all efforts should be made to substitute technology for
manpower - were grounded in the belief that Britain's security would not
be seriously threatened for years to come. Examining in greater detail how
British political leaders perceived threats in the 1920s reveals the oscillatory
nature of strategic thought as well as specific planning formulas that were
substituted for thinking strategically about a peacetime security environ-
ment.
The British perceived no overriding, proximate, or imminent threat, but
rather potential long-term strategic problems with the policies of all the
great powers of the period: Russia, Germany, France, the United States, and
Japan. The British also perceived eventual dangers in the form of a Russo-
German-Japanese or a Russo-German-Turkish combination." The diversi-
ty of opinion over how to manage the balance of power in Europe in light
of the potential threats to the precarious postwar stability posed by
Germany, Russia, and France paralleled in scope the range of opinion about
whether American or Japanese policies were more inimical to British inter-
ests in the Far East. While France might establish hegemony in Europe,
Germany and Russia might unite to overthrow the order. And while Japan
might threaten Britain's Far Eastern Dominions, the United States seemed
bent on achieving maritime supremacy. The critical issue always was which,
if any of these concerns, translated into risks against which the British
needed insurance. Unfortunately, perspectives on which threats required
insurance shifted from year to year, codified in dictates to refrain from
preparing against a potential adversary one year and conversely, to treat that
TH INK ING ABOUT STRATEGY ABSENT T HE EN EMY 55
sa me oppo ne n t as a h yp othetical threat for planning purposes th e ve ry next

yea r. F or exam ple, in 1924 th e Com m ittee on Imperial D efense (ern) d ecided
th at Fran ce, Jap an , and Germa ny should be used for planning purposes and
one yea r lat er, the gove rn ment d ecid ed th at Britain shou ld not prepare for
a war with Japan o r Fran ce before 1935 .60
During th e 1920s m ost civilian lead ers were co nvin ced th at Russia posed
th e g rea tes t threat to British in te res ts (in Ind ia, A fg ha nista n, P ersia, and
C hi na) an d eve n tua lly d ir ectl y to Britain itself," With no immed iat e
problems in Eu rope, an eme rgi ng foc us on Imperial security rai sed th e
specte r of Russia as a threat th at , acco rd ing to Mi lne in 1927, C IG S from 1926
to 1933, was " pursu ing a co nsis te n t poli cy whose aim is ultimatel y to und er-
mine British su p re macy in Ind ia.?" H owever, little d eterm in ation to plan
for wa r w ith Russia per sisted. Rather, France, Japan, an d Ge rman y eme rged
as Britain 's "hy po the tica l" ene mies. O f th e g rea t powers, on ly th e United
Sta tes was con sistently regarded by civilians m ore as a nuisance th an as a
po te ntial threat; hence th e 1919 st ra tegic principle th at th e Royal Navy
shou ld not build agai ns t th e u .s. Navy.
W ar pla n ning d iffe rs fro m defense pol icy. W ar pla n ni ng, g u ided by h ypo-
th etical threats, se rves its fu nc tion best by en te rta in ing not on ly th e m ost
lik ely scena rios but also th ose less proba ble yet perhaps m ore st ra tegica lly
in te res ting." Defense policy ca n never be so seq ues te re d fro m politics. In th e
1920s British defense poli cy suffe re d fro m an abse nce of threats, a liberating
prosp ect for th e wa r planner. A bse nce of a clear threat had two important
repercussions fo r se rv ice polici es. F ir st, on ly o ne co nv iction was consistently
pro cla imed by civilia ns, namel y th at g rea te r risk s we re accepta ble in th e m il-
itary realm w hi le few cou ld be to lera ted in th e economic realm . Second,
absence of clearl y a rtic u la ted stra tegic p riorit ies by Britain's po litica l lead ers,
beyond th e ten yea r rul e a nd th e co m mi tment to Imperial po lici ng, left th e
se rv ices to th eir own dev ices and eac h planned to fight agains t th e m ost cha l-
lenging se rv ice ab roa d . "T he N avy contin ue d to prepare d oggedly for a w ar
w ith Japan, as th e Royal A ir F orce con tin ue d to prepa re d oggedly for a w ar
w it h Fran ce.. .. In so far as [the A rmy ] vis ua lized a co nflict wi th any m a jor
power it had in mind yet a third adversa ry: th e So viet Union," w h ich posed
th e g rea tes t th rea t to th e defense of Ind ia." Britis h st ra tegic t hi n ki ng m ay be
desc ribed as decentrali zed. There we re mult iple and co mpeti ng foci of
threat , a mong th e se rv ices and among pol itician s, an d little g u id ance from
abov e to fo rge a consen su s on long -t erm st rategic priorities.
This overa rchi ng osc illa ting quality of stra tegic think in g coe xisted w ith a
sea rch for formulas to fun cti on as su rrogates fo r a clear hi erarchy of st ra te-
g ic priorities. The ten yea r rul e demonstrat es how British lead ers tried to
crea te so me dete rm inacy around th e time dimension of uncerta inty. In ad di -
tion , m ost Bri tis h pol itical lead ers, wi th th e exception of the Treasury and
56 SECURITY STUDIES 4 , no . I
its supporters, were determined that Britain should not live on the suffer-
ance of other powers, even if none were presently perceived as threats. The
notion that the Empire should not live by the goodwill of other countries
suggested an intention to prepare for all possible enemies and wars. In real-
ity, France and Japan were singled out as the two powers under whose suf-
ferance Britain refused to live." Yet shifting support for the Singapore base
casts doubts on the depth of commitment to this strategic tenet as regards
[apan." On the other hand, fixation on the French air menace by military
and civilian leaders alike was remarkably consistent. Undoubtedly, the focus
on France owed much to the fact that the French Air Force could directly
attack the British homeland. As Arthur J. Balfour admitted,
A war with France would be a world calamity which seems almost

unthinkable; but where national security is concerned even the
unthinkable must be faced and we must sometimes assume that to be
possible which, in existing circumstances, seems only an evil dream."
Balfour's words illustrate how intent declined and capabilities rose as an

important planning assumption, whether because of the fear that such capa-
bilities would in fact be used, because of a belief that superior capabilities
would translate into superior diplomatic leverage, or because French capa-
bilities, in this instance, provided a budget rationale for service planning.
The diplomatic leverage argument is more persuasive than the argument
that France would conceivably go to war against Great Britain. The French
Air Force was designed to operate in support of the French Army and the
British never did build the Home Defense Air Force (HDAF), deferring the
program in 1925. 68 If France had been considered a real threat, the short dis-
tance across the Channel would have made the necessity for air defense far
more obvious and undeniable, 'a n d far sooner." The French, however, did
demonstrate the diplomatic leverage that capabilities could provide during
the Chanak crisis of 1922 70 and the Washington Naval Conference of
1921-22. 71 The tragedy, as Michael Howard points out, was that "Even
Balfour's far-sighted vision did not encompass the possibility of other
powers arising on the Continent with a yet greater capacity for delivering
destruction even than France."?'
Ferris concludes that up until 1926, the British were willing to rearm."
The RAF and the Royal Navy, in fact, fared quite well during the first half
of the 1920s. The critical question, however, is rearm against whom and pre-
pare for what purposes. In Britain, strategic policy emerged by accident
rather than deliberation. As Ferris summarizes,
[The government] did not adopt what Haldane called a "first princi-
ples" approach, which led to "a want of grip in our general ideas of
THI NKI N G ABOUT STRATEGY ABSENT T HE ENEM Y 57
strategy." The govern m en t did not start by defining a strategic policy

on which to ba se all its subsequent decisions. It was slow even to form
an explicit view of grand strat egy.... This occurred because British
gove rn m en ts traditionall y preferred to deal with probl ems as they
arose, and durin g th e 1920s there were no ov e r rid ing threats to
Britain."
When one contemplates th e policies of the United States in response to the

ch all enges of the post-cold war world that have emerged to date - in the
former Soviet Union and em pire; in Northern Iraq in the aftermath of the
Gulf W ar; in Somali a ; in Bosni a - fir st principles and an explicit view of
grand st rategy a re noti ceably ab sent. H ow effective can a strat egic approach
be th at develops in response to problems as they arise? The answer, it

appears, w ould depend upon how severe and how representative th ose ini-
tial threats and/o r ch allenges prove to be . F or the British, the challenges of
the 1930s pro ved to be an o rde r of m agnitud e g re ater th an th ose of the 1920s.
The Diplomacy of Decentralization

Alliance uncertainty possesses two dimensions: the choice of partners, or the
com position of future alliances, counter-alliances, and coalitions; the cho ice
of form, between m ore spec ific, formal , permanent alliances an d looser,
broad er, collecti ve a r ra ngeme nts. Uncertainty abo ut who to ally with and
ag ainst was a dilemma for th e British in the Pacific arena after th e First
World War. The British were torn between the advantages of placing their
all egiance with the United States or Japan. In an exception that su ppo rts the
m ore general trend, the British were prepared to renew their formal alliance
with Japan . H owever, th e st rategy Britain ultimately pursued, codified in
th e W ashington F our Power treaty of 1922, supplanted the Anglo-Japanese
alliance with a non-aggression pact in the Pacific and sav ed British leaders
from having to choose between th e United States and Japan . This first
dimension of alliance uncertainty is illustrated more generally by the fact
th at in 1922, the British had approved o r were on th e verge of approving,
military programs again st ne arl y all their former allies: battleships agains t
the United States; th e H ome D efense Air Force against France; the
Singapore ba se against Japan.
In response to the seco nd dimension of alliance uncertainty, British diplo-
m acy exh ibited a greater affinity for multilat eral and coll ecti ve a rrange-
ments where the locus of threat and the authorization for th e use of force
were broad an d diffuse rather than specific. A penchant to pursue a diplo-
macy of decentralization emerges in British debates abou t alliance patterns
in Europe and the Pacific, despite the fact that formal commitments were
58 SE CURITY STUDIES 4 , n o. I
seriously entertained. During the 1920s, the British weighed the advantages
and disadvantages of commitments to other powers and whether firm com-
mitments, to France in particular, would strengthen Britain's position or
whether such commitments, to Japan for example, would be an irritant and
undermine the British position." British leaders were reluctant to provide
specific and definite commitments, preferring instead looser pledges and
multilateral and collective security arrangements. The general obligations
characteristic of the League Covenant illustrate the alliance strategy pre-
ferred by the British, in stark contrast to the specific and automatic com-
mitments demanded by the French. Specific pledges to defend France and
Belgium were retracted by the British in 1920 when those guarantees failed
to garner the support of the United States.

In Europe, the British tried to use their diplomatic leverage to reduce the
mutual animosity between France and Germany. Both countries were cause
for concern. The French were pursuing provocative military programs (sub-
marines and air power), and a network of alliances in Eastern Europe that
could easily draw France into a major war. Germany's eventual power posed
the greater long-term threat, but in the short-term offered a way to check
potential French hegemony. In Britain's view, both France and Germany
should be sufficiently strong to restrain each other; and sufficiently friendly
to permit the accommodation of Germany's more moderate demands for
revision of the Versailles Treaty. The diplomatic dilemma was how to pro-
vide sufficient assurances to the French so that they would relinquish their
entangling commitments in the east and make concessions to Germany on
the revision of Versailles. Should Britain maintain its distance from France,
along the lines of Britain's more traditional isolationist policy, or offer a com-
mitment to French security?
Up until 1925 many arguments were marshalled for and against an
alliance with France, but the British remained suspicious of the French and
reluctant to commit to a bilateral pact." Those opposed to an alliance feared
being drawn into a European war, freezing an unsatisfactory status quo,
emboldening the French to pursue more aggressive and provocative policies,
and in the end, securing very little diplomatic leverage in return. Those sup-
porting such a commitment, however limited it might be , saw it as the only
way to persuade the French to alter their alliance strategy in the east and to
prevent the Germans from overthrowing the European order. The bias in
British diplomacy, however, was always to reach a European settlement that
did not require a British commitment. By contrast, French diplomacy
favored formal, specific, and automatic commitments. Germany's offer to
France and Britain of a non-aggression pact based on binding arbitration,
though absent an enforcement mechanism, offers a telling example. One
month earlier, in January 1925, most British decision-makers had resigned
THI NKI N G A BO UT STRATEGY ABSENT THE ENEMY 59
themselves to some type of a specific commitment to French security.

Germany's offer, however, meant that such a commitment may not be
neces sary. "The e m, believing that Britain could gain its aims without a
specific commitment to France, thus reconsidered the dangers of any com-
mitments at all .'?'
The most specific commitments made to European secu rity were the
Locarno guarantees. The greatest apparent exception to the diplomacy of
decentralization in Europe, the Locarno treaties of 1925 deserve closer
examination. Throughout 1925, the British debated a range of options
for Europe, and eventually settled on the Locarno guarantees. 78 Twelve
ministers dominated the debate over European security, divided among the
options of a formal alliance with France, mutual security guarantees, mere

pledges of assistance, loose general military guarantees, regional security
pacts to be formed for specific emergencies (or ad hoc coalitions), non-
aggression treaties, and commitments to Europe under the auspices of the
League. In the end, the Locarno Pact established non-aggression treaties
among France, Belgium, and Germany, with Britain ag reeing to defend any
sig nato ry attacked by any other. In theory, the British assumed very precise
military obligations in Europe: to guarantee the German-Belgian and
German-French frontier s against aggression from either side, and to main-
tain the demilitarization of the Rhineland. But military leaders never devel -
oped any plans for implementing the guarantees." No military forces were
devoted to the mission; nor did the British engage in joint planning for com-
bined operations with allies." While this may have been disconcerting to the
Foreign Office, Whitehall was not alarmed. The Chiefs of Staff, in their
First Annual Review of Imperial defense policy in 1926, bluntly stated their
assumptions for sizing and st ructuring the armed forces. Consistent with
government directives, these guidelines were designed to meet the require-
ments of Imperial security, not a general war in Europe.
The size of the forces of the Crown maintained by Great Britain is
governed by various conditions peculiar to each service, and is not
a r rived at by any calculations of the requirements of foreign policy, nor
is it po ssible that they ever should be so calculated. Thus, though the
Expeditionary Force, together with a limited number of Air Force
Squadrons, constitute the only military instrument av ailable for imme-
di ate use in Europe or elsewhere outside Imperial territory in support
of foreign pol icy, they are so available only when the requirements of
Imperial Defense permit. It follows that so far as commitments on the
Continent are concerned , the Services can only take note of them .... 8 1
The strategic priorities expressed by the Chiefs of Staff mirrored the views
held by most of Britain's political leaders. Those priorities had been
enshrined in the 1919 principle that Imperial policing should be the primary
mission of the services. In the end, the Locarno obligations were undertak-
en in the belief that the treaties themselves demonstrated that Europe had
become more stable and the British never designed the forces or plans to
meet their Locarno obligations. As the Chiefs of Staff remarked in their
1930 annual review,
This country is in a less favorable positIOn to fulfil the Locarno
guarantees than it was, without any written guarantee, to come to the
assistance of France and Belgium in 1914. 82
How effectively did Britain's responses to alliance uncertainty in Europe

prepare the nation once strategic clarity returned? A diplomacy of decen-

tralization prevented the British from influencing the French early on, when
Britain's diplomatic leverage was greatest. British policy left the French to
rely on an eastern alliance system, and the Belgians to rely on the French."
In the Far East as in Europe, the British faced uncertainty about the com-
position of future alliances and counter-alliances, and about the desired
looseness or tightness of those diplomatic relationships. The Far East from
the outset exhibited one anomaly for it was there that the British had first
abandoned splendid isolation. In 1902, the British entered an alliance with
the Japanese that was renewed several times, and due for reconsideration in
1922. The emergence of the United States after the First World War as a
formidable Pacific power forced the British to reconsider the relative advan-
tages and disadvantages of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in light of the
escalating tensions between Japan and the United States, and the degree to
which the Japanese had used the alliance to pursue their own imperialist
agenda in East Asia. British debates about whether or not to stand by their
loyal ally Japan resembled debates about whether to stand more firmly
behind France. In both cases, the fear was that allying with Japan, and
France, might embolden those states while at the same time antagonizing
the United States, and Germany, both of the latter feared to be unreliable,
albeit for different reasons. America was unpredictable, undependable, and
subject to the whims of a fickle public opinion. Germany possessed
revisionist aspirations. The scope of possibilities considered by British
leaders ranged from an Anglo-American entente directed against Japan to
renewal of the alliance with [apan." The British preferred a multilateral, or
tripartite arrangement, but failing that and believing an entente with the
United States unlikely, were prepared to renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
In the end, the Washington treaty negotiations produced the Four Power
treaty, a looser, multilateral arrangement. Under the provisions of this non-
aggression pact, Great Britain, the United States, Japan, and France agreed
to respect the Pacific interests, insular possessions, and insular dominions of
one another, and to refrain from alliances, force, and collusion. British diplo-
macy in the Far East, as in Europe, eschewed formal and specific commit-
ments, and military obligations as well.
Retrenchment in the Services and Industry
The fiscal retrenchment that began in the 1920s and continued through the
1930s contributed to deficiencies in military preparedness and weaknesses in
Britain's defense sector. The problem was less that of normal demobilization
than it was the long and continuing reduction of the armed forces between
the wars and the erosion of defense and defense-related industries.
Churchill, who dominated the reformulation of British service policies in

1922, wanted the minimum necessary for deterrence and imperial policing
and a nucleus for expansion. Principles laid down by the Churchill
Committee in 1922, designed to manage the problem of resource uncertain-
ty, called for maintenance of the essential elements of the fighting services to
ensure national security; reduction in peacetime establishments and recon-
stitution after a rupture of relations with another power; adequate provision
for research and development." In a pattern analogous to u .s. assumptions in
the present day, the British believed their security would not be threatened
in the near future and only after a lengthy warning period. British leaders
placed their faith in reconstitution, or the ability to rebuild forces in time
with adequate warning. No studies were made of the potential affects of
rapid disarmament on defense industries, on related heavy industries like
machine tools, or on the development and integration of new technologies.
Smaller armed forces were deemed sufficient, and could be expanded when
necessary. The implicit assumption was made that the British economy and
defense industrial base were strong enough to sustain reconstitution. Despite
some successes, like the creation of shadow factories for rapid conversion
from peacetime purposes to aircraft production," this assumption was large-
ly ill-conceived." The dominant element of strategic consensus again
emerges, namely that economy was Great Britain's fundamental strategic
requirement.
The virtual termination of shipbuilding with the signing of the Armistice
resulted in a significant decline in industrial capacity. Rather than adopting
what in Higham's estimation was a "farseeing, planned programme of
salvage, repair, maintenance, and limited but steady building," short-sight-
edness prevailed." The Royal Navy became dangerously deficient in war-
ships, cruisers, destroyers, anti-submarine warfare vessels, and in skilled
engineers and tradesmen."
Up until the 1860s, the Admiralty had built most of its warships in the
Royal Dockyards, thereafter encouraging private industry to undertake the
62 SECURITY STUDIES 4, no. 1
work. Rapid disarmament, the desire of the Admiralty to preserve H . M.

Dockyards by shifting construction away from private firms, and loss of
foreign customers to competitive yards abroad converged to cripple the ship-
building industry in the private sector. When Britain began to rearm in the
1930s, many of the unemployed who had once been skilled shipwrights were
no longer fit for business." The cessation of warship construction hurt not
only shipbuilders, but also the iron and steel industries, and myriad sec -
ondary suppliers. The Admiralty did subsidize firms that supplied armor-
plate, gun-forgings, gun-mountings, and succeeded in retaining some
reserve capacity by the mid-1930s. Yet even if sufficient capacity was
retained in the industry, the lack of skilled workers, managerial staff,
modern techniques, and equipment hampered the ability to meet the flood
of orders that began in the mid-1930s. 9 1
The aircraft industry, though in excess capacity in the 1920s, like the
munitions industry was drastically downsized. Established firms left the
industry, and stocks were either disposed of or permitted to dwindle. While
in 1922 it was possible to order aircraft and receive them within six months,
it was not so possible in 1935, and "When rearmament hit, outside manu-
facturers had to be brought in as firms which were used to completing
perhaps three aircraft a month could not handle orders which reached a
peak production flow of as many as 500 machines a month in the Second
World War."92 The downsized aircraft industry was sustained in part by
orders for the HDAF. With orders for new aircraft few, contracts were also
consciously spread to retain a nucleus of firms. Most of the aircraft ordered,
however, were light types designed for the general-purpose concept of colo-
nial warfare. In the engine manufacture business, the Air Ministry succeed-
ed in keeping a nucleus of firms in business as well. But overall,
technological advances were hampered, largely because "the only active the-
atres in which RAF officers served were Iraq and the North-West Frontier in
which there was no air opposition and in which the ideal was the general
purpose machine which could observe, bomb and strafe. The Hawker Hart
was the epitome of this jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none concept."?'
Failure to systematically study and apply the lessons of the First World War
adversely affected what few aircraft types were developed. In particular,
little emphasis was placed on the development of aircraft for commerce pro-
tection. In the early years of the war, much of the bomber striking force had
to be diverted for escort and anti-submarine duties.
Tank production languished as well with prototypes developed from year
to year but never produced in sufficient quantities for field testing." The
British General Staff remained interested in mechanized warfare," yet for
political and financial reasons, Britain lost its technical lead in armored war-
fare between the wars. Politically, the British Cabinet was reluctant, even by
the late 1930s, to think about preparing for a Continental war. The Army's
role and equipment continued to be shackled to a plan to defend India and
to "what the sahibs in New Delhi thought was needed to fight the Afghan
tribesmen.'?" Even as late as 1937, the Cabinet continued to define the
Army's roles as imperial defense and home defense against invasion of air
attack." One result was that only those arms suitable for use in small wars
were improved, while major war capacity consisted merely of stockpiled
materials." Of all the services, the Army faced the most acute operational
uncertainty between the wars and this directly influenced its responses to
resource uncertainty. When faced with cuts, the British Army sacrificed pro-
curement of equipment rather than cutting existing units, or force struc-
ture." Unsure of its role in the nation's defense, and unclear as well about
the type of war it should be preparing to fight, the Army failed to reequip
for fear it would be rearming for the wrong war.
Preservation of the defense industrial base for mechanized warfare
suffered not only from the operational uncertainty facing Army leaders, but
from the financial stringency, which hit the Army hardest of the services,
and from the government's short-sightedenss when it came to industrial
base requirements. Between 1923 and 1933, the annual allocation for the
purchase and maintenance of all Army weapons averaged less than those
allocated to the other services. Between 1927 and 1936, the sum available
annually for tank experimentation averaged between 22,500 and 93,750,
while the cost of a single experimental medium tank could be 29,000. 100
Financial cuts compelled the War Office to abandon development of
medium tanks with expensive, powerful purpose-built engines for those that
employed cheaper commercially-manufactured engines. However,
power/weight ratio problems made it impossible to design an effective all-
purpose medium tank with the cheaper low-powered commercial engines
being used. !" As a result, when rearmament began, Britain possessed no
good multi-purpose medium tank ready for production. Britain also lost its
industrial capacity and manufacturing expertise for tank production.
Financial restrictions on tank orders resulted in the loss of designers,
draughtsman, and good mechanical engineers, and confined research and
development to two contractors, which the War Office was barely able to
keep alive. !" Lack of industrial capacity forced the General Staff to turn to
a railway company to develop prototypes for a medium tank with a purpose-
built engine in 1937. 103 Lack of production facilities left the army no choice
in 1939 but to "co n ve rt railway engine workshops and other civil engineer-
ing works to military production - a process that was both lengthy and
expensive."
Absence of an industrial base strategy had serious consequences for
British ground forces in the first two years of the Second World War,
condemning them "to fight with thoroughly inadequate equipment such as

the two-pound anti-tank gun - a gun which the army fully recognized as
inadequate for use against a Continental opponent."!" For political and
financial reasons, the British failed "to produce enough of some weapons,
especially tanks, so that sufficient forces could be used against each other in
unfettered manoeuvres in order that new tactics could be worked out and
subsequent changes in models could then be based upon operational
research."!" The Army also lacked light automatic infantry weapons,
modern field guns, and anti-aircraft weapons. As Higham describes it, "In
the 1920s and 1930s, the British Army was a display case full of samples
commanded by men who were not at all sure how these things should be
used, if employed at all." !" But tank shortages were particularly devastating
because they prevented British troops from operating and training prior to
the outbreak of war, while several complete German panzer divisions, avail-
able before the start of war, had conducted large-scale armored exercises. In
addition, few British commanders had any experience in handling armor or
an armored division.!"
The Army's preoccupation with colonial disruptions, the unwillingness
of British leaders and society to even contemplate let alone prepare for
another Continental war, lack of a strategy for managing the defense indus-
trial base in peacetime, and financial stringencies all converged to cripple the
Army's ability to prepare for potential long-term strategic contingencies.
The Army's emergency strength and capacity to expand were also deci-
mated. In 1922 the War Office could dispatch an Expeditionary force of only
one cavalry and two infantry divisions immediately, and another infantry
division only six weeks after mobilization. Combat support elements were
unable to meet mobilization requirements, and the Territorial Army, ana-
logous to the u .s. National Guard, remained a weak cadre for expansion. '?"
By 1935, the Army possessed less than one division capable of active service
against a European enemy. In 1939, when the Cabinet called for a fifty-five
division force, "not only had new weapons to be created, manufactured,
evaluated, doctrinized, distributed, and deployed, but the masses of men had
to be inducted, clothed, fed, trained, and integrated into a fighting machine
whose commanders were more used to commanding companies than
corps."!"
Nevertheless, the performance of British armored forces against the
Italians in the desert at the end of 1940 suggests "what the British might
have achieved with a more serious effort" and "certainly indicates that the
lack of resources in the 1930s is not the only explanation for operational and
tactical weaknesses."!" Treasury policy in the 1920s is over-maligned to the
extent that it has shouldered nearly all the blame for British performance in
the early days of the Second World War. Financial stringency certainly did
T H IN KING ABOUT STRATEGY ABSENT THE ENEMY 6S
not prevent planning for the con version of industry and m anpower to mili-
tary purposes, nor th e acq uisition and stockpiling of vita l raw materials,
preparati on s that "played a maj or role in th e speed with which British
ind us t ry ca ugh t up and su rpasse d G erman production for such critical
weapon syste m s as fighter aircraft earl y in th e w ar." !" A s much if not more
at blame was th e reluct an ce of Britain 's lead ers and citizens alik e to acknow-
led ge th e d an gers of th e 1930s until th e ve ry last minute.
In Higham's wo rds "a ll was haste an d w as te and a d esire to return to a
civi lian life, w h ile failing to real ize th e co n tin ue d sec u rity, both economic
and physical , of th at ex iste n ce depended upon the st rength of the Service s
and th e o rga n ization w hich su pplied th em in peace, cri sis and combat." !"
F erri s co n te nds th at 1925 w as a peak of military preparedness.I" Convinced

th at peace existed , th at it would be th e sta te of affairs for th e foreseeable
futur e, and th at th ere w ould be plenty of w arning time, th e British took a
st ra tegi c ga m ble bet ween 1926 and 1933, cutting se rv ice spe n d ing to assist
econo m ic growth. In 1926, this assess men t m ay have been th e correct one
given th at it wou ld tak e a ca tas troph ic event like world eco nom ic crisis to
banish any prospects fo r co nsolidating a peaceful stable wo rld o rde r. Yet
hopin g to sus tai n sec urity on th e chea p, by th e 1930s neither th e se rv ices nor
the eco no my we re ro bust eno ugh fo r th e ch all enges th e em pire faced. At th e
ve ry least , Great Br ita in w ould have been better off preserving the core
st re ngth of th e a rmed serv ices and th e industrial base to co m pe ns ate for eco-
nom ic w eakness, rather th an g u tting th e se rv ices to bolster th e economy.
Primacy of Imp erial Security

The 1919 p rinci ples th at fun ctio ned as bro ad g u id el ines for Britain's mili-
tary st ra tegy a fte r th e F ir st W orl d W ar assigne d a preeminent role to
Imperial policing and Imperial sec urity. With th e ten year rule, "the prin-
ciple fun cti ons of th e Military and A ir F orces is [sic] to provide garrisons for
India, Egypt, the new mandated territory and all territory (other than self-
gove rn ing) under British co n t ro l, as w ell as to pro vid e the necessary support
to th e civil po we r at h orne."!" The serv ices shou ld also d et er attacks aga in st
th e homeland and defend interests ab road, but th e underlying assu m ption
was th at Bri ta in itself would no t be threat en ed for m any yea rs , and on ly
afte r a len g th y wa rn ing pe riod . As Treasury officials perceived it, the ten
yea r rul e was not "a n essay in prophecy, but a w orking h yp othesis intended
to reli eve th e C h iefs of Sta ff fr om th e respon sibility of preparing agai ns t
co n tingenc ies which th e Govern men t believe to be either remote or beyond
th e fin ancial capacity of th e country to provide agains t."!" The ch allenge,
fr om th e Treasury's per spective, was to bal ance risks, and th e financi al risks
fac ing Brita in dwarfed all othe rs . F o r these reason s, th e fate of the se rv ices
66 SECURITY STUDIES 4, no . I
in the 1920s came to hinge upon the government's view of Imperial security.
There persisted a corresponding reluctance to consider the future use of
force on mainland Europe.':" The services, particularly the Army and Air
Force, succeeded in defending their programs to the degree that they
demonstrated to civilian leaders relevance to, and effectiveness, in Imperial
policing.'!'
Neglect of long-term strategic concerns had several origins. First, the
Continental giants that had posed real threats to Britain in the past had
either disappeared or been severely crippled. Second, an influential group of
British policy-makers and strategists, composed of Curzon, Milner, Smuts,
Amery, and Sykes, had become very concerned with Imperial security and
"was not likely to give to the European theatre any larger priority than it
could help."!" Third, pressing needs surfaced immediately after the
armistice.
Russia was plunged into civil war and revolution; the newly emanci-
pated countries of eastern Europe clashed over disputed boundaries;
Greeks fought Turks; and Arab leaders contested the succession to the
dismembered Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. The end of the
war also brought a new surge of nationalism .... ll9
The end of the First World War exhibits an uncanny resemblance to the
post-cold war era.
Confronted with a range of lesser strategic contingencies on the heels of
the armistice, the British cabinet, on 17 February 1922 , assumed,
we need not now contemplate fighting a European enemy equipped
with all the latest mechanical appliances for war. We should now visu-
alize a situation in which we might have to fight Indians and Arabs.
This involved military operations of a very different class.... u o
The perception was that the center of gravity for defense had shifted from
Europe to the Middle and Far East. This was not an unreasonable conclu-
sion given the upheavals that confronted the British between 1918 and 1923,
particularly in India and the Middle East. Commitments were extended to
Persia, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, but by June 1921, the British withdrew
from Persia. In March of that year, Mesopotamia, soon to be Iraq, was relin-
quished to King Faisal, but the British retained responsibility for internal
order. Palestine continued to pose a heavy burden, and in Ireland, the British
faced forces of violent nationalism that they were ill-equipped to handle.
Then in 1922, Turkish nationalist forces threatened to invade Chanak on the
Asiatic shore of the Dardenelles and deprive Britain freedom to use the
straits. "! Had the Turks attacked before 30 October, before British assets
were in place, the British would have lost Constantinople and use of the
Dardenelles. The Chanak crisis, what some have called the gravest military
test of the 1920s, revealed Britain's inability to fulfill major Imperial policing
requirements, despite RAF successes in conducted policing operations in
Somaliland, Iraq, Transjordan, and Aden. 122 Finally, internal upheavals and
frontier disputes in India kept British forces engaged in peacekeeping oper-
ations for years. As Howard summarizes,
These activities, together with protective duties in that Alsatia of the
international capitalist system, China, occupied the British Army quite
as fully as had its comparable imperial policing duties before the
General Staff had begun to play its European War Games in 1905....
The vast corpus of experience fighting in Europe was allowed to melt
away: not until 1932 was a Committee set up to study the lessons of the
First World War. Experiments with armoured warfare were taken up
half-heartedly and abandoned with little reluctance.!"
Service responses to operational uncertainty were influenced, first, by a con-

sensus that had developed among politicians and their strategic advisors that
Britain should be planning for small wars, peacekeeping operations, and
policing duties. The services should not plan for a great power war where
they would face a technologically sophisticated adversary.
Beyond this general guideline, service responses to uncertainty varied,
reflecting service-specific attributes. The Royal Air Force (RAF), as a new
organization, adjusted differently than the older established services. The
RAF was consumed with establishing its organizational legitimacy and this
drive overwhelmingly influenced how its leaders defined roles and missions.
RAF leaders championed the Imperial defense mission or the strategic bomb-
ing mission depending upon which could provide greater resources and
security for the organization. Given an environment of acute financial st rin-
gency, RAF leaders believed they had little choice but to challenge the posi-
tions of the older services and carve out a niche for themselves. If the RAF
could perform more economically missions traditionally the responsibility of
the older services and establish a strong, independent, and indispensable role
for itself, its existence would be justified. Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air
Staff (CAS) from February 1919, was an astute politician. According to
Ferris, Trenchard, contrary to the received conventional wisdom, did not
unequivocally defend strategic bombing as the main role of the RAF.
Trenchard systematically championed strategic bombing only after 1921
when it became politically expedient to do so. And when Trenchard began
espousing strategic bombing and advocating formation of the HDAF, he
inflated the materiel and psychological affects of strategic bombing, as well
as the threat of the French air menace, to strengthen the indispensability of
the RAF to British security. Prior to 1922, Trenchard focused on substituting
68 SE CURITY STUDIES 4, no. I
the technology of the RAF for the manpower of the Army in Imperial polic-
ing to demonstrate the superior capabilities of RAF in performing the peace-
time duty of major concern to civilian leaders.!"
Once the independent doctrine of strategic bombing became tied to RAF
survival and growth, the idea of using air power to support mechanized
warfare was perceived as a threat to RAF independence. Exercises conduct-
ed in 1927 experimented with low-level attacks in conjunction with tank
assaults. Trenchard's Air Staff vigorously objected to these joint operations,
opposed Army overtures for closer cooperation, and would assign squadrons
for combat air support missions only with great reluctance. According to
Bond, "On one occasion the Air Ministry warned the War Office against
allowing Army officers to encourage Air Force officers to violate official Air
policy.": " Nor was the RAF more forthcoming with resources to the RN for
air defense of convoys against submarine attack. As Bond and Murray
submit, "the myopia of the Air Staff hindered the development of a broadly
based conception of air power and the capability to render inter-service
support to the army and the Royal Navy."126 To be fair, however, the Army
was reluctant to integrate other services into its doctrine and to deal with the
issue of close air support.!" The RAF coped with the uncertainty it faced by
carving out roles for which it was ideally suited, by aggressively expanding
its responsibilities, often at the expense of the other services, and ultimately
by pursuing an air power doctrine that strengthened the independence of
the RAF.
As the premier service, the Royal Navy (RN) was less concerned about
justifying itself to civilian leaders. Naval leaders, committed to retaining
Britain's traditional maritime supremacy, resisted rethinking strategy to
accommodate Britain's severe financial constraints. In the Admiralty's view,
Britain should define policies to govern the services' "power" and, after
the latter had defined how much money these policies required,
"decide whether the policy is too costly to carry out" and, if so, select
an "alternative."!"
The Admiralty was of the opinion that it, not the politicians, should dom-
inate naval policy. Despite the emphasis from above pushing Imperial
defense and the diplomatic pressures that culminated in the Washington
and London naval treaties, the RN continued to think in terms of a One
Power Standard, a wary eye always following the u .s. Navy, and to prepare
for a decisive fleet encounter with Japan's Imperial Navy. Above all, the
Admiralty defended the preeminent and independent role of naval power
and refused to think of naval power as an adjunct to, or in support of, the
other services. In the opinion of David Beatty, Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS)
from November 1919,
THI NKI N G A BOUT ST RATEGY ABSENT TH E ENEMY 69
politicians misunderstood the meaning of Sea Power. They are all mil-
itary mad and fed by the War Office have come to consider the Navy
as an a ppen dage to Military Forces and only exi sts for the purpose of
carrying th e Arm y and keeping the road open for them and we are in
th eir eyes no longer the Spear Head of Great Britain which we have
been for over a hundred ye a rs ."?
The Royal N avy, of all th e serv ices, resi sted most rethinking its roles and
missions. It continued to focus on preparing for a decisive fleet encounter,
slighting th e importance of convoy protection against su bm a rine attack and
a nti-s u bm a r ine warfare.!" Between the wars, "it was to Jutland, and not to
th e long, hard defense of trade routes against su bm a rines in the 1917-18
period , that the Royal N avy 100ked."' 31 The RN dealt with the uncertainty it
faced by defending its traditional roles and missions, and attempting to meet
th ose requirements given fin ancial constraints at home and arms control
limits negotiated abroad.
O f all th e services, the Army struggled most between the wars with
uncertainty ove r its rol e. While the RAF defined missions to legitimate its
existence and the RN clung to traditional missions, the British Army after the
First W orld W ar, in th e estim ation of Bond, experienced " pro t racted polit-
ical and military indecision ove r its role. "!" L acking the traditional esteem
of th e Royal Na vy o r the no vel appeal of the Royal Air Force, the Army
became th e "C inde re lla " service. Without a definite European role, the
Arm y reverted to its traditional peacetime mission of Imperial defense. As
C ava n, e IGS from 1922 to 1926, reasoned in a memo to the Chiefs of Staff in
1924 ,
Under eXIstIng world conditions we require no plans of campaign
(except for sm all wars incidental to our Imperial position) ... We must :
concentrate on Imperial defence. There is no need to try and ju stify
our existence by wasting our time and energies in the compilation of
elaborate plans for war against hypothetical en em ies.'!'
Army leaders did not define th eir organization's role to preserve and
enhance organizational power. The War Office followed the explicit
in structions issued to it by th e Cabinet in 1922. The Army's responsibilities
we re home security, which included the internal security of Great Britain
and Ireland, and Imperial d efense, which meant providing local security for
British colonies, protectorat es, and mandates; provid ing adeq ua te garrisons
and d efenses for st rateg ic ports at home and ab roa d ; and su pplying th e
British co m ponent of th e garrison of India. An ad d itional peacetime com-
mitment in vol ved providing an occupation force for the demilitarized zone
of th e Rhineland. The War O ffice was explicitly ins t ructed by the ten year
rule not prepare for the contingency of a major continental war. Rather,
from the remaining troops at home, the Army should organize an
Expeditionary Force for a minor extra-European war.!" C IG S Milne, in
laying out guidance for the Expeditionary Force Committee in 1926,
instructed preparations for a sea voyage and operations in an under-
developed country. '" As a result, in the words of Bond and Murray, "the
army was equipped for imperial operations in the late 1930s and prepared
neither intellectually nor in terms of its table of organization to meet the
German Army on the Continent."!"
The Army ended up pursuing roles and missions that detracted from its
organizational power and wealth in several ways. First, Imperial policing
did not require a large and modern army because mechanized units were
not necessary for this mission, and could be built only at the expense of exist-
ing conventional units essential for policing duties. Ferris emphasizes that
Army leaders were not reactionary intellectuals, unable to understand the
capabilities of armored forces. Rather, they correctly judged that "aircraft
and mechanized forces alone could not surmount widespread colonial
disorders" such as those Britain eventually faced in Palestine in 1929 and
1936-38. 137 Strategic overextension in the Middle East further hindered
Army leaders from reducing conventional forces and modernizing.
Alternatively, the French air menace, the One Power Standard, and latent
fears of Japan provided the RAF and RN with modernizing adversaries.
Imperial policing further detracted from the Army's power and wealth
between the wars by reinforcing the Cardwell system, and the Army force
structure upon which the system was based. The Cardwell system linked
battalions at home and abroad to maintain a regular flow of replacement
and reliefs. By implication, training and equipment at home could not vary
too much from that overseas. As long as the Cardwell system was main-
tained, it would be impossible to mechanize the Army at home and have it
remain interchangeable with units of an uri-mechanized Army in India, or
to devote more resources to armored and mechanized forces.' :" By 1923 most
of the immediate postwar emergencies had died down, leaving the British
Army in India as the largest commitment. To many, India alone justified
maintaining the Cardwell system.
The Indian Army was a backwater in ideas and equipment. Imperial
policing and peacekeeping in India did not require mechanized forces, and
the majority of senior officers there were loathe to substitute machines for
infantry and cavalry. Furthermore, internal security measures required
breaking up battalions into small detachments, which inhibited training for
combat. Because the traditional problem of the North West Frontier domi-
nated military thinking in India, Major B. C. Dening, an advocate of Army
reform, lamented in 1928,
T H IN K ING ABOUT STRATEGY ABSENT T HE ENEMY 71
W e thus ha ve a situa tion in w hi ch th e g rea te r portion of the British

A rmy is regulated by th e cond itio ns prevailing on a portion of one o f
th e fro n tie rs of one o f th e E m pire's const ituent parts. l"
Problems o f internal sec u rity and fr ontier warfare in India sh aped th e

Arm y's rol es an d m issions a nd undermined the a bility o f th e Arm y to re-
o rg a n ize a nd m odernize. The Ca rdwe ll syste m, and m aintenance of the
Ind ian ga rrison of eigh ty yea rs, cr eated serio us obsta cles to th e A rmy's abil-
ity to ada p t to uncertainty a nd to m od erniz e for fu tu re wa r. Both "compli-
ca ted the p rocess of m ech ani zati on ; militated aga ins t th e creatio n o f a n
E xpe d itio na ry F orce in peacetime; and prevented a radical redistribution of
im pe r ial ga rr isons in resp onse to cha nging st ra tegic conditions." 140 A rmy
d octrine an d train in g ass u m ed that the Arm y's primary mission w as, an d
would remain for th e foreseeable future, policing th e Empire. M eanwhile,
failure o f th e A nglo-Ame rica n g ua ra n tee of French security remov ed an y
obligatio n to m aintain a Conti ne n ta l ca pa bility.
RAF responses to un certainty in the post w ar e ra m irrored th e beha vior of
a ne w o rga n izatio n see ki ng to esta blish its legitimacy. RN po licy reflect ed the
a tt itu de of the premier a nd m ost p res tig io us se rvice in a m arit ime sta te .
A rmy pol icy reverted to the peacetime missions of a g loba l m aritime pow er.
Fe rris d evelops th e th esis th at th e future o f m oderniz ation for the RAF and
th e Army hinged on w h ich substituted technology for manpower m ost
effectivel y. The A rmy lost , while th e RAF su cceed ed because it dem onstrat-
ed that air power w as a n eco nom ica l m ethod of co nd ucting Imperial po lic-
ing ope ra tio ns. As a result, the A rmy was not perm itted to m ech ani ze, w hi le
th e RAF was fu rn ished the resources to d evelop st ra tegic bo m bing. Fer ris
tr aces these developmen ts largel y to th e saav iness of C AS Trench ard, a nd th e
political in eptitude of C IG S Wilson ." ! H ow ever, the fate of the A rmy was
closely tie d to Brita in's geo po litical im pe ra tives, being an isla nd nati on w ith
no continental competi tors, ye t w ith a sca tte re d em pire to m anage. This
imperial legacy permeated A rmy o rga niza tion through the Ca rd well
syste m. Finally, m odernizati on in th e A rmy was integrall y rel ated to
preparati on for a m aj or wa r. As long as civilia n lead ers foll ow ed a wait a n d
see a pproach, the W ar Office wou ld be direct ed to co ncen t ra te on co lo nial
de fense . M ilita ry in stitutions a re fre q ue n tly chas tised for preparing to fight
the last wa r. Between th e wa rs, the British services di d no suc h thi ng.
Parado xicall y, as Bond and Murray surm ise, " the British would ha ve pe r-
formed far better on th e battlefields o f the Second W orld W ar had th ey ruth -
lessly prepared to fight th e last w ar."!"
72 SEC URITY STUDI ES 4, no. I
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY:
INSIGHTS FR OM THEORY AND HISTORY
All states face politically-driven obstacles to strategy formation in peacetime.

Disagreements arise about how to operationalize national objectives and
how to specify what the nation is willing to fight for in the absence of a clear
threat. In addition, leaders can hope to receive little pay-off for focusing on
future conflicts when the public eye is riveted on domestic issues. Pacifist
pressures also de velop after sustained periods of conflict or rivalry, and con-
found these tendencies. In response to public pressure, democratic leaders,
in particular, must turn their attention to social and economic agendas or
risk removal, despite the fact that the world may still remain a very unset-
tled place. The power of public opinion has been a major driving force in
the contraction of defense resources during peacetime, but it cannot explain
why defense priorities are reoriented in the manner they are because the
qualitative nature of shifts is affected by forces others than those that
account for the quantitative direction of cuts. Responses to uncertainty must
be consistent with the strategic culture of the state to sustain a minimal
degree of public consensus. But to understand in greater depth the qualita-
tive nature of strategic reorientation, we must ask what drives political and
military leaders, and the organizations that influence national defense.
According to cognitive theory, the experience of the First World War
sho u ld have had a decisive impact on how British political and military
leaders set priorities among threats, risks, and national security goals. Direct
involvement in combat would have provided a dramatic and vivid
experience, but even being politically aware would have made the w ar a
highly salient ev en t in the minds of leaders. Yet there developed a strong
re action to even thinking about, let alone preparing for, another continental
war. Arguably, the plethora of minor contingencies that erupted after the
armistice commanded attention at the expense of the Great War. However,
given the toll that World War extracted in life and materiel, it is difficult to
imagine it being extinguished by pressures for Imperial defense and polic-
ing. Yet extinguished it was. Britain's officer corps, military institutions,
political leadership, and society were so determined to escape the horrors of
the last war that they avoided thinking about it. 143 The chief lesson of the
First World War - to avoid ever repeating the experience - proved to be so
highly salient and unambiguous that it seemed unnecessary to study the
Great War let alone prepare for another one. This type of avoidance looks
very much like a motivational effect but it paints an incomplete picture of
British behavior, particularly in the services where waging war and think-
ing about the unthinkable should be priorities. Motivational effects explain
the desire to avoid war at almost any price, but the desire "never again" to
fight a major war does not alone dictate behavior. One could prepare to
fight, or one could prepare to deter. When the British government began
to rearm in 1935, increased military strength was still not conceived of as
practical preparation for Continental war.'"
Higham documents how few postwar British Cabinet members had
combat experience in the First World War. It "was not until Eyres-Monsell
became First Lord in 1931 that the younger generation of veterans began
to exercise an influence in the Cabinet."!" Lloyd George was the only prime
minister to serve in high office throughout the war, while neither Bonar
Law nor Baldwin had studied military affairs in any depth, nor were
interested in them. Baldwin along with MacDonald failed to appreciate
the importance of research and development in defense, and the time

lag for modern weapons production. While familiar with political and
administrative processes, these men lacked knowledge of military-
diplomatic policy formulation, as well as broad training in strategy and
military policy.!" With little interest or background in military and strategic
issues, Britain's civilian leaders proved a hard sell for service leaders seeking
resources to meet their requirements. The government's military advisors
had experience on the Western Front, but their prewar experiences over-
shadowed the lessons of that particular conflict and the demands of modern
industrial warfare.
Cognitive theory is not useful in explaining British responses to un-
certainty. The limited extent of direct involvement in the First World War
by the then-current British leadership contributes to the weakness of cogni-
tive explanations. But more importantly, the whole of British society simply
refused to think about future great power war. In addition, the smaller con-
flicts that erupted immediately after the war provided a postwar context for
strategic reorientation. Two implications followed: British military strategy
promoted short-term contingency response at the expense of a long-term
strategic approach geared toward shaping the course of the future security
environment; the small war contingencies of the present were extrapolated
into the future, the assumption being that current threats were representa-
tive of future threats. This very process describes the u.s . approach to strate-
gic planning today as represented in the Clinton administration's Bottom-Up
Review (BUR). The primary role for u .s. forces is responding to specified
threats. Looking to recent experience, it is assumed, is sufficient for planning
future forces. As one analyst succinctly put it, "The enemies are yesterday's
and today's enemies, not necessarily tomorrow's."!" But u .s. strategy is not
likely to follow Britain's so far down the path of projecting current contin-
gencies into the future for an important reason. For Britain between the wars,
the preservation of Empire provided a 'firm psychological basis for strategic
policy and a clear sense of national purpose. Britain's imperial legacy pro-
vided a comfortable strategic posture to fall back on, whereas the United
States has no such natural peacetime "imperial" orientation.
Organization theory provides more insight into British strategic adjust-
ment. It is particularly useful in explaining the responses of the RAF and RN
to uncertainty. As a new organization, the RAF was consumed with legit-
imizing its existence; as a well-established organization and the nation's
"first line of defense," the RN resisted rethinking how developments in air
power and submarines would affect naval warfare in the future.
Organization theory also explains the resistance of these two services to
focusing on combat support roles. With resources scarce, organizations
position themselves better by demonstrating their independent and unique
contributions to national security.

Organization theory, however, contributes little to explaining the adapta-
tion of the British Army in the 1920s . Geopolitical theory, on the other hand ,
clarifies Army posture and illuminates British responses to alliance and
resource uncertainty as well. From the perspective of organization theory, it
is difficult to account for why different services responded to uncertainty
differently, and why the Army pursued strategies that undermined its
power and strength. While the RAF and RN planned for wars that enhanced
their power, the Army eschewed preparing for the only type of war, a con-
tinental one, that would permit it to modernize. Ferris blames C IG S Wilson.
Bond acknowledges that Wilson held his post during a uniquely difficult
period, but argues more convincingly that Britain's geopolitical situation and
Imperial legacy influenced strategic perceptions and shaped the redefinition
of Army roles and missions after the First World War. 148 In the 1920s Great
Britain resurrected its imperial strategic orientation, focused on preserving
the empire, and pursued distinctly "peacetime" missions. For the Army
most of all, peacetime missions detracted from the service's overall combat
capability. British strategy was also decentralized diplomatically and
economically, patterns consistent with a global, insular power's orientation
in peacetime. Decentralization emerged in the focus of policy, in the locus
of responsibility for use of force and preservation of security, in preferences
for multilateral and collective diplomatic arrangements, and in the absence
of coherent policies for preserving the defense industrial base.
Theories about how individuals, organizations, and states respond to
uncertainty provide both promising and discouraging insights for the
United States today. On the positive side, there is little cause for concern that
organizational imperatives will take over and drive strategy. Organizational
responses to uncertainty occur within a geopolitical and a political context.
Organizations have greater leeway when civilian direction is weak and
vague, but even in Britain, the services were responsive to even the most
minimal civilian guidance. Organizational responses to uncertainty are less
THI NKI N G ABOUT ST RATEGY ABSENT TH E EN EMY 75
a functi on of the level of threat th an they are of the nature and extent of
civilian leadership and direction. This offers promise for u.s. leaders today
because civilians can prevail over organizational tendencies and sha pe
service st rateg ies in peacetime.
While we can be confident at the level of military strategy, prospects for
responding to uncertainty at the grand strategy level are more discouraging.
Geopolitical theory reveals that global , insular po wers have a particularly
difficult time coping with uncertainty. On the one hand, a range of g loba l
interests means that leaders will perceive a broad and diffuse set of
challenge s and opportunities abroad. No hi erarchy of priorities will be sel f-
evid en t. On the other hand , geographic insularity provid es distance from
powerful an d potentially hostile neighbors, which feeds th e perception that

the country enjoys relative military security. Insularity contributes to the dif-
ficulty in setting strategic priorities in peacetime because insular nations can
withdraw m ore easily politically and militarily, even if not eco nom ically.
Withdrawal promotes a contingency response strategy - responding to near-
term threats as they arise - rather than a longer-term shaping orientation -
deterring potential threats before they reach fruition and sh aping the system
through rea ssurance to prevent unstable situ ation s fr om developing.
Nuclear w eapons have reduced th e relevance of insularity, but they have not
rendered it irrelevant. The fighting in Bosnia can more re adily spread to
neighboring European states than it can to the United States. And two of
the gravest challenges to Europe today - a chaotic resurgence of Russian
nationalism to the ea st and an upsurge of Muslim revanchism to the south
- are far more visible to Europeans sitting between them than to Americans
living an ocea n away. Insularity heightens perceptions of security. A global
orientation expands th e state's strategic purview. Both mean th at u.s. leaders
face structural obstacles to developing grand st rategies in peacetime.
The defense debate in the United States today reflects the same set of
issues that British leaders wrestled with in the 1920s: how to think about
strategy absent an enemy, and how to manage an uncertain international
security en vironment. u.s. leaders a re weighing the advantages of existing
alliances, ad hoc coalitions, and coll ective secu rity arrangements; are aggres-
sively downsizing th e military establishment with the hopes of retaining a
capacity in both the services and industry to reconstitute an d regenerate; and
are reorienting military priorities to emphasize peacetime missions, low-
intensity conflict, and sm all war contingencies. The British focused on th e
near-term at the expense of the long-term security environment, extrapolat-
ed near-term challenges into the future as the sole basis for planning, and
emphasized the economic basis of security (arguably correctly) but at the
expense of the military foundation s of security. Higham argues that British
policy,
could be justified on the grounds that no major war was likely for
some time after such a holocaust as had just been terminated, if it had
settled all the issues. But the world was not settled and the peace had
not solved all the problems. Britain, therefore, needed a combination
of alliances and armed forces capable of providing for the visible and
possible dangers with a sufficient reserve for the unforeseen.!"
Similarly today, all the issues are not settled and will not be until robust
democracy flourishes in Russia. For this reason, the United States, the most
consequential player in the system, cannot afford not to think strategically
about the distant future because the greatest challenges to u.s . security, while
they lie at least a decade into the future, are far more dangerous than current
regional worries. Principal among them would be a return to great power

rivalries if an enduring and stable international order fails to emerge. Nor
can the United States afford to simply muddle through with a strategy that
develops in response to problems as they arise because, as Colin Gray aptly
puts it, the United States "long will remain its own, and many other polities',
last line of defense." !" The bright side of this picture flows from the major
difference between interwar Britain and the post-cold war United States:
the British were seriously overextended and this reinforced their tendency
to focus to exclusion on small wars, low-intensity conflict, and peacekeeping
operations.
Despite British reluctance to think about strategy absent a clear threat, an
imperial strategic orientation took hold. While this undermined in certain
crucial ways the country's preparedness for the challenges that emerged
from the revisionist great powers of the 1930s, protection and policing of
worldwide commerce and Empire provided a sense of national purpose, and
a consensus on when and how to use force abroad. The Clinton administra-
tion, however, has yet to articulate a national purpose for the country in the
post-cold war world, or to define a strategy to implement that purpose.
Chief dangers in the post-cold war security environment!" have been laid
out but no strategy establishes priorities to guide defense and diplomatic
policy. u.s. leaders have yet to adopt Haldane's first principles approach and
forge a coherent grand strategic approach, or articulate a methodology for
linking economic, diplomatic, and military policies to that grand strategy. In
the absence of political guidance, budget-driven goals (or negative priorities)
replace strategic goals (or positive priorities), and strategic drift sends mixed
signals at home and abroad.
Despite Britain's strategic shortcomings between the wars, the decision to
emphasize long-term economic growth at the expense of near-term defense
spending made sense. In a similar vein, the Clinton administration has
recognized the strategic importance of a strong domestic economy. The
THI NKI N G ABOUT ST RATEGY ABSENT TH E ENEM Y 77
administration has also embraced a de facto defense industrial policy to

maintain the nation 's ability to produce key d efense technologies. However,
in vesting in the defen se industrial base is being driven primarily by a desire
to protect jobs. The decision to build a nothe r Seawolf submarine re veals the
logic behind the ad m in ist ra tion's defense industrial base policy and its lack
of a strategic underpinning. At th e sam e time, bec ause the BUR stri ves to
m eet near-term threats, which are not assu m ed to be particularly innovative
technologically, long-term military potential is being sacrificed in order to
preserve near-term capabilities.!" The British case illustrates th at managing
resource uncertainty must be o rches t ra ted at two level s: at the macroeco-
nomic level a nd w ith in specific industries. P erceiving the greatest threat to
the country to be economic in nature, the British cut se rvice spen d ing to bol-
ster economic growth. However, a robust economy cannot compensate for

lack of a healthy resource base in defense and defense-related industries, or
for absence o f vigo rous efforts to promote research a nd development.
GUID ELI N ES F OR M A N AGI N G U N C ERT AI NTY
Today, the United States faces a very uncertain security environment.

Nonetheless, specific proposal s for fashioning a strategy amidst the "fog
o f peace" can be d eri ved from the preceding theoretical and historical dis-
cu ssions.
First, geopolitical theory demonstrates that g lobal, insular powers have an
inherently difficult time managing uncertainty. Insularity heightens percep-
tions of secu rity, which encourages withdrawal. A global orientation
expands the sta te's strategic purview and obscures any sel f-ev id ent hierarchy
of st ra teg ic priorities. A s C olin Gra y puts it, "The dynamic state of the
world does not ha ve sel f-ev iden t m eaning for the identity and intensity of
u .s. national interests." !" u .s. leaders must first recognize these inherent
structural obstacles. Next, they must not be seduced by the misguided logic
that uncertain times mean st rategy is unnecessary, muddling through is the
best we can hope for , and re sponding to contingencies as they arise is a cost-
free approach.
One danger of strategic drift, which organization theory highlights, is
that the institutions of national defense, specifically the individual services,
and the Joint Staff in particular today, will fashion their own st ra teg ies with
organizational, rather than national, interests in mind. However, as the
British case illustrates, military organizations dri ving st ra te gy is not
ine vitable when threats are absent, but rather when civili an guidance is
absent.
Muddling through is particularly unwise for the most consequential
player in the system, whom others depend upon for defense and assurance.
The French looked to the British for support, but the British were not forth-
coming. So the French locked their strategy into an alliance system with
Eastern Europe, precisely what the British feared most. Britain missed the
opportunity to influence great power diplomacy when its diplomatic lever-
age was greatest. u .s. leaders must not squander their diplomatic leverage in
the aftermath of the cold war as the British did in the aftermath of the First
World War.
Finally, reacting to near-term dangers as they arise is not a cost-free strat-
egy, because military forces will be structured and trained in response to the
latest conflict. The British case reveals how planning for the present (that is,
peacekeeping operations) came at the expense of preparing for the future

(that is, great power warfare). Today, present dangers are far less worrisome
than potential future security challenges. Accordingly, the nation should
focus on shaping the future international security environment, in conjunc-
tion with similar efforts by like-minded states, rather than simply respond-
ing to problems as they arise. !" The gravity of the challenges the British
faced in the 1930s far exceeded those of the 1920s which, they had assumed,
would shape their security environment well into the future. While history
does not repeat itself in the narrowest sense, it is worth remembering that
the world of the 1990s, like that of the 1920s, is not a settled place. And with
finite and declining defense resources, maintaining capabilities to address
current threats and challenges can only come at the expense of planning for
more dangerous problems down the line.
The bottom line is that strategy in peacetime is as important as strategy
in wartime. Furthermore, flexibility is not antithetical to clarity. Nor does
setting priorities preclude adapting and adjusting along the way. From the
British case, we see how an absence of strategic thinking for the distant
future, weak civilian guidance, and responding to dangers as they arose had
an even greater detrimental effect on British security than did the financial
stringency of the 1920s. Evidence indicates that lack of resources was not the
only reason, nor even the primary reason, for Britain's weak performance
during the early days of the Second World War. Implications for current u .s.
strategy are clear: civilian guidance is crucial, and it must be driven by the
" positive" priority of shaping strategy in response to future challenges to
world order rather than by the "negative" priority of reducing defense
expenditures. A consensus only on the need to reduce military expenditures
provides no foundation for developing a forward-looking military strategy.
Furthermore, simplistic formulas, like a two-war standard or the two
"nearly simultaneous" major regional contingency concept, offer weak sub-
stitutes for strategic thinking.
Problems in military preparedness and defense production also resulted
from the reluctance of Britain's leaders and populace to respond to un-

ambiguous threats when they eventually did emerge. Given the greater lead
times for defense production today, the consequences of pursuing a resource
allocation strategy analogous to Britain's between the wars - neglect of the
defense industrial base, reliance on a proto-typing strategy for new techno-
logies, dependence on reconstituting military capacity based on assumptions
of a lengthy warning period - is indeed riskier. A healthy resource base in
both defense and defense-related industries is a necessary and invaluable
cushion against political indecision, societal aversion, and the general
unwillingness to prepare for war unless threats are clear and imminent.
In thinking about the problem of operational uncertainty, namely what
types of conflicts should the United States be planning for, extrapolating

from the near-term into the distant future is unwise. Rather, u.s . defense
planners must think strategically about the near-term, mid-term, and long-
term security environments. In peacetime, it is better to be far-sighted rather
than near-sighted. The British were near-sighted; their imperial commit-
ments made this understandable, though not laudable. The United States
possesses no such excuse. In addition, the military services should plan
against modernizing adversaries. Thinking in terms of modernizing adver-
saries helped prepare the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force for world war.
Absence of a modernizing adversary hindered the British Army's ability to
adapt for future conflict. For the United States today, this does not require
thinking in terms of a specific adversary. u.s. military planners in the 1920s
and 1930s were quite adept at thinking in terms of generic or hypothetical
adversaries, to which the Color and Rainbow Plans attest.!" Nor does this
imply that u.s . planners should focus exclusively on a resurgent Russian
threat. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and advanced mil-
itary technologies raises the likelihood of modernizing third world adver-
saries, far more capable than the Iraqi forces during the Gulf War which
form the basis for one of the major regional contingencies of the BUR.
Peacetime strategic uncertainty confronts the United States with a host of
challenges that it is inherently ill-equipped to surmount. British strategy
between the wars should be a reality check for u .s. leaders. The fog of peace
has existed in the past, and the ability of the United States to navigate the
fog will have profound consequences for future peace and stability.
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l. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy , 2nd ed. (New York: Praeg er, 1967),335-36.
2. Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1984).
3. Studying how states plan for security in the absence of threats, understandably,
80 SEC U RIT Y STUDIES 4 , no. I
has not been high o n the re search age n das of sec urity spec ia lists . The ex isting
literature o n thinking st ra tegica lly in an uncerta in worl d is sca rce. F or so me
ideas o n the su b ject, see Colin S. Gra y, Weapons Don't Make War: Policy,
Strategy and Milita ry Technology (Law re n ce : Uni versit y of K ansas Press, 1993),
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6. Michael Howard, "Men Against Fire: Expectations of W ar in 1914, "

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T H IN KING ABOU T ST RATEG Y ABSENT TH E EN EMY 81
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42. Perrow, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 98.
43. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 159.
44. Lang, "Military Organizations," 862.
45. Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy In World Politics (New York:
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46. Ibid., 41.
47. Arnold Wolfers, "The Determinants of Foreign Policy," in Arnold Wolfers,
Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1962),42.
48. John Robert Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1989),45-46; Terry L. Deibel, "Strategies Before Containment: Patterns
for the Future," International Security 16, no. 4 (Spring 1992): 79-108.
49. Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1984).
50. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 59.
51. Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980), 74.
52. Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy, 12.
53. Quoted in Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy, 13.
54. David J. Finlay, Ole R. Holsti, and Richard R. Fagan, Enemies in Politics
(Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967),2.
55. Ferris, Men , Money, and Diplomacy, 34.
56. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 34.
58. Ibid., 15-30.
59. Ibid., 92-93.
60. Ibid., 154-55, 172.
61. Ibid., 154-55.
62. Quoted in Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of
British Defence in the Era of The World Wars (London: Maurice Temple Smith,
1972), 90.
63. Michael Vlahos, The Blue Sword (Newport: Naval War College Press, 1980);
Michael Vlahos, "Wargaming, An Enforcer of Strategic Realism: 1919-1942,"
Naval War College Review (March-April 1986): 7-22.
64. Howard, The Continental Commitment, 90; Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy,
54; Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 82.
66. Howard, The Continental Commitment, 88-89.
67. Quoted in Howard, "Men Against Fire: Expectations of War in 1914," 82-83.
69. Howard, The Continental Commitment, 84.
70. Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy, 118-21.
71. Emily O . Goldman, Sunken Treaties: Naval Arms Control Between the Wars
(University Park,Pa.: Penn State Press, 1994).
74. Ibid., 11-12.
75. Ibid., 48.
THI NKI NG ABOUT STR ATEGY ABSENT TH E ENEMY 83
77. F erris, M en, Mon ey, and D iplom acy , 152.

78. Ibid., 147-54.
79. H oward , Th e Continental Commitment, 94-95.
80. F erris, Men, Mon ey, and Diplomacy , 154.
8 1. Quot ed in Bond, British M ilitary Policy between the Two World Wars, 80.
82. Quot ed in ibid., 93.
83. Ferris, Men, Mon ey, and D iplom acy, 106.
84. Ian Nish , Alliance in D ecline (Londo n: Athlon e Press, 1972).
85. F er ris, Men, Mo ney, and Diplomacy , 11 7-118.
86. M. M . Postan , British War Production (London, 1952), 19,40.
87. F erris, Men, Mon ey, and Diplomacy , 52.
88. Rob in Higham , Armed Forces in Peacetime (Ham den, C t .: A rcho n, 1962), 192.
89. H igham , Armed Forces in Peacetim e 118, 145-46; L eslie Jones, Shipbuilding in
B ritain (Ca rd iff: Uni ver sity of W ales Press, 1957).

90. Higham, A rmed Forces in Peacetime, 193; Bri an Bond and Williamson Murray,
"T he British Armed F orces, 1918-39," in Allan R. Millett and Williamson
Murray, eds ., Military Effectiveness, vol. 2, The Interwar Period (Bosto n: All en
and Un win , 1988), 103.
9 1. W illiam son Murray, " British Mi litary E ffecti ven ess in th e Second W orld
W ar," in M ille t and Murray , M ilitary Effectiveness, vol. 3, Th e Second World
War, 96.
92. H igham , Armed Forces in Peacetim e, 20 1.
93. Ibid., 206.
94. Ibid., 2 12- 13.
95. Harris develops th e a rg umen t that the loss of Br itian's technical lead in
a rmo red warfare between the war s was not th e result of intellectual conser-
vatism on the part of the War O ffice but of design and development diffi-
culties that can be traced to budgetar y cu ts in the ea rly 1930s. J. P. H arris,
"British A rmour and Rearmamen t in th e 1930s," Journal ofStrategic Studies 11 ,
no. 2 (J une 1988): 220-44.
96. H igham , A rmed Forces in Peacetim e, 233.
97. H arris, " Britis h Armour and Rearmament in th e 1930s," 233.
98. Higham , A rmed Forces in Peacetim e, 84.
99. Bond , British M ilitary Policy betw een the Two World Wars, 151.
100. H arris, " British Armour and Rearmamen t in th e 1930s," 223.
10 I. Ibid. , 225.
102. Bond poi n ts to th e syste m of T reas ury oversig ht, under which new items had
to be explicitely justifi ed and sav ings in one area could not be cr edited to
expen diture in ano the r, and "which allo wed virt ually no flexibility, set too
much em phas is on precedent, and di d not prov ide for conti n ui ty in th e k ind
of resear ch , tri als, and expre imen ts essen tia l to th e develo pmen t of m ech a-
niz ati on ." Bond, British Mi litary Policy between the T wo World Wars, 135.
103. H arris, " British A rmour and Rearmament in th e 1930s," 228.
104. Bond and Murray, "T he British A rme d F or ces, 1918-39," 103.
105. Higham , Armed Forces in Peacetime, 98-99.
106. Ibid ., 99.
107. H arris, " British Armour and Rearmament in the 1930s," 239.
108. F erris, Men, Mon ey, and Diplomacy , 11 5.
109. Higham , Armed Forces in Peacetim e, 233.
11 0. Bond and Murray, "T he British A rmed F or ces, 1918-39," 11 5-16.
84 SE CURITY STUDIES 4, no . I
Ill. Ibid. 108, 125.

112. Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime, 210.
114. Quoted in Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 24-25.
115. Quoted in Howard, The Continental Commitment, 98.
117. Ibid., 64.
118. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 12-13.
119. Ibid., 14.
120. Quoted in Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy, 116.
121. Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime , 59-63; Stephen Roskill , Naval Policy
Between the Wars, vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1968), 181-203.
122. Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy, 118-21; Higham, Armed Forces in
Peacetime, 63-66.
126. Bond and Murray, "The British Armed Forces, 1918-39," 120.
127. Ibid., 122.
129. Ibid., 61.
130. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, 536-43; Higham, Armed Forces In
Peacetime, 115.
133. Quoted in Ibid., 75.
134. N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. 1, Rearmament Policy (London: HMSO, 1976),
52; Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars 73.
135. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 81-82 .
138. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 114-15; Higham,
Armed Forces in Peacetime, 81-82; Bond and Murray, "The British Armed
Forces, 1918-39," 107.
139. Quoted in Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 101.
142. Bond and Murray, "The British Armed Forces, 1918-39," 116-17.
143. Ibid., 117, 120, 124.
144. Ibid., 99.
145. Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime, 243-61.
146. Ibid., 253-54.
147. James A. Winnefeid, The Post-Cold War Force-Sizing Debate, R-4243-Js (Santa
Monica: RAND, 1992),4. Winnefeid's monograph is invaluable for comparing
the Bush Administration's force-sizing approach with the Aspin model.
Though written before Aspin became Secretary of Defense and before the BUR
was conducted, the logic that Aspin used for the BUR was the same as that
which undergirded the threat-based approach to force planning which he pro-
moted while still Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
148. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars, 28-32 .
149. Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime, 77.

150. Colin S. Gray, "Off the Map: Defense Planning After the Soviet Threat,"
Strategic Review 22, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 29.
151. They are proliferation of mass destruction weapons, regional perils, dangers to
democracy (especially in the former Soviet Union), and a weak economy.
Recently, transnational threats have been cited as a fifth danger.
152. See Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., "The Clinton Defense Program: Assessing
the Bottom-Up Review," Strategic Review 22, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 15-25, for
more discussion on this point.
153. Gray, "Defense Planning After the Soviet Threat," 34.
154. A similar argument appears in William T. Pendley, "Mortgaging the Future
to the Present in Defense Policy: A Commentary on the Bottom-Up Review,"
Strategic Review 22, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 36-39.
155. See Steven T. Ross, ed ., Peacetime War Plans, 1919-1935, vol. 1; and Steven T.
Ross, ed., Plans for War Against the British Empire and Japan: The Red, Orange,
and Red-Orange Plans, 1923-1938, vol. 2, Peacetime War Plans 1919-1935 Series
(New York: Garland, 1992).

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Thinking About Strategy Absent the

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H E UN ITE D S TA TES stands at the brink of the twenty-first century, facing

Emily O. G oldman is assista n t professor o f political scien ce at the University o f California ,

SEC U R IT Y STU D IES 4, no. I (Autu m n 1994): 40-85

cial pressure, of diplomatic pressure, of commercial pressure, and , not

their security in the absence of threats, or on whether states can develop

THE NATURE OF UN C ERTAINTY

Uncertainty may be defined generically as a lack of information. In the

functioning of the balance system wherein "enemies come together for

The overriding concern raised by resource uncertainty is how best to man-

about the future complexion of the battlefield. Examples include debates in

Uncertainty may be thought of as a systemic condition and a product of per-

engaging in complex social judgements under uncertainty to motivational

Whether in peace or war, "one of the tasks of grand strategy is to set

validity of this assumption depends on the characteristics of the organization

or traditional threat jeopardizes the ability of the organization to conduct

ronment proves infeasible, organizations may rely on standard planning sce-

Lang concludes that building routines on the abnormal and expectations

A second strain assumes organizations try to adapt in far-sighted ways to

perception of the environment by the organization's power holders."

peacetime. Geography also exerts an indirect influence on strategy by shap-

fuse, the global power possesses a weaker hierarchy of strategic priorities.

develop economic strategies to preserve the ability to wage future wars

D ep endent Va ria ble = Strategic Resp on se"

Cogn itive! su ppo rt former preserve pr epare for general

O rga n iza tio n n/ a nla internal focus,

glo ba l d ecentrali zed none peacetime missions, LIC

regi onal centrali zed targeted spe cific war

m ar itim e d ecen tral ized; non e peacetime missions

contin ental centrali zed targeted total , long, sustai ned , HI C

(H IC= hi gh-inten sity conflict; LIC = low-inten sit y conflict)

A robust literature, grounded in organization theory, suggests that left to

MANAGING UNCERTAINTY AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR:

Threat Perception without a Threat

orchestrating diplomatic, economic, and military tools during peacetime, the

If any single policy captures the essence of peacetime strategic uncertain-

sa me oppo ne n t as a h yp othetical threat for planning purposes th e ve ry next

A war with France would be a world calamity which seems almost

Balfour's words illustrate how intent declined and capabilities rose as an

strategy." The govern m en t did not start by defining a strategic policy

When one contemplates th e policies of the United States in response to the

be th at develops in response to problems as they arise? The answer, it

The Diplomacy of Decentralization

to garner the support of the United States.

themselves to some type of a specific commitment to French security.

options of a formal alliance with France, mutual security guarantees, mere

How effectively did Britain's responses to alliance uncertainty in Europe

prepare the nation once strategic clarity returned? A diplomacy of decen-

Retrenchment in the Services and Industry

Churchill, who dominated the reformulation of British service policies in

work. Rapid disarmament, the desire of the Admiralty to preserve H . M.

condemning them "to fight with thoroughly inadequate equipment such as

F erri s co n te nds th at 1925 w as a peak of military preparedness.I" Convinced

Primacy of Imp erial Security

Service responses to operational uncertainty were influenced, first, by a con-

W e thus ha ve a situa tion in w hi ch th e g rea te r portion of the British

Problems o f internal sec u rity and fr ontier warfare in India sh aped th e

All states face politically-driven obstacles to strategy formation in peacetime.

the importance of research and development in defense, and the time