War of the world by Niall Ferguson

Author:Niall Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2006-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

THE STRATEGIC CASE FOR APPEASEMENT

Superficially, the arguments for appeasement still seem sensible and pragmatic when one reads them today. The British had the most to lose from a breakdown of peace. Theirs was the world's biggest empire, covering roughly a quarter of the globe. In the words of a 1926 Foreign Office memorandum:

We... have no territorial ambitions nor desire for aggrandisement. We have e got all that we want - perhaps more. Our sole object is to keep what we want and live in peace... The fact is that war and rumours of war, quarrels and frictions, in any corner of the world spell loss and harm to British commercial and financial interests... So manifold and ubiquitous are British trade and finance that, whatever else may be the outcome of a disturbance of the peace, we shall be the losers.

Those words were echoed eight years later by Lord Chatterfield, who observed that 'we have got most of the world already or the best parts of it, and we only want to keep what we have got [and] to prevent others from taking it away from us'. Given her vast commitments, Britain certainly seemed in no position to worry about any other country's security. As the Conservative leader Bonar Law remarked in 1922: 'We cannot alone act as the policemen of the world.' The reality was that defending even her own possessions could prove impossible in the face of multiple challenges. In the words of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (writing in 1921 ): 'Our small army is much too scattered... in no single theatre are we strong enough - not in Ireland, nor England, nor on the Rhine, nor in Constantinople, nor Batoum, nor Egypt, nor Palestine, nor Mesopotamia, nor Persia, nor India.'

The Royal Navy, too, soon found itself overstretched. The construction of a naval base at Singapore, which began in 1921 but was more or less suspended until 1932, was supposed to create a new hub for imperial security in Asia. But with Britain's naval forces concentrated in European waters, the base itself threatened to become a source of vulnerability, not strength. By the time of the 1921-22 Washington Naval Conference, British policy-makers had abandoned the historical goal of naval preponderance by agreeing to parity with the United States, an advantageous arrangement for the latter given its far fewer overseas commitments. Britannia had ceased to rule the waves, in the Pacific at least. In April 1931 the Admiralty acknowledged that 'in certain circumstances' the Navy's strength was 'definitely below that required to keep our sea communications open in the event of our being drawn into a war'. In the face of a Japanese attack, the Chiefs of Staff admitted in February 1932, 'the whole of our territory in the Far East as well as the coastline of India and the Dominions and our vast trade and shipping, lies open.' Eight months later, the same body admitted that, 'should war break out in Europe,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.