Abstract
The ifs and buts of deterring strategic nuclear attack seem almost simple by comparison with the complex uncertainties of war at sea. Nuclear forces are permanently in presence and their relative strength, which is known in considerable detail, does not significantly depend on mobilisation, deployment or reinforcement. Defence is unimportant and, for Britain, non-existent. Only attack, counter-attack and escalation count in nuclear war and these are the acts which, when credibly threatened, constitute deterrence. There are not many scenarios and very few of them offer Britain any choice at all.
It is not in the continental struggle that the final decision for this country — if there is to be war — will be taken … The crux … is our ability … to command the air and sea above and surrounding these islands.
Enoch Powell1
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Notes
Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge, from his statement at his court martial, quoted in Redmond McLaughlin, The Escape of the Goebe. (Seeley Service, 1974) p. 128.
Anyone regarding as churlish this reference to wives, families and creature comforts should consider the reasons given by Field Marshal Lord Montgomery for deciding that wives and families ‘were not allowed to live in the area of divisions that had an operational role in repelling invasion’. Montgomery, Memoir. (Collins, 1958) pp. 72–3. Disregard of this principle had an important influence on Britain’s failure to honour her treaty obligations after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
Anyone who thinks that the Labour Party are only concerned with the Common Market should read an interesting Fabian pamphlet by Robin Cook (an intelligent and defence-oriented member of the Labour Left): ‘the way forward [how politicians reveal themselves by the coincidence of their clichés] to a better defence policy would seem to rest with some form of partial disengagement from NATO’. Robin Cook and Dan Smith, What Future in NATO?. Fabian Research Series 337 (1978) p. 27.
Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol. (OUP, 1961) p. 245.
Statement on the Defence Estimates 1981. p. 25.
Adopting a generous measure Kaplan identified 190 occasions between June 1944 and August 1979 when Soviet armed forces were employed in support of foreign policy. During the shorter period from January 1946 to December 1975 and excluding the wars in Korea and Indo-China he identified 215 similar incidents for the US armed forces. Stephen S. Kaplan, Diplomacy of Powe. (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1981).
Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without Wa. (The Brookings Institution, 1978).
Admiral of the Fleet S. G. Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the Stat. (Russian 1976; English trans., Pergamon, 1979) p. 184.
‘Today, a fleet operating against the shore is able not only to solve the tasks connected with territorial changes …’. Ibid., p. 221.
Gorshkov, quoted in Bradford Dismukes and James McConnell, Soviet Naval Diplomac. (Pergamon, 1979) p. 302.
Desmond Wettern, ‘Teamwork’80’, Navy International. December 1980.
Johan Jørgen Holst, ‘Norwegian Security Policy and Peace in Northern Europe’, The World Today. January 1981.
House of Commons, Sixth Report from the Expenditure Committee: Session 1976–7. HC 393 (HMSO, 1977) pp. xxii–xxiii.
Wettern, op. cit.
Admiral Harry D. Train II, USN, ‘Preserving the Atlantic Alliance’, United States Naval Institute Proceedings. vol. 107, January 1981.
Ministry of Defence News Release 36/81, 19 August 1981.
Train, op. cit. This was not the first time the Admiral had suggested that the Mediterranean might receive priority. See the report, in Navy International. September 1980, of the Admiral’s speech of 15 July 1980. Interestingly enough, reconsideration of the ‘swing strategy’ was one of the principal recommendations made by Nitze and Sullivan (on the grounds that carriers would be more useful in the Pacific) and this in spite of their repeated emphasis on the importance of the likely battle for the Norwegian Sea. Preference for the Pacific has deep roots in even the most NATO-minded of Americans. Paul H. Nitze and Leonard Sullivan Jr., Securing the Sea. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979).
Admiral Harry D. Train II, USN, ‘NATO-Global Outlook’, Navy International. January 1981.
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© 1983 James Cable
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Cable, J. (1983). Alliance Naval War I: the orthodox case. In: Britain’s Naval Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06657-5_7
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