The Elements of Strategic Policy, 1919–26

Abstract

The purpose of strategic policy was to use Britain’s military, diplomatic and economic power in order to preserve the British Empire. Although some statesmen had a premonition of Imperial decline, the psychological basis for strategic policy was an unshaken confidence that Britain could preserve the Empire.¹ Nor, even considering the nature and the consequences of Britain’s decline in power, were statesmen wrong to believe this. Of course, the economic effects of the great war and trends like rising nationalism in its colonies, were eroding the foundations of Britain’s strength. Nonetheless it remained among the greatest economic and industrial nations on earth, while its military and diplomatic power countered every immediate threat to its existence. Despite the potential gap between its strength and commitments, Britain remained a formidable power. Britain’s dilemma of the 1930s, of a single-handed war against several states, does not demonstrate that its relative strength had fallen so far that it could no longer defend its empire. This situation would have threatened Britain even at the peak of its power; it had always faced grave perils whenever it fought several states by itself. The dilemma of the 1930s stemmed not so much from the decline of British power as from the failure of its diplomacy to forestall the rise of a specific international environment.