British rearmament and the Treasury, 1932-1939

Abstract: I w h e n and why do military organizations undergo major innovations in the way that they operate? Can they innovate in peacetime or must they wait for wars to provide the information and motivation necessary for a change in familiar concepts of operations? Are they doomed to "fight the last war"? What roles have civilians played in the process of military innovation? These questions are central to the debate concerning the ways in which the armed forces of the United States, or any other nation, can or should prepare for war. This article will focus on successful cases of military innovation, asking how military organizations in peacetime have been able to make major innovations. A "major innovation," as I use the term here, is a change that forces one of the primary combat arms of a service to change its concepts of operation and its relation to other combat arms, and to abandon or downgrade traditional missions. Such innovations involve a new way of war, with new ideas of how the components of the organization relate to each other and to the enemy, and new operational procedures conforming to those ideas. They involve changes in the critical military tasks, the tasks around which warplans revolve.' This article will not propose a theory that explains military innovation everywhere and always.2 It will confine itself to the modern military orga-

Abstract: Astate that is confronted with a grave external threat has three basic options of response, each of which involves certain trade-offs. First, it can strengthen its military. Rearmament, or “internal balancing,” allows it to maintain its diplomatic freedom of action, but its economy may suffer from the strain of accelerating the production of weapons of war. Second, it can join forces with another power. Alliances may obviate the need for an arms buildup, but they carry the risk that the state will be abandoned by its partners or drawn into undesired conflicts. Finally, it can attempt to reconcile with its adversaries by conceding to some of their demands. Appeasement may be the least troublesome way to eliminate a threat, but it is also the most risky because it transfers valued resources to a potential opponent. After weighing these options, the state should choose the policy, or combination of policies, that will provide an acceptable level of security at the lowest overall cost. 1 The foregoing account is appealingly parsimonious, but it captures only part of the story. States are frequently racked by bitter internal debates over how to deal with international pressures, and changes in their political leadership sometimes bring about sudden shifts in their behavior. Of the three strategies described above, rearmament is often the most acutely divisive. It requires a sharp increase in the extraction and mobilization of resources from society, so it can become highly politicized. Some groups will inevitably bear a heavier burden than others, and their discontent may eventually endanger the regime’s hold on power or its ability to prepare for war. To ensure domestic

Abstract: How do states perceive international threats? Which domestic actors are the most important in threat definition? What happens when domestic actors and interests disagree on the nature of threats? As we state in chapter 1, these are central questions to the neoclassical realist agenda and require a theory of the state to answer. In this chapter I will develop a neoclassical realist theory of threat assessment to fill this gap and illustrate it with reference to the British experience between the two world wars. Neorealist theories are theories of international outcomes. They highlight the role of polarity and international structure, black box the state, and focus on shifts in aggregate military power or threat. Debates include whether bipolar or multipolar distributions of power are more war-prone; whether anarchy encourages states to maximize relative power or security; whether equal or unequal distributions of power contribute to war; and the prevalence of buck-passing or balancing against threats. Proponents of balance of power theory and balance of threat theory would argue that prior to World War I Britain balanced against the rising power (or threat) of Wilhelmine Germany in the form of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, and the naval arms buildup. Granted, prior to 1914, balancing may not have happened in an optimal fashion. Balance of power theory and balance of threat theory, at least in their current forms, predict a general tendency toward balancing and do not expect an efficient or quick balancing process under all circumstances.

Abstract: Introduction: police, labour and colonial violence Part I. Ideas and Practices: 1. Colonial policing: a discursive framework 2. 'What did you do in the colonial police force, daddy?' Policing inter-war dissent 3. 'Paying the butcher's bill': policing British colonial protest after 1918 Part II. Colonial Case Studies: French, British and Belgian: 4. Gendarmes: work and policing in French North Africa after 1918 5. Policing Tunisia: mineworkers, fellahs and nationalist protest 6. Rubber, coolies and communists: policing disorder in French Vietnam 7. Stuck together? Rubber production, labour regulation and policing in Malaya 8. Caning the workers? Policing and violence in Jamaica's sugar industry 9. Oil and order: repressive violence in Trinidad's oilfields 10. Profits, privatization and police: the birth of Sierra Leone's diamond industry 11. Policing and politics in Nigeria: the political economy of indirect rule, 1929-39 12. Depression and revolt: policing the Belgian Congo Conclusion Notes to the text.

Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since September 11, 2001, few issues have been more hotly debated than the United States' role in the world In this hard-nosed but sophisticated examination, Colin S Gray argues that America is the indispensable guardian of the world order Gray's constructive critique of recent trends in national security is comprehensive, rooting defense issues and prospective answers in both US national security policy and in the emerging international security environment