Clausewitz and the British Generals

Although the British case provides no solutions for the problems America faces, John Mearsheimer concludes in his cogent review of Brian Bond,' can be learned by examining the policies Britain pursued as she sought to solve her strategic dilemma. At least in the abstract, the proposition is hard to quarrel with. It may be true, as Richard Neustadt says, that There is little historical memory in the American government; there is no reason to expect Americans to look for it in any other government.2 But there is a lot of history out there nonetheless. Willfully, arbitrarily, selectively, or manipulatively as the case may be, some of it inevitably gets recalled by somebody, including somebody in power. Mearsheimer's argument-that Britain in the 1930s was done in by the irreparable disjunction between its policy, strategy, and economic capacity, rather than by Colonel Blimp-is credible, useful, and a salutary step beyond Bond's. But neither its premises nor its implications are exactly simple or self-evident. The British Army was, of course, woefully unprepared for World War II, as many other armies were unprepared for the wars that confronted them, and the British Army itself had so often been unprepared in the past. Force structure, the relative weight and budget of the respective services, the constitution of the services themselves were all real problems. Money was a problem too, though it is rather less clear why the cost of adequate defense for Britain should necessarily have exceeded the cost to Germany and France, countries of roughly comparable size, resources, and industrial capacity, similarly devastated by the war of 1914-18, and engulfed by the same worldwide depression; or to Japan, which in 1939 produced only a little more than 40 percent as much steel as the United Kingdom

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