Abstract
AT twenty minutes to four in the cold darkness of the morning of 14 February 1940, a Norwegian coastguard rang up the curtain on one of the classic dramas of gunboat diplomacy, perhaps the purest instance in recent times of the definitive use of limited naval force in isolation from all other means of pressure.
Limited is a victim of SLIPSHOD EXTENSION. … a lazy habit of treating LIMITED as a convenient synonym for many more suitable and more exact words … to limit is to confine within bounds.
Fowler1
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Notes
Use of local force to create or remove a fait accompli. See Grant Hugo, Britain in Tomorrow’s World, Chapter 5, Chatto & Windus 1969.
Reidar Omang, Altmark-Saken 1940, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag Oslo 1953.
Sir P. Vian, Action This Day, Frederick Muller 1960.
In the latter case Army officers were also involved, though the Commander of the Norwegian patrol vessel pol III was the first to take action and shore-based naval torpedoes dealt the coup de grâce. See J. L. Moulton The Norwegian Campaign of 1940, Eyre & Spottiswoode 1966.
For an analysis of American problems in the pueblo affair see Grant Hugo, Appearance and Reality in International Relations, Chapter 2, Chatto & Windus 1970.
In fact the German Minister had persuaded Horthy to surrender and leave the Palace a few minutes before Major Skorzeny’s men arrived on 16 October 1944, but the threat of armed German intervention was a critical undercurrent to all the complexity of Hungarian intrigues in this confused episode. See C. A. Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary 1929–1945, Part II, Chapter XVIII, Edinburgh University Press 1956.
See James Barros, The Corfu Incident of 1923, Princeton University Press 1965, where it is argued that the unknown assassins operated without the knowledge or complicity of the Greek Government, who did their unavailing best to clear up the crime.
Israel did express regret and pay the small sum demanded in compensation by the UN (Sweden having waived her claims) for the murder of Count Bernadotte, but Arab governments in whose territory UN officials were killed did not even reply to the Secretary-General’s letters and ‘no satisfaction has been received for any claims addressed to the Arab States’. Rosalyn Higgins United Nations Peacekeeping 1946–67: The Middle East, O.U.P. 1969.
Grant Hugo, Britain in Tomorrow’s World: Principles of Foreign Policy, Chatto and Windus 1969, Chapter 5.
See G. Bennet, Cowan’s War, Collins 1963;
S. W. Page, The Formation of the Baltic States, Harvard 1959;
Richard H. Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War, Princeton 1968.
Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between The Wars, Vol. I, Chapter 3, Collins 1968.
Though Finnish representatives in London emphasized to Lord Curzon as late as 7 May 1919 the apprehensions entertained by the Finnish Government of a Russian naval attack. See p. 170 of Stig Jägerskïold, Riksföreståndaren Gustaf Mannerheim 1919, Holger Schildts Förlag Helsingfors, 1969.
Fahim Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon, Middle East Institute Washington 1961.
Camille Chamoun, Crise au Moyen-Orient, Paris-Gallimard 1963.
On 26 July, see Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, p. 228, Eyre & Spottiswoode 1961.
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© 1981 James Cable
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Cable, J. (1981). Principles and Precedents of Limited Naval Force. In: Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1979. Studies in International Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08917-8_4
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