Abstract
Great Powers employ a variety of maritime strategies, but these different national approaches have often been overlooked or inappropriately lumped together. Furthermore the concepts that were derived from these strategies can have effects that transcend the immediate historical circumstances that gave rise to them. Finally the methods of administration devised to implement governmental policy can either be viewed as a model for other rising Great Powers or can provide the means of making possible new institutions dealing with issues of concern to Great Powers. The purpose of this collection of essays is to examine the similarity in the Anglo-American perspective of Great Power maritime strategy and the role of navies in maintaining a balance of power. The institutions that emerged are very much a part of the life of all nations, great or small, and hence are worthy of careful examination.
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Notes
Martin Wight, Power Politics, Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (eds), (New York, 1978) pp. 169–70.
Carsten Holbraad, in his book, Superpowers and International Conflict (London, 1979), draws a distinction between a simple triangle and a complex triangle. In analysing the contemporary international system he does not rule out the eventual possibility of a pentagonal or hexagonal balance of power system.
A sophisticated attempt to analyse the impact of nuclear weapons on a systemic approach to bipolarity can be found in Arthur Lee Burns, ‘From Balance to Deterrence: A Theoretical Analysis’, World Politics, May, 1957, pp. 494–529.
These points are discussed further, Ibid., pp. 173–9. See also Geoffrey Blainey, The Cause of War (New York, 1973), especially Chapter 8.
Inis L. Claude, Jr, in his book, Power and International Relations (New York, 1962), classified balance of power in the following ways: (1) as a situation; (2) as a policy; (3) as a system (pp. 17–25).
See also Manus I. Midlarsky, ‘Equilibria in the Nineteenth-Century Balance-of-Power System’, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 25, no. 2, May 1981, pp. 270–96.
David Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, in T. H. Green and T. H. Crose (eds), Essays, Moral Political and Literary, vol. 1 (London, 1982) p. 352 as quoted in Wight, Power Politics, pp. 168–9.
Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York, 1976) p. xvi.
Sir James Cable, Diplomacy at Sea (Annapolis, MD, 1985) p. 36.
Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918 (Princeton, 1967) p. 284. This event also, incidentally, ‘revealed an unsuspected community of feeling among the English-speaking peoples’. (Ibid.)
See also William N. Still, Jr, American Sea Power in the Old World: The United States Navy in European and Near Eastern Waters, 1865–1917 (Westport, Conn, and London, 1980).
Carsten Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London, 1970) p. 152. As Lord Castlereagh put it, the combination was against any state ‘whose perverted policy or criminal ambition shall first menace the repose in which all have a common interest’. (Quoted p. 137).
See, for example, Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England (Oxford, 1970)
Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908 (Berkeley, 1967); and
J. A. S. Grenville and G. B. Young, Politics, Strategy and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873–1917 (New Haven, 1966).
Richard Heathcote Heindel, The American Impact on Great Britain, 1898–1914 (New York, 1968 and Philadelphia, 1940) p. 86.
For an expansion of these observations, see George Liska, Quest for Equilibrium: America and the Balance of Power on Land and Sea (Baltimore and London, 1977), especially Chapter V.
B. B. Schofield, British Sea Power: Naval Policy in the Twentieth Century (London, 1967) pp. 211–22. Schofield summarised: ‘The Royal Navy reached its greatest strength at the end of the war in Europe with 1,065 warships in commission down to and including corvettes, to which must be added 2,907 minor war vessels and 5,477 landing ships and craft of various kinds. The personnel required to man this vast armada numbered 863,500.’ (pp. 215–6).
Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years (Paris, 1954) p. 73.
see also Robert S. Jordan (ed.), Generals in International Politics: NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (Lexington, KY, 1987).
Also see the unpublished doctoral dissertation by Philip A. Dur, ‘The Sixth Fleet: A Case Study of Institutionalized Naval Presence, 1946–1968’, Harvard University, December 1975.
(See Admiral Richard L. Conolly, ‘Reminiscences’, (Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1960).)
For an expansion of these points, see Robert S. Jordan, ‘The Maritime Strategy and the Atlantic Alliance’, in The Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, September 1987.
For a description of NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic, which shows the multilateral NATO flag in peace-time, see Admiral Richard G. Colbert, ‘The Shifting Balance of Power at Sea’, The Atlantic Community Quarterly, Winter 1972–3.
Roger D. Hansen, ‘The Reagan Doctrine and Global Containment: Revival or Recessional’, SAIS Review, Winter-Spring 1987, p. 41.
For a brief historical summary of various British ‘Grand Designs’, see Peter Nailor, ‘Britain and the Imperial Staff’, in Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr and Uri Ra’anan (eds), National Security Policy: The Decision-Making Process (Hamden, CT, 1984).
For a good review of the ebb and flow of inter-alliance/intra-alliance politics, see Richard Rosecrance, Defense of the Realm: British Strategy in the Nuclear Epoch (New York and London, 1968) especially pp. 93ff.
In regard to the third aspect, for a good overview, see Richard N. Fieldhouse, ‘US Naval Strategy and Nuclear Weapons’, in Carl C. Jacobsen (ed.), The Uncertain Course: New Weapons, Strategies and Mind Sets (London, 1987).
For a brief overview of the INF Treaty, see Philip Windsor, ‘The INF Treaty — Compensatory Adjustments’, Bulletin, the Council for Arms Control, no. 30, February 1988
also Norman Polmar, ‘The Missile Agreements’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, February 1988.
See, for example, Jordan, ‘The Maritime Strategy’; a revised version appears in Carol Edler Baumann (ed.), Europe in NATO: Deterrence, Defence and Arms Control (New York, 1987) pp. 145–61.
For the nuclear dimension, see William M. Arkin et al., ‘The Nuclearisation of the Oceans: Roles, Missions and Capabilities’, in R. B. Byers (ed.), The Denuclearisation of the Oceans (New York, 1986).
For the inter-Service rivalry dimension, see David A. Rosenberg, ‘Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1960’, International Security, Spring 1983.
See also Thomas H. Etzold, ‘The End of the Beginning … NATO’s Adoption of Nuclear Strategy’, in Olav Riste (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years: European and Atlantic Defence 1949–1953 (New York and London, 1985).
See Elisabeth Barker, The British Between the Superpowers, 1945–1950 (Toronto, 1983).
Richard A. Best, Jr, Co-operation with like-minded Peoples: British Influences on American Security Policy, 1945–1949 (Westport, CT, 1986) p. 194.
Michael Howard, The British Way in Warfare: A Reappraisal, The Neale Lecture in English History, 1974 (London, 1975), pp. 14–15
as reprinted in Michael Howard (ed.), The Causes of War (London, 1983)
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© 1989 John B. Hattendorf and Robert S. Jordan
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Jordan, R.S. (1989). Introduction: The Balance of Power and the Anglo-American Maritime Relationship. In: Hattendorf, J.B., Jordan, R.S. (eds) Maritime Strategy and the Balance of Power. St Antony's. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09392-2_1
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