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The Dilemma of Rising Demands and Insufficient Resources

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BartlettC. J., Great Britain and Sea Power, 1815–1853, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963, 364 pp. $6.40.
GrahamGerald S., The Politics of Naval Supremacy, Cambridge, The University Press, 1965, 132 pp. $6.00.
GrettenSir Peter, Maritime Strategy: A Study of Defense Problems, New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965, 210 pp. $6.75.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Harold  and
Margaret Sprout
Harold
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Several years ago we reviewed in this journal a collection of books dealing with various aspects of Britain's role in international politics. In the opening paragraph of that review article we observed that “these writings can be viewed simply as discrete accounts of a single nation's unique experience. But one can also view such literature from a broader perspective. Particular cases are always unique in their totality. But they may be exhibits of more widely encountered types of phenomena. It is always possible, and it may be interesting and fruitful, to formulate general comparative questions about particular cases, and to derive hypotheses which could be tried out for credibility in other cases.”

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , July 1968 , pp. 660 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 “‘Retreat From World Power’: Processes and Consequences of Readjustment”, World Politics, XV (July 1963), 655–88Google Scholar.

2 An alternative label might be “dilemma of resource allocation.” However, that label would be somewhat less expressive of the phenomena with which we are pri- marily concerned. “Dilemma of resource allocation” connotes to us a pattern more characteristic of authoritarian and centralized political systems, in which initiatives are observed mainly near the apex of the political pyramid. Our model is intended to include, in addition, a wide variety of situations in which the essence of the dilemma is the thrust from below, even from traditionally repressed and inarticulate sectors of the political community.

3 One thinks immediately of the ongoing work of James N. Rosenau; among other items that could be cited is his symposium Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York 1967)Google Scholar. The dilemma of insufficient resources is implicit in Easton's, David concept of “input overload” (A Systems Analysis of Political Life [New York 1965], 58–59)Google Scholar. The dilemma is likewise implicit in Lasswell's, Harold “distributive” concept (Politics: Who Gets What, When, How [New York 1958])Google Scholar. The dilemma lurks in die cliche “revolution of rising expectations.” It informs Hammond's, Paul Y. essay “The Political Order and the Burden of External Relations”, World Politics, xix (April 1967), 443–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It enters into certain chapters of Huntington's, Samuel P.The Common Defense (New York 1961), esp. chaps. 14–19Google Scholar; and into still other theoretical writings.

4 The book is written in a didactic style that occasionally comes close to telling Britons what is good for them, a matter that most Americans would surely prefer to leave for Britons to decide for themselves. The writing is cluttered with banal platitudes: e.g., “Countries do not lightly resolve their own annihilation, and strategies which cause them to do so are vain and inefficacious”; and again, “Since economic strength is more than ever regarded as precedent to military strength … British retrenchment and economic growth may yet reveal semblances of grandeur” (pp. 24, 32). Reifying rhetoric, a practice to which we are perhaps more allergic than some, pervades the prose.

5 The format of the book, too, is open to criticism. The work is presented as serious scholarship and is published by a leading university press. The text is buttressed by footnotes, but there is no collected bibliography or bibliographic essay nor are there index references to sources cited. These deficiencies (for which the publisher may be more responsible than the author) make it difficult to use the book for reference and make it even more difficult to visualize the scope of die materials used in its preparation.

6 Others have dealt in greater depth with some of these issues: among them, Armstrong, DeWitt C. Jr., “The Changing Strategy of British Bases,” unpubl. diss., Princeton University, 1960Google Scholar, summarized in “The British Revalue Their Strategic Bases”, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, CIV (November 1959), 423–32Google Scholar; also Crowe, William J. Jr., “The Policy Roots of the Modern British Navy,” unpubl. diss., Princeton University, 1965Google Scholar. Various aspects are covered in Strang, William, Britain in World Affairs (New York 1961)Google Scholar; Northedge, F.S., The Troubled Giant: Britain Among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (New York 1966)Google Scholar; and Northedge, British Foreign Policy: The Process of Readjustment, 1945–1961 (New York 1962)Google Scholar.

7 Some of the themes discussed in the following pages have been previously developed in our earlier writings: in particular, Toward a New Order of Sea Power (Princeton 1940)Google Scholar, chaps. 1–2; Foundations of National Power (Princeton 1945), chap. 6Google Scholar; “Britain's Defense Problem,” in Britain Today: Economics, Defense and Foreign Policy, a collection of papers delivered at a conference sponsored by Princeton University, 1959; and “‘Retreat From World Power,’” our review article in World Politics, cited previously.

8 See Mahan, Alfred Thayer, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (Boston 1890)Google Scholar; also Strang, chaps. 1–6.

9 A partial list of British strategic positions overseas includes, besides those mentioned above, the Cape of Good Hope, the Falkland Islands, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Trinidad, Halifax, Vancouver Island, and several positions within the Mediterranean. In 1904, Admiral Lord Fisher penned the often quoted epigram, “Five keys lock up the world! Singapore, the Cape, Alexandria, Gibraltar, Dover. These five keys belong to England …” (quoted by Marder, Ardiur J. in The Anatomy of British Sea Power [New York 1940], 473)Google Scholar.

10 Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, eds., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge 1962), 366–67, 396–97Google Scholar.

11 This estimate is derived from the price indexes in Abstract of British Historical Statistics, 476; and in Peacock, Alan T. and Wiseman, Jack, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (Princeton 1961), 153–54Google Scholar. Our estimate may be considerably in error, but is probably on the conservative side. In any case, the general order of magnitudes is all that matters.

12 There are numerous histories of British naval policy covering the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most detailed are three massive volumes by Arthur J. Marder, who covers the period 1880–1916: The Anatomy of British Sea Power, cited earlier, and From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 2 vols. (London 1965, 1966)Google Scholar. For some of the consequences for Britain of the German naval program in the early 1900's, the standard work is Woodward, E. L., Great Britain and the German Navy (Oxford 1935)Google Scholar; also the recent work by Sternberg, Jonathan, Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London 1965)Google Scholar. These works are superior specimens of a considerable literature, mostly in the style of narrative diplomatic history, in which events are reconstructed and arranged with minimal synthesis and often with insufficient attention to changing conditions, technological and economic in particular.

13 A synoptic sketch of die erosion of the Pax Britannica was presented nearly thirty years ago in chaps. 1–2 of our Toward a New Order of Sea Power. A fuller and more mature synthesis will be included in our forthcoming work on Britain's changing role in international politics.

14 Political and Economic Planning, Planning No. 24, quoted by King-Hall, Stephen, in Our Own Times (London 1935), Vol. I, 25Google Scholar.

15 Britain in World Affairs, 188ff., 233ff.

16 (Princeton 1941). For an earlier account of the revolution in naval technology, from the standpoint of American power and policy, see our Rise of American Naval Power (Princeton 1939)Google Scholar, paperback ed. (Princeton 1966).

17 Lewis, Michael, “Armed Forces and the Art of War: Navies”, in The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. X (Cambridge 1960), chap. 11, 274CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 (New York 1902), 358.

19 The standard authority on this aspect of British nineteenth-century primacy is Imlah, Albert H., Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In an overview of the period 1810–1850, the British historian David Thomson says: “The effect of economic changes in these four decades was that by 1850, Great Britain had triumphantly established herself both as the ‘workshop of the world' and as die shipper and trader of the world…. Her [worldwide] interests … were soon to be deeply and severely affected by formidable rivals whose industrialisation had meanwhile taken place. The greatest of these were Germany and the United States. But until the decade after 1870 she continued to harvest very rich rewards, as the impetus of her growth and productivity carried her forward” (“The United Kingdom and Its World-wide Interests,” in The New Cambridge Modern History, X, chap. 13. 333–34).

20 Among the works we have found most useful in this connection, special mention should be made of Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor (London 1861), 3 volsGoogle Scholar; Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, 17 vols., published during the final years of the nineteenth century, and a recently published abridgment in one volume, Charles Booth's London, edited by Fried, Albert and Elman, Richard M. (New York 1967)Google Scholar; Masterman, C. F. G., The Condition of England (London 1909)Google Scholar; , G. D. H. and Cole, M. I., The Condition of Britain (London 1937)Google Scholar; Cole, G. D. H. and Postgate, Raymond, The Common People, 1746–1938 (London 1938)Google Scholar; Deane, Phyllis, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge 1965), chap. 9Google Scholar; Ausubel, Herman, In Hard Times (New York 1960)Google Scholar; Johnson, L. G., The Social Evolution of Industrial Britain (Liverpool 1959)Google Scholar; Checkland, S. G., The Rise of Industrial Society in England (London 1964)Google Scholar; Roberts, David, Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (New Haven 1960)Google Scholar.

21 P. 85.

22 The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York 1920), 19–20Google Scholar.

23 Burnett, John, Plenty and Want (London 1966), 93Google Scholar.

24 Regarding this aspect of British political culture, see Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston 1964), chap. 2Google Scholar; for a comparison of British and American political culture in these and other respects, see Waltz, Kenneth N., Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics (Boston 1967), chap. 2Google Scholar.

26 The category “social services” covers “education and child care, health services, national insurance (unemployment, sickness benefits, retirement pensions, etc.), national assistance (relief of the poor and family allowances), housing (subsidies and capital expenditures), and food subsidies” (Peacock and Wiseman, 183). These subcategories are derived from the Central Statistical Office's annual handbook National Income and Expenditure. For the earlier years, many of these items were negligible or nonexistent. That is to say, public expenditures for social services have expanded in scope as well as in magnitude during the past half century.

26 Statistics for 1967 were unavailable at the time of writing in early 1968.

27 Writing for the District Bank Review (London) in 1957, the British economist John Jewkes characterized Britain's international economic position in terms that still apply, with some changes in detail, a decade later: “Comparing 1939 with 1955, in pounds sterling of unchanged value, our gold and dollar reserves are now about five-eighths, our total overseas investments perhaps one-half, our returns on overseas investments perhaps three-fifths of what they formerly were. Hanging above our heads are the short-term external liabilities, standing mainly to the credit of sterling area countries, which are about three times as large as pre-war; and a £2,000 million of long-term dollar debts which have been incurred since 1945” (No. 121 [March 1957], 3–17).

28 Burnett, chaps. 13–14.

29 This aspect of Britain's military problem is especially well covered in chap. 9 of Colonel Snyder's book. He also deals with the closely related issue of conscription. Growing resistance to conscription became evident in the middle fifties. Conscription was abolished after the Suez crisis of 1956–1957 by the reorganized Conservative Government headed by Harold Macmillan. Snyder covers the question of conscription in both its political and its military aspects (pp. 240–42 and elsewhere).

30 The prevailing schedule of values was clearly evident in the Government's handling of sterling devaluation in November 1967—in particular, in the prominence given to further military retrenchment in connection therewith, and the patently evident reluctance to dampen consumer spending or to cut deeply into welfare services.

31 A typical example of this style of wishful thinking is the editorial in the New York Times, January 12, 1968, in which it was asserted that the Labour Government, “harassed by its left-wing and aiming to cut public spending by $1.12 billion over three years must hack at the defense budget to gain acceptance for its home-front controls.”

32 A Conservative M.P., writing for an American newspaper, observed late in January 1968 that “the cuts, except in defense, did not add up to very much, and were not accompanied by their essential corollary, the restraint on consumer demand. Instead, Chancellor [of the Exchequer] Roy Jenkins announced that he would present a budget on March 19, and the size of the taxation measure he takes then will depend on the state of the economy at that time. This is generally interpreted to mean that there will be a sharp rise in taxation on consumer goods, and the result has been totally predictable—a spending spree which is making it Christmas every day for the big stores…. By the time Jenkins gets around to doing anything about it, there will scarcely be any consumer durables left to send for exports”(Trenton Evening Times, January 31, 1968).

33 Politics in England, 43.

34 National Income and Expenditure, 1967, 16–17.

35 If anyone doubts this statement let him read one or more of the following: Still, Henry, The Dirty Animal (New York 1967)Google Scholar; Thomas, William L. and others, Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago 1956)Google Scholar; Osborn, Fairfield, Our Plundered Planet (Boston 1948)Google Scholar; Vogt, William, Road to Survival (New York 1948)Google Scholar; Udall, Stewart L., The Quiet Crisis (New York 1965)Google Scholar; Stewart, George R., Not So Rich As You Think (Boston 1967)Google Scholar.

36 Failure to give attention to the newer limiting dimensions of domestic politics is widespread among theorists of international politics. Nowhere is this weakness more starkly displayed than in the essay by Liska, George, Imperial America (Baltimore 1967)Google Scholar, sponsored by the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research and warmly endorsed by its director, Robert E. Osgood. In Liska's recipe for a global American imperialism that would cost incalculable billions for an indefinite future, die author gives no attention whatever to the worsening racial and other conflicts that are tearing American society apart or to the dangerous and accelerating deterioration of our physical habitat. Our query to Liska, Osgood, and others of their persuasion is whether they really find it credible that even the United States can pay the astronomical price of the new-style imperialism that they advocate, without eroding, progressively crippling, and perhaps eventually destroying the domestic society from which all power and influence are derived.

37 Some of the techniques noted in the next few paragraphs have been identified and analyzed by Eckstein, Harry in an essay “On the Etiology of Internal War”, History and Theory, IV, No. 2 (1965), 133 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 “Duas tanturn res anxius optat,/Panem et circenses” (Juvenal, Satires, X, 80).

39 We are indebted to our colleague, Professor Oran R. Young, for suggesting that we try utilizing the dilemma of rising demands and insufficient resources to establish some of the requisites of viable, conditionally viable, and unviable imperial systems.

40 A recent study of American goals and resources, carried out by Leonard A. Lecht for the National Planning Association of Washington, D. C, presents minimum and maximum estimates of ‘The Dollar Cost of Our National Goals” (Report No. 1 [May 1965], of the Center for Priority Analysis). A fuller statement of this project and of the data and assumptions upon which the estimates are based is published in Lecht, Leonard A., Goals, Priorities, and Dollars (New York 1966)Google Scholar. Lecht's estimates rest, in our view, upon overoptimistic assumptions regarding the intensity of domestic social demands exacerbated by worsening racial conflict. But even if Lecht's optimistic assumptions are correct, American society is clearly headed for trouble. This NPA project points to the need for analysis based upon different sets of political assumptions regarding domestic and international conditions and for comparable studies of the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, India, and other nations.