John Ferris

TREASURY CONTROL, THE TEN YEAR RULE AND BRITISH SERVICE POLICIES, 1919-1924*

There is one major gap in the historiography of British strategic policy during the interwar years. Historians have not examined that policy of the 1920s as if it was a coherent topic in its own right. Although writers like Brian Bond, James Neidpath, Stephen Roskill and Malcolm Smith have elucidated aspects of that matter, such as the development of the Singapore base or of the policies of the fighting services, they have still treated each such issue and department in isolation from the rest. Even those scholars like Correlli Barnett and N. H. Gibbs who have sought to examine strategic policy in the interwar years as a whole, have primarily seen the strategic decisions of the 1920s not as an autonomous historical subject but rather as a prelude to Britains position in the 1930s. Consequently, historians have made these decisions seem inexplicable and unconnected, by removing them from the context of their time and of strategic policy. This approach has led writers to misconstrue the evolution of strategic policy during the 1920s. They have done so because of their assumptions about that issue. They have not recognized these assumptions as being such, but have treated them instead as a bedrock of self-evident fact. Yet when these assumptions are examined, they can be demonstrated to be false.

Haig's Command: A Reassessment.

Part 1 Haigs credentials: personal credentials professional credentials. Part 2 The attrition battles of 1916-17: the Somme Passchendaele - the roots, the battle Cambrai. Part 3 The attrition period - Haigs weaknesses: the tool the execution the common denominator. Part 4 A year of mobility: March 1918 - the German offensive August 1918 - a turning point? the last hundred days - an advance to victory? Part 5 Falsifying the record: Haigs fictions the government support of Haig. Biographical sketches. Appendices: sources used - an evaluation Haig - a political intriguer?

The road to Bletchley Park: the British experience with signals intelligence, 1892–1945

This essay examines the evidence and the literature on British signals intelligence between 1892 and 1945. It assesses the relative significance of the documents on signals intelligence released since the Waldegrave Initiative. It criticizes many conventional assumptions in the literature and argues that signals intelligence has been a normal practice of the British government throughout the twentieth century. The text sketches an alternative history of British signals intelligence during 1892–1945 and analyses its value for the British state in various aspects of the two world wars and diplomacy during the inter-war period.

Netcentric Warfare, C4ISR and Information Operations: Towards a Revolution in Military Intelligence?

No military forces ever have placed such faith in intelligence as do US military forces today. The idea of a ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) assumes that information and the ‘information age’ will transform the knowledge available to armed forces, and thus the nature of war. This faith is central to US doctrine and policy. Joint Visions 2010 and 2020, which guide strategic policy, predict forces with ‘dominant battlespace awareness’, and a ‘frictional imbalance’ and ‘decision superiority’ over any enemy. The aim is unprecedented flexibility of command: the ability to combine freedom for units with power for the top, and to pursue ‘parallel, not sequential planning and real-time, not prearranged, decision making’. Officials have created new concepts about intelligence and command. They hope to pursue power by using new forms of information technology in order to fuse into systems matters which once were split into ‘stovepipes’. These concepts include netcentric warfare (NCW), the idea that armed forces will adopt flat structures, working in nets on the internet, with soldiers at the sharp end able to turn data processing systems at home into staffs through ‘reachback’, real time, immediate and thorough inter-communication; C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; loosely speaking, how armed forces gather, interpret and act on information); the ‘infosphere’, the body of information surrounding any event; and ‘IO’ (information operations), the actions of secret agencies. The aim is to realise the RMA, by creating a revolution in military intelligence. This paper will consider how far those ideas can be achieved, and how attempts to do so will affect the nature of power, intelligence and war in the twenty-first century. Progressives and revolutionaries debate the details of these issues (conservatives need not apply). The Marine Corps’ draft doctrine on IO denies that technology can solve all problems and defends its ‘timeless fighting principles’. Army doctrine too gives C4ISR a Clausewitzian cast,

‘The Internationalism of Islam’: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840–1951

Abstract This article assesses British perceptions of a Muslim menace to imperial security between 1840–1951. These ideas had a long life. They rarely stood in the first rank of imperial concerns, but sometimes in the second. Over this period, British ideas of an Islamic menace focused first on the political self-consciousness of all Muslims than on subterranean bodies which tried to bind masses and elites for political ends, and moved to nationalist movements with a narrow popular base, and finally to those with a mass base. Between 1915 and 1924, fear of a pan-Islamic menace significantly affected British strategic and imperial policy. These ideas involved the interaction of observation, intelligence, perception, learning, fear, ignorance and uncertainty. Their study illuminates the evolution both of British intelligence and of its ideas about the political self-consciousness of its subjects, and the threat that posed to its rule, particularly about the nature and power of colonial nationalism.

A New American Way of War? C4ISR, Intelligence and Information Operations in Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’: A Provisional Assessment

This work examines publicly material available released as of 2 September 2003 on the role of intelligence for the Coalition side during the 2003 Gulf War. It assesses how far the Coalition side practised deception, psychological warfare, and information operations during that conflict, and how far intelligence served the needs of military forces. It focuses on failures as well as successes. It compares the real performance of intelligence during the conflict with the role forecast for C4ISR and Information Operations by theorists of the RMA, and modern strategy. It concludes that the Coalition forces practised Information Operations very well, but that at the operational level, there had been no revolution in military intelligence.

A British ‘unofficial’ aviation mission and Japanese Naval developments, 1919–1929

(1982). A British ‘unofficial’ aviation mission and Japanese Naval developments, 1919–1929. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 416-439.

‘Consistent with an Intention’: The Far East Combined Bureau and the Outbreak of the Pacific War, 1940–41

Abstract From 1934, Britain expanded its military and naval intelligence agencies against Japan. At the outbreak of war in Europe, they, and most of their personnel, were moved from Hong Kong to Singapore, and joined into an interservice organization, the Far East Combined Bureau. Much of the evidence about the Far East Combined Bureau is lost, but the surviving record illustrates what intelligence was available to decision-makers in Singapore during 1940–41, thus illuminating every debate about this disaster. Even more: it enables a reconceptualization of the relationship between intelligence and the outbreak of the Pacific War as a whole.

“Now that the Milk is Spilt”: Appeasement and the Archive on Intelligence

This article assesses British intelligence and its effect on policy during the interwar years. It discusses the publically available documentation, which now includes almost all the material on the matter, though the data base has been permanently destroyed in significant ways. The paper traces the development of British intelligence between 1869–1939, involving the transition from a tradition to a system of intelligence, with the greatest change occurring during the Fist World War. The article assesses how, between 1914–39, intelligence was interrelated to bureaucratic politics, modes of decision making, and the formulation of strategic politics, modes of decision making, and the formulation of strategic policy. It discusses the structure and power of British intelligence agencies between 1919–39, their quality compared to rivals in other countries, and the impact on policy of their successes and failures. It concludes that intelligence, as an influence and a source of evidence, is essential to the study of diplomatic and strategic history, upon which its impact is complex and variable.

Generations at war

Thomas X. Hammes asks what power is and what war will be. His answers to these questions have strengths and weaknesses; weaknesses first. The history is reductionist – Hammes loots the past for pedigree while discarding anything that does not fit his needs. His observations of current trends are intelligent, but he transmutes them into theory by dubious means. Implicitly, his case rests on ideas about ‘ages’ and ‘generations’, which he treats not as loose means of categorization, but as tools to identify the essential characteristics of a time, from which one can predict what must happen, or cannot. Only a single generation can exist at a time, except when one is beating another to death. Ages have one and only one set of true characteristics – thus, his question whether current insurgencies are mere ‘aberrations’, or indications of ‘the evolution of a new generation of war’. Yet in reality, several generations coexist at any time, many things occur in any ‘age’ which do not fit the name, and the world is filled with contrary trends. Hammes uses the concept of ‘age’ exactly as do the advocates of ‘information age’ warfare whom he criticizes. That similarity indicates something about American thinking on strategy and war. On the other hand, Hammes’ critique of contemporary ideas about transformed forces is good. These ideas fail in practice, and in principle. They assume the United States always can play to its strengths, and never to its weaknesses. It always is convenient when an enemy chooses to be foolish or weak, or foolish and weak, but that is its choice, and you will be a fool to assume it must do what you wish. A smart but weak foe may refuse any game where you can apply your strengths, and make you play another one. A tough and able foe might turn the characteristics of your game into a strength of its own, by attacking any precondition for your system to work and then by imposing its rules on you. The RMA has done many things, but not everything. It has multiplied American strengths but not reduced its weaknesses. It has increased the value of high technology and firepower in conventional war, but for little else; where these things matter, they do more than ever; where they do not, nothing has changed. In particular, the US is as weak as ever against guerrillas.