Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939

Abstract

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatening and aggregate shifts in power alone may not provoke counterbalancing behavior. In the 1930s, Britain balanced against the most threatening components of power: the German Luftwaffe and the threat of a knock-out air assault against the homeland, Japan's Imperial Navy and its threat to Britain's commercial trade routes and the Dominions in East Asia, and the Italian Navy and the threat to Britain's line of communication through the Mediterranean Sea to India and Asia. Given Britain's difficult financial circumstances, all other components of power, such as the army and the land components of power of Germany, Japan, and Italy were ranked as secondary in terms of its rearmament priorities. Thus, London was able to narrow the gap with Berlin in specific components of power of strategic importance such as aircraft production or to exceed Germany in other areas such as the Royal Navy and its battlefleet.

Key Words:

• Balance of Power
• Balance of Threat
• Components of Power
• British Rearmament and the 1930s

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two very helpful anonymous reviewers, Peter Katzenstein, Jonathan Kirshner, Jack Levy, Benjamin Miller, Barry Posen, Norrin Ripsman, Jeffrey Taliaferro, and the participants in the Conference on ‘Grand Strategy in the Interwar Years’, University of Utah (26–27 March 2009) whose detailed comments and suggestions greatly strengthened this article. A version of this article was presented at Cornell University's Peace Studies Program and at Haifa University.

Notes

¹Robert S. Ross, ‘The Geography of the Peace: Great Power Stability in Twenty-First Century East Asia’, International Security 23/4 (Spring 1999), 81–118; Barry R. Posen, ‘European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity?’ Security Studies 15/2 (July 2006), 149–86; United States National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025 : A Transformed World (Washington DC: United States Department of National Intelligence 2008).

²Viscount Palmerston was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. David Brown, Palmerston and the Politics of Foreign Policy, 1846–1855 (Manchester UP 2002), 82–3.

³Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Scranton, PA: The Haddon Craftsmen 1948), 207.

⁴On the guilty men thesis (the book Guilty Men was published in 1940) see Sidney Aster, ‘Guilty Men: the Case of Neville Chamberlain’, in Robert Boyce and Esmonde M. Robertson (eds), Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (New York: St Martin's Press 1989), 233–68.

⁵For a criticism of the guilty men thesis, see James P. Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain 1936–1939 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield 2006); Peter Neville, Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War (New York: Hambledon Continuum 2006); Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton UP 2006); Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (New York: Ashgate 2006); Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy, ‘Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Virtues of British Appeasement in the 1930s’, International Security 33/2 (Fall 2008), 148–81.

⁶Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House 1979); Stephen M. Walt, The Origin of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1987); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton 2001). Both balance of power and balance of threat theories focus on aggregate or net capabilities. Walt disaggregates threat by including the additional variables of proximity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions.

⁷Steven E. Lobell, ‘Threat Assessment, the State, and Foreign Policy: a Neoclassical Realist Model’ in Steven E. Lobell, Jeffrey Taliaferro, and Norrin Ripsman (eds), Neoclassical Realism, The State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge UP 2009), 42–74.

⁸See Wohlforth's discussion of American and Soviet definitions of what constituted power. American decisionmakers emphasized economic and organizational resources, nuclear weapons, followed by economic and technical resources. Soviet leaders highlighted military capabilities. William Curti Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1993). Also, see Dale Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2000), who breaks power into three types: military, economic, and potential power. Levy and Thompson differentiate between land and sea power. See Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, ‘Hegemonic Threats and Great Power Balancing in Europe, 1495–2000’, Security Studies 14/1 (Jan.–March 2005), 1–30.

⁹It is important to note that Britain did attempt to appease Italy in order to detach it from Germany. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.

¹⁰Norman H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Vol. 1, Rearmament Policy (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1976); Robert Shay, British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits (Princeton UP 1977). As Mearsheimer notes, ‘Britain, though, was unable to develop the large-scale military forces required to protect all of her empire. The reason was simple: her economy was not strong enough to support a military establishment which could meet all potential threats.’ John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The British Generals Talk: A Review Essay’, International Security 6/1 (Summer 1981), 168. On Britain's inability to simultaneously field a two-power navy, a fighter and strategic bomber force, and a modern field force, G. Bruce Strang, ‘The Spirit of Ulysses? Ideology and British Appeasement in the 1930s’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 19/3 (Sept. 2008), 481–26; Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament. In contrast, Christopher Price in Britain, America, and Rearmament in the 1930s : The Cost of Failure (New York: Palgrave 2001) argues that Britain did have the requisite economic and financial resources to fund a more extensive rearmament program. Friedberg makes a similar argument about Britain prior to World War I. See Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton UP 1988).

¹¹Patrick James, International Relations and Scientific Progress: Structural Realism Reconsidered (Columbus: Ohio State UP 2002); Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition’, in Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner (eds), Political Science: State of the Discipline (New York: Norton 2002), 197–230; Randall L. Schweller, ‘The Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism’, in Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (eds), Progress in International Relations: Appraising the Field (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003), 311–47; Daniel H. Nexon, ‘The Balance of Power in the Balance’, World Politics 61/2 (April 2009), 330–59; Steven E. Lobell, ‘Structural Realism/Offensive and Defensive Realism’, in Robert Denemark et al. (eds), The International Studies Compendium Project (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2010), 6651–669.

¹²Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge UP 1981); Peter Liberman, Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies (Princeton UP 1996); Erik Labs, ‘Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims’, Security Studies 6/4 (Summer 1997), 1–49; Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton UP 1996); Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

¹³Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 33.

¹⁴According to Mearsheimer, states are not mindless expanders – states may forgo opportunities to increase their power because the costs are too high, due to diminishing returns from additional military resources, because it might undermine the economy, or building additional military forces will provoke a rival who can match the increase.

¹⁵Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton UP 1976); Walt, The Origin of Alliances; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1999).

¹⁶Christopher Layne, ‘From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy’, International Security 22/1 (Summer 1997), 87.

¹⁷Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited’, International Security 25/3 (Winter 2000/2001), 128–61.

¹⁸Karl Deutsch and David Singer counter that multipolar systems are more stable. Karl W. Deutsch and David J. Singer, ‘Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability’, World Politics 16/3 (April 1964), 390–6.

¹⁹Both balancing and buck-passing entail balancing behavior. The question is whether the balancer or the buck catcher will do the balancing.

²⁰Dale Copeland asserts the opposite (The Origins of Major War).

²¹For a review of balance of power theory, see Jack S. Levy, ‘What do Great Powers Balance Against and When?’, in T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michael Fortmann (eds), Balance of Power (Stanford UP 2004), 29–51.

²²Thomas J. Christensen, ‘Perceptions and Alliances in Europe, 1865–1940’, International Organization 51/1 (Winter 1997), 65–97.

²³Mohammed Ayoob, ‘The Third World in the System of States: Acute Schizophrenia or Growing Pains?’, International Studies Quarterly 33/1 (March 1989), 67–79; Steven R. David, ‘Explaining Third World Alignment’, World Politics 43/2 (Jan. 1991), 233–56.

²⁴Randall L. Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In’, International Security 19/1 (Summer 1994), 85.

²⁵Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning for Profit’, 86.

²⁶Defensive realists also include ‘structural modifiers’ such as geography and technology thereby further revising Waltz's emphasis on the gross distribution of power. See Glenn H. Snyder, ‘Process Variables in Neorealist Theory’, Security Studies 5/3 (Spring 1996), 167–92; Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance of Power, 26; Van Evera, Causes of War, 7–9; Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited', International Security 25/3 (Winter 2000/2001), 136–41.

²⁷On the foreign policy executive, see David A. Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of US Commercial Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1988); Norrin M. Ripsman, Peacemaking by Democracies: Domestic Structure, Executive Autonomy and Peacemaking after Two World Wars (University Park: Penn State UP 2002); Lobell et al., Neoclassical Realism.

²⁸Steven Spiegel, Dominance and Diversity: The International Hierarchy (Boston: Little Brown 1972); Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 55–82.

²⁹William C. Wohlforth, ‘Perceptions of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance’, World Politics 39/3 (April 1987), 377.

³⁰Jeffrey W. Taliaferro et al. (eds), The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2012).

³¹Philip Streich and Jack S. Levy, ‘Time Horizons, Discounting, and Intertemporal Choice’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51/2 (April 2007), 199–26.

³²Stephen G. Brooks, ‘Dueling Realisms’, International Organization 51/3 (Summer 1997), 450.

³³Brooks, ‘Dueling Realisms’.

³⁴On elite cohesion and consensus, see Schweller, Unanswered Threats; Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, 39–41.

³⁵Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1991); Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein (eds), The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1993).

³⁶Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1994); Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton UP 1997); Steven E. Lobell, The Challenge of Hegemony: Grand Strategy, Trade, and Domestic Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2003); Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2005); Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca: Cornell UP 2005); Jonathan Kirshner, Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War (Princeton UP 2007); Kevin Narizny, The Political Economy of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2007); Ariel Roth, Leadership in International Relations: The Balance of Power and the Origins of World War II (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010). Not all domestic and unit level arguments highlight suboptimal outcomes. See Paul A. Papayoanou, Power Ties: Economic Interdependence, Balancing, and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1999); Lars S. Skalnes, Politics, Markets, and Grand Strategy: Foreign Economic Policies as Strategic Instruments (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2000).

³⁷Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1984); Christopher Layne, ‘Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlain's Grand Strategy Revisited’, Security Studies 17/3 (July 2008), 397–437.

³⁸On why it was rational for Britain and France not to form a counter balancing alliance until 1939, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics; and Randall L. Schweller, ‘Tripolarity and the Second World War’, International Studies Quarterly 37/1 (March 1993), 91.

³⁹Copeland (The Origins of Major War) makes a purely structural argument. He contends that as a declining and fearful state, Berlin's strategy during the 1930s was to rearm quickly in order to defeat the Soviet Union and Western powers before they closed the gap. The failure of the allies to ream earlier and maintain rough military equality created a short window of opportunity for Germany to stop Soviet growth.

⁴⁰Ripsman and Levy, ‘Wishful Thinking’. Also see, Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy, ‘The Preventive War that Never Happened: Britain, France, and the Rise of Germany in the 1930s’, Security Studies 16/1 (Jan. 2007), 32–67.

⁴¹Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia UP 1998).

⁴²John P.B. Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament in the 1930s: A Chronology and Review’, Historical Journal 18/3 (Sept. 1975), 588; Richard Overy, The Road to War (London: Macmillan 1989), 317–20.

⁴³Gaines Post, Jr, ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen: British Rearmament, Deterrence, and Appeasement, 1934–35’, Armed Forces and Society 14/3 (Spring 1988), 329–57.

⁴⁴Shay, British Rearmament, 79; Post, ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, 337.

⁴⁵W.K. Hancock and M.M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1949), 65.

⁴⁶G.C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury: 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press 1979), 81; Shay, British Rearmament, 41.

⁴⁷On Chamberlain's rejection of the DRC's balanced spending program, see Christopher Layne, ‘British Grand Strategy, 1900–1939: Theory and Practice in International Politics’, Journal of Strategic Studies 2/3 (Dec. 1979), 303–34.

⁴⁸For defense spending across the three military Services, see Mark Thomas, ‘Rearmament and Economic Recovery in the Late 1930s’, Economic History Review, 36/4 (Nov. 1983), 554.

⁴⁹Neville, Hitler and Appeasement.

⁵⁰Malcolm S. Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain in the 1930s’, Journal of Strategic Studies 3 (1978), 313–37, 315, 329–34; Michael Howard, ‘British military preparations for the Second World War’, in David Dilks (ed.), Retreat from Power 1906–1939 (London: MacMillan 1981) 105; Peden, British Rearmament, 128–34; Sean Greenwood, “‘Caligula's Horse” Revisited: Sir Thomas Inskip as Minister for the Co-ordination of Defense, 1936–1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies 17/2 (June 1994), 30–1.

⁵¹Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, 330.

⁵²M.M. Postan, British War Production (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1952), 66–9.

⁵³Postan, British War Production, 471–3.

⁵⁴Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 532.

⁵⁵Shay, British Rearmament, 206; Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’, 600; Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 303.

⁵⁶Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’ 600.

⁵⁷Malcolm S. Smith, ‘Planning and Building the British Bomber Force, 1934–1939’, Business History Review 54/1 (Spring 1980), 46.

⁵⁸Shay, British Rearmament, 206–10; R.A.C. Parker, ‘British Rearmament, 1936–39: Treasury, Trade Unions and Skilled Labor’, English Historical Review 96/379 (April 1981), 306–43.

⁵⁹Shay, British Rearmament, 209.

⁶⁰Peden, British Rearmament, 40.

⁶¹Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’, 598; Smith, ‘Planning and Building’.

⁶²Charles Bright, ‘Class Interest and State Policy in the British Response to Hitler’, in Carole Fink, Isabel V. Hull, and MacGregor Knox (eds), German Nationalism and the European Response, 1890–1945 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1985), 241; Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 277.

⁶³Peden, British Rearmament, 165.

⁶⁴Peden (British Rearmament, 161–7) argues that the Navy had been quite successful in building towards the New Standard, despite Treasury control.

⁶⁵For a comparison of British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, Anglo-French, and German-Italian-Japanese fleet strengths in April 1939, see Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Table 11, 432; Overy, Road to War, 320.

⁶⁶Joseph A. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (New York: St Martin's Press 1998).

⁶⁷Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 158.

⁶⁸Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, 320.

⁶⁹Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’, 606.

⁷⁰Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, 319.

⁷¹Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: OUP 1980), 206.

⁷²Peden, ‘Warren Fisher’, 42.

⁷³Self, Neville Chamberlain, 239.

⁷⁴Levy, Appeasement, 64. The opposition countered that lacking a well-equipped land-army, France and Belgium would doubt Britain's commitment to their defense. Strang, ‘Ideology and British Appeasement’, 489.

⁷⁵Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy, 67.

⁷⁶Howard, ‘British Military Preparations’, 115; Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’, 603; Shay, British Rearmament, 235.

⁷⁷Peden (British Rearmament, 172) notes that after 1935, even the Army was unable to spend its entire allocation because of manufacturing delays and bottlenecks. Howard, ‘British Military Preparations’, 115.

⁷⁸Peden, British Rearmament, 176.

⁷⁹Strang, ‘Ideology and British Appeasement’, 507.

⁸⁰Francis Coghlan, ‘Armaments, Economic Policy and Appeasement: Background to British Foreign Policy, 1931–7’, History 57/90 (June 1972), 215; Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, 330–2; Greenwood, ‘Caligula's Horse’, 30.

⁸¹Peden, British Rearmament, 65.

⁸²Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 289.

⁸³Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 275–6.

⁸⁴Dunbabin, ‘British Rearmament’, 601.

⁸⁵ Global Trends, vi.

⁸⁶Levy, Appeasement; Neville, Hitler and Appeasement.

⁸⁷Hines H. Hall, III, ‘The Foreign Policy-Making Process in Britain, 1934−1935, and the Origins of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement’, The Historical Journal 19/2 (June 1976), 477–99.

⁸⁸Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, 327.

⁸⁹Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane 1976), 341.