Book Review - Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement

British Grand Strategy, 1919–1940

by David French

Oxford University Press, 2022, 623 pp

Hardcover ISBN: 9780192863355

Reviewed by: Jordan Beavis

David French is an illustrious name in British military history. For decades he has made significant contributions to our understanding of British strategy and Britain’s Army in both peace and war, in the latter case frequently rebalancing an often stereotyped view of the military force that was once responsible for the land defence of the world’s largest empire. In Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement, French has written his magnum opus. On page after page, French skilfully weaves together decades of analysis and extensive original research on the formulation and implementation of British grand strategy in the 1920s and 1930s. In doing so, he provides a fascinating account of the varied success of the efforts of the British policymaking elite (politicians, civil servants, service chiefs) to establish a stable international order following the First World War, and their failure to maintain it in the face of expansionist aggression in the 1930s.

French’s monograph comprises three parts, with each analysing distinct periods in the formulation and implementation of British grand strategy in the interwar period. Part I examines the search for peace and the construction of a new world order in the aftermath of the First World War. By the end of 1918 the British public were weary of war and the Treasury was practically exhausted. With its enemies seemingly vanquished, the empire’s bloated wartime forces were demobilised and a ‘Ten-Year Rule’ was implemented. This rule specified that no major war was considered likely within the next 10 years (a period that was later set on a rolling basis), with faith also placed in the ability of the new League of Nations and collective security to avoid future conflicts. Intermittent internal threats to the empire or the general peace were dealt with by ‘adroit diplomacy’ and a series of international agreements negotiated to maintain peace, such as the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the 1926 Treaty of Lausanne. 

By 1931, however, the benign international order that the British had helped create began to collapse. Part II reviews the period 1931–1936, wherein expansionist Italy under the Fascists and Imperial Japan, as well as the revanchist Nazi Germany, began to represent significant challenges to world stability and imperial defence. In Britain, the National Governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald (1931–1935) and Stanley Baldwin (1935–1937) felt their ability to deter such challenges was hamstrung by the need to secure a national economic recovery following the Great Depression and follow (rather than lead) pacificist public opinion. By 1934, however, the poor state of the nation’s armed forces had been recognised. A well-conceived draft program was prepared by service chiefs and senior civil servants in 1934 to rectify the worst of the deficiencies and thereby reinvigorate the empire’s traditional grand strategy of diplomacy backed by effective military deterrents. This plan, however, was effectively watered down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, who then imposed his own uninformed strategic views onto his Cabinet colleagues and ensured Britain would have neither the forces nor the allies necessary to contain German, Italian or Japanese expansion. 

Chamberlain’s almost ruinous control as Prime Minister over British grand strategy in 1937–1940 is the concern of the book’s third and final part. Few individuals in British history are as controversial as Chamberlain. French’s analysis of his strategic policymaking is damning in its detail, clearly indicating that many of Chamberlain’s decisions not only are liable to critique with hindsight but also were rightly questioned by many contemporaries for their flawed logic and assumptions. He was hindered by his strong ‘self-belief’, which in practice amounted to ‘an utter certainty in the correctness of his own opinions, even when they were based on little more than ill-considered prejudices’.^[1] Chamberlain’s ascendency represented the abandonment of a foundational guideline of British diplomacy, most clearly expressed in Lord Salisbury’s dictum of 1927 that ‘in coming to an arrangement one must be prepared to give something, the skill consisting in giving relatively unimportant details in order to maintain vital principles’.^[2] Chamberlain did surrender such ‘vital principles’ in his desire to appease the dictators in 1937–1939, and the force of Cabinet and public opinion saw him adopt a stronger approach following the German annexation of rump Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Yet Chamberlain’s public threats of war against Germany were completely undermined by his use of intermediaries to inform Hitler—without the knowledge of his Foreign Secretary or Cabinet—that he was still open to further negotiations on a European settlement. As French clearly illustrates, ‘pursuing deterrence in public, and conciliation and appeasement in private, only ensured that both policies would fail’.^[3]

Given heightened geopolitical tensions in the world today, French’s book is a timely study of how deterrence, coercion or appeasement can be exercised, and the varied factors that must be considered in implementing each. It offers many lessons to strategic policymakers, especially in regard to utilising national strengths and the need to be transparent to the public on the dangers posed by those that seek to upend the international rules-based order. However, French’s dense academic prose, the granularity of his analysis, and the high cost of the book (US$110) does mean that many general readers will find the book inaccessible. Nor can it be recommended as an introductory text for individuals seeking their first insight into the interwar period; more accessible works are available for this purpose.^[4] Those willing to take the time and effort to come to grips with this excellently researched work, however, will be left pondering the foundations of the West’s grand strategies and how the successes and failures of British policymakers in the 1920s and 1930s could be emulated or avoided today.

About the Reviewer

Dr Jordan Beavis is an Academic Research Officer at the Australian Army Research Centre, having formally worked as a Researcher for the Australian War Memorial’s Official History of Australian Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research focuses on the militaries of the British Empire/Commonwealth in the interwar period (1919–1939), international engagement, professional military education, and mobilisation.

Endnotes