Was Britain's implementation of NATO strategy credible? After the
adoption of Flexible Response in 1967 NATO relied on conventional forces
to defend the West. Britain had a central role in NATO's plans, but was
British defense planning adequate for the task? How did the Government
plan for the use of the conventional Armed Forces for the range of
operations it was committed to? How were the Armed Forces to be
mobilized, and what was the detail of the planning for mobilization?
In 1967 MC14/3 was adopted as the overall strategic concept by NATO. It
relied on an escalatory deterrence, from conventional through tactical
nuclear strikes to strategic nuclear attack. This is commonly known as
Flexible Response and replaced NATO's trip-wire response. The declared
principal of the strategic concept was to reduce the chance of
mistakenly starting a nuclear war, meeting force with like force, and
raising the nuclear threshold in the event of actual war.
By using newly available documents from British and other archives, this
volume will show that far from being a flexible strategy, in the event
of a war it was doomed to failure. The concept was compromised by the
failure of the Alliance members to provide one of the main legs of the
conventional deterrent - sustainability.
This book analyses the paradox between the public face of defense policy
and the practice. The book assesses whether the planning would have
worked, and what would have happened in Europe if war had broken out. To
answer this question the research looks at the conflicts in the
Falklands and the Gulf to assess the feasibility of the plans in
place.
Elements upon which British defense depended were still being built more
than twenty years after the new strategy was adopted. Defense policy in
Britain was concerned less with the threats the country faced than with
just how little could be spent on defense.
Never Ready is extensively illustrated with contemporary photographs,
many in color, and specially commissioned diagrams, color artworks and
maps.
