The premise of this excellent book is to place arms and defense capability in the context of the British economy and military strategy. Unusually, the story evolves in three parallel streams, with each chapter dedicating a section to each dynamic. These are not disjointed narratives but interconnecting strands woven subtly into a common thread. As Peden makes clear, each part of the state machinery approached the debate from the perspective of its own military/civil department. Therefore, it was less—as was so often the preoccupation—the balance of power than the balance of bureaucracy. Nonetheless, a surprising level of empathy between departments emerges even as their various influences waxed and waned. In building on the work of David French and others, this book puts forward the economy as a critical actor on the stage of defense and military strategy. While the decline of Treasury control during the wars is hardly unpredictable, rather more surprising is the Treasury's successful development of the “concept of economic stability as a fourth arm of defence” both in the 1930s (to resource a future war) and in the 1950s (as a bulwark against communism in Britain) (132). Indeed, so convincing was this idea that even in tough spending rounds the chiefs of staff accepted such a rationale—even if they did promptly reengage strenuously in the departmental tug-of-war (anything else would perhaps have been too much to have expected).

If Arms, Economics and British Strategy follows an uncommon tripartite narrative, its chronological framework is more straightforward, employing predictable landmarks as the basis for opening and closing chapters. Of those boundaries not provided by a world war, the start date of 1904 was marked by the strategically vital adoption of the Anglo-French entente, the last two chapters broken by the small matter of the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the final chapter concluded with the retreat from East of Suez. This simple structure indicates that for Peden there are no crude delineations of British ways of warfare. Subsequently, the “Blue Water” purists are left high and dry and ideas of a continental commitment washed away with the warning that “any attempt to impose a rigid model of a British way in warfare on the past is liable to distort understanding” (344). As the author admits, such an assertion is hardly new (in fact, few have posited this argument more cogently than the editor of the series, Hew Strachan), but Peden does help develop this thesis a number of stages further, contending that Britain was more affected by technological changes and determinants than hitherto appreciated. Yet, even in this regard, he distances himself from a categorization of technological epochs as set out by historians such as David Edgerton, in which the military and strategic dominance of the sea gives way to the air before yielding in turn to the nuclear age. Instead, Peden reminds us that naval and air power continued to play crucial roles well beyond these defined boundaries. Likewise, there is an emphasis on war as “a single process” (344). Indeed, the author emphasizes the fluidity of British military strategy—the emergence of the “broken-back” and “flexible” concepts of warfare developed as complementary (not alternative) approaches to the atom and hydrogen bombs.

Technology lies at the heart of this book, just as, Peden argues, it lay at the heart of understanding British defense strategy and policy. The author strives to underline that Britain consistently possessed an impressive military-scientific-industrial complex. Another theme reiterated is that “far from being conservative, policy makers were too readily impressed by new weapons” (162). As such, Peden marshals much evidence as an able defender-in-chief for the military and policy makers against the charge of conservatism: the commitment to the cavalry was not anachronistically sentimental, the interwar aircraft industry was not backward, and the navy was not “irrationally attached” to the battleship in the 1930s (118). However, it is in its placing of technological developments amid the economic landscape that the book is most forceful and original. In his typically understated fashion, he elaborates a nuanced critique of the central argument expounded in Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (London, 1988). It was not, we are told, merely a case of relative economic decline and military capacity, but also the colossal and disproportionate increase in the cost of defense equipment. Particularly, the book cites the incredible rises in price of technology such as the supersonic bomber TSR-2, which dictated the shape of British defense strategy. In one sense, Kennedy's thesis remains untouched, as there is little getting past the fact that the British economy could not afford the increased cost of technology, while comparatively or relatively the U.S. economy could. At the same time, however, Peden does a real service in demonstrating that this dynamic acted as a powerful determinant in the military capacity of, and strategic role played by, Britain.

Consequently, the implications of this book lie beyond the military-strategic field. They touch on the relative economic decline of Britain and indicate that the nation was able financially to support and promote a large industrial-military and technological complex through to the end of this period. As such, it bolsters recent research to prove that Britain has not suffered from an inevitable and inexorable decline since the First World War. But, if this gives the impression of optimism—be not deceived, for the book impresses that meeting the needs of strategists, economists, policy makers, and the chiefs of staff was an unrelenting and increasingly impossible struggle. As Lord Kitchener lamented in 1915: “One makes war not as one would like to, but as one must” (92)—one cannot help feeling that the same also applied to British strategy throughout the twentieth century.