Greg (Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK) Kennedy 
British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 1900-2000 [PDF ebook] 
Influences and Actions

This new collection of essays by a panel of established international scholars sheds new light on what some of those influences were and what actions were taken as a result of Britain’s Far Eastern commitments. Not only are new evidence and approaches to those issues addressed presented, but new avenues for further research are clearly outlined. This new study shows how the use of the sea as a means of projecting power and influence beyond national borders holds a unique place in the history of Great Britain. Directly linked to the concepts of empire, great power and strategic over-stretch, Britain’s strategic position east of Suez in the twentieth century was a dominant area of interest and had an enormous impact in the overall construction of Great Britain’s naval strategic posture. Britain’s global naval position was in fact predominantly formed by Far Eastern strategic influences from 1900 to 1945. After that, even in the face of the Cold War and emphasis on planning for a third European war, strategic influences east of Suez continued to play a major role in the creation of Britain’s naval force structure and in its global strategic foreign policy formulation process.