and Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922), laid down general principles.
32
However, there was a lack of theory to guide policymakers when they came
to allocate resources. Although Adam Smith had drawn attention in 1776
to the tendency for armaments to become more expensive over time, other
major economists showed no interest in war prior to 1914. John Maynard
Keynes, while an official at the Treasury, applied macroeconomics to
debates in Whitehall on strategy in 1915–16. During the Second World
War economists were concerned with the administration of war production
or were engaged in producing statistical summaries for Winston Church-
ill’s guidance, both when he was firstlordoftheAdmiraltyandwhenhe
was prime minister.
33
However, operational research – that is the quanti-
tative analysis of how best to achieve strategic objectives – was dominated
by scientists. Henry Tizard chaired the Air Ministry’s Committee for the
Scientific Survey of Air Defence in the late 1930s, and during the war
scientists were engaged in wide-ranging operational research, which had
some impact on major debates on anti-submarine warfare and strategic
bombing.
34
The concept of cost-effectiveness did not enter the discourse of
British policymakers until the 1960s, and was then imported from the
United States. In 1960 the economists Charles Hitch and Roland
McKean published The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age, which
was described in the British Treasury in 1965 as ‘the standard work on
cost-effectiveness’. Hitch, who was comptroller of the United States
Department of Defense, was involved in 1963 in talks with British
Treasury officials, who encouraged the Ministry of Defe nce to adopt
cost-benefit analysis, sometimes against the opposition of the armed
forces.
35
The 1960s were the high point of the infl uence of economists
on American defence policy, enjoying as they did the patronage of
32
See Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War
(Oxford University Press, 2001).
33
John H. Whitaker, ‘The economics of defense in British political economy, 1848–1914’,
in Crauford D. Goodwin (ed.), Economics and National Security, supplement to History
of Political Economy, 23 (1991), 37–60; Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 3 vols.
(London: Macmillan, 1983–2000), vol. I: Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920, pp. 309–15; D. N.
Chester (ed.), Lessons of the British War Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1951),
chs. 2, 4 and 7.
34
Maurice Kirby, Operational Research in War and Peace: The British Experience from the
1930s to 1970 (London: Imperial College Press, 2003).
35
Sir Richard Clarke to Sir Leslie Rowan, 21 Jan. 1965, and Clarke to Sir William
Armstrong, ‘Insight on defence costs’, n.d., CLRK 1/3/4/1, Churchill College,
Cambridge. In addition to The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), Clarke also recommended McKean’s ‘useful
essay’, ‘Cost-benefit analysis and British defence policy’, in Alan Peacock and D. J.
Robertson (eds.), Public Expenditure: Appraisal and Control (Edinburgh: Oliver and
Boyd, 1963), pp. 17–35.
Introduction 13