The Turkish Irritant

The world war that began in the summer of 1914 confirmed widespread prewar expectations that a third war in the Balkans could drag in the superpowers. In the weeks that followed, Turkey, still neutral, became increasingly belligerent. British government policy was to appease Turkey in order to avoid conflict. Churchill disagreed with this policy, believing that war with Turkey was unavoidable and that the sooner it came, the better. At his instigation, the government reviewed contingency war plans to capture the Gallipoli but found that Britain lacked the resources to implement them. After Turkey joined the Central Powers in November 1914, Britain had no strategy for prosecuting the war against Turkey. But the British government was not much concerned, incorrectly believing that Turkey was incapable of hurting any vital British interests.

The Fortunes of War

Reports through back channels concerning events at the Dardanelles generated doubts in London over the reliability of the commanding admiral’s assessment. The War Council nevertheless sent reinforcements to Dardanelles to maximize chances of victory. Unexpectedly, the Russians turned against the operation—fearful that it might succeed. On March 18, Anglo-French fleet attacking the Dardanelles suffered disaster. With Kitchener’s and Churchill’s support, Asquith decided that the attack must continue at all costs and ordered a risky amphibious assault. Because a majority of the War Council now opposed the operation, Asquith did not summon it to endorse his decision. Adding to Asquith’s desperation for success, the wheat crisis worsened when the traders realized the British government’s secret policy of price manipulation. They withdrew from the market, causing British wheat imports to dry up.

Two Problems, One Solution

At its meeting on January 13, 1915, the War Council supposedly authorized an attack at the Dardanelles in order to meet a Russian request for assistance and relieve pressure on the Western Front. This is incorrect. Not only did the government’s interest in the Dardanelles have other sources, but in fact it was leaning at this point toward offensives in Syria and the Balkans rather than Turkey. Churchill, however, continued to push for his Dardanelles operation and in so doing created chaos inside Admiralty, straining his relations with the admirals. On January 20 Asquith approved an offensive in the Balkans, but in so doing underestimated French resistance to the diversion of resources away from the Western Front.

Seven Days in January

Worries over the economy and wheat prices led to the formation of a new (previously unknown) executive policy committee operating in parallel with the War Council. During the fourth week of January 1915, the new Food Price committee met ahead of the War Council. In this forum, Asquith and his senior advisors were finally convinced of the severity of the wheat problem. They further decided that rather than introduce food rationing, it would be simpler to force the Dardanelles and open the path to Russian wheat—thereby not only lowering wheat prices but also permitting Russia to solve its financial problems by resuming wheat exports. At the subsequent War Council meeting of January 28, 1915, Asquith overruled the objections of Admiral John Fisher to the Dardanelles operation. A review of the concerns displayed by each voting member demonstrates that the majority favored attacking the Dardanelles for mainly economic reasons.

The Political Economic Strands

In the midst of the strategic review discussed in chapter 5, Arthur Balfour, one of the War Lords, pointed out that selection of strategy should be governed by economic resources and expected duration of the war. Agreeing with him, many officials in the civilian departments of government urged Asquith to pay closer attention to the worstening economic problems, and he began to do so. Civilian officials worried especially over rising wheat prices and the prospect of social unrest. In an effort to solve the problem, the government began to manipulate global market prices through secret trading in the futures market, combined with the management of market intelligence concerning wheat harvests within the British Empire. Closer scrutiny of wheat prices in the third week of January revealed that the problem was both more complex and far worse than the government initially realized. A quintupling of wheat prices seemed imminent.

War in a Globalized World

From 1904 on, the British government conducted further studies into the strategic implications of globalization. The fragility of the globalized economic system deeply impressed those involved in these investigations. This impression underlay the widespread pre-1914 belief that a major war between urban-industrial societies must be short, lest the disruption to economic systems swiftly lead to social revolution. Seeing opportunity as well as danger, the Admiralty devised a plan, approved by the government, to exploit British monopoly control over the underpinning infrastructure of the global trading system—finance, ships, and communications. It envisioned a massive denial-of-service attack upon Britain’s enemies. Upon the outbreak of war, British plans to wage economic warfare both offensively and defensively met with mixed success. Over the next few months, policy was modified and adapted according to experience.

The Military and Diplomatic Strands

At the beginning of 1915, concern mounted in Britain over the prolongation of the war, the damage to the British economy caused by uncoordinated military mobilization, and mounting evidence of strategic drift. In addition, political leaders were uneasy over the magnitude of casualties on the Western Front, and nervous at the thought of committing there the Kitchener New Armies comprised of volunteers. Prime Minister Asquith announced a full review of strategic policy to be held during first week of January 1915. Major disagreements over strategy within both army and navy high commands and much lobbying ensued. The planned strategic review was effectively aborted when the British army commander in France complained that the government was starving him of adequate resources, however, and nothing was resolved.

Britannia’s Achilles Heel

By the turn of the twentieth century, British leaders were contemplating the strategic implications of the recent transformation in the global economy now called the first era of globalization. Defense experts worried particularly about Britain’s dependence upon imported food, especially wheat. This chapter explains the internationalization of the global wheat market, focusing on the role of new technologies and important changes in day-to-day business practices. The most significant of these were the spread of commercial agriculture to the Southern Hemisphere, the introduction of grain elevators for wheat storage, and the development of futures contracts. In 1905, a Royal Commission concluded that Britain’s food security problem really lay in the fragility of the new globalized system. The concern was that in wartime the market system might freeze, causing wheat to become unaffordable rather than unobtainable. In reaching this conclusion, the commission exploited early economic theory on the psychology of economic shocks.

This Wicked Gamble

On the eve of the amphibious assault at Gallipoli, practically all the senior military officers involved feared disaster. Disaster promptly ensued, with a large loss of life including among Australian units. The resignation of Admiral Fisher compounded the disaster and led to the fall of the Asquith Ministry and formation of Coalition government. Days after the landings, the British government was stunned to learn that Russia had no wheat available for export. Fortuitously, the price of wheat fell thanks to an unexpected bumper North American crop. After another failed attack at the Dardanelles in August 1915, British government finally cuts its losses and quit the Gallipoli peninsula.

Conclusion

The conclusion reviews the previous chapters as a case study in high-level policymaking under pressure. Globalization, the internationalization of the grain trade, and the outbreak of war confronted the British government with conjoined political–economic and military–diplomatic problems, which it had no good options to solve. The complexity of the challenges confronting the government render simplified narratives of its decision-making inaccurate and of doubtful utility as a model. This argument has important methodological implications for students of grand strategy and military history: the former requires as much attention to military as to civilian perspectives and the latter demands better economic literacy. Both require rigorous archival research in civilian and military, public and private records, as well as a willingness to engage the past with a high level of precision.