The Colonial Experience of the British Empire of the Interbellum era and the RAND Corporation at the End of the XX Century: the Transfer of Ideas.

Nesterov Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Senior lecturer of Chair of World History, Law and Methods of Education, Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education 443099, Russia, Samara region, Samara, Maxim Gorky str., 65/67 dmitriynesterov1994@gmail.com Other publications by this author

IntroductionOver its more than seventy-year history, the RAND Corporation has repeatedly turned to the analysis of the colonial experience of Britain.

There are two main stages of this process – during the Vietnam War and the war on terrorism in the Middle East at the beginning of the XXI century. Both in the 1960s and 1970s and in the 2000s, RAND Corporation experts primarily focused on the colonial experience of counter–guerrilla activity after World War II - in Malaya, Kenya and other British colonies in order to form strategic and tactical recommendations for the United States of America on their basis ^{[1, pp. 53-57] [2, pp. 56-59] [3, pp. 313-318]}.

At the same time, the experts of the RAND Corporation during both the Vietnam War and the war on terrorism mainly analyzed the British anti-insurgency operation in Malaya during the emergency situation of 1948-1960. ^{[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]}. This was due to the fact that the British military themselves, who participated in the Malay company, insisted that this counter-guerrilla operation was the most successful of all and its experience is universal ^{[11] [12]}.

As T. Makaitis rightly noted, "the assumption that the insurgency was a communist phenomenon led to the fact that Western analysts neglected the pre-war experience... Malaya is a culmination, not a starting point, not a formula derived from a single experiment" ^{[13, p. 7]}. Thus, the English scientist noted the fallacy of the RAND Corporation's approach to ignoring the colonial experience of the anti–insurgency of the interwar period. 

However, in 2000, this American analytical center publishes a report by the famous military historian Jeffrey McGregor "The Penultimate Army: British military Policy in 1919-1939 and its relevance for the modern US army" ^[14], written back in August 1997. This work is of interest because of several important circumstances. Firstly, its author was a professional military historian, an expert on World War II, who also had experience of serving in the US armed forces ^[15], but at the same time Jeffrey McGregor was not a full-time expert of the RAND Corporation, did not cooperate with her either before or after writing the report. Thus, he was invited by the analytical center to write this particular report.

Secondly, in addition to Jeffrey McGregor, only B. Hoffman of the entire expert staff of the RAND Corporation addressed the colonial experience of the anti-insurgency of the Interbellum era, but only in the context of the use of the air force ^[16]. Thus, this expert opinion is the exception rather than the rule, thereby presenting an undoubted interest for the study. 

Thus, the main purpose of this article is to critically analyze the expertise of the RAND Corporation of the British colonial experience of the interwar period.

British colonial experience and US policy at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries.At the beginning of the analysis of the report, J.

It should be noted that the author throughout his expert opinion polemizes with the concept of F. Fukuyama about the "end of history", while not directly referring to his work. On the one hand, J. McGregor agrees that after the end of the Cold War and the formation of a unipolar world, "a high and even increasing level of violence on ethnic and nationalist grounds will remain" ^{[17, p. 148]}, but the author of the report completely rejects the thesis that serious conflicts will disappear from the historical scene. So J. MacGregor writes that Great Britain in 1919 felt like a winner and rejected thoughts about the possibility of a new total conflict. As a result, it was this conviction that led to defeats at the beginning of the Second World War ^{[14, p. 1]}.

The danger of this approach, according to J. McGregor, is that governments are starting to reduce defense spending. Despite the fact that after the end of world conflicts (and the author also includes the Cold War), the number of peripheral conflicts in which the victorious power has to take part increases. Thus, the British Empire had to control colonial possessions in the Near and Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean in order to prevent and pacify rebellions ^{[14, p. 1-4]}. Thus, during the period of strengthening of one power, according to the expert, there is an increase in rebellions and insurgent movements on its periphery.

In addition, J. McGregor notes that the reduction in funding led to the fact that the British Empire was forced to use new military technical means to patrol the empire. So, in Mesopotamia, an attempt was made to use the method of "air control", according to which it was the Air Force, not the infantry, that should carry out counter-guerrilla activities ^{[14, p. 5]}. At the same time, J. McGregor, unlike his colleague at the RAND B. Hoffman Corporation, who wrote a report on the use of the British Air Force in anti-insurgency operations in the interwar period in the late 1980s ^[16], evaluates this experience negatively, since it did not bring the desired results ^{[14, p. 5]}.

J. McGregor also negatively assesses the position of a number of radical British officers of the interwar period, who argued that infantry, cavalry and artillery should become a thing of the past, and tanks should replace them. At the same time, even the patrolling of the empire and the suppression of rebel movements had to be carried out by them ^{[14, p. 16-17]}. Similar views of J. McGregor rated as overly optimistic.

In addition, the author of the report of the RAND Corporation draws attention to the fact that after the end of the First World War there was a decrease in interest in professional military issues, and this, in turn, led to the fact that the officer corps began to treat their service as entertainment. J. McGregor writes that the colonial officers were more worried about sporting events and their appearance ^{[14, p. 12]}. This, in turn, according to the author, led to the fact that the British military could not adequately assess the threats and effectively counter them.

Similar conclusions of the expert RAND J. McGregor is confirmed in the publications of the journal of the Royal United Institute of Defense Studies (RUSI) of the interwar period, which also show that the problem of training the officer corps caused serious concerns and required urgent resolution ^{[18, p. 288-293] [19, p. 326-332] [20, p. 333-337] [21, p. 656-674] [22, p. 718-721]}.

At the same time, J. McGregor emphasizes that the United States of America after the end of the Cold War was in the same situation as the British Empire after the First World War with the same set of problems. In addition to reducing costs and low training of the officer corps for them, J. McGregor attributed the conviction in the effectiveness of the "minimum force" doctrine ^{[14, p. 1, 22]}, according to which counter-guerrilla operations should be carried out by small detachments ^{[23, p. 459-475] [24, p. 245-279]}. This approach, according to the author of the report, led to the unpreparedness of the British army for the Second World War.

ConclusionsThus, at the end of the twentieth century, the RAND Corporation negatively assessed the interwar experience of the British Empire.

The subject of her criticism was the tactics of "patrolling the empire", and the method of "air control", and the reduction of defense spending, and excessive pacifism in the ranks of the officer corps. At the same time, the analytical center noted that the United States was in the same position after the end of the Cold War. 

In general, the uniqueness of this expert opinion is that this is the only case in the history of the RAND Corporation when the colonial experience of Britain was recognized as negative. This approach is explained by the fact that the purpose of the report of J. McGregor had a rationale for keeping the budget for the US armed forces at the level of the Cold War era.