Britain, France and the Naval Arms Trade in the Baltic, 1919 -1939: Grand Strategy and Failure

At the end of World War I, France and Great Britain established a "Cordon Sanitaire" in eastern Europe to further their own security interests. With this backdrop, Donald Stoker's book examines British and French involvement from 1919 to 1939 in the creation and development of the naval forces of Poland, Finland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Focusing upon the manner in which the French and British competed for sales of warships, naval aircraft and other naval materials, and their efforts to place naval advisers and military missions in these states, the book reveals how each power waged their respective struggles for economic and political influence in the smaller countries. Both Britain and France hoped that initial successes would garner future sales and further their influence in the recipient nation's economic life. The haphazard and often surprisingly corrupt manner in which French and British private and governmental institutions conducted business in the regionweakened the "Cordon Sanitaire", the very system the two powers created, and undermined their respective grand strategies. In the end, British and French abandonment of the region helped create a power-vacuum that a revisionist Nazi Germany and an expansionist Soviet Union proved only too eager to fill. This is an in-depth scholarly study of a subject that should appeal to students of international history, strategy, international relations and naval history in general.

Donald J. Stoker, Jr. is Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy for the US Naval War College, College of Distance Education Monterey Programs Office.