James Cable

Sir James Eric Cable ( November 15, 1920 - September 27, 2001 ) was a British officer , diplomat and naval historian .

Origin and education

Cable's father was active in the British consular service, he attended the Stowe School and then studied modern languages ​​at Corpus Christi College (Oxford) , which he graduated in 1941. In the same year he joined the Royal Corps of Signals and advanced to major during World War II .

Diplomatic career

In 1947 he entered the diplomatic service. His first post abroad was Batavia in the Dutch East Indies , where he experienced Indonesia's independence .

In 1952 he was transferred to Helsinki , where he met his future wife. In 1954 he took part in the Geneva Indochina Conference. From 1956 to 1959 he served in Budapest , 1960 as consul in Quito . From 1963 to 1966 he served in the Foreign Office in the Southeast Asia Department , and from 1966 to 1969 he was a diplomatic legal advisor in Beirut . At the end of the 1960s he published two diplomatic studies under the pseudonym Hugo Grant.

Apparently in 1970 he took a sabbatical year and did his doctorate with a study on gunboat policy , Gunboat Diplomacy , which between 1971 and 1994 experienced a total of three extended editions and finally included the study period up to 1991.

From 1971 to 1975 he was chief of the planning staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). He ended his diplomatic work as ambassador to Finland and retired in 1980. His last work was published in 1998.

Marine historical studies

In contrast to naval war theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Sir Julian Corbett , Cable, following Carl von Clausewitz's studies on naval power, concentrated on the use of maritime power as a means of diplomacy in the context of gunboat diplomacy , which he timeless defined as

... the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage, or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state.

Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy , 1971, p. 21.

This definition does not limit gunboat politics as a historical phenomenon to the time of high imperialism before the First World War , but assumes that it also exists in the present; regardless of the fact that the gunboat was replaced as a technical instrument of power in the course of the 20th century by cruisers , battleships and finally aircraft carriers and thus sea-based air forces . He viewed the international intervention in Shanghai in 1927 as a high point of gunboat policy :

In 1927, for instance, when 35 warships and 40 000 troops assembled to protect the International Concession at Shanghai from the militant Chinese nationalists whose forces had earlier seized the British concession at Hankow ( Wuhan ), Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States were the largest but not the only contributors. There were also ships from the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

Cable, Political influence of Naval Force , p. 115.

Shortly before his death, he regarded the US intervention in Monrovia in April 1996 and the deployment of British, American and Italian naval forces in Albania in March 1997 as the latest examples of gunboat policy (ibid., P. 160). Cable also considered the use of naval forces in international conflicts to be necessary for the future, especially with regard to the future exploitation of maritime mineral resources:

When the sea itself holds those prizes - more likely in the future, with oil, fish, or manganese nodules, than in the past - or when the sea offers access or a convenient arena, there may be a case for preferring the use of naval force to other expedients. Maritime conflict is easier to limit and control than it is on land or in the air. It also inflicts less collateral damage. Warships, even if with more difficulty and at a greater distance than formerly, can pose a threat and sustain it without commitment, wait, gain time for diplomacy. If prospects look poor, warships are easier to withdraw. Warships allow choice, naval force is a flexible instrument.

Cable, Political influence of Naval Force , 174.

Awards

In 1967 he was accepted as Commander in the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). In 1976 he was raised to the British nobility as Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) and from then on carried the suffix "Sir".

Works

• As Hugo Grant: Britain in tomorrow's world. Principles of foreign policy , London (Chatto & Windus) 1969. ISBN 0-7011-1488-6
• As Hugo Grant: Appearance and reality in international relations , London (Chatto & Windus) 1970. ISBN 0-7011-1650-1
• Gunboat Diplomacy. Political applications of limited naval force , London 1971. ISBN 0-7011-1755-9 . 2nd edition under the title Gunboat Diplomacy, 1919–1979 etc. , 1981, 3rd edition Gunboat Diplomacy 1919-1991 etc. , 1994.
• The Royal Navy and the siege of Bilbao , Cambridge / London / New York 1979. ISBN 0-521-22516-7
• Britain's Naval Future , London a. a. 1983. ISBN 0-333-34685-8
• Diplomacy at Sea , London a. a. 1985. ISBN 0-333-37563-7 .
• The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina , Basingstoke et al. a. 1986. ISBN 0-333-38746-5
• Navies in violent peace , Basingstoke (Macmillan) 1989. ISBN 0-333-45929-6
• Intervention at Abadan: Plan Buccaneer , Basingstoke / London 1991. ISBN 0-333-53633-9
• The political influence of naval force in history , Basingstoke et al. a. 1998. ISBN 0-333-67169-4

Web links

• Obituary in The Guardian, October 30, 2001
• Obituary in The Telegraph, October 13, 2001
• The grave site in Cambridge