Il Committee of Imperial Defence britannico e gli oneri della sicurezza comune (1902-1914)

The institution of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1902) was the most concrete effort taken by London to move away from the "adhocratic" course of action followed until that time in the field of the security policy. The CID was tasked to promote a better coordination between Army and Navy, and between armed forces and civilian power, including in its structure the chiefs of the different branches of the services. At the same time, the Committee had to develop a solution to the problem of imperial defence, promoting and strengthening intelligence and study and finding a balance between the needs of India and Great Britain, whose leaders were constantly engaged in a difficult tug-of-war for the allocation of the military budget. In this perspective, the CID was supposed to act as a new forum of strategic planning, elaborating -– together with the Admiralty and the envisaged Army General Staff –- a shared model to cope with the increasing threats affecting British national security and to provide an efficient sharing of men, means, and capitals. However, the action of the CID was affected by a long string of problems, partially stemming from the diffidence of British political culture for the issues of strategic planning, partially from the "relative decline" of British national power and the economic and commercial factors that fuelled and, at the same time, were fuelled by this decline. This state of things had long-lasting effects. The birth of the CID and the transformation that the British Armed forces faced in the first years of the XX century led to the abandonment of the traditional strategy that had made India the pivot of imperial security, and to the shift to the so-called "continental commitment". More broadly, the CID, together with the other institutions outlined in the works of the Esher Committee, acted as the Trojan horse that, in the years preceding the First World War, led to the abandonment (or, at least, to a massive reorientation) of the "Asian" and "navalistic" dimension of of London's security policy.