Table Of ContentPublishedbyMacmillaninassociationwiththeInternationalInstituteforStrategic
Studies
StudiesinInternationalSecunry
10 RobertThompson:DEFEATINGCOMMUNISTINSURGENCY:
ExperiencesfromMalayaandVietnam
13 J.M.Lee:AFRICANARMIESANDCIVILORDER
16 JamesCable:GUNBOATDIPLOMACY, 1919-1979
17 RobertJackson:SOUTHASIANCRISIS:India-Pakistan-Bangladesh
18 Adam Roberts:NATIONSINARMS:TheTheoryand PracticeofTerritorial
Defence(Secondedition)
20 Lawrence Freedman:THEEVOLUTIONOFNUCLEARSTRATEGY
21 GwynHarries-Jenkins(editor):ARMED FORCESANDTHEWELFARE
SOCIETIES:Challenges inthe 1980s
22 HannsW.Maull:RAWMATERIALS,ENERGYANDWESTERN
SECURITY
23 PaulDibb:THESOVIETUNION:The IncompleteSuperpower
24 DonaldC.Daniel:ANTI-SUBMARINEWARFAREANDSUPERPOWER
STRATEGICSTABILITY
25 HedleyBull:THECONTROLOFTHEARMSRACE
26 JonathanAlfordand KennethHunt(editors): EUROPEINTHEWESTERN
ALLIANCE:TowardsaEuropeanDefenceEntity?
27 StephenJ.Flanagan:NATO'SCONVENTIONALDEFENCES:Optionsfor
theCentralRegion
28 RobertJaster:THEDEFENCEOF WHITEPOWER
InternationalInstituteforStrategicStudiesconferencepapers
ChristophBertram(editor)
I NEWCONVENTIONALWEAPONSANDEAST-WESTSECURITY
2 PROSPECTSFORSOVIETPOWER INTHE 1980s
3 THEFUTUREOF STRATEGICDEFENCE
4 THIRD-WORLDCONFLICTANDINTERNATIONALSECURITY
5 AMERICA'SSECURITYINTHE 1980s
6 DEFENCEANDCONSENSUS:TheDomesticAspectsofWesternSecurity
Robert O'Neill(editor):
7 THECONDUCTOF EAST-WESTRELATIONS INTHE1980s
8 NEWTECHNOLOGYANDWESTERNSECURITY POLICY
9 DOCTRINE,THEALLIANCEANDARMSCONTROL
10 EASTASIA,THEWEST ANDINTERNATIONALSECURITY
11 PROSPECTSFORSECURITYINTHEMEDITERRANEAN
BarryBuzan:
ANINTRODUCTIONTOSTRATEGICSTUDIES:MilitaryTechnologyand
InternationalRelations
FrancoisdeRose:
EUROPEANSECURITYANDFRANCE
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NATIONS
IN ARMS
The Theory and Practice of
Territorial Defence
--_.....~8~8__... _
Adam Roberts
Foreword by
McGeorge Bundy
Second (Revised and Enlarged) Edition
M
inassociationwith
MACMILLAN INTERNATIONALINSTITUTEFOR
PRESS STRATEGICSTUDIES
©TheInternationalInstituteforStrategicStudies1976,1986
Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmission
ofthispublicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission.
Noparagraphofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copied
ortransmittedsavewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordance
withtheprovisionsoftheCopyrightAct 1956(asamended),
orunderthetermsofanylicencepermittinglimitedcopying
issuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency,33-4AlfredPlace,
LondonWCIE7DP.
Anypersonwhodoesany unauthorisedactinrelationto
thispublicationmay beliabletocriminalprosecutionand
civilclaimsfordamages.
Firstedition(Chatto&Windus) 1976
Second(revised andenlarged)edition(Macmillan) 1986
Reprinted(withcorrections) 1988
Publishedby
THEMACMILLANPRESSLTD
Houndmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG21 2XS
and London
Companiesand representatives
throughouttheworld
British LibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
Roberts,Adam
Nationsinarms:thetheoryand practiceof
territorialdefence.-2nd(rev.andenl.) ed.
-(Studiesininternationalsecurity)
I.Strategy-History-20thcentury
I.Title II. Series
355.4'5'0904 UI63
ISBN978-0-333-37307-1 ISBN 978-1-349-07445-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-07445-7
Contents
Foreword byMcGeorgeBundy page 7
Introduction toSecond Edition 9
Chapter
I Concepts ofTerritorial Defence
2 European Neutrals and Territorial Defence
3 Sweden: The Sources ofSecurity
4 Sweden's Total Defence
5 Yugoslavia: The Background to General People's
Defence 124
6 The Yugoslav Doctrine of General People's Defence 172
7 The Limits ofTerritorial Defence 218
8 An Alternative to Existing Forces 248
Postscript:TerritorialDefence in the 1980s 278
Index 302
MAPS
Sweden: Major Areas ofPopulation 300
2 Yugoslavia: Administrative Divisions 3°1
Note
ACCENTS
I have omitted accents from Yugoslav names and words.
FOOTNOTES
In each chapter the first reference to a book or journal gives full
publication details. Subsequent references in the same chapter
contain just the author's name and the short title of the book or
article.
The footnotes are intended as a general bibliographical guide
to the subjects covered, and all authors quoted are included in the
index. Hence there isno separate bibliography.
Foreword to the Second Edition
In the field ofmodern military analysis, books whose value goes up
as they grow older are rare; preoccupation with current issues only
too often bends analysis away from enduring reality toward
temporary and even ephemeral matters. Nations in Arms is an
exception. It is not simply that interest in the possibilities of
territorial defence has increased in the years since 1976.Nor can it
be claimed that the book itself, as one reads it again, proves to have
identified a sovereign solution to the problem of maintaining non
threatening and self-respecting defence in the nuclear age. Mr
Roberts never advanced any such claim, and indeed his new
introductory and closing comments seem to suggest a present
position somewhat more subtle than the one set forth in the main
text.
The enduring virtues of Nations in Arms are as clear as they are
unusual. First, it is a careful, honest, and essentially sympathetic
account of a significant means of attending to national defence
which has been widely and unwisely neglected in most nuclear
weapons states. Second,it rests centrallyon a closeconsiderationof
the theory and practice of two highly civilized countries without
nuclearweapons which have been remarkablysuccessful in protect
ing their peace and their independence in the presence oflarge and
expansive neighbours. Third, and in a measure paradoxically, it is
informed by a sensitive awareness that ifit is to be relevant in the
age of nuclear weapons, territorial defence should itself be assessed
as a possibleform'of'unconventionaldeterrence'.Itisa book about
one way of escaping or reducing the danger of defending one's
countrybyapocalypticthreats, butitisin nosensean escapistbook.
Mr Roberts is right, I think, to let his original text stand
unrevised.He has thus left intactanotherofitsspecial qualities-its
freshness. Tohavechosen this topicin 1967,in theheydayofflexible
response, was in itselfanactofboldness, and tohave had it as one's
first concern for the following nine years-the years ofdetente and
SALT-was to have it almost to oneself, at least in the Anglo
Americanstrategiccommunity. The book reads thatway still. Itisa
report to the main body of English-speaking defence scholars on a
phenomenon ofgreatinterestwhich Mr Roberts has examinedwith
care, as most ofthem have not.
And now, ten years later, his analysis commends itselfstill more,
not indeed as a magic pill, but as a bright light on one part of the
7
NATIONS IN ARMS
spectrumofourpossibilitiesforkeepingpeace. Thereneweddebates
ofthese last years have had the effect ofshakingold orthodoxies and
raising newdoubts aboutourunderstandingofwhatit takes to keep
a country's peace. More and more we have had to recognize that
there is danger in some kinds of menacing strength. We have also
learned that while deterrence has to do mainly with what an
adversary believes, self-confidence-what Michael Howard calls
'reassurance'-has to do mainly with what we ourselves believe.
Many ofushave come to believe that the trulyself-confidentsociety
canbeat once less threatenedand less threatening.Thespectrumof
relevant inquiryhas widened, even forquite traditionalanalysts,not
only from nuclear weapons to other military forces, but out to
questions of political, social, and even moral behaviour. This
growing recognition of a wider range ofrelevant issues may have
created anewandwelcomingmarketforwhat MrRobertsfound out
ten years ago, and also for the thoughtful postscript in which he
draws new lessons from later experience. Even for Sweden and
Yugoslavia, territorial defence may not be a single sovereign
remedy, but what citizens might be able and ready to do in their
own defence is no longer, ifit ever was, a question that it is safe to
put aside as irrelevant to the keeping of the peace-not in any
country.
Nations in Anns is a book no careful student of defence policy
should neglect.
McGeorge Bundy
14June 1985
8
Introduction to the Second Edition
This book was first published in 1976, and is now reissued
unaltered, except that the Foreword and Postscript are both new,
this introduction has been rewritten with the rather lengthy
acknowledgements omitted, and a few printer's errors in the text
have been corrected. The strong temptation to amend and improve
the substanceofthe text (Chapters 1-8) has been resisted,not least
because it could easily in the end have resulted in a book that was
neither the 1976 version, with all its faults, nor completely new.
Instead, up-datings, new materials and second thoughts are in the
Postscript.
Several recent developments, discussed in the Postscript, high
light the case for territorialdefenceasat leastone centralcomponent
of the defence policies of states and even ofalliances. In particular,
the series of crises in NATO in the past decade over the alliance's
nuclearpolicydoes mean thatanapproachinvolvinglessrelianceon
nuclear weapons--Qr at least on the first use thereof-should be
considered.The sterility ofEast-West arms controlnegotiations in
the pastdecade reinforces the case forsuch an approach.Thewhole
idea of seeking to control the arms race through international
negotiations between adversaries has run into problems similar to
those encountered in earlier eras, and while this idea should not be
abandoned, it isunwise to placeexclusive emphasison it.Thereisa
need, at the very least, to consider also an approach to defence
which is rooted in the idea of restraint, and which depends in large
measure on unilateral (or alliance-wide) decisions about what kind
ofsecurity policy we in the West actually want.
However, if this book carries implications for NATO and its
member states, it does so also for the Alliance's critics. It is not
enough for opponents of NATO's nuclear policies merely to
condemn. Peace movements have repeatedly failed, whether in the
1930sor in the 1980s, because they were not willing to specify what
kind ofsecurity policies they were prepared to accept. Theirfailure
to command majority support on central issues of defence policy
may be due, at least in part, to their failure to go beyond negative
criticism.
Yet during thepastforty years, in which stateshave been learning
to live with the bomb, some at least have also been learning to live
without it. One conception of national defence has played a
significant part in limiting the reliance placed on nuclear weapons:
9
