Cable does not really address dogs that did not bark that is, the absence of naval force, or more properly, the failure to use it. A counterfactual argument is usually difficult to make convincingly. However, the Royal Navy s failure to stop Italy from using the Suez Canal in 1935 during the Ethiopian campaign, and the impact of that failure on the European political scene, would appear to be a good case in point. It has been thought that the absence of strong Royal Navy forces in Singapore in 1941 played into Japanese political calculations. This would seem a good area for inquiry as the United States enters the Quadrennial Defense Review season.
Cable ends with some lessons and speculations.
These are, unfortunately, not sharply focused. As he admits, it is hard to discern any real patterns from his historical survey, and even if any exist, the stockbroker s warning that future results cannot be predicted from past performance applies. At best, if anything approaching a principle emerges from the confused record of the past it may be that the natural political environment for navies, their raison d tre , is the unforeseen. . . . Warships allow choice, naval force is a flexible instrument. The book is a good short summary of the political uses of naval force, both intended and unintended, over the past fifty years.