Correlli Barnett Correlli Douglas Barnett CBE FRHistS FRSL ( born 28 June 1927 ) is an English military historian , who has also written works of economic history , particularly on the United Kingdom ' s post - war " industrial decline " . Personal life . Barnett was born on 28 June 1927 in Norbury , Surrey , the son of Douglas and Kathleen Barnett . He was educated at Trinity School of John Whitgift in Croydon and then Exeter College , Oxford where he gained a second class honours degree in Modern History with his special subject being Military History and the Theory of War , gaining an MA in 1954 . Barnett later said : " I can safely say there were only two books that I read at Oxford which strongly influenced my subsequent approach – one part of the Special Subject , and the other something which a friend recommended to me . The first was Clausewitz ' s " On War " , which was part of a Special Subject on military history and the theory of war . The other was Lewis Mumford ' s " Technics and Civilization " – if I read it again now I do not know what I would think of it , but certainly that was a starting point for my interest in looking at history in technological terms rather than in the constitutional / political terms prevalent at Oxford " . From 1945 to 1948 he served in the British Army in Palestine as a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps . In 1950 Barnett married Ruth Murby . They have two daughters . Work . Military history . Barnett worked as historical consultant and writer for the BBC television series " The Great War " ( 1963 – 64 ) . He has contributed numerous articles to various newspapers arguing against the 2003 Iraq War . He is the author of " The Desert Generals " , a book that attacked the perceived cult of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and assessed the roles of his sacked predecessors as commanders in the North Africa campaign , including Richard O ' Connor , who drove the Italians from Cyrenaica in late 1940 , and Field - Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck ( whom he called " The Victor of Alamein " ) , who forced Rommel to a halt at the First Battle of El Alamein , only to be dismissed by Winston Churchill for his pains . He pointed out that Montgomery enjoyed massive superiority of men and materiel at the Second Battle of El Alamein , and described him as an " emotional cripple " , a description , he noted in subsequent editions , borne out " in rich detail " by the Nigel Hamilton biography . However , Barnett ' s conclusions are attacked by Field Marshal Michael Carver in his book ' Dilemmas of the Desert War ' ; Carver calls Barnett " naive " and notes numerous flaws in his work . He also published " Britain and Her Army 1509 - 1970 " , which as a survey combines the political , the social and the military over the grand sweep of Britain ' s post - medieval history . In several of his works ( " The Desert Generals " , " The Swordbearers " ) Barnett portrays the British armed forces as hidebound by tradition ( e . g . cavalry regiments allegedly reluctant to adopt modern tank tactics ) and by technology inferior to that of the Germans . This position is also attacked by Carver , who notes that during Operation Crusader and during the Battle of Gazala , British technology was a match , or in some cases , better than that used by the German and Italian armies . Barnett makes this point of the British armour in the desert , and of Jellicoe ' s Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1916 . In his " Bonaparte " ( 1978 ) , he takes a more critical view of Napoleon Bonaparte than is customary , portraying him almost as a Mediterranean bandit keen to dish out crowns and honours to cronies and members of his blood family , and stressing how much many of his most famous successes owed to bluff and luck ( e . g . the fortuitous arrival of General Louis Desaix at the Battle of Marengo ) . The Pride and Fall Sequence . Barnett ' s " The Pride and Fall " sequence comprises : ( 1 ) " The Collapse of British Power " ; ( 2 ) " The Audit of War : The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation " ( published as The Pride and the Fall : The Dream and Illusion of Britain as a Great Nation in the USA ) ; ( 3 ) " The Lost Victory : British Dreams , British Realities , 1945 - 50 " ; and ( 4 ) " The Verdict of Peace : Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future " . In sum , the sequence describes the decline of British power during the twentieth century , a decline attributed by the author to a change in the values of Britain ' s governing élite from the late eighteenth century , and one which was encouraged by evangelical and non - conformist Christianity . Barnett claims that the statesmen of the eighteenth century were men " hard of mind and hard of will " who regarded " national power as the essential foundation of national independence ; commercial wealth as a means to power ; and war as among the means to all three " . Furthermore , they regarded it as " natural and inevitable that nations should be engaged in a ceaseless struggle for survival , prosperity and predominance " . The British national character , Barnett argues , underwent a profound moral revolution in the nineteenth century which came to have a deep effect on British foreign policy ; foreign policy was now to be conducted in a reverence of highly ethical standards rather than an " expedient and opportunist pursuit of England ' s interests " . Barnett came to this conclusion by beginning " with a colour - coded flow - chart which logically traced back step by step to their origins the chains of causation of all the ‘ total - strategic ’ factors in Britain ' s plight in 1940 - 1941 : political , military , economic , technological . These various chains eventually converged on a common primary cause : a mutation in the values – indeed the very character – of the British governing classes which began in the early nineteenth century . This mutation supplied the starting - point of my narrative , and thereafter , in Enoch Powell ' s words in his review , was my ‘ guiding and interpretative thread through the events of the twenty inter - war years ’ . " A . J . P . Taylor said of " The Collapse of British Power " : " This is fine fighting stuff , powerfully based on the historical records " . Robert Blake said the book was " Pungently written , perceptive and controversial " . Rab Butler said that " The book should be praised for its profound research . . . It is written in excellent prose and with great historical ability which will be valuable to historians and challenging to any of us . However , to read alone it gives a false conception of Britain as we know her today , and is the sort of work which must be read in the company of others if one is to get a clear conception of the change of British status . . . I have some sympathy with the author ' s criticism of the defects of the English education system in those vital days , not only in the arts but also in the technical field . . . What is important , however , to realize in reading Mr Barnett ' s book is that the greatness of the Victorian age was made up of very much those qualities which he describes as leading to Britain ' s decline " . Peter Hennessy claims " The Audit of War " " acquired an instant vogue when published in 1986 " . Paul Addison has called " The Audit of War " as " the most thorough and sustained assault so far " on wartime orthodoxy . Addison recognised that Barnett " is a withering critic of nineteenth - century " laissez - faire " capitalism and its legacy for twentieth - century Britain . To this extent he shares some common ground with Marxist historians and quotes E . P . Thompson with approval . But he is no Marxist himself , and his ideal model of the relationship between state and society is Bismarckian . The development of modern Germany , through the creation of a state dedicated to the pursuit of national efficiency in a ruthlessly Darwinian world , is held up by Barnett as the example which Britain could , and should , have followed . Britain ' s tradition of collectivism he interprets as a decadent , “ romanticizing humanism , anti - industrial , riddled with illusions , and perpetuated by the public - school system ” . " Addison criticised Barnett ' s thesis in " The Audit of War " as resting " on a number of simplifications . First , he divorced the history of Britain from its European context and thereby distorts the perspective . Secondly , he fails to acknowledge the political imperatives behind the reconstruction programme . Thirdly , he neglects the politics of industrial conservatism . Fourthly , his analysis is remarkably selective , singling out one factor – the welfare state – and one government , as uniquely responsible for difficulties that no other government , before or since , has surmounted " . Roger Scruton has claimed that whilst Barnett ' s thesis against public schools was set forth in " a series of brilliant books " , his view of education is mistaken : " Relevance in education is a chimerical objective and the English knew this . Who is to guess what will be relevant to a student ' s interests in ten years ' time ? Even in the applied sciences , it is not relevance that forms and transforms the curriculum , but knowledge " . Scruton goes on to say : " And for what life of the mind would Correlli Barnett have us prepared ? Certainly not one that offers what has been offered to him : namely a synoptic vision of a national identity . If we examine the complaints made by Barnett , we cannot fail to be struck by the fact that they contain no comparative judgement . Set beside which élite did the English fail so badly ? In which country of the modern world do we find the educational system which compares so favourably with the English college ? Which European nations , unhampered by the code of the gentleman , have shown us the way to successful empire building and retreated with credit from their colonies ? All such comparisons point to the amazing success of the English . By devoting their formative years to useless things , they made themselves supremely useful . And by internalising the code of honour they did not , as Barnett supposes , make themselves defenceless in a world of chicanery and crime , but endowed themselves with the only real defence that human life can offer – the instinctive trust between strangers , which enables them in whatever dangerous circumstances to act together as a team " . Politics . During the February 1974 general election Barnett wrote a letter to " The Times " : " It depresses me to the point of desperation that debate in this General Election only touches the fringes of the fundamental question before this country . This question is , of course , our chronic unsuccess as a competitive industrial power ; our continual relative decline . . . This election . . . ought to be about the fundamental reshaping of the structure and attitudes of British industry ( including our anarchic trade union organization ; by legislation if necessary ) . Yet the Conservative Party only skirts the question , while the Labour Party ignores it totally . . . Who would believe , listening to the election argument , that this country stood on the verge of final eclipse as a leading power and industrial nation ? " In 1974 Barnett said of Britain ' s economic crisis as one of low - wage , low - investment and low - productivity : . . . the peculiar structure , history and attitudes of British trades unionism is — and has been for a century — largely , although not wholly , responsible for this dismal cycle . You cannot pay high wages unless you have already achieved high productivity . You cannot achieve high productivity unless the work - force is prepared to operate modern machines to the utmost of the machines ' capacity . Yet for all the glib talk by trades union leaders about improving productivity , everyone knows that British industry is fettered by demarcations and other restrictive practices aimed at preserving somebody ' s “ property rights ” in a particular task . . . the necessary switch to a high - wage economy cannot be achieved in isolation , by the process of “ free collective bargaining ” ( ie , extortion of money by menaces or force ) , but only in step with a parallel switch to high productivity and investment . Are Mr Scanlon ' s members — and other British workers — prepared to match the efficiency , flexibility , cooperativeness and zeal of German workers — or do they really simply want more money for going on as they are ? After the Marxist historian ' s E . P . Thompson planned Dimbleby Lecture on the Cold War was cancelled in 1981 , Barnett asked whether he ( Thompson ) saw : . . . any connexion between the internal nature of the Soviet empire as an oligarchic tyranny and its external policies ? As a former communist he must know that the Soviet regime is of its very nature and from earliest origins a minority conspiracy that has gained and maintained power by force and trickery ; that because of this inherent nature it always has been and remains terrified of independent centres of thought or power , whether within the Russian empire or beyond its present reach . It is the conjunction of such a regime , and its manifested wish to dominate others , with armed forces powerful beyond the needs of mere defence that is the engine of the present “ armaments race ” . Who believes that Nato and its armaments would exist if Russia had been a Western - style open society these last 60 years ? The first requirement for large - scale nuclear or any other kind of disarmament is the withering away of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union . In 1982 Barnett said of Britain ' s Trident missile system that : The American decision to sell us Trident only makes sense on the supposition that Washington absolutely trusts Britain to be a docile ally which would not step out of line . . . The question therefore arises of how closely Great Britain wishes to align herself with the United States over the next 40 years ; of what unstated " quid pro quos " by way of support for American policy outside Europe may be involved . In a word , is Trident a reassertion of the “ special relationship ” ? If that is the case , how well does such a relationship with the United States marry with the United Kingdom ' s membership of the EEC , and with her European policy in general ? Are we not in danger of falling into mid - Atlantic between Europe and America ? And should we not , at this period in our history , be aligning ourselves clearly with Europe in evolving a distinct European world policy , rather than leaning towards Washington . After Britain ' s victory in the Falklands War Barnett spoke of the " courage , professionalism and ultimate success of our Falklands task force " but added : The lesson of the Falklands crises is not that we need a blue - water surface fleet in case of similar residual bits of pink on the map come under attack , but that we should bring out foreign policy into congruence with our defence policy and shed such unprofitable bits of pink in good time . The real guilty men of the crisis are the MPs of both parties who , in the past , blocked possible deals with the Argentine with emotional cries of “ sell - out ” without apparently reckoning the possible cost of defending the Falklands against the value of the islands to the United Kingdom . Can it now be really argued that a capability to do another Falklands somewhere in the wide oceans is more important to our security of this country than the preservation of Western Europe , our own outer rampart and our greatest market ? Barnett said of the Franks Report which investigated the Falklands War : " . . . the British Establishment has sat in judgment on the British Establishment and found it not guilty . . . What is therefore needed is a critical examination of the Foreign Office as an institution : its collective " house style " and outlook ; the personalities and characters of its leading figures . Only then shall we understand how British policy evolves in terms of a specific situation like the Falklands " . In an interview in 1996 Barnett stated his beliefs that Britain ' s future lay with a form of federated Europe , including the adoption of the European single currency . He criticised Eurosceptics as " emotional idealists nostalgic for a lost past " . Writing in " The Spectator " in 1998 , Barnett criticised the RAND Corporation for its " naive belief that technology can solve any human problem " , citing its support the Revolution in Military Affairs theory . Instead of this , Barnett argues that Carl von Clausewitz ' s " Theory of War " as a continuation of politics still holds true , giving examples such as the Provisional IRA ' s campaign ( " the classic contemporary demonstration of Clausewitzian principles in action " ) and Yugoslavia ( " where Nato has simply frozen a war which will certainly break out again if and when the intervention forces leave " ) . Barnett claimed that the world will in the future continue to be " an arena of complex rivalries and direct collisions of interest rather than a ' world order ' or a ' world community ' , and that human groups engaged in such rivalries will from time to time resort to force as an instrument of their politics " . Barnett concluded the article by claiming that the United Nations was an " expensive figment of liberal wishful thinking " . As a military historian Barnett has often written on various contemporary conflicts involving Britain . He supported the British attempt to regain the Falkland Islands during the Falklands War of 1982 , but also opposed British participation in the Kosovo War of 1999 , arguing that Yugoslavia was " a sovereign state committing no aggression beyond its own borders , [ the military action against it ] is a breach of the UN Charter and likewise of the North Atlantic Treaty " . Furthermore , on 30 March 1999 he claimed that the wars ' course had vindicated his original stance on " Nato ' s ill - thought - out policy , based on emotion and simplistic moralising . . . In particular , it has plunged the Kosovans , the objects of Nato ' s solicitude , into their present calamity " . Later that year Barnett returned to the subject , saying that the 80 day - long air campaign against Serbian forces demonstrated " that air power is a clumsy means of political coercion " and " that Bosnia should have served as a warning to us not to get entangled over Kosovo , and that if we did get entangled , we would finish up to our necks in trouble – which we have " . In early August 2002 Barnett wrote to " The Daily Telegraph " opposing the American plan of invading Iraq , rejecting the claim that those opposed to the war were the equivalent of the appeasers of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s . He claimed that whereas Nazi Germany was disrupting the balance of power in Europe , Saddam Hussein ' s Iraq posed no threat to the region . Moreover he argued that the opposition stemmed from the view that it " would be a breach of international law to attack a sovereign state and member of the UN that is not currently guilty of any external aggression ; and two , that the execution of such an attack could lead to prolonged and unforeseeable adverse military and political consequences " . In December of that year Barnett argued that in the light of the British Government ' s decision to allow the United States to use bases in Britain for its proposed anti - missile defence system ( " Star Wars Mk II " ) Britain " should surely re - examine the utility to this country of the " special relationship " with America at the present degree of intimacy " . In January 2003 Barnett wrote that Britain ' s close relationship with the United States put Britain " in greater danger from Islamic terrorism rather than confers security against it . If we join in an attack on Iraq as America ' s satellite , that danger will become more acute " . After the Iraqi Army ' s defeat by coalition forces , Barnett claimed that those " who predicted a prolonged messy struggle in the streets have been confounded " and that he did not believe Saddam Hussein " would be so foolish as to deploy the Republican Guard in the open to be smashed by overwhelming US firepower " . However Barnett viewed the war as threatening " the very basis of the present world order of sovereign states . We must remember that the United Nations was set up to prevent 1930s - style cross - frontier aggression " . He further claimed that the reasons behind the invasion gave ammunition to states like Iran and North Korea to launch invasions themselves . Writing in August 2003 Barnett claimed that his predictions on the aftermath of the war had come to pass , saying that " some of us are on record since summer 2002 as warning that an attack on Iraq would end with the attackers bogged down in a politico - military mess of some kind or other " . In September that same year Barnett likened the Iraq War to the Suez Crisis of 1956 . In December 2003 Barnett published an article in " The Spectator " , asserting that Al - Qaeda was winning the " war on terror " — a label Barnett rejects because " you cannot in logic wage war against a phenomenon , only against a specific enemy . . . America is combating not ' terrorism ' but a specific terrorist network , al - Qa ' eda " . Barnett further claimed that terrorist organisations are " entirely rational in purpose and conduct " in that they conform to Clausewitzian ideas . He claims the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were mistaken in that they " opened up long American flanks vulnerable to increasing guerrilla attack : a classic case of strategic overextension " and that Saddam Hussein ' s regime had no links to Al - Qaeda . He claims that the United States Army in Iraq should be replaced with UN troops from Muslims states to quell resentment and to " isolate the insurgents " . In order to defeat Al - Qaeda , Barnett argues , the United States should " recognise that combating terrorists is essentially a job for special forces like the SAS , for the police or gendarmerie ( or troops trained in a gendarmerie role ) and , above all , for good intelligence ( meaning , at best , spies inside al - Qa ' eda cells ) – and not a job for heavy - weight hi - tech firepower " . After Lord Hutton published his report in early 2004 , Barnett wrote that Lord Hutton ' s " conclusions are totally at variance with the wealth of documentary evidence and witness statements presented to his inquiry and published on the internet " , citing Lord Hutton ' s claim that " there was no dishonourable or underhand strategy " in leaking Dr . David Kelly ' s name when Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence " conspired " to do so . Furthermore he argued that Lord Hutton ' s " judgement is so unbalanced in its treatment of the BBC and of Downing Street and the MoD as to be worthless " except as a way for Tony Blair to " escape " from an investigation on " whether or not he did take us to war on a false prospectus " . After fellow military historian Sir John Keegan demanded to know why those who opposed the Iraq War wanted Saddam Hussein to remain in power , Barnett replied that " America , Britain , the Middle East and the wider world would be vastly better off in terms of peace and stability if Saddam were still gripping Iraq , and we were still gripping Saddam as we had been from 1991 to 2003 " . He explained that the condition of the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein " is of no relevance " to non - Iraqis ; secondly , he argued that Saddam Hussein " had presented no international danger since he was soundly beaten in the 1991 Gulf war . He possessed no weapons of mass destruction . . . and he was subject to close Anglo - American surveillance of the " no - fly zone " " ; thirdly , " Saddam had provided a highly competent ally , if a tacit one , in the so - called " war against global terror " " due to his opposition to Al - Qaeda . During the 2005 general election Barnett argued that George W . Bush and his friends " were bent on toppling Saddam Hussein in pursuit of an ideological mission to convert the Middle East to democracy " before Bush came to power in January 2001 and that the September 11 , 2001 attacks " simply provided them with a convenient cover story " . Barnett concluded by saying that Blair was " wholly unworthy of our trust . This is the central fact of this election , and we should vote accordingly " . In late September 2005 Barnett argued that " ‘ to cut and run ’ [ from Iraq ] would in fact be the morally brave thing to do " since the " current strategy is failing to produce the hoped - for results , but on the contrary is running ever deeper into difficulties and danger , and yet with the final result all in doubt " . Barnett contrasted Blair to his predecessor , Clement Attlee , and his military withdrawals in India and Palestine , claiming that no British lives were lost in them . In October 2005 he said of Margaret Thatcher : Ever since the war we had lived in a form of state socialism with tremendous controls and regulations over economic and social life . I can remember when you couldn ' t even buy a house abroad without special permission from the Bank of England . People who think the pre - Thatcher years were a golden age really didn ' t live through them : just ask anyone who rode on the clapped - out railways or tried to make a telephone call when the Post Office ran the phones . When she came to power she transformed the country . The moribund industries relying on taxpayer funding - all gone . The trade unions - all gone . She abolished exchange controls , completely liquidated the state sector of industry and threw the economy wide open . It ' s certainly true that she was so powerful a person that cabinet government in the collegiate sense began to diminish . More and more they were like a collection of staff officers around the general . Blair has taken that further and deliberately adopted a presidential style in every possible way . The main difference was that she had genuine feeling , conviction and leadership . In my view , during the last eight years , Blair has proved a very plausible conman who promises much but hasn ' t achieved it . During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in mid - 2006 Barnett wrote that it was " grotesquely out of proportion " to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the damage inflicted on Israel by Hezbollah . He argued that Israel " was born out of a terrorist struggle in 1945 - 48 against Britain " and that the " Arab resentment of Israeli hegemony . . . powers both Hamas and Hezbollah as they follow the path of terrorism first mapped out by the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvei Leumi in the 1940s " . Honours . Barnett is a fellow of Churchill College , Cambridge and from 1977 to 1995 he was the Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre . He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature , the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts . From 1973 to 1985 he was a member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies . He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire . Influence . There were some Cabinet Minister s in Margaret Thatcher ' s government who were influenced by Barnett ' s works . Sir Keith Joseph , Education Secretary from 1981 to 1986 , admired Barnett ' s work about the anti - business culture in education and in an interview with Anthony Seldon he proclaimed : " I ' m a Correlli Barnett supporter " . Nigel Lawson , Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989 , also cited Barnett ' s views on education as an influence , specifically " The Audit of War " . In 1995 when Michael Heseltine became Deputy Prime Minister in John Major ' s Cabinet , he presented each member of the Cabinet with copies of Barnett ' s " The Lost Victory " . Barnett ' s comment that " an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three " was cited by Noam Chomsky in his essay " A Predator Becomes More Dangerous Once Wounded " .