some airplane flights are being cancelled due to the lack of Gasoline
Im hoping somebody might be able to help me or point me in the direction for defence policy rationale. Im currently studying post grad history, predominantly of the interwar Royal Navy. In a previous life i was also an analyst for law enforcement and local government.
One of the things that strikes me viewing primary source material is just how much of interwar force requirements were, to my mind, completely made up. There does not seem to be any concerted effort taken to understand what strategic requirements actually were needed. Instead a series of dubious assertions and a mixture of overly simplistic calculations or ludicrously fake statistics are deployed to best make a case to whatever audience it is being presented to. In most cases requirements appear based upon the concept of "what is the most financial resources we feel we can extract from the government", rather than "what do we actually need". It certainly appears that policy drives the evidence rather than vice versa. For example there are many versions of "we want X ships, create me some statistics that prove to others we need X ships". Those statistics are normally ridiculous and clearly used to sell a proposal, not the basis of it.
Now, this is a sweeping generalisation, and it is also something i suspect is similar to all organisations throughout the history of governments. However im very much surprised how irregularly requirements are actually justified and evidenced. The evidence must have looked embarrassing. I can only imagine a trained economist in the treasury either laughing or banging his head against a wall.
What im interested in is a broad comparison with how modern government defence department would go about logically justifying its requirements. From my experience of other forms of government and civil service i suspect there must be substantial best practice as to HOW to go about policy and requirements evaluation and WHAT a good policy would contain. Does something like the Civil Service Green Book apply to defence policy?
I want a model of ideal defence requirements policy development or some such, to act as counterpoint to the seemingly slapdash approach i can see in the sources im looking at.
