The Colonial Experience of the British Empire of the Interbellum era and the RAND Corporation at the End of the XX Century: the Transfer of Ideas.

Abstract

The author analyzes the features of the expert activity of the RAND Corporation at the end of the twentieth century, aimed at studying the colonial experience of counterinsurgency activities of the British Empire during the interwar period. The position of the American analytical center on the possibility of using such experience in modern conditions is considered. A comparison is made of the conclusions of RAND Corporation experts on a similar issue in an earlier historical period - the Cold War era. The reasons for the change in the views of the experts of the analytical center on the question of the potential possibility of applying the colonial experience of the counterinsurgency of the British Empire are revealed. Thus, the characteristic features of the academic examination of US foreign policy decisions at the end of the twentieth century are analyzed. The analysis showed that the RAND Corporation considered this experience useful to the United States, since this analytical center believed that the United States after the end of the Cold War found itself in the same position as the United Kingdom after the First World War. At the same time, the United States repeats the same mistakes that the British Empire authorities made – reducing spending on the army, shifting the emphasis from using infantry in anti-insurgency operations to modern weapons, spreading pacifist ideas and reducing the level of military training. Also, the RAND Corporation for the first time evaluated the colonial experience of the British Empire in a negative way, thereby advocating a return transfer. The United States of the late twentieth century, according to the analytical center, should make decisions not similar to those taken by the British authorities in the interwar period, but opposite to them. This approach is explained by the fact that the RAND Corporation had to provide information support for increasing spending on the US armed forces and maintaining large contingents of troops.