ABSTRACT
Defence policy has undergone considerable change over the years and yet there is much continuity in ideas and practices. A fundamental look at defence policy, as occurred in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), is a bold move. After the victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo, the British armed forces were engaged for the next forty years mainly in small actions in the expanding Empire around the world. The Crimean and Boer Wars, however, revealed fundamental inadequacies in the army, which triggered reviews to discover what had gone wrong. The formulation process leading to a defence strategy in the Second World War is a special case in that the war aim was not in doubt and provided a unity of purpose not always achievable in peacetime. Defence strategy and military policy was still generated by the Chiefs of Staff Committee system that had worked so well during the War.
