The Organisation of Defence and its Relationship with Strategy
Started in the 2000s, the foundation of Dr James W.E. Smith's work including a MRes and PhD.
Contents
Introduction and Overview
This work is the foundation of all others a process that I have been researching since the 2000s that explored how the fundamental organisation of defence interfaces with policy making and specifically, thinking about strategic and acting strategically. Central to this, has been two qualifications which have provided new histories of the creation of the UK Ministry of Defence and US Department of Defence. A process known as defence unification which saw the free-standing military departments, such as the British Admiralty abolished in favour of an amalgnated defence department. This research has gone to the core of defence thought, process and national-strategy making, asking key questions about the future and past organisation of defence and its impact on broad spectrum of issues from the dividing line between victory and defeat, civil-military relations, the future of the military and navies, and often difficult avoided topics like inter -service rivalry, ‘seablindness’, civilian oversight and professional issues like doctrine, education, national policy and more.
Critically, the work has challenged thought on defence organisation past and present, strategic theory, and introduced understanding through terms like ‘Art of Admiralty’. It goes on to ask what is the future of defence organisation is, how many military services should there be, and is strategy just an academic ivory tower pursuit in a world of politicised defence and complex, questionably working, bureaucratic systems and processes behind contemporary UK and US national defence and security organisation.
The entry for the British Library and US Congress have used this descriptor for my work:
James W.E. Smith offers the first comprehensive analysis of defence unification—the process of merging separate military ministries into a single ministry—as a historically grounded phenomenon that reshaped strategic thought and directly influenced national strategy development. It had centuries-long historical roots, based on British and Prussian military operations and high-level governmental administrative functions driven by national geographic imperatives, yet its implementation was shaped by U.S. institutional frameworks that forced the schism between maritime and land-based strategic paradigms to become the underlying foundation for defence unification. In the British context, it explores how prior to 1964, the freestanding ministries—the Admiralty, War Office, and Air Ministry—that represented institutional, strategic, operational, and cultural concerns to Cabinet were abolished through defence unification. This process was only made possible by factors, agendas, politics, bitter rivalry, personal ambition, and complex national/international realities faced by Britain between 1945 and 1964, resulting in the creation of the Ministry of Defence and reshaping the Royal Navy. It also presents the first analysis of U.S. defence unification, giving the U.S. Navy Department’s perspective for the first time: one that reconfigures understanding of U.S. unification, challenges official narratives, and demonstrates how the process originated in the United States—transforming navies and strategic frameworks, influencing the British process. Furthermore, it reveals why governments recognised the critical interplay between defence organisation and the highest levels of decision-making in national strategy formulation—a perspective extending from Henry VIII’s 1546 Council of the Marine to the contemporary era. Crucially, it argues that the U.K. Ministry of Defence’s creation was contingent, and how the Admiralty—the oldest service ministry—became the sole advocate for a national strategy that, while historically effective, faced existential threat under unified defence structures, providing insight for future debates across a range of national defence topics in the U.K, U.S. and beyond.
Crucially, this work demonstrates that the unresolved tensions from defence unification remain pivotal—proving the process is enduring, far from finished in the UK and US, and continues to shape contemporary defence, the future of the military services, and the development of seabed-to-space national strategy and doctrine.
Outputs
You will see the threads of decades of research throughout many of my outputs. A full record can be found here.
Currently this project is moving towards:
Forthcoming Monograph.
A sample of outputs:
USNI Proceedings (2025) | “Defense Organization and the the Future of the United States Navy”
The Naval Review Journal (2025) | “Endgame for Seablindness: defence organisation & the future of the Royal Navy & United States Navy”
The Naval Review Journal (2024) | “Seablindness and the Royal Navy after 1964”
The Naval Review Journal (2024 | Reforge Britannia’s Trident or Close the Shop?
The Naval Review Journal (2023) | “The Art of Admiralty”
The Australian Naval Review (2023) | “The Art of Admiralty, Maritime Strategy, and the Island Nations: Britain, Australia, and Japan”
Center for Maritime Strategy (2025) | “Learning from the Royal Navy: Lessons for the USN on Sea Power Politics”
King’s College London (2025) | “The Future of Defence Organisation Resurfaces?”
War on the Rocks (2020) | “Space Force Creation Warrants Revisiting Defence Unification”
Lecture: ‘UK and US Defence Unification: The interface of Strategy and Policy ’ (Institute for Historical Research)
Lecture: ‘The Creation of UK and US Defence Ministries: Power, Politics and Agenda’ (King’s College London)
Lecture: ‘Two Steps from Abolition: The U.S Navy and U.S Defence Unification 1945-1964.’ (US Naval Academy, 2019)
Academic Qualifications
Doctorate in War and Strategic Studies (PhD), completed 2021 King’s College London.
PhD thesis title: Deconstructing the Seapower State: Britain, America and Defence Unification.
Supervisor and Mentor: Professor Andrew Lambert.
PhD thesis Abstract: This research examines the relationship between defence organisation and the development of strategy and strategic theory; it does this in the context of the period of defence unification between 1941 and 1964. Defence unification was one of the defining changes in British and American defence and government, if not the defining one. Only by studying unification as a fundamental change can its integral relationship to the ongoing development of strategic thought, execution of strategy and strategic theory be understood. This thesis is situated at the interface of organisational development, intellectual-educational process, political-cultural-military history, strategic studies and civil-military relations. The thesis explores the fundamental structural change in British and American defence following the abolition of the Admiralty and freestanding US Department of the Navy. It provides a new history of British and American defence unification. It challenges current perspectives on freestanding service ministries’ function by reopening debates such as the so-called ‘British Way of Warfare’ and ‘Continental Commitment.’ It contributes to this debate by demonstrating the impact and influence of unification on the broader British and American national understanding of strategy––including the devaluation of the maritime perspective and sea, naval power, seapower and maritime strategy––and its relationship high policy decision-making in regards to national defence and security from doctrine through to strategy and policy. All of defence and security were impacted by defence unification, such as intelligence, wargaming, and nuclear weapons, through to new technology and issues such as space. The research proved that the higher organisation of defence often resulted in the rejection of experience, especially strategic. This research is a contribution to ongoing theoretical debates about maritime strategy, sea and naval power, grand and national strategy based on reconsidering outdated narratives of defence unification and reopening debates that contrast the significance of continental and maritime strategy and its interface with political power, decision making and ultimately the ‘battle’ for a national strategy.
Master of Research (MRes) Applied History, awarded 2015.
MRes thesis title: ‘The End of Admiralty and its Impact on British Defence Policy 1955-1964’.
An ‘MRes’ is an advanced postgraduate degree focused on research and research methodological skills. It sits higher than a Masters qualification but lower than a PhD.