Know your enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee saw the world - Hardcover

Percy Cradock

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719560489 ISBN 13: 9780719560484

Publisher: John Murray, 2002

Synopsis

The records of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Britain's senior intelligence body, are now being released to the public on the same basis as other official papers. As a result, historians have available a unique archive revealing British thinking at the highest level about the world situation and threats confronting the West in the critical years after World War II. This book, by Sir Percy Cradock - for many years himself Chairman of the JIC as well as the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor - explores these hitherto top secret records and the interplay of JIC estimates and warnings with British foreign policy decisions over the first 23 years from 1945. He concentrates on the great crises of the Cold War, Berlin, Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, but also examines some lesser emergencies involving Britain alone, such as Kuwait, confrontation with Indonesia, and Rhodesia. He compares the British organization and performance with the parallel system of US intelligence and the very different machinery of the KGB. In a final chapter he reflects on the intimate relations between intelligence and policy, and how Britain adjusted to a long period of declining power.This study aims to be a valuable addition to historical knowledge and to offer an insight into the development of Western as well as British foreign policy.

About this title

About the Author

The Rt. Hon. Sir Percy Cradock joined the Foreign Office in 1954 after a spell as a law don at Cambridge. From 1978 to 1984 he was Ambassador to China, where he opened and led the negotiations on the Hong Kong Joint Declaration. From 1984 to 1992 he was the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Adviser and from 1985 to 1992 also Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and was made a Privy Councillor in 1993. He lives in Richmond. He is also the author of Experiences of China ('a remarkable book: elegant, perceptive... beautifully written', Charles Powell); and In Pursuit of British Interests ('a brilliant book - a little classic', Julian Critchley).

Review

'An impressive book by a gifted expert - one on whose advice I myself relied and never found wanting.' Margaret Thatcher

Edition details

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719560489
• ISBN 13: 9780719560484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 362