According to Gordan Chang, President Eisenhower's top priority was to break apart the Sino-Soviet monolith, so in his 1963 memoir The White House Years he barely mentioned Sino-Soviet tensions, so as “to avoid saying anything that could hinder the emergence of the Sino-Soviet split.”1 Under President Johnson, the split in the Communist bloc gradually deepened. A Top Secret CIA report from 22 February 1965 cited an unnamed Soviet source as saying “that Kosygin's trip to Hanoi will result in the Soviets giving ‘defensive’ aid to North Vietnam in the form of fighter planes, SAMs and radar equipment.”2 The CIA reported that on 28 March 1965, a three-way agreement among the USSR, China and North Vietnam had been reached to transport arms shipments across China by railway. Coincidentally, a declassified report of a sunken Soviet cargo ship carrying missiles to North Vietnam might explain why these Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) had to be brought by railway through China (see Document 7).

Transporting missiles by train required China's cooperation. Beginning in 1965 the Soviet government felt obliged to provide North Vietnam with SAMs. The first SAM site was spotted from the air on 5 April 1965, located 15 miles southeast of Hanoi, but there were as yet no missile equipment there. However, this did not “mean the end of Sino-Soviet friction on this issue.” In particular: “Moscow has shown itself reluctant to date to ship extensive aid to North Vietnam by sea, and recent Soviet allusions to an ‘American blockade’ suggest that the USSR fears a repetition of Khrushchev's disastrous backdown in the face of the US naval quarantine in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since both air and land transit of significant quantities of Soviet military aid to the DRV would almost certainly necessitate passage over or through China, there remain ample opportunities for further difficulties and mutual recriminations.” In fact, China was placing strict limits on the transit of Soviet personnel, and Presidium Member Suslov said that “although the Chinese had agreed to let Soviet nationals go through China by rail, they had ‘changed their minds several times in this regard’.”

Yuan Shikai (Yuan Shih-kai) was one to the most significant Chinese political figures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Picture 2). He was a high military official of the Qing Dynasty who turned against it, succeeded Sun Yatsen as the first president of the Chinese Republic and then attempted to found a new imperial dynasty by signing the so-called “21 Demands” with Japan. Coincidentally, his rival Sun Yatsen claimed Yuan Shikai proposed these demands to Japan, not the other way around. When his attempt to become emperor failed, Yuan Shikai died soon afterwards under mysterious circumstances.

Although retired from the Qing Army, when the Double Ten (October 10th) Revolution began in 1911, the Qing dynasty summoned General Yuan Shikai back to duty. Yuan was appointed to command an army to suppress the rebellion. However, Yuan was in no rush and declined to accept the appointment, saying a foot injury still troubled him. Yuan was finally persuaded to take up the command of the army in return for the office of prime minister. Yuan then entered into negotiations with the rebels and he played the Qing court off the politically naive revolutionary leader Sun Yatsen. By March 1912, the Manchus had abdicated and Yuan was named first president of the Republic of China (ROC).

Over the next two years, Yuan Shikai engaged in political intrigue subverting the democratic government. After destroying the revolutionaries’ political and military authority, Yuan moved to consolidate his power. He dissolved the National Assembly, replacing it with a political council composed of his own cronies. This body created a constitutional council to draft a new governing document. But this new “constitution” in fact granted unlimited powers to the president.

The outbreak of World War I presented Yuan with new difficulties. As Western interest shifted away from East Asia, the Japanese were given a relatively free hand. As an ally of Great Britain, Japan seized the German territorial concessions in Qingdao, Shandong. During January 1915, the Japanese presented Yuan's government with their infamous 21 Demands, including full Japanese control over China's finances, police and many other government affairs.

Contrary to popular wisdom, some politicians in the United States apparently wanted Japan to attack America, so that the U.S. government could join the war in Europe. During the 1930s, the U.S. strategy toward Japan evolved from “non-recognition of its invasion of Manchuria, to political neutrality, to trade embargo, to a combination of forward basing of the U.S. Fleet and trade cessation.”1 U.S. deterrence ultimately backfired, however, because the emperor chose a military strategy that had a remote hope of success over an even higher likelihood of regime change at home if Japan backed down after incurring such huge human and financial costs in China. Coincidentally, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, some American politicians celebrated, knowing that by this act the United States could now enter the war in Europe.

As Japan expanded its empire first into Manchuria (1931–33), then into North China (1934–36) and finally throughout Central and South China (1937–45), the U.S. government adopted a low-cost strategy starting with non-recognition. But Congress passed a succession of neutrality acts starting on 31 August 1935 that forbade trade with either side in a war. On 5 October 1937, Roosevelt's famous quarantine speech signaled the U.S. judgment that Germany and Japan were both pariah states. Thereafter, in mid-1938, the United States began escalating trade restrictions on the war materiel necessary for Japan to continue hostilities in combination with forward basing of the U.S. fleet at Hawaii starting in 1940.

Embargo seemed like a highly promising strategy, given Japan's overwhelming dependence on raw material imports for war materiel production. On 11 June 1938, in response to the many Chinese civilian deaths from the Japanese bombing of Guangzhou (Canton), Secretary of State Cordell Hull imposed a “moral embargo” on U.S. exports of aircraft and equipment. By June 1940, the U.S. government had instructed U.S. customs authorities not to permit certain equipment exports to Japan and on 2 July 1940, Congress passed the “Act to Expedite the Strengthening of National Defense” (the Export Control Act), which authorized the president to prohibit the export of war materiel and strategic resources in order to stockpile them at home.

By early August 1945, only one major Sino-Soviet issue was left unresolved, a detailed agreement as to where exactly the Sino-Soviet boundary ran. With Japan's surrender imminent, it was important to Chiang Kai-shek that the agreement on Outer Mongolia be announced soon, so that the Chinese people could be convinced that Outer Mongolia's loss was a necessity of war. On 11 July 1945, Soong expressed his concern that the joint Sino-Soviet declaration on Outer Mongolia not mention the border, since there were still many disagreements about the disposition of the boundary line. Stalin agreed, suggesting that they retain the “status quo,” but Soong retorted: “These is dispute about status quo.”1 Negotiations were broken off after 12 July, so that Stalin and Molotov could attend the conference at Potsdam, but talks resumed once again on 7 August. Coincidentally, during this almost four-week break, the Chinese envoy T. V. Soong had the opportunity to travel back to Chungking to consult personally with his brother-in-law Chiang Kai-shek. Based on Chiang's decisions, the final points of the upcoming Sino-Soviet declaration were determined between 7 and 14 August 1945.

The issue of Outer Mongolia's borders with China was of great importance to Soong. After returning from Chungking, he presented two maps to Stalin, one Russian and one Chinese, which outlined the Sino-Mongolian border. The following exchange then took place:

But, on 10 August, Stalin disputed the maps which Soong had presented: “Re frontiers Chinese map is not well founded. Existing frontiers should be recognized.”2

Stalin stuck to this proposal because the existing borders actually included extensive Manchurian territories which Tokyo had secretly ceded to Moscow during Outer Mongolia-Manchukuo border negotiations in the 1930s. Stalin clearly hoped to retain the largest amount of Chinese territory possible. The Chinese delegation, on the other hand, pleaded with Stalin to define the border between Outer Mongolia and China, even suggesting that the two countries use a Chinese college atlas as their guide.

Obtaining the United States as an ally was the major prize for the British in December 1917, since it brought significant potential naval resources that might win the war against Germany. American ships, notably older coal-burning destroyers sent to Queenstown soon after the American entry into the war, made a huge difference; by the end of August, there were 35 ships total. The formal unification of the British and American fleets on 7 December 1917 was coincidentally proceeded by a chance munitions explosion in Halifax, Canada, on 6 December 1917 (see Picture 4). Once Britain's main naval base in North America was destroyed, and there was no possibility of ever using America's ships against her, the unification of the two navies proceeded as planned the very next day.

The 6 December 1917 munitions explosion that destroyed Halifax was caused by an American-leased ship. One of the first large-scale humanitarian aid missions by sea occurred during World War I with the creation of the non-profit Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB). This aid organization distributed $927,681,485.08 worth of foodstuffs and clothing to Belgium and to German-occupied areas of Northern France. Because of the Commission's almost total reliance on international shipping, the CRB was once described by critics as a “piratical state organized for benevolence”: “Like a pirate state, the CRB flew its own flag, negotiated its own treaties, secured special passports, fixed prices, issued currency, and exercised a great deal of fiscal independence.”

The director, future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, had to obtain permission first from England and Germany to let the aid ships through the maritime blockade lines. From 1 November 1914 until the summer of 1919, over 900 CRB-leased ships successfully navigated not only the British naval blockade but also German minefields and swarms of U-boats conducting unrestricted submarine warfare. By delivering essential food aid, the CRB helped the British government focus the full impact of the starvation blockade against Germany rather than against helpless neutrals in Belgium and Northern France.

Hoover's efforts were supported by the U.S. government. But the British also had to cooperate fully if this aid program was to work. Inspections of the CRB ships took place at Halifax, Canada. Beginning in August 1917, inspections of the cargoes could also be carried out during the loading process in U.S. harbors.

Most people assume that after World War II the U.S. government made a mistake not fighting in China against the communists. But the U.S. government's main goal was to try to break up the Sino-Soviet alliance. A secret CIA report from December 1948 even advised letting the Chinese communists dominate all of the mainland of China in order to accelerate this split. Once the communists succeeded in taking all of the mainland, it was necessary to make Mao Zedong as dependent on Russia as possible, so as to increase tensions. Prior to Mao's visit to Moscow in early 1950, therefore, the U.S. government refused to recognize Beijing, which meant “the Chinese Communists cannot now play off one great power against another, since they have no non-Soviet allies at the moment.” It also put extreme pressure on China by establishing the Taiwan Strait Patrol in 1950 and adopting a strategic embargo on Chinese imports.

We now know that the USSR actively intervened in the Chinese Civil War against Chiang Kai-shek and on the side of Mao Zedong and the communists. Sino-Soviet tensions were already on the rise, however, even before Mao's proclaimed victory on 1 October 1949. In August 1948, British officials were reporting that Russian officials in Dairen had begun to exclude not just Nationalist forces from the port facilities, but also “the armed forces of the Chinese Communists.” Coincidentally, right after this British report came out, the CIA submitted its own report in December 1948 that recommended the Chinese communists be allowed to dominate all of the mainland of China, without U.S. opposition, since there would probably be “no chance of a split within the Party or between the Party and the USSR,” until after the “Communist domination of China” (see Document 6).

With the beginning of the Korean conflict in 1950, the U.S. furthermore adopted a “sea denial” strategy, sending the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to stop a planned PRC invasion of Taiwan. Fear of communist expansion along the first island chain led the U.S. government to support Taipei during the two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954–55 and 1958. Washington also felt obliged to sign security treaties supporting Chiang Kai-shek's efforts to defend a number of offshore islands from PRC attack.

The USSR narrowly survived the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps surviving in part by tapping formerly unknown gold sources in Siberia and Outer Mongolia. An English-language letter dated 14 April 1924 from C. R. Bennett, a representative of an American banking consortium in China, to Wellington Koo, foreign minister of China, even warned him of a new German and Soviet consortium to mine gold in Outer Mongolia. (See Map 3.) Coincidentally, Soviet political maneuvering in Outer Mongolia during fall 1924 strengthened the Soviet government's sphere of influence there, which allowed them to exploit these gold resources. Without access to these untapped gold riches, the Soviet government might have collapsed when the Great Depression hit unexpectedly in 1929.

After its 1921 invasion of Outer Mongolia, the Soviet government repeatedly promised China that it would withdraw its troops. But during May 1924, the American vice-consul in Kalgan, Edwin F. Stanton, reported that “the present Soviet Government, acting in an advisory capacity to the Mongolian Government, but actually dictating its policies and its administration, does not intend to relinquish either political or economic control of Outer Mongolia.” In fact, Moscow's creation of the Soviet bloc in 1924 to include Outer Mongolia has been ignored by most historians as insignificant. But the untapped Mongolian gold resources made it of great financial importance.

Even while publicly agreeing Outer Mongolia was part of China, the Soviet government sought to secretly retain it. Part of the mystery surrounding Soviet envoy Lev Karakhan's unwillingness to compromise on Outer Mongolia was cleared up during April 1924, when Koo received a communication from the Moore-Bennett company which directly related to the USSR's continued occupation of Outer Mongolia. This letter warned Koo that “[An] unimpeachable commercial source has reached me to the effect a composite political commercial financial technical group is now under establishment in Moscow and Berlin for the purpose of surveying and considering means of opening up and working all of the Eastern gold and other precious mineral fields of Siberia and particularly as affecting China's interest […]” This communication appears to have been the first detailed information that Koo received that the USSR and Germany were already cooperating with each other to exploit gold mines in Outer Mongolia.

Sometimes dates can be used for sending signals. For example, on 7 December 1902 Germany and Great Britain instituted their “peaceful blockade” of Venezuela. On 7 December 1917, the U.S. Navy merged with the British Navy to fight Germany. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese simultaneously attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor and the British in Hong Kong and Singapore. Does this date hold a special significance for Great Britain, the United States and Japan? Or was it just a simple coincidence three times?

The Venezuelan Crisis of 1902–1903 threatened to pit the United States and Great Britain against each other. Venezuela's European creditors were firm in their demands that President Castro pay off Venezuela's mounting foreign debts. Several European nations sent their fleets, and on 25 November 1902 Germany and Great Britain formally announced their intention to implement a “pacific” blockade of Venezuela. It was widely assumed that such an action might result in foreign domination of Venezuela.

President Theodore Roosevelt opposed this action as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and the U.S. Navy's “winter exercise” of 1902–1903 was timed to correspond exactly with this German-British threat. The blockade was declared on 7 December 1902, and for “eleven days, between 8 December and 18 December 1902, the future of U.S., British, German, and Venezuelan relations hung in the balance as Theodore Roosevelt discreetly pursued diplomatic negotiations between Venezuela and the two great European powers.”

The U.S. Navy was able to mobilize 53 ships to counter the 29 ships available to Britain and Germany in the Caribbean. War appeared more and more likely. On 16 December 1902, Parliament convened to debate the situation in Venezuela and the strains it was placing on Britain's relationship with America. Outnumbered and outgunned, on 17 December 1902, the two European nations conceded defeat, lifted the blockade and agreed to arbitrate the matter with Venezuela instead.

Great Britain's decision to back down had another, albeit unintended, result. The British Colonial Office drafted a secret memorandum raising questions about the defensibility of British possessions in the western Atlantic in the event of a conflict with the United States. The Admiralty response acknowledged that the United States would be in a position to “stop our supplies from Canada” and to secure all food imports from the United States itself, effectively cutting off two-thirds of Great Britain's food supply.

After World War II, the USSR occupied the two southernmost Kurile Islands, plus two of the Hobomai islands off Hokkaido. The Kurile Islands were considered strategically significant because Japan's naval fleet left from there to attack Pearl Harbor (see Map 5). Coincidentally, President Truman's Order No. 1 gave Stalin permission to occupy and hold parts of Japan “proper.” By never signing a peace treaty, the modern-day Russian government still controls these four islands under the guise of occupying Japan “proper.”

The Kurile chain consists of 36 islands stretching from the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula to the northeastern edge of Hokkaido Island. The two most southern of these—Kunashiri and Etorofu (or in Russian: Kunashir and Iturup)—were traditionally thought by the Japanese to be part of Hokkaido Island. Through a series of nineteenth-century Russo-Japanese treaties, the Kuriles fell under the ownership of Japan: in the Treaty of Shimoda (1855) and the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1875), Japan handed over its interests in Sakhalin Island to Russia in return for total control of the Kurile Islands. Following the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, the 5 September 1905 Portsmouth Peace Treaty allowed Japan to regain sovereignty over the southern half of Sakhalin. With the opening of Soviet-American negotiations for Soviet entry into the Pacific War, however, the centuries-old dispute over the Kurile Islands reemerged. Through a lengthy series of negotiations and agreements—including the Cairo Declaration, the Teheran Conference and the Yalta agreement—Stalin wove a diplomatic web that allowed the USSR to reoccupy the islands.

The October 1943 Cairo Conference, which the USSR did not attend, first raised the question of post-war territorial acquisitions. On 27 November 1943, the Allies issued the following declaration: “The three great Allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It is their purpose that […] Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.”

The British World War I campaign against the Dardanelles was initially meant to be purely a naval effort, but its failure to force a passage through Turkey's defenses required a change of strategy. The new plan was to adopt a peripheral campaign to secure the Gallipoli Peninsula. If the originally planned 24 April 1915 landing was successful, land troops could clear away the Turkish shore emplacements and field artillery, and thus permit the passage of the British fleet to Constantinople. Coincidentally, on 24 April 1915 Turkey began to purge its Armenian minority in anticipation that as fellow Christians the Armenians might back the British against the Turks. Eventually, as many as a million Armenians died as a result of this Turkish repression.

General Sir Ian Hamilton, who was commander of Eastern Command, was in charge of the Gallipoli operation. He had serious doubts that a landing operation could succeed, and was warned that the Turks might fortify the coast, turning the operation into a “second Crimea,” just like a similar landing disaster some 60 years earlier in the Crimean war. Nevertheless, when Kitchener ordered the landing to be attempted, Hamilton decided that the Anzac force would land to the north of Gaba Tepe and the 29th Division would land at five beaches near Cape Helles. While the 29th went north, the Anzacs would advance east across the peninsula to block Turkish reinforcements.

This plan was too complicated. By simultaneously landing at six different beaches, Hamilton hoped to confuse the Turkish defenses. But instead the landing parties quickly got bogged down. Rather than move immediately inland, the two forces landing at Helles Y and S beaches awaited the arrival of the main force from the south. Meanwhile, further to the north, the Anzac landing was just north of Gaba Tepe. Hamilton's mistake of not leaving the beaches immediately to attack the Turkish troops was to have dire consequences.

Among his many problems, Hamilton completely underestimated the Turkish response. In mid-March 1915, they formed a new Fifth Army commanded by General Liman von Sanders, former head of the German military mission to Turkey. Soon, the Turks had moved about 40,000 men and 100 artillery pieces to the west side of the peninsula ready to oppose the landing.

Woodrow Wilson was wrongly blamed for betraying China at the 1919 Paris peace talks due to a chance clerical error. His “secret” compromise solution to the Sino-Japanese Shandong question divided the problem into “political” versus “economic” concerns. While fighting to return to China full control over all political rights, Wilson was willing to grant Japan the economic rights that Germany had previously held in the Shandong concessions, and which the Japanese government had acquired from Beijing by means of official—albeit secret—agreements. Wilson successfully negotiated this compromise with the Japanese delegation during the last week of April 1919, immediately prior to the announcement of the Paris Peace Conference's peace treaty. Coincidentally, Wilson's secretary back in Washington neglected to release this agreement, thereby helping to precipitate the 4 May 1919 student demonstrations in China that eventually resulted in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

President Wilson stood up for China's national sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. On 29 April 1919, Wilson expressed his concerns that Japan might wrongly acquire Germany's former political rights—considered illegal by China—in Shandong province. He even went so far as to ask the Japanese envoy, Baron Makino, several detailed questions, first about underwater cables, then about railways and mines, to make sure that Japan was not being given more rights than Germany had previously enjoyed. Wilson was especially worried about Tokyo's contention that the Japanese citizens should enjoy extraterritorial rights along the railway lines in Shandong, warning the Japanese delegates that “He must say frankly that he could not do this. He asked the Japanese representatives to cooperate with him in finding a way out. He wanted to support the dignity of Japan, but he thought that Japan gained nothing by insisting on these leased rights being vested in the government.” As for Japan's insistence on using Japanese police along the railways, Wilson clarified that “he did not mind Japan asking for these rights, but what he objected to was their imposing them.”

The Pacific Ocean has three major North-South island chains, including the so-called “first island chain” that runs from the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula down through the Kurile Islands, the Japanese home islands, Okinawa, Taiwan and on through to the Philippines. The so-called “second island chain” splits away from Japan, and runs southward toward the Bonins, Guam and the Marshall Islands. Meanwhile, the so-called “third island chain” runs from the end of the Aleutian Trench southward along the Emperor Seamount, through Midway, and ends up in the Hawaiian Islands (see Map 1).

During the late nineteenth century, Japan expanded along the first and second island chains and into the Western Pacific. In 1876, Japan obtained all of the Kurile Islands in exchange for ceding the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Russia, and also seized the Bonin Islands, about 1,300 kilometers to the southeast of Japan. In 1879, the Ryukyu Islands were formally annexed by Japan and became the prefecture of Okinawa. Finally, after the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Japan obtained the island of Taiwan—in theory in perpetuity—in 1895, which gave it unbroken control from Kamchatka to Taiwan. Japan's expansion effectively cut the U.S. sea line of communication (SLOC) to China, which was considered to be a major trading partner.

In 1897, assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, and Commander C. J. Goodrich, president, U.S. Naval War College (NWC), carried on a confidential correspondence discussing how Japan's recent expansion impacted the United States. The original letters are in the NWC Historical Archives. On 23 June 1897, Goodrich explained that a Japanese attack on the United States would have to be staged from either Dutch Harbor (Unalaska) in the Aleutians or from Hawaii:

Stalin needed the support of the Allies to secure his victories in Eastern Europe and in Asia. During January 1945, Stalin promised to uphold the Yalta Conference's “Declaration on Liberated Europe,” which guaranteed that open elections would be held in the Eastern European countries under his control. But Stalin quickly broke his promises in Europe, and in Asia too. For example, on 11 January 1943, the United States and Great Britain had completely eliminated all of their remaining extraterritorial rights and special privileges in China. But during the same year, Chiang Kai-shek for the first time confirmed that “the Sino-Soviet Agreement concluded on the basis of equality was not fully carried out.”1 Following the end of World War II, the Soviet government did not renegotiate its unequal treaties with China, but instead worked hand in hand with the Chinese communists to overthrow the Kuomintang. Stalin also consolidated Soviet control over Outer Mongolia.

Historians have previously attributed Chiang Kai-shek's 14 August 1945 decision to hold a plebiscite granting Outer Mongolia full independence from China to the 11 February 1945 Yalta agreement, in which Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided: “The status quo in Outer-Mongolia (the Mongolian People's Republic) shall be preserved.”2 But when President Roosevelt agreed to support the status quo he never intended to push China into granting Outer Mongolia its independence. In fact, according to international law, the juridical status quo appeared to be based on the 31 May 1924 Sino-Soviet treaty, in which Moscow publicly recognized that Outer Mongolia was an integral part of China: “The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics recognizes that Outer Mongolia is an integral part of the Republic of China and respects China's sovereignty therein.”

But the true status quo was not what it appeared. China's sovereignty over Outer Mongolia was in fact undermined by a 31 May 1924 secret protocol with the USSR that recognized the 1915 tsarist tripartite treaty signed by Tsarist Russia, China and Outer Mongolia granting Outer Mongolia its autonomy from China. Although the 1924 protocol specified that the 1915 treaty was not to be enforced, Outer Mongolia's de facto autonomy was assured so long as Moscow refused to negotiate new terms. When Roosevelt promised to uphold the status quo at Yalta, therefore, he unwittingly provided Stalin with important leverage during secret Sino-Soviet negotiations that followed the Yalta Conference.

Chapter 2 explains how the British Army’s ‘honeymoon’ period in Northern Ireland came to an end by May 1970, and how these early months entrenched certain ideas about nationalist and unionist communities in British strategic thinking. The chapter argues the army succeeded in partially repairing trust between Catholics and the state, but that this proved highly destabilising. Strategists under-estimated lingering anger over the events in August 1969 and exaggerated their ability to control tensions. The decision to concentrate soldiers in predominantly Catholic areas and leave the police in Protestant areas gradually made the army appear biased. Tougher action, when it came, looked like it was happening only against one section of the community, whilst the army’s ability to understand Protestant militants was limited and strategists in any case wished to avoid any confrontation from that quarter. The Provisional IRA’s offensive began around Easter 1970, before the British Army adopted a more aggressive stance. By permitting provocative Protestant marches in Belfast the British began to lose the Catholic goodwill so carefully gained by army battalions in the preceding months. The British response to rising republican violence can only be understood in the context of the expectations about loyalist reactions.