Michael MccGwire

Michael Kane MccGwire (9 December 1924 – 26 March 2016) was a British international relations specialist known for his work on Cold War geopolitics and Soviet naval strategy.

A former Royal Navy commander, he was Professor of Maritime and Strategic Studies at Dalhousie University in Canada and then a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.

He was a well-known critic of nuclear deterrence theory.

MccGwire grew up in British India, where his father worked for Burmah Oil Company until the 1929–34 depression.

The family then moved via Lausanne, Switzerland, to settle in Swanage in England.

The 30th Flotilla was a close-knit group of men, many of whom stayed in touch until the end of their lives.

At the end of WWII MccGwire was on a British destroyer in the Pacific.

He attended the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, from age 13 and graduated top of his term in 1942, winning the King's Dirk which was presented to him by George VI.

In May that year 17-year-old MccGwire went to sea as a midshipman, by which time half of the Dartmouth term who had graduated a year earlier had already lost their lives.

In August he was on HMS Rodney (29) (a battleship famous for its role in the Bismarck sinking) when it took part in the celebrated Malta relief convoy named Operation Pedestal, in which 13 British ships were sunk but the oil tanker SS Ohio made it through.

Then in 1946-47 he moved to a frigate in the Mediterranean, HMS Whitesand Bay (K633), on the Palestine Patrol, which involved leading boarding parties and taking control of the ships that were illegally carrying Jewish immigrants to Palestine.

In September that year the Royal Navy sent MccGwire to Downing College, Cambridge, to learn Russian along with seven others, including the later defector George Blake.

He then returned to sea as a navigator in the Arctic, with the UK's Fisheries Protection around Norway – adjacent to the Soviet Northern Fleet.

Having been involved in the North African, Sicilian and then Normandy landings, he then moved to Motor Torpedo Boats, joining MTB 476 of the 30th MTB Flotilla as a First Lieutenant.

In the year that they were together, these nine MTBs sank six German vessels and damaged another 12 off the coasts of France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The high speed boats each had three super-charged Merlin engines – the same as used in the Spitfires, running on high octane fuel.

MTBs attacked at close quarters at night, with double-skin mahogany hulls that did little to protect the crew or fuel from gunfire.

Then in 1951 MccGwire was loaned to the Australian Navy in a training role.

In 1952 MccGwire joined GCHQ to develop naval intelligence on the Soviet Navy, then returned to sea.

On the 1956 visit to Britain by Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev in the lead up to the Suez Crisis, MccGwire was liaison officer on an accompanying Soviet destroyer.

In 1956-58 he served as an assistant naval attaché at the British embassy in Moscow, accompanied by his family.

Under constant surveillance, he still managed to travel within the USSR and provided various military intelligence before modern satellite data was available.

He also started building up his knowledge of Soviet geopolitics.

Promoted to commander on 31 December 1958, he undertook further study in the UK and USA.

As a 'war planner' he worked in the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) in the US.

It was his time in the US, working on a multi-national staff, that opened MccGwire's eyes to what one can achieve when unconstrained by deeply ingrained service deference and loyalties.

At that point he realised that he wanted to join an international organisation such as the UN.

But before leaving the Royal Navy, MccGwire wanted to head up the Soviet Naval Intelligence Section in the British Defence Intelligence Staff, which he felt needed serious restructuring.

The UK was twenty years into the Cold War, yet when he got this job MccGwire was the first head of the section to know the language, to have worked in Russia, to have had experience of another agency and to be well acquainted with the Americans.

He completely reshaped the intelligence effort to ask new questions.

His aim was not simply to assess the military threat – how many ships the Soviets had – but to understand what the Soviet Navy was for.

His colleagues were surprised when MccGwire quit his promising naval career and retired in 1967 aged 42, having just been told that a promotion to Captain was imminent.

His aim was to work in the Third World as a Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme, and the first requirement was to have a degree, so he became an undergraduate student in International Politics and Economics at University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

While at Aberystwyth he also started and ran the Interstate Journal of International Affairs, wrote a book on the Soviet Navy for the UK's Institute of Strategic Studies, spoke at numerous specialist conferences on this subject, and "in spite of his age, he experienced no difficulty in slipping into college life as a popular, if slightly formidable figure".

A new national quota system thwarted MccGwire's hopes of joining the UN.

It was for his contribution to British naval intelligence that MccGwire received his OBE in the 1968 New Year Honours.

In the words of his successor as Head of the Soviet Naval Intelligence Section, Commander Peter Kimm, "it is my sincere belief that he [MccGwire] has succeeded in contributing something tangible to the security of the country and to the stability of the world in a way which is not given to many of us to do."

After a year as a lecturer in the postgraduate Strategic Studies programme at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1970 he became Professor of Maritime and Strategic Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada, a post gained on the basis of his experience and previous publications.

He stayed there until 1979, publishing three edited books and playing the leading role in founding the modern study of Soviet naval power.

In 1979 he became a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, a highly respected think-tank in Washington DC, USA.