Michael Kane MccGwire OBE (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 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 August he[3] was on HMS Rodney (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.
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.
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.
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.
[7] 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.
"[8] 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,[2] 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.
[9] While at Aberystwyth he also started and ran the Interstate Journal of International Affairs,[10] 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".
At Cambridge, he enlarged the terrain of security studies to include economic and social development, and environmental sustainability, while continuing to argue for an end to nuclear deterrents.
At this point in time, prevention of global warfare became the primary aim in Moscow, where Gorbachev wanted to defuse tensions and downgrade military spending.