do nations need strategies?

The
IDEA
DO NATIONS NEED
STRATEGIES?
By Nicholas Kitchen
O
Yet whilst Britain’s review of national strategy may have been
the lips of policymakers and academics. Upon assuming power
contemporary relevance national strategy itself were less
in May, the United Kingdom’s historic coalition government had
interrogated. In a world of complex interdependence, of myriad
set in motion three exercises that together aimed to reshape
threats, risks, and challenges, does it make sense for a nation to
British foreign policy in the context of an ‘age of austerity’ that
define its concepts, interests and capacities in a grand strategy
promised sweeping budget cuts across all areas of Britain’s public
document? Is flexibility, rather than strategy, the key asset for
spending. Taken together, the new National Security Strategy
nations living in uncertain times?
ver the last six months in United Kingdom foreign policy
circles, questions of national purpose have not been far from
politically and bureaucratically significant, questions of the
(NSS), the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the
Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), sought to lay down the
THE NATURE OF STRATEGY
bounds of Britain’s future role in the world, to articulate Britain’s
Strategy, according to Clausewitz, was “the art of using battles
national interests, establish the goals of policy and set the means
to win war”. For Sun Zi, the greatest achievement of strategy
by which to achieve them.
was winning without actually having to fight. The concept of
‘grand strategy’ has evolved over time from these classical roots
The salience of this exercise in refocusing UK foreign policy can
to encompass all aspects of power and influence at a nation’s
hardly be understated. British military, diplomatic and aid resources
disposal, from the soft power attraction of ideas and culture to
have been stretched over the past fifteen years by Britain’s global
the coercive capacities of economic and military power. Grand
activism. The UK has committed significant military force to the
strategies might operate, suggested Paul Kennedy, “for decades,
Balkans twice, to Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has
or even centuries”, as integrated and evolving sets of national
committed to play a global leadership role on issues such as
policies that established preferred means of action and set the
climate change, debt relief and development. The global economic
goals of a state in international politics. Such was the long-term
crisis, catalysed by the banking sector on which so much of the
nature of the concept of grand strategy that Andrew Marshall, the
UK’s strong economic performance since the mid-1990s relied, has
long-serving Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments,
hit Britain worse than most, leaving a budget deficit estimated to
saw strategy’s role as shaping the future rather than reacting to it.
be as high as 12% of GDP. The United Kingdom, goes the analysis
of the ruling coalition, has been living beyond its means, and the
Yet despite the pluralisation of security threats and responses,
sector of the budget tasked with pursuing British foreign policy
and the range of possible futures, the language of grand strategy
will have to accept its share of the inevitable cuts.
remained the art of war. Grand strategy identified threats and
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assigned enemies. The process of formulating strategy made
questions of the utility of national strategy resurfaced: if the
assessments of adversaries’ capacities and one’s own; and selected
ground on which international politics is played out is shifting and
the most appropriate means of counteracting threats given the
uncertain, how to define national policies that seek to operate
constraints imposed by financial costs and domestic political
over the long term?
realities. Such an approach was, of course, highly appropriate
for the Cold War, where the basic realities of state power and
CLINGING TO PAST CONCEPTS: THE UNITED KINGDOM’S
ideology formed an immutable framework structured around
NATIONAL STRATEGY REVIEW
the two superpowers on which strategy could be constructed,
The difficulties experienced by American strategists over the past
adapted and honed. The Soviet Union and the West, whilst often
twenty years were evident in microcosm in the United Kingdom’s
mistaken in their assessments, could at least rely on a set of shared
review of its foreign policy that began in May and resulted in
assumptions about the nature of international politics from which
the triple announcements of the National Security Strategy
strategic thought could flow.
(NSS), Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the
Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). These publications were
AFTER THE END
presaged by a report of the cross-party Parliamentary committee
The end of the Cold War removed those basic certainties on which
for Public Administration, that stated that ‘the Government in
strategists had based their work. The conceptual bedrock had
Whitehall has lost the art of making national strategy in relation to
dissolved, replaced with quicksand of questionable assumptions.
defence and security’. Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative chairman,
Did the Cold War’s peaceful end mean that nuclear weapons
was not alone in his concern that an inability to ‘think strategically’
really had rendered great power war obsolete? What did the
was fundamentally undermining the process of reviewing the UK’s
globalisation of finance, commerce and communications mean for
national strategy.
traditional notions of sovereignty? Had nation-states’ monopoly
on the use of force ever existed, and what did the rise of non-state
Ironically, there was evidence of an attempt to think strategically
actors mean for strategy? Where disease, climate change, poverty
at the beginning of the process, the National Security Strategy.
and social unrest caused suffering and conflict, what counted as a
Responsibility for authoring the NSS fell on the newly formed
threat? Did national security still stop at ‘the water’s edge’, or was
National Security Council (NSC), coordinated by a National Security
peace essentially indivisible?
Adviser based in the Cabinet Office, and which brings together key
ministries under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister: Treasury,
Little wonder that policymakers in the 1990s occasionally
Foreign Office, Defence, International Development and Home
admitted to feeling nostalgia for the Cold War. In the United
Office. Other ministries, such as Energy and Climate change, along
States, strategists engaged in a race to define the nature of this
with the Chief of the Defence Staff, Heads of Intelligence Agencies
new international order. The result of what the policy planning
and other Senior Officials attend as required.
staff inside the Clinton Administration referred to as the ‘Kennan
sweepstakes’ was a plethora of priorities, and a strategic debate
This cross-cutting approach to defining the national interest proved
that seemed incapable of agreement at even the most basic
relatively successful in the NSC’s consideration of the key security
conceptual level. Moreover, policymakers found that national
threats that the UK faces. Here the NSS presented clear evidence
security, like workers’ wages, was ‘sticky downwards’. Reducing
of an attempt to think strategically, to understand the international
American commitments to reflect the end of a global conflict
environment and undertake assessments with the aim of ranking
that at points had seen over a million American troops stationed
threats both in terms of their likelihood and of their impact. It was
abroad in as many as 500 bases, proved more difficult than
also here, however that the process began to go awry, because
imagined; the expected ‘peace dividend’ never materialised as
the NSS itself made no account of the costs – economic and
political and bureaucratic interests dominated in the absence of
political – of addressing these threats, and did not therefore make
clear strategy.
a genuinely strategic assessment of which threats to address
and how.
Even the epoch-making events of 9-11 could not resolve the
issues of the meaning of national strategy, as the sole superpower
The clear example here is contained in the NSS’s ‘tier one’ threats.
sought to wage war not against a state or even a non-state
The NSS judges that cyber attacks are ongoing and increasing
actor, but on a means of conflict itself. As the rhetoric of the
likely, and that the level of impact could be significant. At the
War on Terror gave way to more circumspect talk of a ‘Long War’
same time, an international military crisis involving the UK is also
and ‘Countering Violent Extremism’, so the more fundamental
judged a tier one threat, on the basis of its potential impact,
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although its likelihood is markedly less. But there is no criteria
future as Marshall demanded good strategy should. In a world
upon which to decide how to distribute limited resources:
where interdependence, uncertainty and asymmetry are the most
maintaining the capacity to address threats arising from military
nebulous of defining features, there is always the temptation to
crises is expensive, particularly in capital terms, yet, as the security
succumb to these political arguments because the requirements of
strategy admits, the probability of such a threat emerging is low,
strategy remain unclear.
and fundamentally “no state currently has the combination of
capability and intent needed
to pose a conventional military
threat to the territorial integrity
of the United Kingdom”. The
threat from cyber attacks on the
other hand are clear and present,
even constant, though potentially
of lesser existential impact. The
question left unanswered, is to
what extent should resources be
It is tempting therefore
thinking strategically is crucial... because
it charges us with finding answers to
fundamental questions. What sort of
society do we want to be? How do we
understand the world? What are our
priorities and what matters less? What
in short, do we stand for?
allocated on the basis of threat
to conclude that
nations would be better
off without strategies,
that the ability to react
flexibly to events should
be the goal in itself
and that the longterm commitments
of national security
strategies only serve
likelihood, and to what extent
to fix for the future the misconceived frames of the past. This is,
on threat impact? And at what level does a resource commitment
of course, a danger. Yet thinking strategically is crucial for nations
become unsustainable given the combination of likelihood
and their governments, and even though the outcomes may often
and impact?
be imperfect the process is profoundly worthwhile, because it
charges us with finding answers to fundamental questions. What
Failure to answer these questions meant that though the NSS
sort of society do we want to be? How do we understand the
identified threats and was able to rank them fairly clearly, it did not
world? What are our priorities and what matters less? What in
dictate the metrics under which the SDSR should take place. The
short, do we stand for?
result – unsurprisingly, for students of political bureaucracies – was
a review of defence spending and of foreign policy spending as a
Grand strategy is therefore more than simply a bureaucratic
whole that exhibited little coherence with the maxims of the NSS.
process of assessments, of matching the ends and means of the
Decisions, particularly in high-cost areas such as military capital
national interests to the budgets and capabilities of government.
spending, derived more from political and bureaucratic legacies
Strategy is a wider process in which nations as a whole understand
than they did the requirements of a coordinated foreign policy.
the world in which they live and constitute their identity. The
politics – the domestic interests and the emotional attachments
THE PROBLEM OF POLITICS
– are a central part of that, since they frame choices and possible
This, in essence, is the problem of politics as it relates to making
futures. The goal of strategic thought should be to lay bare where
national strategy. A nation’s grand strategy does not exist in a
the requirements of foreign policy and the needs of politics meet,
vacuum: even as international features that inform assessments
so that when we ask who we are and what we stand for, we can
shift, domestic political realities endure. Ministries seek to
distinguish our interests from our passions. ■
protect their budgets, military services compete for their share
of the pot, politicians seek to protect capacities and jobs in their
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constituencies. Moreover, the endurance of these interests means
Dr Nicholas Kitchen is Philippe Roman Fellow in International
that strategies tend to reflect the past rather than shape the
Affairs at LSE IDEAS.
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