Author’s Note: This is the first of what I hope will be a regular commentary piece. My personal focus for the foreseeable future will be on strategy and how it relates to the UK though I will be looking for contributors to offer their thoughts on the myriad of opportunities and challenges presented to the UK.
The British Institute for Global Affairs was a brainchild of my time at St Andrews. I was surrounded by sharp minds in a world-leading institution at one of the oldest universities in the UK. Yet, despite that, academic discourse rarely applied itself to Britain. Having finished my Master’s in Strategic Studies, I was then gifted a copy of The Retreat From Strategy: Britain’s Dangerous Confusion of Interests with Values. A fitting gift indeed for a Strategic Studies graduate looking to fill in the gap on conversations about the UK’s future.
Before I sink my figurative teeth into the theme of strategy, however, the concept needs some definition. This piece is looking to why the word strategy is important, and why the conversation about strategy is important now.
From Strategos to Strategy
The word ‘strategy’ proliferates across government and corporate documents alike. From the recent ‘Strategic Autonomies’ delivered in the English Devolution White Paper to David Lammy’s statement that “what makes [the UK] matter is having a strategy”, everyone agrees on the importance of strategy, yet few people stop to give the word clear parameters. As Matthew Parris argued, “There exist few modern circumstances where the removal of the word ‘strategy’ from any passage containing it fails to clarify matters”. Its widespread and elastic use prevents the word from offering a meaningful contribution to policy discussions.
The word originates from the Ancient Greek strategos, a title meaning General. Despite Byzantine Emperor Maurice penning the Strategikon in the 6th century AD, such references to strategy related to tactics and battlefield practice. Strategy became more discernible as a widespread concept for discussion in the late 18th century when Joly de Maizeroy published his Théorie de la guerre, though it was the Napoleonic Wars that popularised the phrase through writers like Clausewitz and Jomini.
The real turning point, however, was the Renaissance. Between the proliferation of new ideas and the rediscovery of old ones, humanism was born. Decrepit institutions were challenged, and the seeds of radical change were sown. Within this zeitgeist, a small book was written that might well be seen as the longest cover letter in history. On the outskirts of Florence, Machiavelli penned The Prince.
He had also written his Discourses on Livy and the two combine to offer an approach to politics detached from God. It wasn’t that Machiavelli denied God’s existence, it was that he took the notion of God-granted free will to its most extreme logical end. If God had given us free will, and therefore couldn’t be relied upon to intervene, then it was on humans to navigate and weather the misfortunes of life. To have dependable security, people had to depend on their own ability to secure themselves. In the cut-throat and divided Italy that bred Machiavelli, the misfortunes to be navigated were more often than not the harmful actions of opposing states. In breaking from theologically-rooted political thinking, Machiavelli demonstrated the need for strategy. Strategy, at its core, is an attempt to navigate the potential misfortunes and competition of the future.
Contemporary definitions of strategy all follow in this vein of thought. Whether one looks to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, renowned historian Edward Luttwak, Professor Lawrence Freedman, or Clausewitz himself, strategy is understood as aligning (armed) means, ways, and ends. As Sir Hew Strachan laconically writes, ‘Strategy is a profoundly pragmatic business: it is about doing things, about applying means to ends’ in a context of potential or actual conflict.
Ship Shape
It is worth appreciating that at a national level, strategy also takes into consideration how we generate means, who we draw those means from, who we involve in the undertaking of the ‘ways’, and how we decide on the ends. In other words, choosing who to tax and who is given the vote is as much part of strategy as deciding on whether to invest in warships or green energy. Nowhere is this more evident than in Britain’s history. Navies are an extremely expensive undertaking, so building a formidable navy requires a formidable amount of tax revenue. To keep its island safe, Britain had to tax more people and therefore involve those taxed in the political process. Our Parliamentary model is not just a point of pride, it is part of our strategy for success too.
When BIGA talks about strategy, it is talking about the ways in which actors organise themselves to best align (armed) means to political ends in a competitive and potentially violent environment. With that being said, discussions about defining strategy have been on-going for decades, so why is this article important now?
‘The time at last’
Strategy is a conceptual tool for handling competition. It offers agency and at its core, it is fundamentally an attempt to not just survive the future and weather the future but to navigate the future. This is relevant now more than ever.
Strategic studies began its decline over the course of the Cold War. Where strategy had been concerned with applying military means to political ends, the Cold War was reliant on anti-strategy in the context of nuclear weapons. Strategic thinking became increasingly abstract as policymakers guessed at what might work in the advent of conflict. When the Cold War ended, returning to traditional strategy felt backward and so security studies took its place. More than simply an issue of academic vogue, security studies became indicative of a unipolar world order. History had reached its terminus, and the gains of liberalism simply needed securing. The application of security began its descent into a phrase referring to anything that might hinder policy.
Today, the world is a vastly different place. The umbrella of American hegemony is in doubt and for an upper-middle power like the United Kingdom, strategy is all the more important to navigate the very real risks of a changing, and potentially fragmenting, world. Ministers from David Cameron to John Healey have commented on the increasingly competitive nature of world politics. Russia, China, and Iran are the obvious cases for this but states such as Israel, India, and Türkiye also highlight the mixture of opportunities and concerns to contend with.
In such a world, there are no safe choices. We cannot simply batten down the hatches and hope for storms to pass. When things go awry, we cannot aim to just better secure ourselves; we must have direction, the toolkit, and the resources to navigate change. Since strategy is about generating and aligning (military) means to (political) ends; we must consider what it is that the United Kingdom ought to strive for in the world, and what resources we’re willing to commit to that. To do anything less, is to encourage negligence, atrophy, and painful decline.