The UK's 'Grand Strategy' Delusion

All Change?

In February 2024, in a speech at Policy Exchange, a centre-right think tank in London, John Healey MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, outlined the approach his party would take to national defence in the event of a general election victory. In his speech – ‘A New Era for UK Defence with Labour’ – Healey spoke unambiguously of ‘the strategic defence review the next government will carry out in its first year.’  As far as pre-election pledges go, this one could probably not be clearer: in 2025 (at the latest) a new Labour Government (if elected) will begin a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) – a choice of title that might be in homage to the widely respected SDR of 1998, led by George Robertson, then Labour’s Secretary of State for Defence.

The UK has become rather fond of defence reviews in the past couple of decades. Admittedly, these years of uncertainty and turbulence have given ample cause for periodical reassessment of national strategy. But in defence as in other areas of policy (e.g., the national skills gap) attempts to articulate the strategic challenge, and the UK’s response to that challenge, have often been superficial, have lacked staying power and have too often required replacement rather than revision. A 2025 SDR would come just two years or so after the 2023 ‘Integrated Review: Refresh’ – a second-rate update of its third-rate predecessor, the 2021 ‘Integrated Review’. Before these we saw the SDR ‘New Chapter’ (2002), ‘Delivering Security in a Changing World’ (2003); ‘The Strategic Defence and Security Review’ and its twin (which one was really born first?) ‘The National Security Strategy’ (2010); and then the duo corpora in unum ‘National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review’ of 2015. So many reviews, and so many different titles. While some might think it preferable for reviews of national strategy and defence to be relevant for more than just a few years, and ideally to offer something like a strategic vision, what can at least be said of this drumbeat of reviews is that it has allowed for inadequate and/or superannuated statements of public policy to be given the last rites before they become too much of a national embarrassment.

Mercifully absent from Healey’s speech was talk of ‘grand strategy’. It has become standard practice, as soon as a strategic defence review is announced, for calls to be made for a thorough debate to establish Britain’s ‘place in the world’ and for a new, national ‘grand strategy’ to be articulated. The operating assumptions appear to be not only that too little is known about the UK and its position in international affairs but also that a committee of politicians, defence practitioners and academics will find the philosopher’s stone of national strategy and will, finally, get it right.

Grand strategy has become fashionable – there are even university research programmes devoted to its study – and so it seems churlish to ask what it is, and what it is for? While the origins of strategy might lie in generalship and the art of military command, we have happily allowed use of the word to proliferate to mean little more than having a plan to do something/somewhere. Interestingly, ‘grand’ strategy looks like an effort to bring the language back to its military roots. Or is it? Is it really any more than ‘having a plan’ but at a national (i.e., ‘grand’) level? Or could it be just empty verbiage? Or, worse still, could it be a form of distraction therapy, with ringing declarations of glorious ambition designed to take our mind off the absence of strategic sense at the heart of government and a lack of military capability? Not so much ‘grand strategy’ as ‘grand delusion’, perhaps?

What is Grand Strategy and What is it For?

Grand strategy comprises several large ideas. It has usually conveyed some sense of existential threat. In The Collapse of British Power (1972) Correlli Barnett used the expression ‘total strategy’ to include ‘all the factors relevant to preserving or extending the power of a human group in the face of rivalry from other human groups.’ (Barnett’s ‘collapse’ took place between 1940 and 1945). Other terms, such as ‘war policy’, ‘high politics’ and ‘higher strategy’ have all been used to deliver a similar message – the need to respond urgently and effectively when facing a struggle for national survival. But we don’t need to experience a major war to think in this way. In 2024, when threats to national survival are rather more remote, advocates of a grand strategic approach usefully point out that it can provide continuity of strategic thinking. Describing itself as the ‘spiritual home’ of the approach, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London argues that ‘The core emphasis of Grand Strategy is to secure the long-term security, peace and prosperity of a nation.’ This is reasonable enough, although the use of the Upper Case, as if to reify the idea of grand strategy, is questionable.

As well as urgency or, in its absence, continuity, grand strategy also points to the need for comprehensiveness in decision and action. National security and defence challenges have always been complex and mutable – perhaps more so now than ever. And it is generally acknowledged that challenges of this sort require a response that is both multifaceted and adaptable. In the UK this has given rise to a series of initiatives intended to solve the problem: ‘comprehensive approach’, ‘joined-up government’, ‘fusion’ and, most recently, the ‘integrated approach’ (at first stale and then refreshed). It remains to be seen whether grand strategy could improve upon these initiatives or would serve merely to restate a very familiar problem.    

Finally, grand strategy should require rational assessment. John Gaddis put this most clearly in On Grand Strategy (2018) when he defined grand strategy as the ‘alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities. If you seek ends beyond your means, then sooner or later you’ll have to scale back your ends to fit your means. Expanding means may attain more ends, but not all because ends can be infinite and means can never be.’

Less Talk, More Action

So there we have it: grand strategy is concerned with security against large, if not existential threats, whether imminent or long term; with achieving a response that is both comprehensive and decisive; and with finding and maintaining a balance between aspiration and capability. But if that is what grand strategy is all about, does it really differ significantly from what might otherwise be described simply as ‘public policy’ and/or ‘national strategy’, albeit made more complicated and urgent in time of war? Perhaps grand strategy is just a branding exercise, using the sort of chest-thumping language that teeters on the edge of fraudulence and fools no-one, other than its authors. Since 2021 the UK’s public has had to endure slogans such as ‘Global Britain’, ‘science and technology superpower’ and, ludicrously, ‘soft power superpower’, all of which suggest that the UK has recently been suffering from a bout of national narcissism or, at least, late-onset ‘main character syndrome’. If the outcome of a grand strategic debate might be the suggestion that public policy would be more effective if it could be more integrated, is that not rather limply obvious?  And if it is so obvious, why is it that modern democratic governments (at least that of the UK) have found it so difficult to work in this way? Is the claim that ambition should never exceed available resources (unless resources can be expanded to meet the gravity or urgency of the ambition) something that is not already known in every walk of life, particularly in military circles? Would a new grand strategy, if it were to be launched in 2025, capture the imagination and inspire the country or might it be met by a response similar in tone (and weariness) to the comment made by ‘Brenda from Bristol’[1] when told by a BBC interviewer in April 2017 that a general election had been called: “You’re joking. Not another one!”

Even if grand strategy were sincere, and more than a dazzling glimpse of the all-too obvious, how much use would the UK have for it? It has been argued that the purpose of grand strategy is to transform, to enable movement from something less to something more. By this view, grand strategy is a quest for a ‘big idea’ that will not simply describe the state of the world but will also motivate a country to improve its standing internationally. Another, contrasting, view is that grand strategy should prevent, slow down or manage the impact of national decline – prophylaxis, perhaps – or compensate for it in some way, even if only symbolically. Neither of these is appropriate for the UK – at least not yet. The positive or constructive form of transformation (‘something less to something more’) is surely superfluous for a country that is a long-established liberal democracy, a country with a long history that resonates (for better or for worse) regionally and internationally, a globally significant major economy, an important participant in global trade, an acknowledged diplomatic and military leader, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, an internationally respected driving force in science, technology and innovation and one that does indeed enjoy an enviable degree of soft power through the arts, education, tourism and the media. What benefits could a grand strategy bestow upon the UK that it does not already have? As for the prevention of national decline (‘prophylaxis’), while there are those who see the UK as but a shadow of its former self, it is far too early to invite friends and relatives to the bedside for a final farewell.

The UK does not need to construct a grand strategic argument for itself – either to transform itself into something bigger and better, or to prevent decline into something smaller and worse. The UK already occupies an enviable position internationally and the grand strategic risks it faces are neither of unrealised potential nor of imminent doom. The risks are, instead, that the UK might suffer either from guilt-ridden imposter syndrome manifested at the national level or from a national complacency that fails to see both that good fortune can sour if not acknowledged and nurtured and that serious threats to the UK (perhaps even existential threats) could arise in the future. The least useful response to both risks – imposter syndrome and complacency – would be to pursue yet another soul-searching grand strategic narrative with its curious combination of grandiloquence, hubris, arrogance and neediness; an unhealthy combination that could even serve to undermine success and hasten decline rather than to avert these perils. The best response, instead, is simply to act grand strategically – a form of words that comes close to the ‘grand strategy’ it seeks to replace, but which crucially denotes the recognition of position rather than the pursuit of it.

Just Do It: Act Grand Strategically

A Labour-led Strategic Defence Review would be undertaken by a political party that will have been out of power for some 15 years, during which time it will have been largely disconnected from the practice of national strategy and defence, other than through parliamentary debates and the work of oversight committees. How would this new government take the reins of power and ‘act grand strategically’ to devise a credible national defence?  

The first step in the process would be to decide who, or what, is in charge. No defence debate continues for long in the UK parliament before some wise voice reminds the incumbent government of its ‘first duty’ to defence and the Armed Forces. That simple wisdom is, of course, borrowed from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations: ‘The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force’. What is seldom, if ever, mentioned is that Smith added a rider to his ‘first duty’ comment: ‘In a civilized society, as the soldiers are maintained altogether by the labour of those who are not soldiers, the number of the former can never exceed what the latter can maintain…’  If, as seems plausible, it was the health of the economy that was the government’s actual ‘first duty’ then perhaps Smith’s sense of ‘government’ was holistic, meaning – in a way that supports my claims here - all of government. In today’s context, Smith would see the Treasury, the MoD and the Armed Forces all as participants in the same exercise in which the requirement for a healthy economy does not overrule the need for defence, and vice versa (unless, perhaps, in time of war, but even then within limits). We could extend this idea of a common enterprise further to include all other departments, functions and agencies of government that might have something useful to say about national defence – foreign affairs, industry, innovation, intelligence and so on. Another term for this common enterprise is ‘Prime Minister and Cabinet’ and it is from here, the heart of complex, inter-departmental government, that UK national defence must be led and co-ordinated.

Having dispelled any uncertainty as to the responsibility for national defence, the new government would then decide how to go about its SDR: a complex process, requiring careful planning and sophisticated analysis. This is a procedural matter, but a critically important one: it is the point at which the character, ambition and durability of the SDR can be set. Various models might be considered. The SDR could, for example, be an elite, closed-door exercise involving only the most senior government officials and military officers, perhaps with a smattering of Special Advisers. Alternatively, the review could be an opportunity for the new government to proclaim a visionary approach to defence and even to government as a whole – as seen in past efforts to ‘integrate’ many different areas of policy (such as security, defence, international development and foreign affairs) into a coherent and well-illustrated whole, and in the fewest possible number of pages. Or the review could be a mature, serious-minded and comprehensive exercise in strategic information-gathering, consensus-building and confident decision-making. The widely admired archetype of the latter approach was US President Eisenhower’s Project Solarium in 1953.[2]

A 2025 SDR Solarium Commission need not be a vast and unwieldy undertaking, ruminating interminably on possible or preferred ‘futures’ for the UK. Neither could it be guaranteed that the process would be entirely harmonious and collegiate. But SDR 1998 showed that this manner of working can be an effective way to develop UK national defence strategy. Borrowing the words of the 1998 document, a 2025 SDR Solarium Commission would ensure that the review’s conclusions had been ‘formed and tested in a wider forum’, that the SDR would ‘establish the widest possible shared vision about Britain’s future security needs and the tasks of its Armed Forces’ and would ‘provide Britain’s Armed Forces with a new sense of clarity, coherence and consensus’.

With its participation broadened to include the various departments, functions and agencies of government mentioned above, a 2025 Solarium Commission would provide the essential context and consensus upon which the SDR could develop and would show that UK national strategy is led by a fully engaged central government, open to advice and criticism from all those involved or concerned. By showing that national strategy is directed by the elected government, acting on behalf of the public, and not a remote, elite activity assumed to be beyond the public’s comprehension, a Solarium approach would also go some way to addressing the trust deficit that exists between government and the public in matters of defence. Crudely put, UK government appears at times to have little trust in the public’s capacity to understand the complexities and exigencies of defence, while much of the public doubts that central government takes defence sufficiently seriously (other than as an inconvenient draw on public expenditure or as something to do with memorials and parades).

And then we come to the heart of the problem. An SDR Solarium Commission would provide essential context and a level of consensus, enabling the Prime Minister and Cabinet to provide the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces with top-level guidance as to the UK’s strategic priorities. But the Commission’s task would not be to make decisions about the purpose, shape and size of UK Armed Forces: it is the task of the MoD and the Armed Forces to match strategic priorities with military capabilities. The common enterprise should not come to a shuddering halt at this point, however, with the MoD left to its own devices and subject to conflicting spending decisions by the Treasury. Strategic priorities, resources and capabilities must all be discussed interactively until a solution is agreed. And that solution must be reassessed whenever circumstances change. If capabilities are judged insufficient to meet strategic priorities, then adjustment must be made, either by reducing expectations or by increasing the resources available to defence.

To act grand strategically is to achieve and maintain balance between priorities, resources and capabilities or, as military people (and John Gaddis) like to say, between ‘ends, ways and means’. The current UK defence programme has been described by the National Audit Office as ‘unaffordable’ (an example of relative judgement masquerading as absolute fact), suggesting that hard choices must be made about the size and equipment of the Armed Forces. But the first task must be to clarify the UK’s strategic outlook. In his speech to Policy Exchange John Healey listed ‘five strategic priorities to keep Britain safe’: the reinforcement of ‘protections for the UK homeland’; obligations to NATO; seeing allies as ‘our strategic strength’; directing defence investment ‘first to British jobs and British business’; and renewing the Armed Forces Covenant. These priorities offer, potentially, something recognisable as national strategy, but what would they mean in practice? Does protection of the UK homeland imply reinvestment in the Air Defence of the UK or the creation of an Iron Dome-style missile protection system, and at what cost? Or should the national perimeter be defended through alliance in Europe? UK interest in the Asia-Pacific is not mentioned explicitly but does it fall within the idea of ‘strategic strength’ through alliance?  Or could it mean that the days are numbered for AUKUS 1 and 2 – the submarine and technology alliance between Australia, the UK and the United States? Only when these large ideas are clarified can decisions about capabilities reasonably be made. Absent an increase in the defence budget to, say, three per cent of GDP, what capabilities would the next government then be willing to give up, if any? Should the UK Armed Forces act as insurance policy of sorts, retaining the capability to act in all domains (sea, land, air, space and cyberspace)? Or should capabilities be matched to a narrower set of strategic priorities? Does the Royal Navy need both, one, or indeed any aircraft carriers, and if so for what purpose and with how many aircraft? Should the British Army have a full-strength, deployable, armoured division? If so, where might it be deployed? Should it be a cadre formation, relying on the availability of reserves? Could smaller formations and units (i.e., brigades and battalions) achieve what is needed? What is the strategic problem for which the Global Combat Air Programme is the answer? Is this costly and complex programme necessary for the future of the Royal Air Force or should the F-35 be the last manned aircraft the RAF will have?

To act grand strategically is to avoid both the disastrous combination of fanciful rhetoric, over-commitment and under-equipment on the one hand, and on the other hand the casual notion that national strategy can somehow be reverse engineered from a disparate collection of procurement programmes. Neither outcome can be described as strategic, ‘grand’ or otherwise. National strategy requires government leadership, and it also requires ends, ways and means to be in balance. Strategy must also be sensitive to uncertainty and contingency – the nature and severity of security threats and challenges cannot be assumed to be always, if ever, within the UK government’s scope of control. When circumstances change and ends, ways and means are no longer in equilibrium, then adjustment must be made. If imbalances between ambition and capability are not corrected to meet changing circumstances but are allowed to persist in the vague hope that something will turn up, then whatever is the result it cannot properly be called strategy. It should not be necessary to prepare a new ‘grand strategic’ narrative, nor to embark on a grand overhaul of the UK’s place in the world, for the UK to act grand strategically.

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[1] The comment, and its author, became a meme in UK domestic politics. The author’s surname was not attached as she requested that it not be made public.

[2] For a summary of the Eisenhower Solarium, and its current relevance, see Mike Steinmetz, ‘Project Solarium 1953 and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2019’ in Paul Cornish (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Cyber Security (Oxford University Press, 2021).