The new British “National Security Strategy” is not really a strategy at all, but a mess of conflicting (and often fantastical) goals and unexamined assumptions.
For this, two things above all are responsible. The first is the unexamined tension between, on the one hand, the strategy’s promise of a “systematic approach to pursuing national interests,” and, on the other, the repeated assertion that these interests are totally and inextricably bound up with Britain’s alliances. For it should be clear by now that “allies” cannot necessarily be relied on, and that in certain circumstances the agendas of allies are not a security asset but rather a source of greatly increased danger to Britain.
The second fundamental problem, one that has plagued Britain for many years, is the tension between the professed commitments set out in the “Strategy” and the practical limits on Britain’s resources. The authors should have paid attention to the famous maxim of former French prime minister Pierre Mendes-France: “To govern is to choose.”
When, however, the choices involved are difficult and painful, to choose requires not just knowledge and intelligence but also moral courage. In this case, the authors do not understand or have chosen to ignore the meaning of the word “priority.” Having set one “priority” in NATO and the alleged Russian threat, they then add more and more “priorities.” The new “strategy” promises to bring ambitions and resources into alignment through a huge increase in military spending and military industry; but even if this happens — and there are good reasons to think that it is fiscally impossible — it will not be remotely enough to achieve all the conflicting goals set out in this document. Läs artikel