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Tuesday 2 December 2008 13:30 - 14:30The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom
How Radical Can Britain Be?
Experts' Comment - 26 March 2008
Dr Paul Cornish, Head, International Security Programme and Carrington Chair in International Security, Chatham House
The publication before Easter of the long-awaited National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom (NSS) brought to an end months of speculation as to the reasons behind the delay (the Prime Minister announced the initiative in July 2007, with a view to publishing a strategy document a few months later in the autumn), the likely content of the paper, and indeed whether the initiative was simply too ambitious.
For some critics, it goes against the grain of British pragmatism to concoct a grand strategic vision of the sort published last week. By and large, the British are squeamish about waving flags, swearing oaths of allegiance and writing national mission statements; this is the sort of thing that other, less self-confident countries get up to. For their part, government ministers and senior civil servants prefer to rely on their experience, wits and judgement, rather than on some policy blueprint.
The NSS is ambitious in one other, more important respect. 'National' implies cross-governmental and, if the past is anything to go by, the Prime Minister's initiative will have been regarded across Whitehall as an assault on the departmental independence traditionally enjoyed by the Home Office, the Foreign Office and other government ministries. Cross-governmental policy initiatives are fraught with difficulty, and often only survive at the level of the lowest common denominator. This all helps to explain why the NSS has much to say about 'security' (or rather, 'insecurity'), rather less about 'national' and much less still about 'strategy'. Perhaps this also explains why the document has so far attracted relatively little interest and looks to be heading for the political long grass.
As might be expected, the NSS sets out in some detail the various threats and hazards with which Britain is likely to be confronted in the near future; everything from terrorism and weapons proliferation, to organised crime, to global poverty and underdevelopment, to climate change and natural disasters. By describing all these dangers in one document, the NSS performs a useful service, although some might wonder whether this smorgasbord of horrors could have been listed in order of priority.
Of more concern is that the NSS begins from the questionable premise that the various man-made threats and natural hazards are not only identifiable, but also interconnected. But what about Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns', and what about security challenges which are not connected to anything else and appear as if from nowhere? This is not to say that security policy should or could be based upon wild and paranoid imaginings, but it is to say that 9/11 and other security crises of recent years should have taught us to expect the unexpected.
If it is to meet security challenges as they arise - known and unknown, inter-connected and disconnected - British society and its government will need to be agile. Agility in politics, as in warfare and as in gymnastics, requires balance and must begin from a solid and stable position. In other words, the UK National Security Strategy should start with a clear sense of what 'national' means. The authors of the NSS refer to the need to challenge the 'violent extremism narrative'; the only way to do this, and to prepare for other challenges which are yet to emerge, is to write our own 'narrative', of who we are and what we want.
On several occasions the NSS refers to the UK's 'core values'; human rights, the rule of law, legitimate and accountable government, justice, freedom, tolerance and opportunity for all. But these values are mentioned in a strangely passive and defensive way, almost as if the most that should be done with these immense ideas is to protect them from marauding terrorists and criminals (and, of course, to stop them being ruined by flood water). Saddest of all, these values appear to constitute little more than the 'normality' to which, we are told, the government's security strategy will enable us to return 'as soon as possible' after some harm occurs. The problem with mere 'normality' is that it isn't usually all that interesting and inspiring and might not be worth defending in extremis.
A similar lack of self-confidence is to be found in discussion of the relevance of Britain's core values more broadly. In the heady days of 1997 the newly elected Labour government introduced the notion of an 'ethical foreign policy' soon to be diluted into 'a foreign policy with an ethical dimension'. Now, a little over ten years later, the government appears to have adopted the homeopathic approach, whereby only a trace element of ethics is thought to be enough to do the trick.
The NSS sets great store by multilateralism and by abiding by a 'rules-based approach to international affairs'. But multilateralism is a quantitative rather than a qualitative approach to international politics: what if an important international institution is rendered indecisive and useless by filibuster or veto? What if the majority opinion points in one direction but British foreign and security policies, driven by our 'core values', point in another? As for the 'rules-based approach', this seems like another device to avoid hard thinking. Rules (like international institutions) are created to serve our values, not the other way around.. And in any case, which rules will obtain? The UN Charter offers rules for states (sovereignty and non-intervention), as well as rules for people (fundamental human rights, the dignity and worth of the human person, the equal rights of men and women, social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom), but the past sixty years have shown that these have not always sat well together.
The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom is most seriously undermined by a confusion between ends, ways and means. Too much of this document is descriptive; setting out both the myriad challenges to the security of the United Kingdom and what the government is doing to meet those challenges. Important though these processes and procedures are, they should not be confused with strategy.
Strategy has two components. At the highest level, strategy requires intellectual and moral leadership. In the case of national security, we might expect a grand unifying vision of a way of life which is not merely to be guarded jealously but which is to be celebrated, encouraged and developed. At a more technical level, strategy should be about establishing priorities and objectives, as well as bench-marks by which to measure progress. Neither of these two components is much in evidence in the NSS. Instead, the focus is on methods and tools, with the result that the NSS reads like a desiccated management study offering little in the way of vision or purpose.
The NSS should certainly serve to improve the quality of public and political debate about security and defence in the United Kingdom, and the document is admirably candid about the scale and complexity of the threats and hazards with which Britain is confronted. Yet there are serious flaws in the NSS and the approach it embodies. Only the most entrenched cynic could argue that the NSS describes everything but says nothing. But it is a document which offers all things to all readers, while being strangely unable to provide much in the way of vision, leadership and motivation - or strategy, in other words.
The best that can be said of the National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom is that a start has at least been made at what must surely be a vitally important task. Questions can now be asked, gaps in policy can now be identified, and the British public can become more aware and more closely involved in planning and preparation, and therefore more resilient in the face of terrorist threats and natural hazards.
But in the longer term, if the UK National Security Strategy is to make a serious contribution to national security policy and practice, two things must happen. First, the NSS needs to be a document full of substance, rather than platitudes, somehow overcoming the traditional British reluctance to be explicit about 'core values' and awkward things of that nature. Second, the NSS will need leadership, resources and stubborn persistence to cut across Whitehall fiefdoms and implement a genuinely cross-governmental approach to security.
If these things cannot be achieved, for whatever practical or cultural reasons, then it would be as well to admit it now. Much the worst outcome would be to embark upon a programme of radical change which does away with the old (and imperfect) ways of doing things, but which fails to deliver something more coherent and robust - precisely at the moment when coherent and robust defences are most needed.
Further Resources
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Briefing Papers, Reports and Papers
Islam, Politics and Security in the UK
Briefing Paper
Various, October 2007
Domestic Security, Civil Contingencies and Resilience in the United Kingdom: A Guide to Policy
Paul Cornish, June 2007
Blair's Foreign Policy and its Possible Successor(s)
Briefing Paper
Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas, December 2006
The Globalization of Security
Briefing Paper
Chatham House and the Economic & Social Research Council, October 2005
Security, Terrorism and the UK
Briefing Paper
Chatham House and the Economic & Social Research Council, July 2005
Transcripts
Friday 7 December 2007
Does the Foreign Office have a Future?
Lord Wallace, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords
Tuesday 20 November 2007
General Reflections
General Sir Michael Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, UK (2003-06)
25 October 2007
Britain Between America and Europe
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Wednesday 14 March 2007
Terrorism, Security And Civil Liberties
Lord Carlile Of Berriew Qc, Independent Reviewer Of Terrorism Legislation
International Affairs
Choosing between America and Europe: a new context for British foreign policy, Robin Niblett, July 2007
The UK/G8 role for peace and security, Alex Ramsbotham, Alhaji M S Bah and Fanny Calder, March 2005
The collapse of British foreign policy, William Wallace, January 2005
The World Today
National Security Strategy: Winning on Wicked Issues, Charlie Edwards, February 2008
Audio (mp3)
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