Britain in Search of a Grand Strategy
The United States is not the only Western power suffering from strategic uncertainty. James Frayne, a British political consultant who is a friend of this blog and an avid student of strategy, drew my attention to his post at The Campaign War Room:
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – under the leadership of Bernard Jenkin – has been running a very worthwhile investigation into “Who Does UK Grand Strategy?” The uncorrected evidence has begun to be put online and it’s worth taking a look at. Peter Hennessy, Julian Lindley-French, and Hew Strachan gave evidence on 9 September, which you can read here. Foreign Secretary William Hague and National Security Adviser Sir Peter Ricketts gave evidence on 14 September, available here. Various figures from the MoD gave evidence on 16 September, available here.We have no meaningful national conversation in the UK on national strategy, so we owe Bernard Jenkin one for pushing this investigation forward. I haven’t had a chance to go through all the evidence yet and will post something longer on it further down the line.
Seems straightforward enough, but the quality of the links are really good; senior British officials in frank discussion of grand strategy. Here’s an example:
Q54 Robert Halfon: Would you make the distinction between a Grand Strategy and a National Security Strategy and do you agree that if there is that difference, a long term strategy needs to look forward 20 years plus?
William Hague : I think a National Security Strategy is an important component of it. I do not think a National Security Strategy is the entire strategy of the country, because there needs to be a strategy not only for maintaining our security, but for advancing our prosperity. These things are closely linked; it is only on strong economic foundations that it is possible to build an effective foreign or defence policy. But it cannot just be a defensive strategy. Was it not a Napoleonic maxim: “The side that stays within its fortifications is beaten”? I think one has to have a strong sense of how the country is going to extend its influence and reach out into the rest of the world, using whatever, to use the jargon, using soft power as well as hard power. So there is something more to the strategy of the country than the National Security Strategy.
Q55 Robert Halfon: Once you have devised that strategy, how does it withstand political pressures and a change of government?
William Hague : If it is good, of course, it will withstand a change of government not by seeking prior agreement across political parties but by being something that has been clearly demonstrated as something the country should pursue. I think that is really how consensus and cross party agreement works in this country. Of course, we are in a period now where it works in a different way between the two coalition parties, because since we are in government together, we have to formally agree things together. But I think if an approach to the future of the nation is shown and understood to be working, it will be something that is continued by other governments in the future.
Some thoughts:
First, there’s a substantial difference between the committee hearing in the House of Commons and what would transpire over here in the US House of Representatives or especially in the Senate. The seriousness of the exchange in this inquiry is evident, conversational it may come across at times, the MPs led by Bernard Jenkin appear genuinely interested in the opinion of the witnesses and the Commons seems to be exercising oversight in a meaningful sense of the word. The Brits also use adult vocabularies, unlike most American politicians. It would be hard to imagine Congressmen saying “otiose” in a hearing. Or, in a few instances, knowing what it meant ( too self-referential, I suppose).
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