The British state seems perpetually befuddled. Every international crisis catches it in its sudden glare like so many headlights trained on a nervous rabbit hopping hopelessly around a motorway. One moment Russia is invading Ukraine, then Hamas attacks Israel, Israel flattens Gaza, America knocks out Venezuela, then attacks Iran, while all the time China leers over Taiwan. Each new event leaves us spinning. Whose side are we on? What do we want? How do we get it?
We use grand words to navigate our way in the confusion: ‘the special relationship’; ‘the national interest’; ‘the rules-based order’. But if these once signified some grand story we could all relate to they now feel empty and confusing. Jack Watling’s Statecraft sees something systemic in our inability to deal with these non-stop crises – and offers us a way to fix it.
It’s not that democracies can’t make strategy; it’s just that we’ve forgotten how
The trouble for Britain is that since the Cold War it took where the world was headed and its role in it for granted. Stability would be rooted in an international system propped up by America. Economic integration would guarantee peace and prosperity. Our democratic values would make us successful and significant. Different government departments could deal with discrete crises – an economic shock here, a distant war there – but these unfortunate events were the exception rather than the norm.
Now that model of the world has gone. Crises rather than order are the norm. And we have been left at sixes and sevens. Our economic policy says ‘Go do deals with China’ when our security policy screams caution. Our values trumpet openness –which creates opportunities for adversaries to manipulate us at home. We espouse the rules-based order, but our main ally, the US, is trashing it. Even when we have excellent intelligence, as in the run up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we struggle to mobilise our resources to act on it swiftly. The way democratic power changes every few years means it is impossible to plan long-term.
That didn’t matter so much when there was a strategy spanning generations. But now that we need to rethink our role in the world, the constant switches become problematic. It’s something we share with other democracies. American aims have become utterly erratic, often seeming to spin on a dime (or perhaps for a dime). Different departments in DC appear to be running different foreign policies. Some prioritise China; a few yearn for isolationism; others forge a bruderschaft of dictatorships. All these collide with one another and drag Britain into the pile-up.
Watling, who works for Rusi (Senior Research Fellow, Land Warfare – Military Sciences), is darkly amusing on how ‘strategy’ documents are written. Grandly titled, they are passed around departments where each revises it in their own direction, until you have a grand statement with little originality and which is made redundant when the next crisis comes.
The bad news is that dictatorships are rather good at strategy. Consider China, which can bring economic, military, diplomatic and information policy towards one greater aim, such as taking control of Taiwan by 2049. China harnesses long-term investments to secure geopolitical influence. Russia is more of a spoiler state, but it, too, can unite its different tools for a larger strategy. For decades, the Kremlin has used its energy companies as ways both of reaping profit and controlling Europe.
The point is not that democracies can’t make strategy; it’s that we’ve forgotten how. Consider the start of the Cold War. In 1948, a National Security Council resolution announced that the US was adopting a policy of ‘total Cold War’ against the Soviet Union. This included a combination of economic, diplomatic, military and cultural fronts. Over the Cold War, the ‘West’ combined a grand narrative about political freedoms, artistic freedoms and economic freedoms together with foreign policy to support independence movements in central Europe into a greater whole.
Statecraft is punctuated with colourful scenes of Watling’s adventures along the front lines in Ukraine. In one, he takes apart a Russian missile head with Ukrainian forces, only to find it stuffed full of western components. The moment becomes emblematic of our current kerfuffle. Our economic policy prioritises global trade –but that has led to our adversaries using our technology to wage war against our interests, and makes sanctions feel, says Watling, like ‘putting a hand over a colander’.
One can imagine a different approach that would align economics and security. Democracies would ensure our supply chains were ‘friend-shored’ and that we had a domestic defence industry to satisfy our companies, and this policy would be built up regardless of what happens each election. Meanwhile, our economic warfare tools would surgically subvert Russian supply chains at their choke points. Our visa policy would turn engineers off working on any part of military industry by banning them from entering any allied country in perpetuity.
While Statecraft is a detailed, often surgical, book, its overall effect is therapeutic. Reading it one can start to imagine a road map through the crazy car crashes of the post-rules-based world, and how we can unite the disparate tools we still possess to truly take back control.
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