What competitive strategies could Britain develop to gain asymmetric advantage over adversaries?
The Big Ask | No. 19.2025
In the Integrated Review Refresh of 2023, His Majesty’s (HM) Government incorporated gaining strategic advantage over competitors and adversaries as a key element of the strategic framework. In order to achieve such an advantage, the United Kingdom (UK) needs to outsmart, outperform or outmatch its rivals. Recent examples of national success include the formation and expansion of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the establishment of AUKUS, assisting Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion and organising the European response to Washington’s attempts to end Russia’s war.
But in a thoroughly geopolitical age, Britain needs to focus on gaining an asymmetric advantage over adversaries. This involves ‘competitive strategy’: attempting to gain an advantage over rivals, while also diminishing their ability to respond or retaliate. It encompasses activities across the geopolitical spectrum, including economic and diplomatic efforts, as well as utilising military assets to dissuade or deter. Given Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, has announced his intention to compile a new national security strategy, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: What competitive strategies could Britain develop to gain asymmetric advantage over adversaries?
Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London
In an increasingly multipolar world, where power is dispersed and uncertainty is rising, the value of reliable friends has never been greater. But strategic partnerships don’t always mandate the usual suspects. Small states – often overlooked and underestimated in strategic discussions – can offer the UK unique opportunities to gain asymmetric advantage.
Just this week, we published a special symposium in Small States and Territories where 25 international contributors spanning the globe – from the Maldives to Malta, Barbados to the Baltics – reflected on the enduring relevance of small states in tackling the world’s large questions. Their insights underscore how such states leverage agility, strategic positioning and innovation to punch above their weight, pioneer new solutions and offer important lessons for larger powers such as Britain on the value of working collaboratively across asymmetries.
For example, the UK’s close defence ties with the Baltic states, particularly Estonia, have not only strengthened the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) forward deterrence posture, but also provide HM Government with valuable insights into whole-of-society defence planning, digital resilience and early warning systems against hybrid threats such as cyber-attacks and information warfare.
Similarly, engaging with small island states in the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean bolsters Britain’s ability to operate globally, secure critical maritime routes and respond to climate-driven instability. This is a significant opportunity to exert convening power and international leadership, particularly given that larger adversaries are generally more reticent and less trustworthy on sustainability issues.
Importantly, small states often wield disproportionate diplomatic clout in multilateral settings (108 countries make up the Forum of Small States at the United Nations (UN), for example). Coordinating with them can amplify the UK’s voice in forums such as the UN, the Commonwealth and regional organisations. After all, competitive strategy is not just about overwhelming force; it is also about building smart coalitions, projecting credibility and acting with agility. In this context, working with small states can offer Britain an asymmetric edge and a way to reinforce a rules-based order from the ground up through equitable partnership which recognises the value each and every player brings to the table.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge
Outside of the realm of military tactics, the concept of ‘asymmetry’ is tricky. All states are unique, and all competitions between adversarial state-systems are asymmetric. The question therefore becomes how HM Government can maximise the things it is good at to maintain an advantage over authoritarian regimes which seek to challenge the UK’s greatest asymmetric advantage: representative, democratic government.
Two intersecting advantages are worth highlighting. The first is Britain’s capacity for research and innovation. The country’s top universities continue to thrive, and with the erosion of research freedom in the United States (US), the UK has a unique opportunity to establish itself as the world’s leading hub for academic research. Britain’s high-end manufacturing firms continue to generate new ideas, especially in the defence, technology and pharmaceutical industries. HM Government needs to protect the UK’s best firms by securing their intellectual property and access to key markets overseas, while encouraging the British financial services sector to throw its weight behind the nation. But, the UK’s capacity to innovate goes beyond the sciences to its ability to think in innovative ways about political economy, social change and world order.
This leads to a second key advantage: Britain’s capacity to build alliances aimed at countering its adversaries and sustaining democratic technological leadership. The last Conservative government led the way on this, from support for Ukraine to establishing AUKUS and the Hiroshima Accords. As the old, rigid structures of the post-Cold War order break down, HM Government’s capacity to develop purposeful international relationships – including with European states – will deliver increasingly greater advantages.
Both of these advantages, however, are dependent on societal faith in our political institutions. That faith is weaker than it has been for many years, ground down by poor government delivery on economic strategy, services provision and regulation. If we cannot get that right, none of the UK’s asymmetric advantages will matter to its adversaries for long.
Senior lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews
The UK possesses a rare form of competitive advantage which it should build upon and exploit in these unsettled times. This competitive advantage can be summarised as Britain’s alliances and allies’ trust in Britain.
The UK is uniquely placed to shape Europe’s emerging security architecture as the American commitment to Europe becomes increasingly uncertain. Britain’s early and effective contribution to Ukraine’s defence has earned it significant political capital among our Eastern European allies, who regard Russia as the primary threat to European security. The UK also plays a major role as the largest member of the JEF, which incorporates the Nordic and Baltic states. Britain’s bilateral security agreements with France and Germany – the Lancaster and Trinity House agreements – provide it with further leverage.
Britain’s positionality within Europe’s security relationships sets it up as a natural leader of the continent’s shifting security architecture. To exploit this, however, it will need to make strategic commitments and investments within the coming months. Foremost among these investments should be sub-strategic nuclear weapons. The UK’s allies are increasingly concerned about the credibility of America’s extended deterrence.
Britain’s own minimal deterrence posture – relying on a single ballistic missile submarine patrolling at any time – leaves it with no capacity to shield its allies visibly against Russian nuclear blackmail. Nuclear-armed fighter jets or ground launched cruise missiles are the capabilities which are needed, and which should be developed. In terms of alliances, reinforcing the JEF with permanent planning structures and deepening collaboration with France, particularly on extended deterrence, are other key steps which the UK can take.
Britain is powerfully positioned to assume a leading role within Europe’s emerging security order. However, capitalising on this opportunity will require key investments made in a timely manner.
Director, Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre, University of Oxford
The purpose of strategy is to secure advantages, and, faced with an impasse, it is vital to seek out those differences, or leverages, which convey a better position, however marginal and incremental that may at first seem. In practical terms, Britain has at its disposal some distinctive advantages.
At the most extreme, it possesses a sovereign nuclear arsenal; a supreme feature of national power which some of its rivals do not. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the irresistible force of public consent. Some regimes assume that they need only to indoctrinate their populations and discipline the rest. But you cannot govern indefinitely at the point of a bayonet. There comes a point where public support makes the difference. The Soviet Union was not defeated by any army; it failed in terms of public backing, and, driven by a hopeless ideology of enforced equality, the shell of the regime eventually fell in because there was no support for it left.
Britain’s asymmetric advantage will, ultimately, be situated in this concept of consent, accountability and social contract.
Lecturer in Economic Warfare Education, King’s College London
Asymmetric advantage over adversaries in the era of ‘interstate systemic competition’ presupposes achieving a superiority in the fastest-developing economic spheres, such as cutting-edge technologies and cyberspace, which require not only access to critical materials and talents but also a proper regulatory environment to support a favourable investment climate and business profitability. To regain a competitive edge, as rightfully stated in the Integrated Review Refresh, the UK needs to respect multilateralism and act proactively to build long-term strategic partnerships with its allies.
However, even when an increase in defence spending is necessary, the overreliance on supply-chain securitisation risks undermining these very objectives. Domestic resilience which depends on coercive mechanisms, such as export controls and sanctions, might not only exacerbate ‘systemic challenges’, as key challengers such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) respond in kind, but also alienate potential allies who develop their own asymmetric advantages in line with their national security agendas.
Achieving an asymmetric advantage necessitates transparent investment strategies, with trust forming the foundation of long-term partnerships. However, increasingly complex, ever-changing and opaque policies have been eroding this trust and the favourable investment climate. Securitisation (when more goods are classified as dual use) and coercive enforcement mechanisms hamper business efficiency for allies due to higher transaction costs and growing expenses, including sanctions compliance costs. Any state promoting economically suboptimal business models not only jeopardises the global competitiveness of its domestic businesses, but also damages its reputation as a guardian of the rule of law.
Laughton Professor of Naval History, King’s College London
The UK should secure asymmetric advantage over present and future adversaries by rebalancing national strategy from the current compromise, which merely balances service interests and limited budgets, to a declared and funded maritime posture.
Maritime Britain consistently outperformed larger continental rivals by focusing national power, armed forces, communications, technology, banking, economics, industry and law to exploit maritime dominance through economic pressure, enhanced by targeted amphibious and air operations, defeating land-centric strategies of historic adversaries France, Russia and Germany, and securing global shipping in peace and war. In 1940, the UK, unable to fight alone in Europe, waged maritime war until 1944, winning the Battle of the Atlantic – the central campaign of the Second World War – supplying the British with food, fuel and weapons, alongside enabling Soviet, American and Canadian armies to engage.
While the Kremlin’s current invasion of Ukraine is largely land-based – Russia’s preferred domain - it has been shaped by maritime pressure on Russia’s vulnerable export-focused economy and exposed coasts, with NATO dominance of the Baltic a critical enabler. While large continental states – the US, the PRC and potentially Russia, emphasise land/air forces, the UK should focus on asymmetric aero-naval strategies, which also enhance the security of the nuclear deterrent.
The best strategies have their roots in experience, and the ‘British Way’ was shaped by the asymmetry of commanding the broad ocean for deterrence, suasion and conflict. With European and other partners necessarily focused on over the land maritime strategic leadership, linked to the wider world, through AUKUS and other global connections, is the obvious path to asymmetric advantage.
Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy
Shortly after the first atomic bursts in 1945, George Orwell realised that the proliferation of nuclear weapons to the greatest powers would make it almost unthinkable for them to engage in open warfare against one another. From that moment forwards, such countries would only be able to wage ‘cold war’ against their peers, where geopolitical, ideological and technological strategies would take centre stage.
As with waging a conventional war, a cold war requires clarity of purpose and the asymmetric application of integrated national power. Where it differs is in the pursuit of victory: the objective cannot be to defeat a rival with military force, but rather to contain it while draining its strength and will to compete potentially over a very long period. Here, two competitive strategies become central:
Geopolitical denial, to block a rival’s room for expansion, ideally by instrumentalising other countries to reduce the cost to the practising nation. During the first cold war with the Soviet Union, the UK forged a potent coalition including the US, Canada, Iceland, Norway, France, Portugal, Turkey, West Germany and others, which not only denied the Soviets access to – and influence over – the industrial heartlands of Western Europe, but also at a cost which was manageable.
Discursive dominance, to prevent adversaries from projecting their own narratives and discourse to shape the international order in a way which provides them with a structural advantage. As in the first cold war, this requires greater synergies between the state and civil society; in some ways, it means putting ‘soft power’ in battledress: funding and coordinating civil society, whether knowingly or otherwise, to project the national message and dislocate hostile narratives.
And in both cases, Britain has a natural advantage: it is an island state, historically adept at forming, funding and managing alliances and coalitions to press down rivals, while its language has become the world’s primary medium of communication. By aligning its allies and partners to deny Russia and the PRC global access and leverage, HM Government can compound these advantages.
Independent defence analyst, writer and illustrator
While small inexpensive drones cannot fulfil every mission requirement, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nonetheless demonstrated that they are now at the forefront of modern warfare. Low-cost, disposable drones are proving increasingly vital, not just in the air, but also on land and at sea. This presents a significant opportunity for the UK to become a global leader in adapting and advancing drone technology.
This requires a mindset shift, allowing room for ‘good enough’ weapons available in volume, instead of relying on a limited supply of exquisite systems. These more basic systems should equip the British Armed Forces and be made available to allies, both through exports and military aid.
To seize this opportunity, Britain should capitalise on its close understanding of how Ukraine has successfully leveraged new technologies to counter, and often outpace, Russian capabilities. A key lesson from Ukraine’s success – frequently achieved with British support – is the use of commercial off-the-shelf technologies to cut development time and unit cost dramatically, especially in drone warfare.
The UK faces growing challenges in mass-producing heavy military equipment, given the shift from large-scale industrial bases in recent decades. However, there is a promising alternative. Across the country, small and medium-sized engineering firms equipped with computer-assisted manufacturing capabilities are already operating in industrial estates. With innovative thinking, this dispersed manufacturing network can be harnessed to produce the next generation of weapons. What was once seen as an inefficient production model – distributed manufacturing – can now be both scalable and cost-effective. Applying this approach to drone production is a strategic imperative.
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