What should be the three predominant strategic objectives for Britain in an increasingly volatile era?
The Big Ask | No. 20.2025
Within the ever more contested geopolitics of the 21st century, the United Kingdom (UK) acknowledges the necessity of achieving strategic advantage. Of equal importance, however, is an acknowledgement that any competitive strategies utilised are a means to an end, and that Britain should ultimately pursue overarching strategic objectives rather than strategies for their own sake. These strategic objectives outline the UK’s preferred vision of the international order, and must adapt in accordance with global developments and the emergence of new systemic challenges.
In last week’s Big Ask, eight experts proposed competitive strategies which Britain could use to gain advantage over its geopolitical adversaries. Building upon the ideas put forth in the previous Big Ask, this week we asked seven experts: What should be the three predominant strategic objectives for Britain in an increasingly volatile era?
Associate Professor in History of Strategy and International Law, University of Lincoln, and Director, Maritime Studies Centre
Strategic objectives need to be long-term. Their consideration and purpose needs to look past the length of an election cycle and, ideally, past the possible duration of a single government. Strategic objectives should, fundamentally, be governed by the desire to increase national prosperity and improve the quality of life of a population. Such lofty sentiments, however, cannot be confused for the strategic objectives themselves. ‘Prosperity’ first needs to be defined clearly, and then the enablers to reach that definition become the strategic objectives.
Debates about prosperity often come back to questions of security. Prosperity cannot be ensured (in any guise) if there is not first the security and stability to pursue it. This rapidly brings the debate around to threats, and what conditions – internal and global – pose the greatest threat to British security and stability? I propose three present threats which the UK must place at the top of any threat hierarchy:
The undermining of democracy by external forces.
Strategic objective: Internal focus on education and civic understanding for every single member of the British population.
Climate change and the increased instability and volatility of weather and biospheres.
Strategic objective: Be the first on the United Nations (UN) Security Council to turn away meaningfully from running an economy on fossil fuels and lead the next energy revolution.
Not reacting to the changing character of alliances.
Strategic objective: Pivot away from an increasingly unstable United States (US) and the obsession with the special relationship. Focus militarily on European alliances and a smaller pool of operational areas such as the Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea and North Sea.
Deputy Director (Geopolitics), Council on Geostrategy
The UK faces an increasingly unstable and uncertain world. It is clear that His Majesty’s (HM) Government must make sense of short-term trends – across trade, technology and geopolitics – and chart strategies which enable Britain to not only survive these unsettling times, but also to thrive. The three predominant strategic areas for the UK are as follows:
Technology and geopolitics: Britain has been fast to adjust to the emergence of new critical technologies and has a science and technology framework which was recently updated. However, it neglects the geopolitical context. The UK must adopt and adjust its technology framework in line with the geopolitical pressures confronting the nation.
Defence industrial base: Britain has developed a Defence Supply Chain Strategy and is on the cusp of delivering a Defence Industrial Strategy. The Defense Industry Strategy – Statement of Intent fails to mention the growing political threat to the Euro-Atlantic defence industrial base. The UK must develop a ‘bridging’ role between Brussels and Washington. Neither side can afford to let the collaboration, trust and close relationships falter in an age of emerging technologies and highly industrialised adversaries.
Defence ecosystem: Britain has begun to make hard choices on defence spending, particularly vis-à-vis development. However, these changes remain superficial. The UK’s defence ecosystem – universities, think tanks, tech and the defence industry – continue to operate in an era of scarce resources. We can no longer afford to neglect serious investment in Britain’s defence ecosystem.
Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge
During my time as a diplomat years ago, the Foreign Office considered there to be three components to the pursuit of the national interest – security, prosperity and values. In the present day, this translates into three overarching objectives.
Regarding security, the priority for the UK is to face down the threat from Russia, which is threatening Britain and its friends and allies in Europe. Practically, that means fortifying frontline states in Eastern Europe, encouraging Europeans to take more responsibility for their security and pressing the US to maintain its commitment to European North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies.
In terms of prosperity, the priority for the UK is to secure as many free trade agreements as it can in a world of rising tariffs and growing economic protectionism. With the signing of agreements with the US and India, the focus is now on the Persian Gulf, South Korea and friendly countries in Africa and South America.
Meanwhile, under the heading of values, Britain should continue to promote democracy, free markets and the rule of law, since the UK is safer and more prosperous in a world where others are like it. In this respect, the task is to end the promotion of ‘progressive’ ideas which alienate countries outside the Euro-Atlantic, and are already rejected by many inside the country.
One other point is that action abroad must be backed by action at home. This means developing a keener sense of the national interest than at present, forging a common national community to support this national interest, undertaking meaningful economic reforms and using the proceeds of growth to re-arm. Anything less, and Britain’s strategic planning will count for little.
The Rt. Hon. Baroness Neville-Jones DCMG
Member of the House of Lords and Member of the Advisory Board, Council on Geostrategy
The UK should focus on the following three predominant strategic objectives:
Strengthening and modernising the British Armed Forces to be in a position to provide NATO framework leadership to defend and protect European security.
Reinforcing the security and resilience of the UK homeland against the data and other hybrid threats to the good functioning of the British economy and society.
Educating the British people about the threats faced and the contribution each needs to make to a whole-of-society approach.
Charles Parton OBE
Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
What are the UK’s three predominant strategic objectives? This is an impossible question if they are not to be so general as to be meaningless. The environment? The People’s Republic of China? Being a leader in new technologies? There are many more than these three – they overlap; it is easy to wrangle over any ranking. Still, here goes…
The balance between combatting climate change versus providing cheap energy will test all future British governments. Geography might be kind to us in that the British Isles are fertile and well-watered, but climate change is an international problem whose ramifications – the obvious ones being forced mass migration and food security – are already with us. If future mega cities such as Kinshasa become uninhabitable (temperature and humidity are a fearsome combination), London will be affected. Cheap energy is the requisite for national prosperity, and thereby national security.
Working with like-minded countries to ensure that the new sciences and technologies do not become the preserve of totalitarian regimes is essential to the UK’s economic and national security – the same thing in the long run. Can British governments ensure that innovation is developed here and not appropriated, legally or illegally? And, on the other side of the coin, can they ensure that the UK does not become dependent on imports of totalitarian technology, thus handing leverage to those only too willing to use it to subvert our systems and values?
This raises the question of a ‘China strategy’. HM Government has not had one, certainly since the dawn of the Xi Jinping era. This is vital, both in the short and the long term. It will also greatly affect British relations with the US, which is committed to far more than a mere trade war, and with Europe.
Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy
The UK’s fundamental objective is the same as it has always been, or should have been: to prevent the emergence of a hostile power on the European continent, in such a way that instrumentalises other European – and non-European – countries to reduce the cost of the endeavour to the British taxpayer.
Currently, the biggest threat to British interests is Russia. Since the late 1940s, the UK has maintained a favourable balance of power in Europe by harnessing the awesome power of North America through NATO. If the US begins to focus on other theatres – principally the Indo-Pacific – Britain will need to find novel ways to achieve the same objective. This may involve drawing together a tight grouping within NATO, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, as well as Poland, Germany, France, Romania and Ukraine – to provide the alliance’s ultimate backstop. This will require an expansion of the British nuclear arsenal to include theatre-level or sub-strategic weapons.
Britain’s second primary objective is to cultivate new commercial and political relationships with the countries of the Indo-Pacific, namely those which are growing the most vigorously. This includes the US, which is increasingly an Indo-Pacific – rather than a Euro-Atlantic – power. Dictated by geography, Britain should focus on the littoral belt of countries from Suez to Seoul to generate new income and help AUKUS and Japan to stabilise an increasingly volatile and contested region.
Underpinning all of this is the third primary objective: building up the national powerbase. This requires a national strategy to promote economic growth, regenerate the industrial base and promote national cohesion, almost at all costs. Britain needs cheaper and more sovereign electricity. It needs an advanced and efficient transport and communications system. And it requires liberalised planning to accommodate a growing population.
Research Fellow (Sea Power), Council on Geostrategy
First and foremost, the UK should not give up on the idea of a rules-based international order grounded in liberal democratic values. In a time when authoritarian powers are challenging this foundation, Britain should act to preserve it by strengthening alliances between like-minded nations and leveraging its soft power to shape global discourse. Concepts like human rights, the rule of law and democratic governance should not be allowed to fall by the wayside.
Linked to this is the second strategic objective: safeguarding the long-term security of the global commons. Shared domains such as space, the high seas and cyberspace are all places of intensifying competition, and the UK should champion governance frameworks which balance open access with responsible stewardship, with a view to the long term.
To balance these, Britain must also recognise that the volatility of the current geopolitical landscape requires some measure of strategic autonomy. Mitigating the UK’s exposure to systemic vulnerabilities and the threat of coercive statecraft requires both investment in sovereign capabilities and deeper links with trusted allies – autonomy where it makes sense, and friendshoring where that is a better course of action.
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