Is the National Security Strategy’s ‘strategic framework’ right for Britain?
The Big Ask | No. 26.2025
On 24th June, His Majesty’s (HM) Government published the National Security Strategy (NSS). The 55 page document draws together a range of sub-strategies, including the long-awaited Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The NSS acknowledges the increasingly volatile nature of the world and the need for Britain to strengthen its position to confront, compete and cooperate in a new era.
A key aspect of the NSS is the new ‘strategic framework’. Consisting of three pillars – security at home, strength abroad, and sovereign capabilities – the new framework identifies how the United Kingdom (UK) will achieve its national security objectives. Using this as the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: Is the National Security Strategy’s ‘strategic framework’ right for Britain?
Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy
The strategic framework outlined in the NSS is well-suited to the current (and potential future) geopolitical dilemmas facing the UK. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, there is a real recognition of the state-level threats across the spectrum of conflict, including conventional armed attack, facing the British Isles. Recognition of the need to bolster Britain’s defences and resilience is, frankly, long overdue.
The idea that security at home enables strength abroad – which should also be pursued – is coherent and logical. The emphasis that HM Government should focus on ‘using (and combining) all the levers of state and national power including defence, diplomacy, trade, intelligence, law enforcement, science, technology, education and our cultural reach’ is also warmly welcomed – a wide-ranging approach such as this creates the stage for a proper grand strategy.
The third pillar, ‘increase sovereign and asymmetric capabilities’, is weaker than the other two in that the definitions of ‘sovereign’ and ‘asymmetric’ are left somewhat ambiguous. That said, the content of the section still outlines exactly the right things for the UK to focus on, especially rebuilding its defence industrial base.
As with all previous strategies however, the true test is in implementation. The NSS is, on the surface, a great document which looks set to provide a seminal touchpoint for the future of British grand strategy in a far more volatile period. Yet, without HM Treasury being told it must find the money to support such a strategy properly – something which admittedly will take brave political leadership – it will all be for nought.
Deputy Director (Geopolitics), Council on Geostrategy
There was a suggestion that the NSS was perhaps too ‘bleak’ in outlook – in that it did not describe the world we actually live in, but rather a dark, sombre version – with a sort of hinted allusion that this was all to support the required budget increases to the military and security services. However, I think the authors did the best they could in the situation they were in – between the SDR and the ‘China Audit’, as well as a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit dominated by spending commitments.
In the spirit of positivity, I would argue that there are three areas where the NSS got things absolutely correct.
First is the realisation that the UK has few resources, training and know-how to deal with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). HM Government should increase language training and knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its various strategies, returning to the incredible PRC know-how which the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) once had.
Second, the emphasis on technology as a tool for geopolitical leverage is profound and worth noting. Countries are seeking to ‘gain advantage’ by subsidising their companies and looking to dominate technology technical standards, which impacts trading relationships and justifies the requirement for investment security screening. It also adds justification for higher research and development (R&D) spending – something which has declined lamentably in the UK in recent years.
Third, the prospect of warfare between great powers is seen as a possibility. It is high time Britain began to recall the best practices and strategies of the Cold War to deter and defeat its adversaries, across ideological, technological, military and political spheres. The UK should stop thinking about ‘hot’ major power wars and begin planning for ‘cold’ ones.
Unfortunately, some are still of the mind that the world is a much safer place than it actually is. Such complacency should be long gone by now.
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
At the height of the Dunkirk crisis in summer 1940, the left-wing poet Stephen Spender asked George Orwell: ‘Don’t you feel that any time during the past ten years you have been able to foretell events better than, say, the Cabinet?’ It was not about any powers of prediction, Orwell agreed, but ‘in the power to grasp what kind of world we are living in’.
HM Government’s NSS passes the Orwell test. By accepting the likelihood of peer conflict, and the confluence of domestically generated extremism with hybrid aggression from the CRINK nations – the PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea – it provides sorely needed realism about the ‘kind of world we are living in’.
The most important change it makes is to signal that, instead of adopting a ‘defensive crouch’ behind a system of international laws and treaties which are increasingly being broken, the UK will actively ‘minimise the ability of others to coerce us’ and disrupt hybrid aggression on British shores.
I believe we are seeing the first demonstrations of that principle in the proposal to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and in the decision to expand nuclear delivery options via the F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft. But these will not be the last.
The NSS shows that our politicians, after nearly five years of playing catch-up in the rolling crisis which began on 6th January 2021, have finally understood the severity of the disorder which the UK may have to survive within. But do the electorate?
At the heart of the NSS is the proposal that Britain may actively choose to participate in conflicts in which it is not threatened directly, and that it may also need to choose between its values and its interests. The British people are nowhere near understanding what that might mean in practice – and HM Government itself has been forced to tread on eggshells over the legality of support for American strikes on Iran.
In summary, the NSS contains a welcome change of mindset, but jolting Whitehall – above all the FCDO – out of the rut of instinctive emollience and reactivity will be harder than writing the strategy itself.
Charles Parton OBE
Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
The NSS has been used to bury the China Audit. It gives no clues as to how HM Government will manage the conflicting triangle of economic, national security and climate change issues in the UK’s relations with the PRC. If the government has any strategy for the PRC, it is to ‘say less publicly, say more internally’.
This may be sensible, as long as within government there is clear and consistent guidance to economic, security and climate change departments on the direction they should take. But there are downsides. It is unlikely to be tenable in the longer term; in a world where the United States (US) and the PRC may insist that countries choose sides. The NSS fails to give clear guidance to business, academia and other areas of society, which was one of the professed aims of the China Audit.
We don’t know if HM Government has a ‘China strategy’ (i.e., a coherent set of policies for dealing with the economic, security, climate change triangle) for internal use. If – to prevent it leaking – it is classified as secret, most officials won’t know the details either, since they are not vetted to that level. So, we shall have to judge whether the government is serious about tackling some of the PRC challenges mentioned in the NSS by observing whether it establishes the governmental structures, mechanisms and measures to protect Britain’s security, and – more importantly – whether it more actively implements the laws already on the books, such as the National Security Investment Act, the National Security Act and the Procurement Act.
Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy
The strategic framework is simple yet sophisticated. The three interlocking dimensions – securing the homeland, projecting strength abroad, and enhancing sovereignty – intersect with one another to provide the UK with a more effective and robust strategic approach. This new framework develops the frameworks of the 2021 Integrated Review and 2023 Integrated Review Refresh, which began to prepare British statecraft for an era of intensifying geopolitical competition.
However, the NSS also implies that there is a priority order of the three components, with securing the homeland being the most important. While protecting the British Isles from military assault or sub-threshold attacks is undoubtedly the most important element of strategy, the other two dimensions – projecting strength overseas and enhancing sovereignty – are the most important from the perspective of statecraft.
The reason is simple: the best defence is a good offence. In order to secure the homeland, HM Government needs to contain and repress the UK’s enemies overseas. It is better to keep Russia or the PRC pinned down in distant theatres than combat their malignancy on British territory (e.g., Russia’s deployment of nerve agents in Salisbury). It is even better to stir up trouble on adversaries’ terrains – and force them into combatting British sub-threshold or proxy attacks, particularly if it costs them more than it costs the UK to strike out.
With the concept of ‘asymmetric advantage’, the NSS nudges Britain closer towards a suitable strategy for a geopolitical age, but it could go further still. Besides rebuilding the UK’s military and coercive instruments, HM Government ought to think harder about the importance of economic statecraft. Embracing geopolitics in full will strengthen the British nation and deter enemies from mounting attacks.
Policy Fellow (China Observatory), Council on Geostrategy
The NSS demonstrates understanding that one of the key ways to contain the threats emerging from the PRC, in particular its ambitions for territorial expansion, is to bolster partnerships with the countries surrounding it. This is seen particularly in the ‘strength abroad’ pillar. Its emphasis on ‘greater robustness and consistency’ in addressing strategic threats like the PRC is welcome, as is the reaffirmation of the UK’s commitment and recognition of the importance of multilateral frameworks such as NATO, the Group of Seven (G7) and the Five Eyes agreement. Deepening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific with countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, all of which are key regional players in maintaining stability, is a very welcome sign. Similarly, the continuation of defence engagement with Japan, Brunei, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand is commendable, and further reflects a future-looking commitment to strengthening regional deterrence through diverse bilateral ties.
The PRC is referenced repeatedly in the section on ‘developing relationships in new domains’, underscoring its prominence in Britain’s foreign and security policy calculus. Meanwhile, the ‘sovereign capabilities’ pillar of the NSS does not mention one specific detail which is included in the China Audit, but nevertheless forms a part of this pillar. HM Government’s pledge to invest £600 million in the intelligence services is a necessary response to this threat, reinforcing the need to invest continually in both technological and human resources to keep up with the ever-evolving and ever-sophisticated cyber interference from Beijing. While implementation will be the true test, the framework’s integration of global partnerships, domestic resilience and investment in sovereign tools signals a balanced and forward-looking approach to safeguarding Britain’s interests.
Senior Research Fellow (Science, Technology and Economics), Council on Geostrategy
The strategic framework set out in the NSS is right for the UK, but HM Government has much work to do to ensure that its myriad strategies amount to more than the sum of their individual parts. It is in the gaps between the pieces of this vast mosaic that some of the most pressing challenges lie.
The NSS sets out a strategic framework consisting of three mutually reinforcing components, one of which is increasing Britain’s sovereign and asymmetric capabilities – including rebuilding the UK’s defence industrial base. In order to achieve this, the NSS sets out an approach to align Britain’s productive, industrial, technological and scientific strengths more closely to national security objectives – to an extent not seen, apparently, since wartime.
Here’s the issue: this strategy is one of many which HM Government is publishing. So far in 2025, we’ve also had UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy; the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy; the Strategic Defence Review; the Technology Adoption Review; the AI Opportunities Action Plan; a new Science and Technology Framework; an upcoming Defence Industrial Strategy… you get the picture. These have mostly been thorough and well thought out. The NSS claims to bring together the many strands of work relating to national security which have been underway since the 2024 general election.
But it is one thing to have many good plans and strategies, it is quite another to cohere them towards a common goal – bringing together R&D, skills and talent, infrastructure, planning, regulation, funding and financing, institutional barriers and risk appetite.
Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews
The NSS is a generally laudatory document. It describes an increasingly perilous international environment wherein Britain regularly faces Russian indirect and sub-threshold attacks, as well as the real possibility of a full-scale war. The NSS also gingerly describes the UK’s dependence upon the US, which is becoming a less dependable ally. Diagnosing the current national security environment in a sober and realistic manner, the NSS highlights a plethora of measures which Britain should embrace.
Despite its strengths, the NSS fails in one crucial aspect. Although it highlights the increasingly zero-sum and coercive nature of economic statecraft, it fails to propose policies and institutions suited for this reality.
The NSS presciently opines that ‘economic coercion will become increasingly common’ and that private sector firms will play an ever-greater role in inter-state relations. It asserts that the UK can only compete in this environment if it can counter economic threats and position its firms to lead in strategic domains, including artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and robotics. It sounds alarm bells, however, that authoritarian states possess inherent advantages when it comes to steering firms’ behaviour strategically.
Although the NSS highlights a need for robust economic statecraft, it is remarkably silent on how this will be achieved. More worrisome, recent events demonstrate that Britain’s current architecture of government is unfit for purpose. Policy towards strategic industries is fragmented between the Department for Business and Trade, the Treasury, the FCDO and the Ministry of Defence. None of these bodies has, as its core mission, the UK’s prevailing in an increasingly zero-sum competition with its adversaries over key technologies and trade flows. Britain’s failure to either develop a sanctions regime capable of crippling Russia’s war effort or countering the PRC’s state-directed policies of intellectual property theft and export promotion in strategic industries highlights the inadequacies of current measures.
Prior to the Second World War, the UK developed a structure – the Ministry of Economic Warfare – that centralised all the levers of economic statecraft within a single governmental body. What Britain needs today to give the NSS the economic teeth it needs is to resuscitate (albeit under a different name) the Ministry of Economic Warfare.
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