Before becoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham wrote in The Times on 8th July: ‘we must rebuild Britain’s hard power to face a darker world.’ This begs the question: how much darker is the world becoming, and how should the United Kingdom (UK) react?
The eroding international order
For over four years, Russian missiles and drones have rained down on Ukrainian cities, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties each month – the Kremlin’s latest atrocity in its 12 year campaign against its neighbour. The United States (US) attacked Iran on 28th February 2026, with minimal effort made to create a legal basis. Both Russia and the US are permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the highest body of the international order, with a unique responsibility for the maintenance of international security and its regulation.
The early 21st century has seen the return of overt territorial revisionism by major powers, with members of the UN Security Council violating the UN Charter and vetoing any UN sanction. The 2014 and 2022 Russian invasions of Ukraine are the most extreme contemporary examples, but the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the 1999 NATO operation against Serbia remain hotly contested on the same UN Charter sovereign immunity clause. The American seizure of Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, under US domestic law is an explicit rejection of the same tenets, as are threats to annex Greenland.
In 2025, America imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, calling the ICC judgements ‘...abuse of power infring[ing] upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies…’ The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is stretching the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to legitimise the construction of artificial islands to extend its territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). In 2013, the International Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague ruled against the Chinese claims, but Beijing ignored the ruling.
Economic statecraft and strategic leverage
The globalisation of economic interdependence might encourage the view that international economic ties reduce the effectiveness of military coercion. However, after decades of ‘offshoring’, states are now increasingly exploiting asymmetric economic linkages and supply chain chokepoints for strategic leverage. The PRC exploits other states’ dependence on rare earth metals, the Group of Ten (G10) has exploited its monopoly control over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) banking system to impose sanctions on Iran (2012) and Russia (2022), and the US has imposed punitive tariffs as coercive tools on allies as well as adversaries.
Russia has been excluded from the Group of Seven (G7) since its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The PRC competes against the UN’s International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the Asian International Infrastructure Bank offering competitive infrastructure loans to states without many of the IMF’s regulatory stipulations, but with the infrastructure as collateral. The World Trade Organisation exists to manage exactly these types of disputes, but it is now largely defunct and facing 21st century mercantilism, with powerful states increasingly reverting to aggressive tariff regimes and trade barriers.
The implications of deepening geopolitical competition
Evidently, the international order is under strain – both from those who have long sought to undermine it and, increasingly, those who should be its greatest champions. ‘International order’ is simply a description of the relationships between states. Although the post-Cold War international system was backed by the US as a single hegemonic power, it was largely benign, based on norms or rules often set by international institutions.
A rules-based international order is only effective as long as its advocates enforce those rules. When major powers are seen to be breaking their own rules, the rules become enfeebled. The major powers are undermining the credibility of the UN Security Council and by extension the entire concept of a rules-based international order; if the great powers can act with impunity because of their strength, that is a power-based order. Where would that leave powers such as the UK, which have traditionally seen the upholding of such an order as in their national interest?
The 2021 Integrated Review asserted:
...UK policy has been focused on preserving the post-Cold War ‘rules-based international system’ which has greatly benefitted the UK and other nations. Today…the international order is…characterised by intensifying competition between states...A defence of the status quo is no longer sufficient…
In turn, the 2025 Strategic Defence Review suggested:
The challenge to the free world has intensified through so-called ‘great power’ competition and a collapse of the post-Second World War consensus. The certainties of the international order we have accepted for so long are now being questioned – and not only by authoritarians.
British policy appears to recognise the ‘new reality’, but Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) departmental objectives remain essentially unchanged between 2020 and 2025. The UK could commit to supporting the existing rules-based order, or it could invest in shaping a future order – effectively a balance between short-term and longer-term risk. Both options come with costs. However, the country appears to be planning for neither.
Capability gaps: Allocating resources
Preparing for less international governance will require enhancement to the British Armed Forces and diplomatic capabilities. Even allowing for a ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) first’ focus, there is no flurry of new military acquisition. Conventional military capabilities have continued to atrophy since 2010. The nuclear deterrent comprises submarines already extended past their design lives. The Integrated Review’s announcement increasing the maximum stockpile of nuclear warheads does not change the deterrence criteria or in itself increase the UK’s military capability.
The costs of provision of sufficient military force to protect scattered British commercial interests in a more anarchic international security environment would be considerable. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) included a risible 0.01% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in ‘new’ money to be spent on defence, which led to John Healey resigning as Secretary of State for Defence, stating ‘...[the DIP] falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.’ Following Healey’s transition to His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury as part of the Burnham administration, it remains uncertain how the UK can maintain its reputation as a dependable partner among NATO allies who face the growing Russian menace and who have committed to devoting 5% of GDP to defence.
Britain has long relied on so-called ‘soft power’ to help sustain its influence worldwide; indeed, the Integrated Review lauded Britain as a ‘soft power superpower,’ citing the BBC and the British Council as key enablers. However, both are now at risk of death by a thousand cuts. Since 2021, the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) – i.e., foreign aid – budget has been reduced by 30%. Cuts to the British Council shut down their offices in 27 states. A 21% reduction to BBC World Service funding led to closure of radio services in Chinese, Russian, and Hindi, and to digital-only for Arabic and Persian, although funding was increased in 2026 to about 80% of the 2021 figure.
While the ability to deliver strategic results through ‘soft power’ in a ‘hard power’ world can be debated, the narrative battle against adversaries in ‘middle ground’ countries will be important, and these steps undermine those efforts.
The future of British strategic influence
As a major power with the world’s fifth largest economic output, a minimum nuclear deterrent, and atrophied – albeit regenerating – armed forces, the UK has benefitted from disproportionate influence, mostly due to its privileged position within the rules-based international order, including its permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Germany and Japan have, for the moment, larger populations and larger economies, but no permanent UN Security Council seat. As the existing order continues to deteriorate, the benefits that Britain has derived are at risk. Evidently, the country needs to rethink its approach.
Despite security policy recognising the context of continuous competition – the Prime Minister’s ‘darker world’ – the UK has not made attendant enhancements to its conventional military and cultural strengths to help shape the operating environment. Defence strategy now relies on capabilities hollowed out by decades of political neglect. The policy trajectory leans towards seeking to shape the future order while maximising the opportunities that the existing order offers, but without making the necessary fiscal commitment to influence the future order or the political investment in the existing order.
Britain is between a rock and a hard place. Reinforcing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power will be necessary for it to act to sustain the elements of the existing order it wants to, and to influence the evolution of the future international order. HM Government faces real, and hard, choices.
Dr Andrew Corbett is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies Education at King’s College London. He served as a submariner in the Royal Navy spanning the end of the Cold War, which included commanding two Trident submarines.
This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Defence Unit.
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Britain already spends political capital on the international order, so affordability is not quite the question, but what the spending buys is. A fair amount goes on managing institutions, or on accommodating whichever partner presses hardest, rather than on the rules where Britain's exposure is largest. The sorting question is one you could put to a seminar: if one of these institutions went tomorrow, which would Britain feel first, how long would it take to notice, and which would it not want to be seen to have let go? For an island living on shipping, cables and clearing I suspect the answers are not the ones the political weather points at. The courts come out higher than recent conduct implies.
The capacity to decide quickly is plainly there. NLAWs went into Ukraine before the invasion and Storm Shadow went before any larger partner would send that reach, both settled fast, both defended afterwards, and neither taken because somebody else had asked.
Nothing of that speed has appeared in defence of the institutions themselves. I have not seen a document naming which of them Britain would move first for, and until there is one, both options here are descriptions rather than plans.
Great piece! I think it’s tenable for Britain, we just need a population that will wake up to the real threats we face. But we also need a country young people believe in and want to protect. It’s a tall task but I think it can be done!