Britain's strategy for a decade of danger: Our nation, our continent, our world

Since coming to power, the Labour government has successfully rebuilt Britain’s diplomatic profile through deals on trade, migration and defence. But success abroad masks the extent to which Britain’s domestic woes over the last decade have international roots. 

Britain’s foreign policy debate has not yet caught up with the current set of challenges facing the UK, and it is still defined by old assumptions about the US, trade and Europe. It needs a grand strategy that clearly defines the country’s strategy for security, growth and migration, and how its role in the world can help deliver them.

This paper identifies three ideal types for a future UK grand strategy.

• Model 1: A modern special relationship, focussed on US alignment, Five Eyes, NATO primacy, and maximum interoperability, recognising that the UK has no near-term alternative to the US as its core security provider.
• Model 2:Global Britain 2.0, a diversified, multi-regional strategy leveraging partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, Gulf and Commonwealth. Britain would align itself with other mid-sized democracies – Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea – that are trying to preserve parts of the rules-based order while under double coercion from China and the US.
• Model 3: A Pivot to Europe in a dangerous world, anchoring the UK in Europe’s emerging security and economic ecosystem – without necessarily rejoining the EU. The EU has become a security union, not the liberalising bloc of 2016. It remains the UK’s biggest market and the route by which all irregular arrivals reach Britain – so a more structured relationship could deliver major returns on the growth and migration fronts. 

Given the unreliability of the US, and the UK’s specific geography and interests, the analysis concludes that ‘Pivot to Europe’ is the only model capable of addressing the UK’s core strategic challenges, but it must be combined with a collective effort to modernise the US alliance and an investment in renewing selective global partnerships. 

A new grand strategy will rest on three pillars: 

1. recasting the relationship with Europe
2. de-risking from the US and China with Europe
3. reinventing the machinery of government.