Shared Destinies: Security in a globalised world

This is the interim report of the ongoing ippr Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, an all-party Commission preparing an independent national security strategy for the UK.

In this report, the Commission seeks to lay the foundations for a re-think of UK national security strategy for the first quarter of this century and to provide a constructive challenge to the policies and activities already being taken forward by government. We examine long term drivers of change including globalisation, demographic change, global poverty and inequality, climate change, and scientific and technological change and go on to identify threats, to set out a series of principles that should underpin our response, and to offer some initial policy recommendations.

These recommendations focus on two main areas:

• Conflict prevention and intervention in conflict environments; and

• Strengthened multilateralism (with particular reference to regional security organisations, nuclear non-proliferation, and global biosecurity).

Our report is both a warning and a call to action. We face serious and worsening international security challenges but provided we are willing to learn lessons, to change the way we think, to find the necessary political will and to adapt our policy solutions and instruments to new circumstances, there is much that can be done. We offer this interim report as a contribution to the necessary process of policy change that must now unfold.