Global multipolarity, the European security environment and implications for UK
grand strategy: back to the future, once again
DAVID BLAGDEN*
International Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 2 (March 2015), pp. 333-350
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: David Blagden, ‘Global multipolarity, the
European security environment and implications for UK grand strategy: back to the future, once again,’
International Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 2 (March 2015), pp. 333-350, which has been published in final form at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2346.12238/abstract. This article may be used for noncommercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
*
The author thanks Paul Cornish, John Deni, Andrew Dorman, Sam Dudin, Paul van Hooft, Kit Kowol,
Christopher Layne, John Mearsheimer, Anand Menon, Patrick Porter and especially Helena Mills for invaluable
discussion and comments on this paper and its themes, along with participants in the July 2011 workshop of
Chatham House’s European Security and Defence Forum, the 2012 Historical Analysis for Defence and
Security Symposium of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the 2012 ‘Liberal Wars’
Conference at the University of Reading, and the 2014 Annual Convention of the International Studies
Association. He also thanks the Economic and Social Research Council for its support of the doctoral project
from which this paper arose (grant no. ES/H015906/1), Caroline Soper and her team for editorial guidance, and
the anonymous reviewers for insightful critical feedback.
1
Has international politics fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold War? Has the
Great Power competition that characterized the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries
been expunged early in the twenty-first? Do policy-makers in European capitals—closely
allied and integrated with other western partners as they are—ever again need to prepare for a
world in which large and advanced economies might unleash their military–industrial
potential against one another? These pressing questions have engaged the academic
International Relations (IR) profession for the last 25 years; and in European academia at
least, the consensus is that something has indeed fundamentally shifted—an assessment that
the European experience itself would seem to support.1
This article does not dispute that the European Union (EU) has created institutional,
cultural and normative embeddedness between advanced military powers. However, it does
challenge the claim that the nature of international politics has fundamentally altered, and the
belief that security competition with the potential for devastating military conflict between
Great Powers has been expunged. It argues that, far from the post-military age having finally
arrived, the underlying prerequisites for Great Power security competition have begun to
return to the international system since the start of the twenty-first century. Large but hitherto
underdeveloped countries are being transformed into major powers by the cross-border factor
flows of an integrated global economy, and this process is likely to continue. The return of
global multipolarity—a situation of more than one (unipolarity) or two (bipolarity) Great
Powers—and the concomitant competition incentives will, in turn, have profound
1
See Janne Haaland Matlary, European Union security dynamics: in the new national interest (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Øyvind Østerud and Janne Haaland Matlary, ‘Introduction: towards the postnational military’, in Janne Haaland Matlary and Øyvind Østerud, eds, Denationalisation of defence:
convergence and diversity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 3–12; David Held, Anthony McGrew, David
Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton, Global transformations: politics, economics and culture (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1999); Helene Sjursen, ‘What kind of power?’, Journal of European Public Policy 13: 2, Aug. 2006, pp.
169–81. Even European scholars critical of the current ‘demilitarization’ of Europe agree that major power
security competition is no longer a relevant consideration within their region: Nick Witney, How to stop the
demilitarisation of Europe (London: Centre for European Reform, 2011); Julian Lindley-French, ‘In the shade
of Locarno? Why European defence is failing’, International Affairs 78: 4, Oct. 2002, pp. 789–811; Adrian
Hyde-Price, ‘“Normative” power Europe: a realist critique’, Journal of European Public Policy 13: 2, March
2006, pp. 217–34. For a high-profile argument that Europeans have created a genuinely different regional
system that colours their approach to international politics, see Robert Kagan, Of paradise and power: America
and Europe in the new world order (London: Atlantic, 2003). Arguments that nothing fundamental has changed
about the international system remain more prevalent in North American IR scholarship. For the argument that
the European project is itself a balancing response to external security pressures, see Barry R. Posen, ‘European
Union security and defense policy: response to unipolarity?’, Security Studies 15: 2, April–June 2006, pp. 149–
86; Sebastian Rosato, ‘Europe’s troubles: power politics and the state of the European project’, International
Security 35: 4, Spring 2011, pp. 45–86.
2
consequences for the European security environment, and for European states’ optimal
responses in terms of grand strategy.
This article discusses the strategic implications of this relative power shift in four
stages. First, it briefly outlines its starting premise: that the global balance of power is
shifting, that multipolarity is returning to the international system, and that such relative
power shifts are conflict-prone and strategically destabilizing. Next, it analyses the impact of
a return of multipolar Great Power competition at the global level on the European strategic
environment by positing five reasons why renewed Great Power competition in the wider
world could have a negative impact on European security. These are: the growth of an
increasingly belligerent Russia; a reduced US commitment to European defence; an elevated
risk of international military crises with the potential to embroil European states; the elevated
incentives for nuclear proliferation; and the ensuing threat to European sea lines of
communication (SLOCs) and critical supply chains.
Third, it discusses options for a sensible grand strategic response from one of
Europe’s principal military powers—the United Kingdom—arguing that a return to offshore
balancing is essential to conserve UK power and self-protection capability in a multipolar
future. Fourth, it concludes that while intra-west European relations will remain broadly
cooperative, there is a real risk of European states’ relations with other major powers heading
‘back to the future’—that is, looking less like the 1990s and more like the rest of the
twentieth century as the twenty-first progresses.2
The rise of the ‘BRICs’ and the return of multipolarity
This article begins from the premise that the global balance of economic power is shifting,
diffusing from North America, Japan and the major west European states towards new
industrial centres, notably the ‘BRICs’ (Brazil, Russia,3 India and, most of all, China). This
For the now widely dismissed argument that European major powers’ security relations would again become
competitive after the Cold War—and the source of this article’s title—see John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the
future: instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security 15: 1, Summer 1990, pp. 5–56. The
criticism of Mearsheimer’s article is not wholly fair, because the condition that he identified—the withdrawal of
pacifying American forces from western Europe—has not yet occurred (though may now be beginning): see
John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why is Europe peaceful today?’, European Political Science 9: 3, Sept. 2010, pp. 387–
97.
3
Russia is an unusual ‘BRIC’, as it is far from ‘new’ as either an industrial centre or a Great Power. See S. Neil
MacFarlane, ‘The “R” in BRICs: is Russia an emerging power?’, International Affairs 82: 1, Jan. 2006, pp. 41–
57.
2
3
shift can broadly be attributed to the economic flows associated with post-Cold War
globalization, and is now well under way.4
Moreover, since economic potential underpins the ability to procure military forces,
these large emerging economies are becoming major powers in terms of their military–
industrial potential.5 Such a finding is not diminished by recognition that military gaps
usually close more slowly and less completely than economic gaps, or that converting
economic potential into military capability remains a political choice. 6 Of course, such a shift
does not necessarily mean that western economies are suffering ‘absolute’ decline, but simply
that they are experiencing relative decline as others catch up. Multipolarity is thus returning
to replace the post-1989 ‘unipolar moment’ of US global dominance.7 The new multipolar
environment is likely to comprise a Great Power ‘top tier’ of the United States and China,
followed if not quite matched by India, followed in turn by a second-tier grouping of—in
approximate rank order—Russia, Brazil, Japan, Britain, Germany and France. That said, it is
beyond the scope of this article to predict the specific configuration of future multipolarity; if
only China truly rises, it might be more fairly deemed bipolarity, for example. The key point
is simply to observe that the world will be ‘more polar’ than it has been since 1989.
It can be argued, of course, that the magnitude of America’s strategic lead will leave it
the system’s sole superpower for the indefinite future.8 Even so, conceding that China will
not ‘replace’ the United States as the world’s most capable military Great Power does not
4
Åsa Johansson, Yvan Guillemette, Fabrice Murtin, David Turner, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Christine de la
Maisonneuve, Philip Bagnoli, Guillaume Bousquet and Francesca Spinelli, Looking to 2060: long-term global
growth prospects (Paris: OECD, Nov. 2012); Jim O’Neill and Anna Stupnytska, The long-term outlook for the
BRICs and N-11 post crisis, Global Economics Paper 192 (New York: Goldman Sachs Global Economics,
Commodities and Strategy Research, Dec. 2009), pp. 1–28; US National Intelligence Council, Global trends
2025: a transformed world (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, Nov. 2008); Terry Alexander,
Tim Cooper and David Snowdon, Emerging markets take centre stage: a dramatic shift in purchasing power
(London: Business Monitor International, Feb. 2010); Douglas McWilliams, Charles Davis and Scott Corge,
CEBR world economic league table (London: Centre for Economics and Business Research, Dec. 2013).
5
Paul M. Kennedy, The rise and fall of the great powers: economic change and military conflict from 1500 to
2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), p. xv; John J. Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics (New
York: Norton, 2001), p. 62. Of course, this neglects many country-specific barriers to turning economic
wherewithal into military forces, but it is nevertheless a reasonable assumption in the aggregate sense.
6
Economically capable states struggle to maintain under-armament indefinitely—witness the nineteenth-century
US and contemporary Japanese experiences—largely because other states treat such latent potential as
dangerous and thus balance against it, necessitating counterbalancing from the state trying to avoid arming.
7
In the 1990s and 2000s a handful of major powers were still plausibly capable of resisting a hypothetical US
invasion—Russia, China, and perhaps France, Britain and India—but otherwise incapable of constraining
America’s worldwide military and foreign policy choices. On the ‘unipolar moment’ and its implications, see
Charles Krauthammer, ‘The unipolar moment’, Foreign Affairs 70: 1, Dec.–Jan. 1990–91, pp. 23–33; William
C. Wohlforth, ‘The stability of a unipolar world’, International Security 24: 1, Summer 1999, pp. 5–41.
8
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World out of balance: international relations and the challenge
of American primacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michael Beckley, ‘China’s century? Why
America’s edge will endure’, International Security 36: 3, Winter 2011–12, pp. 41–78.
4
undermine the claim that America’s lead will be reduced or equalled, 9 or that other major
western powers—Japan, Britain, France and Germany—will be matched and surpassed by
some or all of the BRIC states. China’s economy is already bigger vis-à-vis America’s than
the Soviet Union’s ever was,10 and Russia’s military technology has never been as uniformly
advanced as the West’s; yet no one doubted that the USSR was a Great Power throughout the
Cold War. Beijing is simply not devoting as large a share of national resources to military
capabilities as Moscow did—a wise choice, given the toll that such expenditure took on the
Soviet economy—but that does not mean that the military–industrial potential to do so is
lacking.
Ultimately, however, defending the claim that—and explaining why—multipolarity is
returning to the international system is not the point of this article. Rather, it is assumed here
that the balance of power is changing. This assumption is not above question—indeed, some
future economic and/or political crisis (for example, the implosion of China’s shadow
banking sector and associated property bubble) could yet undo the BRICs’ recent gains,
restoring US unipolarity—but it has sufficient merit to serve as a basis for the discussion that
follows.
Relative power shifts and the return of multipolarity are significant for the European
strategic environment, and for British defence and foreign policy, because they are likely to
make the international system more competitive, tense, conflictual and war-prone.
Multipolarity is less stable than bipolarity or unipolarity, for a number of reasons.11 Most
basically, there are more potential major power conflict dyads. Uncertainty over whether
states will balance or buck-pass when confronted with potentially hostile rivals mounts. This
creates a greater incentive to arm to increase security, consequently causing insecurity in—
and a countervailing reaction from—onlooking states. Dynamics of rise and decline
themselves also cause security tensions: declining powers seek to contain and retard rising
rivals, while rising powers seek to empower themselves and expand their interests at the
9
As Henry Kissinger argues, US unipolarity has been a historical abnormality, and therefore the demise of one
‘hegemon’ does not necessitate a search for the next; rather, multipolarity is a more ‘normal’ condition. See
‘Henry Kissinger: China won’t be next superpower’, Huffington Post, 18 June 2011,
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/06/18/henry-kissinger-china-won_n_879721.html, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
10
Angus Maddison, The world economy, vol. 2: Historical statistics (Paris: OECD, 2003); World Bank, World
development indicators and global development finance (Washington DC,
http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do, accessed 23 July 2012).
11
On the instability of multipolarity, see Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics, pp. 338–46;
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of international politics (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 170–76.
5
expense of those in decline.12 Ultimately, the power shift currently under way is likely to
result in a return of Great Power competition and conflict in key regions of the globe. 13
The international system has not had more than one top-tier Great Power since
1989—and has not had more than two since 1945. While historical parallels must be drawn
cautiously, it is notable that multipolarity coupled to substantial relative power shifts
characterized the run-up to both world wars, and to several other major past conflagrations.
Most significantly, the last time economic globalization produced a rapid shift in the balance
of military–industrial potential analogous to that in progress today was between the
unification of Germany in 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.14 This is
not to say that a global or even regional Great Power war is coming: many factors militate
against it, including qualitatively unprecedented economic interdependence, 15 nuclear
deterrence (unavailable in 1914 and 1939),16 and oceanic separation between many major
powers.17 But it does suggest that Great Power competition, tension and even militarized
confrontation are likely to be features of the first half of the twenty-first century.18
The European strategic environment in a multipolar global era
One striking difference between historical precedents and the contemporary context enables
optimism about the European strategic environment and European states’ national security
outlook in the coming years. The period between 1870 and 1914 witnessed a major shift in
the balance of power between the west European Great Powers. By contrast, west European
states today have achieved a striking degree of institutional enmeshment and normative
embeddedness. Moreover, peace within western Europe is bolstered by strategic factors,
12
Dale C. Copeland, The origins of major war (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Robert Gilpin, War
and change in world politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); A. F. K. Organski and Jacek
Kugler, The war ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
13
Relative power shifts need not necessarily be conflict-inducing; the key point here is simply that violent
power shifts are possible. See Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, ‘Graceful decline? The surprising
success of great power retrenchment’, International Security 35: 4, Spring 2011, pp. 7–44.
14
David Blagden, ‘Economic flows, power shifts, and the European balance, 1871–1914’, in Pierre Purseigle
and Adam Seipp, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming 2015); Margaret MacMillan, ‘1914 and 2014: should we be worried?’ International Affairs 90: 1,
Jan. 2014, pp. 59–70.
15
Stephen G. Brooks, Producing security: multinational corporations, globalization, and the changing calculus
of conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
16
Robert Jervis, The meaning of the nuclear revolution: statecraft and the prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1989).
17
David Blagden, Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, ‘Correspondence: sea powers, continental powers,
and balancing theory’, International Security 36: 2, Fall 2011, pp. 195–6.
18
Confrontation already exists in the China–Japan relationship: see James R. Holmes, ‘The Sino-Japanese naval
war of 2012’, ForeignPolicy.com, 20 Aug. 2012,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/20/the_sino_japanese_naval_war_of_2012, accessed 7 Jan.
2015. The US ‘pivot’ to Asia, discussed below, is a further manifestation of this potential.
6
including approximate power parity between the region’s three states with the military–
industrial wherewithal to generate non-trivial offensive capability (Germany, France and the
United Kingdom),19 the US commitment to Europe via NATO,20 the likelihood of enduring
alliance to balance perceived external threats,21 and the French and British nuclear arsenals.22
Finally, Europe’s reduced strategic salience in contemporary international politics is itself
part of the blessing.23 Indeed, if the rest of the world’s major powers were locked in strategic
competition with little regard for European powers as anything other than commercial
partners, this could suit European states’ economic and political interests well.
However, cooperative relations within western Europe are unlikely to insulate
European states entirely from the security implications of multipolar Great Power
competition in the wider world.24 There are five principal reasons for this.25 The first is the
resurgence of Russia from its post-Soviet nadir. Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine thrust the
threat of such aggression back into the public consciousness, although this was only the latest
manifestation of an increasingly belligerent foreign policy. Back in 2011—before the western
sanctions of 2014 and weak global oil prices took their toll—Goldman Sachs projected that
Russian GDP would surpass French GDP in 2024, UK GDP in 2027 and German GDP in
2029.26 Its researchers expected that by 2050 the Russian economy would be half as big again
as Germany’s. Certainly, such projections are not necessarily destined for fulfilment, as the
2014 stalling of Russian growth in the face of sanctions-induced capital flight and weak
global oil prices has made clear; even beyond such immediate headwinds, the Russian
economy faces profound structural challenges, including embedded corruption and weak
property rights, the crowding out of other economic activity by dependence on the
Although Germany’s lead over France in particular has widened during the eurozone crisis.
John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The future of the American pacifier’, Foreign Affairs 80: 5, Sept.–Oct 2001, pp. 46–61;
Mearsheimer, ‘Why is Europe peaceful today?’
21
Posen, ‘European Union security and defense policy’; Rosato, ‘Europe’s troubles’. (Note that Posen does not
see US power as an outright threat to Europe, although US abandonment of Europe is a risk, while Rosato sees
balancing against Russia as a compelling past driver of European integration, but of waning salience today—so
neither wholly supports this point.)
22
Avery Goldstein, Deterrence and security in the 21st century: China, Britain, France, and the enduring
legacy of the nuclear revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 139–216.
23
Oystein Tunsjø, ‘Europe’s favourable isolation’, Survival 55: 6, Dec.–Jan. 2013–14, pp. 91–106.
24
For a previous take on the European security implications of the return of multipolarity, see Adrian HydePrice, European security in the twenty-first century: the challenge of multipolarity (London: Routledge, 2007).
25
There may of course be additional factors: the article does not deny the possibility of ‘unknown unknowns’.
26
O’Neill and Stupnytska, The long-term outlook for the BRICs and N-11 post crisis, p. 23; Dominic Wilson,
Constantin Burgi and Stacy Carlson, ‘The BRICs remain in the fast lane’, BRICs Monthly 11: 06, June 2011
(New York: Goldman Sachs Global Economics, Commodities and Strategy Research), pp. 1–4.
19
20
7
hydrocarbon sector, and demographic decline.27 Indeed, Russia has only been a ‘rising’ or
‘resurgent’ power taking the 1990s as the starting point; viewed vis-à-vis the 1980s and
before, Russia is—and will remain—severely diminished, its 2014–15 recession could yet
result in a deeper economic and political crisis, and its long-term economic outlook is
probably no longer as positive as it seemed to be before the country’s current travails.28
Nonetheless, the era of post-Cold War convergence growth among the BRICs, driven
by globalization—and the hydrocarbon demand that it created—has once again given Russia
the resource base to pose a European security threat. In March 2009, President Dmitry
Medvedev announced a $140 billion rearmament and military professionalization
programme: reforms that bore fruit in 2014’s competent military performance, restoring
Russia to a position of relative military strength not enjoyed since 1989. 29 The 2007 and 2012
cyber attacks on Estonia and Finland respectively, and the 2008 incursion into Georgia, had
already demonstrated a continuing Russian willingness to use military force to achieve
political goals within Europe.
Other signs of a general Russian regional assertiveness abound. Key events include
resuming naval patrols in the Arctic and Mediterranean, and on the margin of NATO states’
territorial waters; resuming long-range bomber patrols that routinely approach NATO
airspace; military exercises in 2009 that simulated an invasion of the Baltic states and a
nuclear strike on Warsaw; simulated bombing runs on Stockholm in 2013; and in 2014,
testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis.
Indeed, 2014 was the most militarily confrontational post-Cold War year yet between
Russian and western forces, particularly in terms of air sorties, warship overflights and so
forth.30 Finally, Moscow’s leveraging of nationalism for purposes of political legitimation
creates the risk of domestic pressures for bellicosity—a risk that could be exacerbated by a
shortage of major allies, internal challenges (among them weak demographics, stalled
democratization, rent-seeking elites, mounting inequality, vulnerability to oil price shocks
Carol Matlack, ‘Even without sanctions, Russia’s economy is looking sicklier than ever’,
BloombergBusinessweek.com, 25 April 2014, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-25/even-withoutsanctions-russias-economy-is-looking-sicklier-than-ever, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
28
International Monetary Fund, ‘Russian Federation: concluding statement for the September 2014 staff visit’,
IMF.org, 1 Oct. 2014, at http://www.imf.org/external/np/ms/2014/100114.htm, accessed 7 Jan 2015.
29
‘Russia announces rearmament plan’, BBC News, 17 March 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7947824.stm; Jonathan Marcus, ‘Ukraine crisis: is Russia ready to
move into eastern Ukraine?’ BBC News, 8 April 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26940375,
both accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
30
Thomas Frear, Łukasz Kulesa and Ian Kearns, Dangerous brinksmanship: close military encounters between
Russia and the West in 2014 (London: European Leadership Network, Nov. 2014).
27
8
and sanctions-induced capital flight) and two post-Cold War decades of perceived
encroachment on its immediate peripheral region by western states and institutions.31
None of this is set out to accuse Russia of necessarily being ‘evil’; on the contrary, a
country of its size, history and shortage of major allies had good reason to want to rearm as
soon as it had the resources available, and to seek to weaken perceived NATO encirclement
through military coercion of NATO aspirants and members on its periphery. However, since
no state can ever know for sure what another will do with its military–industrial wherewithal,
it makes sense to pay close attention to others’ capabilities and incentives.32 And while events
in Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine suggest that cyber attacks and support for tame rebels are
likely to feature in Moscow’s future coercive measures, it is wrong to assume that such
‘unconventional’ weapons are the only deployable forms of coercion against which guard
needs to be taken. Such attacks still ultimately sit below various other military options in the
escalation spectrum, and were only one facet of Russia’s 2008 Georgian and 2014 Ukrainian
campaigns. Furthermore, if global oil prices rebound—and particularly if western sanctions
are ultimately relaxed—Russian growth is likely to recover, and could yet fulfil the
convergence potential identified previously. After all, a Russia with GDP per capita
approaching even (say) Czech levels could lead Europe in military–industrial potential, albeit
perhaps not military technological sophistication or professionalism.
The second reason why a more competitive multipolar global security environment is
likely to have an impact on the European strategic environment is that US military
commitment to European defence is being diluted as part of the ‘pivot’ to Asia.33 Alliances
form to balance an external threat; accordingly, the rationale for alliance disappears along
with that threat.34 Alliances also create free-riding incentives for weaker allies, calling the
strongest ally’s costly commitment into question once the principal benefits are no longer
evident.35 The US commitment to European defence during the Cold War was unshakeable,
Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘The dying bear: Russia’s demographic disaster’, Foreign Affairs 90: 6, Nov.–Dec. 2011,
pp. 95–108; Michael McFaul, ‘A precarious peace: domestic politics in the making of Russian foreign policy’,
International Security 22: 3, Winter 1997–8, pp. 5–35.
32
Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics, p. 31.
33
The so-called ‘pivot’ is often taken as having been ‘officially’ launched by the 2012 US Defense Strategic
Guidance: Leon Panetta, Sustaining US global leadership: priorities for 21st century defense (Washington DC:
US Department of Defense, Jan. 2012). That said, a reorientation of US strategic attention towards containing
China was clearly underway prior to that.
34
Stephen M. Walt, ‘Alliance formation and the balance of world power’, International Security 9: 4, Spring
1985, pp. 3–43.
35
Mancur Olson, Jr, and Richard Zeckhauser, ‘An economic theory of alliances’, Review of Economics and
Statistics 48: 3, Aug. 1966, pp. 266–79.
31
9
given Europe’s role as a centre of industrial power.36 Had the Soviet Union dominated the
whole Eurasian landmass, the balance of power would have shifted decisively against
America. Yet today, balancing China and pacifying the Middle East are higher strategic
priorities for the United States than containing Russia and pacifying Europe, the Ukraine
crisis of 2014–15 notwithstanding. Moreover, the United States faces a future in which it is
one of the Great Power top tier rather than a sole superpower, making it harder for America
to deal with rivals and safeguard its interests. Consequently, the United States is likely to
prove increasingly unwilling—and eventually unable—to shoulder the European defence
burden.37
Signs of this trend already abound. US forces withdrawn from Europe for deployment
to Iraq and Afghanistan have not returned as those campaigns have wound down—a small
increase after the Ukraine crisis notwithstanding—while the US military itself is being
downsized.38 US Defense Secretaries routinely rebuke contemporary European free-riding on
the United States within NATO as ‘unsustainable’.39 European states, therefore, are likely
soon to be forced to carry more of their own defence burden than they have since 1945.
Longstanding alliances are unlikely to fracture formally; but European states, Britain
included, will have to return to prioritizing threats based on true strategic importance, as
opposed to domestic political convenience.40 European states having to shoulder more of
their own defence burden could find addressing regional security challenges—including that
posed by Russia—paradoxically harder in the twenty-first century than in the Cold War,
David Blagden, ‘Strategic thinking for the age of austerity’, RUSI Journal 154: 6, Dec. 2009, p. 63.
On US relative decline, see Robert A. Pape, ‘Empire falls’, The National Interest, no. 99, Jan. 2009;
Christopher Layne, ‘The unipolar illusion revisited: the coming end of the United States’ unipolar moment’,
International Security 31: 2, Fall 2006, pp. 7–41.
38
In March 2000 there were 120,056 US military personnel stationed in Europe (already much lower than the
450,000 or so at the height of the Cold War); by March 2013 there were just 71,126, with further falls in
prospect. Data from US Defense Military Data Center, via https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/, accessed 9 June 2014.
On planned further US military cuts, see Thom Shanker and Helene Cooper, ‘Pentagon plans to shrink Army to
pre-World War II level’, New York Times, 23 Feb. 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/us/politics/pentagon-plans-to-shrink-army-to-pre-world-war-iilevel.html?_r=0, accessed 7 Jan. 2015. Neither small fields of increased US commitment to Europe, such as the
forward deployment of four US Navy destroyers to Spain in a ballistic missile defence role, nor the renewed US
attention on Europe during the Ukraine crisis (and associated rebasing of a small contingent of armoured
vehicles as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve) reverse this overall trend.
39
Robert Gates, ‘Transcript of Defense Secretary Gates’s speech on NATO’s future’, Wall Street Journal, 10
June 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/06/10/transcript-of-defense-secretary-gatess-speech-on-natosfuture/. The outgoing US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, reiterated this charge more recently: Ivo H.
Daalder, speech delivered at the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels, 17 June 2013,
http://nato.usmission.gov/sp-06172013.html. Both accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
40
On Britain’s need to rediscover the art of strategic prioritization, see Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman,
‘National defence in the age of austerity’, International Affairs 85: 4, July 2009, pp. 733–53; Hew Strachan,
‘The strategic gap in British defence policy’, Survival 51: 4, Aug. 2009, pp. 49–70; Patrick Porter, ‘Why Britain
doesn’t do grand strategy’, RUSI Journal 155: 4, Sept. 2012, pp. 6–12.
36
37
10
despite Russia remaining weaker vis-à-vis the United States than it was for much of the
twentieth century. Finally, today’s institutionally and normatively embedded relations within
western Europe developed under—and have never existed without—the US security
umbrella. As such, intra-European relations could themselves come under strain should the
continent’s major powers have to provide more for their own security.
Third, a multipolar world of elevated Great Power security competition is likely to be
one with considerable potential for military crises, which could embroil European states—
either inadvertently, or because their vital interests are affected. Whereas under unipolarity,
the United States could pacify all potential major power conflicts by threatening to defeat one
or—if necessary—both sides, that is no longer the case under multipolarity. Indeed, the
difficulty in predicting future international conflict suggests that European grand strategy
should at least partially hedge against embroilment in such as yet unforeseen emergencies.
There is considerable potential for military crises on the borders of NATO, as the events of
2008 and 2014 demonstrate, and any such crisis on Europe’s borders will be a pressing
security concern for European states. Likewise, the Middle East is likely to remain a focal
point of security competition and an arena of potential conflict embroiling European states,
given its proximity to the European periphery, its economic importance to Europe, China and
India, continuing civil wars in Syria and Iraq, the strength of regional revolutionary
movements such as ‘Islamic State’ (ISIL), and the presence of several militarily capable
regional powers with divergent interests, such as Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and postrevolutionary Egypt. There is also the risk of involvement in military crises further afield,
particularly where key commercial or strategic interests are at stake. For example, threats to
UK interests in the South Atlantic will increase as Latin American development proceeds,
especially if the seabed around the Falkland Islands contains large-scale mineral deposits, and
France could face similar challenges in Africa. Of course, this article cannot hope, and does
not aim, to laundry-list all potential future conflict scenarios; the key point is that in a world
of general Great Power tension, the likelihood of serious militarized crises will increase.
The fourth reason why a multipolar global environment may have an impact on the
European strategic environment is that it may increase incentives to acquire nuclear
weapons—or at least, not to give them up. There are excellent reasons to suppose that nuclear
weapons favour defence and make interstate conflict between possessors less likely.41
Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Nuclear myths and political realities’, American Political Science Review 84: 3, Sept.
1990, pp. 731–45; Jervis, The meaning of the nuclear revolution; Thomas C. Schelling, ‘A world without
nuclear weapons?’ Daedalus 138: 4, Fall 2009, pp. 124–9.
41
11
However, the likelihood of accidental, inadvertent or miscalculated nuclear use rises with the
number of nuclear powers, particularly when that number includes states with weak
administrative capacity and political systems with the potential to be dominated by nonrepresentative militarist or radical factions.42 Multipolar Great Power competition will make
many states feel vulnerable, and the best deterrent against coercion by those strong in
conventional weapons is a nuclear arsenal. Likewise, in such a world, states are more likely
to feel that they require a potent means of coercion to promote their interests. That being the
case, a grand multilateral disarmament bargain is unlikely, and non-proliferation efforts may
well continue to struggle in the coming years, with potentially negative consequences for the
European security environment.
Of course, it can be argued that there has been less nuclear proliferation than many
analysts predicted in the 1950s and 1960s. Conversely, however, Ukraine has recently joined
a list of countries, including Libya and Iraq, whose leaders presumably regretted surrendering
the deterrent power of a weapons of mass destruction programme under the urgings of the
major power(s) that subsequently attacked them. If America’s ability to pacify the globe does
wane, moreover, there will be plenty of nuclear-capable states under the US nuclear umbrella
that currently choose not to develop nuclear weapons that will feel compelled to revisit that
choice (South Korea and Japan being obvious candidates).
The fifth and final reason why a multipolar international system could threaten the
European strategic environment connects to the point made above about potential
embroilment in military crises elsewhere in the world. This is the potential for such crises to
have negative impacts upon European states’ SLOCs and associated critical supply chains
(for food, raw materials, energy, industrial inputs and so forth). Europe relies on
uninterrupted flows of imports and exports, mainly via the sea, for economic well-being and
strategic viability. European energy supplies rely heavily on the Middle East and Russia—
both potential sources of diplomatic and strategic tension. The Indian Ocean, the Persian and
Arabian Gulfs, and the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, meanwhile, are all crucial to
European seagoing commerce as well as potential arenas of maritime Great Power
contestation. Yet European states’ maritime capability to provide independent (non-US)
influence over such SLOCs has been hollowed out by progressive waves of naval cuts.
Meanwhile, the South Atlantic will remain an important theatre for the United Kingdom
while London sustains its current resolve to retain possession of the Falklands, and all west
42
Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The spread of nuclear weapons: a debate renewed (New York:
Norton, 2003), pp. 46–87.
12
European states should consider Russia’s increasing maritime assertiveness in the north-east
Atlantic—the single most crucial SLOC for European powers, both commercially and
strategically.
A twenty-first-century grand strategy for a major–but–limited power: conserving UK
capability in a competitive age
The three dominant assumptions within UK strategic discourse since the start of the twentyfirst century—that the UK will not face threats from militarily capable major powers in the
foreseeable future, that future conflicts will look like the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns,
and that winning ‘small’ wars matters as much as hedging against ‘big’ wars—do not bear
scrutiny in light of the discussion above.43 On the contrary, Britain is likely to face serious
threats from other powerful states over the period affected by strategic decisions taken today,
future conflicts are not certain to look like Iraq and Afghanistan, and winning small wars
matters less than deterring or winning big wars. This assessment remains valid ahead of the
2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), and applies to other European states as
well. That said, other European powers have been better than Britain at avoiding involvement
in discretionary wars since 2001—witness the recent comparative health of the French armed
forces vis-à-vis their similarly funded British counterparts;44 so it is in London that lessons
most urgently need to be learned.
The understanding that major power competition is returning to the international
system, with implications for the European strategic environment, should be reflected in the
grand strategic posture and defence procurement choices of the United Kingdom and its
European allies. The illogical reasoning that ‘there will be more major powers in the world,
Blagden, ‘Strategic thinking for the age of austerity’, pp. 62–4.
In 2013, the French defence budget of US$52.4 billion delivered a regular army of 119,050 equipped with 254
main battle tanks (MBTs), a navy of four aircraft/helicopter carriers and 23 frigates/destroyers (plus nine
corvettes), and a combined air force and naval fast jet fleet of 268 (excluding trainers). The UK 2013 defence
budget of $57.0 billion, by contrast, delivered a regular army of 99,800 (due to fall to 82,000) equipped with
227 MBTs, a navy of two helicopter carriers and 19 frigates/destroyers (and no corvettes), and an air force fast
jet fleet of 223 (excluding trainers). Certain areas of UK quantitative leadership remain nuclear-powered
‘hunter-killer’ attack submarines (seven planned, versus France’s six), amphibious forces, COIN-optimized
wheeled armoured vehicles, and command/control/communications/computers/intelligence/surveillance/targetacquisition/reconnaissance (C4ISTAR) assets—but, overall, the comparative scarcity of heavy forces delivered
by Britain’s slightly higher level of defence expenditure is stark. See International Institute of Strategic Studies,
‘Europe’, The Military Balance, no. 114, Feb. 2014, pp. 94–9, 149–54. That said, UK equipment is probably
superior qualitatively in a majority of areas compared to French equivalents, and France too is experiencing
defence cuts: Elizabeth Quintana, ‘Building a force for the future: the UK needs depth not breadth’, RUSI
Analysis, 17 Jan. 2014, https://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C52D957331F6E1/%20%20.UxIeNWePPIW, accessed 7 Jan. 2015; Francis Beaufort, ‘French chiefs “in revolt”’, Warships
International Fleet Review, July 2014, p. 3.
43
44
13
therefore we should abandon major war-fighting capability’ should be avoided;45 they should
not abandon balanced capability sets that include options for high-intensity state-on-state
conflict in favour of concentrating on counter-insurgency (COIN), stabilization or
humanitarian reconstruction missions because their international influence has declined.46
Similarly, hard power should not be downplayed in a bid to recoup influence by becoming
some sort of normative ‘soft superpower’.47
While this analysis carries broad implications for European grand strategy in general,
there are specific conclusions for the United Kingdom. First, over the past decade it has been
Europe’s most activist military power, making it a good ‘test case’ for the interventionist
approach.48 Second, the costs of this activism have drastically reduced the number and scale
of defensive tasks of which the United Kingdom remains independently capable, thus
weakening its overall strategic position and highlighting the perils of (inadequately funded)
liberal interventionism.49 Of course, UK involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan stems partly
from a belief that Britain’s strategic position always benefits from alignment with the United
States.50 Yet engaging in such costly campaigns—in terms of blood, treasure and strategic
position—solely to facilitate an alliance makes an end (the alliance) out of what ought to be
Blagden, ‘Strategic thinking for the age of austerity’, p. 63.
Such arguments were prevalent before the 2010 SDSR—see e.g. Institute for Public Policy Research
Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, Shared responsibilities: a national security strategy for
the United Kingdom (London, June 2009)—and have resurfaced ahead of the 2015 SDSR. See e.g. Simon
Jenkins, ‘If the MoD can’t name the enemy, it shouldn’t buy the weapons’, Guardian, 14 Jan. 2014,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/16/mod-cant-name-enemy-shouldnt-buy-weapons-threatcold-war-defence, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
47
Hyde-Price, ‘“Normative” power Europe’.
48
Since 2011, France has been more militarily activist overseas, co-leading (with Britain) the 2011 intervention
in Libya, conducting interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013 (ongoing), and
backing ultimately aborted US plans for military intervention in Syria’s civil war in 2013. Nonetheless, none of
these comes within an order of magnitude of Britain’s Afghan and Iraq embroilments, which peaked at
deployments of around 10,000 and 46,000 troops respectively. France had around 4,000 troops deployed in Mali
and around 2,000 in CAR as of early 2014.
49
Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman, ‘Blair’s wars and Brown’s budgets: from Strategic Defence Review to
strategic decay in less than a decade’, International Affairs 85: 2, March 2009, pp. 247–61.
50
For discussion of the UK’s ‘reflexive’ belief that aligning with the Americans on military decisions will
always be in the national interest, see Tim Dunne, ‘“When the shooting starts”: Atlanticism in British security
strategy’, International Affairs 80: 5, Oct. 2004, pp. 893–909. For a theoretical discussion of bandwagoning, see
Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics, pp. 162–3. For how Britain’s affinity for US leadership
contributed to the UK’s embroilment in the US ‘war on terror’, see Mark Beeson, ‘The declining theoretical and
practical utility of “bandwagoning”: American hegemony in the age of terror’, British Journal of Politics and
International Relations 9: 4, Nov. 2007, pp. 618–35. For an overview of the contemporary US–UK ‘special
relationship’ and its influence on UK military decision-making, see John Hemmings, ‘The UK–US relationship
under the microscope’, RUSI Analysis, 27 April 2010,
http://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4BD6E91B58EE6/%20%20.UwQPsmePPIU#.Uw8owWePPIU, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
45
46
14
only a means to an end (national security).51 Third, it is an island—an insular power, in
strategic terms—offering strategic opportunities unavailable to continental powers (states
sharing their landmass with at least one other major power).52
The key lesson from the first decade of this century—and a logical extension of the
analysis presented at the outset of this article—is that in a situation of increasing Great Power
security competition and decline in a country’s underlying military–industrial capabilities
relative to those of rising powers, the most sensible thing that country can do is conserve
rather than squander its strength. Generating a balanced set of capabilities that allow the
country in question to deter—and, if necessary, respond to—potential high-intensity threats
from other militarily capable major powers should be a priority, since such hedging capability
is more important to national security than prevailing in ‘luxury’ wars of choice.53 The best
way to preserve the resources required to generate such balanced capability is to avoid
military intervention in all cases except those in which a failure to intervene will lead to an
adverse and decisive impact on the balance of power that leads to increased future
vulnerability.54
For a second-tier major power—a state of consequence to the balance of power in a
strategically vital region with capability to support out-of-region interests, but lacking the
51
European powers that resisted embroilment in the Iraq and Afghan campaigns have not paid a heavy longterm price in relations with the United States. See e.g. Sam Ball, ‘US flatters France as “oldest ally” after UK
vote on Syria’, France 24, 31 Aug. 2013, http://www.france24.com/en/20130831-syria-with-uk-out-us-flattersoldest-ally-france-john-kerry/; Sudha David-Wilp, ‘Obama visit: why US now needs Germany more than ever’,
CNN.com, 19 June 2013, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/19/opinion/obama-u-s-germany/; ‘What in the world: a
new “special relationship” for US and France’, BBC News, 12 Feb. 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogsechochambers-26161728; Emily Schultheis, ‘Stepping up: US experts want more leadership from Germany’,
Der Spiegel, 23 Aug. 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/us-wants-more-international-leadershipfrom-germany-after-election-a-918276.html. (All accessed 7 Jan. 2015.) Comparatively oversized commitment
to Iraq and Afghanistan has not even secured unambiguously favourable treatment on foreign policy questions
crucial to Britain, or meaningful influence over the campaigns, instead drawing US ire over military
performance: see Doug Bandow, ‘Should America help Britain hold onto its colonies?’ The National Interest,
23 Aug. 2013, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/should-america-help-britain-hold-its-colonies-8936; Tim
Edwards, ‘Britain protested over US official’s “Malvinas” barb’, The Week, 10 March 2010,
http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/falkland-islands/16091/britain-protested-over-us-official%E2%80%99s%E2%80%98malvinas%E2%80%99-barb; ‘British views on Iraq ignored by US: UK minister’, Reuters, 2 May
2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/02/us-britain-iraq-mistakes-idUSL0240237620070502; ‘Senior
US military say British suffered “defeat” in Basra and left people of the city to be “terrorised”’, BBC Press
Office, 29 Oct. 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/09_september/29/iraq.shtml
(all accessed 7 Jan. 2015).
52
Blagden et al., ‘Correspondence: sea powers, continental powers, and balancing theory’, pp. 190–202.
53
Of course, all wars are, fundamentally, wars of choice: Patrick Porter, ‘A matter of choice: strategy and
discretion in the shadow of World War II’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35: 3, June 2012, pp. 317–43.
Nonetheless, the stakes in some wars are higher than in others.
54
This does not preclude all humanitarian interventions: those where the strategic cost was approaching zero
could still be countenanced, given moral domestic political pressure. See Robert A. Pape, ‘When duty calls: a
pragmatic standard of humanitarian intervention’, International Security 37: 1, Summer 2012, pp. 41–80.
However, this maxim does preclude any intervention that might meet adequately armed and organized resistance
that would impose significant strategic costs on the intervener.
15
resource base to match the top-tier Great Power(s) at the global level—this powerconservation challenge is especially pressing. Only through an astute and prudent use of
available resources can such major but limited powers retain the ability to independently
safeguard their vital interests. In short, the prescription should be to walk softly while
carrying a big stick: the diametrical opposite of what the United Kingdom has been doing
since 2001.
An appropriate framework for a twenty-first-century UK grand strategy to conserve
national power and make full use of Britain’s natural advantages is thus what US strategic
theorists dub ‘offshore balancing’.55 This is not a detailed schedule of foreign policy
prescriptions, but a set of core principles providing a framework for thought. In particular,
offshore balancers eschew ground commitments except those where a shift in the balance of
power on an overseas continent could leave the offshore balancer’s own survival at risk
without intervention—so assisting Poland with balancing Russia might meet the threshold,
while attempting to transform Yemen (say) would not. If they intervene ashore, they do it as
quickly as possible, from the sea, and seek only to restore a local balance of power. They do
not attempt the conquest of states with either symmetrical or asymmetrical capability to
impose substantial costs on them, except in cases where there exists a potential existential
threat that may worsen without direct intervention, and comprehensive state-building
operations are not undertaken. Such a posture is thus incompatible with the liberal
interventionism that has characterized UK grand strategy since the start of the twenty-first
century, which has done more harm than good—certainly to Britain’s strategic position, and
possibly to those on the well-intentioned receiving end (Libya and Iraq’s ongoing civil wars
being the latest depressing cases in point).56
For overarching principles of offshore balancing, see Christopher Layne, ‘From preponderance to offshore
balancing: America’s future grand strategy’, International Security 22: 1, Summer 1997, pp. 86–124. For further
development, and specific examination vis-à-vis the UK, see Mearsheimer, The tragedy of great power politics,
pp. 234–66. In the UK context, Michael Codner has characterized a similar-sounding potential posture as
‘strategic raiding’; however, ‘offshore balancing’ better describes a situation of sustained over-the-horizon
presence coupled with reticence over direct intervention. See Michael Codner, ‘A force for honour? UK military
strategic options’, in Michael Codner and Michael Clarke, eds, A question of security: the British defence review
in an age of austerity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 153–74. Of course, a case can be made that Britain has
never been good at eschewing costly direct interventions, given its colonial track record. However, while
recognizing that a ‘perfect’ offshore balancer is an ideal-type, the pre-1989 period nevertheless only rarely saw
multi-year commitments of large British ground troop formations to comprehensive state-building attempts of
the kind that has characterized the post-2001 era, with the historical preference comprising a larger role for local
allies supported by British resources, a small UK ground footprint, and extensive use of maritime and aerial
assets. The major exceptions to this rule were the continental commitments of the Napoleonic, World and Cold
Wars, all of which necessitated an extensive UK balancing effort to prevent another Great Power achieving
European hegemony.
56
Benjamin A. Valentino, ‘The true costs of humanitarian intervention: the hard truth about a noble notion’,
Foreign Affairs 90: 6, Nov.–Dec. 2011, pp. 60–73.
55
16
Acting as an offshore balancer does not imply a diminished ability to exert the influence
necessary to safeguard vital interests. On the contrary, it conserves the capability
underpinning national power. A state with substantial capability not embroiled in intractable
direct interventions has far more deterrent and coercive potential than one whose overall
capability is weakened through overuse and that has no spare capacity owing to commitment
in unnecessary conflicts. As Alfred Thayer Mahan observed: ‘Force is never more operative
than when it is known to exist but is not brandished’.57 Unfortunately, in the British defence
debate capability possession is justified only through vigorous usage in discretionary
operations—the costs of which jeopardize the overall national capability set. The most
sensible policy, on the contrary, is to possess the capability but refrain from using it unless
absolutely necessary.
There are certain geographical prerequisites to offshore balancing. Continental powers
must inevitably pay more attention to continental security concerns; thus only insular
powers—such as the United Kingdom and United States—can act as offshore balancers.58
Insular powers that can stop enemies crossing water obviously cannot be harmed; they are
thus less territorially threatened and can, in turn, afford to be less territorially threatening
(making them fewer enemies, and leaving them with fewer wars to wage and insurgencies to
counter).59 Granted, in the era of the ballistic missile, the cyber attack and the airline-borne
terrorist the practical significance of this distinction is lessened compared to previous
centuries, but fundamentally it remains salient. This is because insular powers can provide for
their security with less (if any) need than continental powers to deploy powerful armies for
continental commitments. An insular power with the maritime capability (naval and air
forces) to secure its oceanic moats and wider SLOCs, the retaliatory capability to deter aerial
attacks (nuclear or conventional), and robust cyber defences, is essentially impervious to
coercion by another state. Terrorists may still get in or be home-grown, of course; but then,
states eschewing foreign occupations are less likely to suffer terrorism anyway. 60
Alfred Thayer Mahan, ‘The place of force in international relations’, North American Review 195: 674, Jan.
1912, p. 31.
58
Certain continental states, such as contemporary France, may at times function as ‘insular-like’, owing to their
separation from continental threats by friendly and capable buffer states. But that condition is not immutable
and, even in today’s comparatively secure Europe, France is and must always be a continentally focused power.
59
Blagden et al., ‘Correspondence: sea powers, continental powers, and balancing theory’, pp. 195–6; David
Blagden, ‘Sea power is benign power: the international case for a maritime posture’, RUSI Journal 159: 3,
June–July 2014, pp. 54–61.
60
Moreover, terrorists could only make the transition from an essentially criminal problem to an existential
threat if they acquired a nuclear or sophisticated biological weapon: an outcome which is made more likely, not
less, by destabilizing Pakistan (say) by infringements of its sovereignty in the pursuit of unending COIN and
drone operations. See Blagden, ‘Strategic thinking for the age of austerity’, p. 63.
57
17
What would a grand strategy of offshore balancing mean for the practical specifics of
the United Kingdom’s military capability set? First, and most crucially, a secure secondstrike nuclear deterrent capability must be retained. An undetectable submarine-based system
of nuclear ballistic missiles represents the only assured guarantee of retaliation, which
removes first-strike incentives and crisis instability.61 This is the ultimate credible hedge
against re-emerging major power threats. Furthermore, as noted above, a return to multipolar
competition renders comprehensive multilateral nuclear disarmament implausible and nuclear
coercion more likely, making the retention of a credible British deterrent more important.
Second, UK military capabilities should remain intrinsically maritime (which does not mean
exclusively naval, given the potency of aircraft when it comes to controlling seaways).62
Fundamentally, if Britain can control the north-east Atlantic and safeguard the country’s
wider SLOCs, the core basis of UK national security will remain intact, regardless of global
conflict dynamics.63 And when London does need to coerce others, this can happen quickly,
kinetically and with a light political footprint from—or via the threat of—ships and seacrossing aircraft, in conjunction with support for local allies: tellingly, the 2011 Libya
campaign’s implementation was effective, even though a compelling strategic rationale was
lacking. Restoring hull numbers to the Royal Navy,64 restoring maritime patrol aircraft
UK Ministry of Defence and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The future of the United Kingdom’s nuclear
deterrent, Dec. 2006,
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/27378/DefenceWhitePaper2006_
Cm6994.pdf; UK Cabinet Office, Trident alternatives review, July 2013,
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/212745/20130716_Trident_Alter
natives_Study.pdf (both accessed 7 Jan. 2015). Granted, the latter document (TAR) began with a desire for
cheaper deterrence than a four-boat replacement of ‘Successor’ ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to succeed
the current Vanguard class, even while accepting the survivability risk and thus elevated crisis instability that a
lesser posture (e.g. a non-continuously-deployed SSBN fleet) would introduce. Yet once the desire to retain a
nuclear arsenal of any kind is accepted—as it was by the TAR—any choice that made deterrence less assured or
crises more unstable for the cost savings of one submarine would be unforgivable.
62
The influence of sea power may be largely ‘silent’, but this does not make it any less pivotal. Put simply, for
an insular power (such as Britain), maritime strength is the reason why ‘bad things do not happen’. See Jeremy
Blackham and Gwyn Prins, ‘Why things don’t happen: silent principles of national security’, RUSI Journal 155:
4, Aug.–Sept. 2010, pp. 14–22; Colin S. Gray, ‘Britain’s national security: compulsion and discretion’, RUSI
Journal 153: 6, Dec. 2008, pp. 12–18.
63
Recent naval cuts may have put this ability in doubt, but it should remain the aspiration of UK maritime
posture. For discussion, see Nick Childs, Britain’s future navy (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2012). On why conflict
dynamics on the far side of the world are falsely perceived as an imminent threat at home, see Patrick Porter,
The global village myth: distance, strategy and modern war (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press,
2015).
64
Political and fiscal pressures dictate that the six Type 45 destroyers and 13 planned Type 26 frigates (which
are to replace the current 13 Type 23s and four recently withdrawn Type 22s) are unlikely to be added to at the
level of high-end surface combatants in the foreseeable future. However, ensuring that all 13 Type 26s are
indeed delivered, and that both Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers are retained in service—with one always
available—should be priorities. A useful next step would be filling the future mine-countermeasures,
hydrographic and patrol capability (MHPC) replacement with some form of cheap, generic, sizeable hull that
can be produced in large numbers, thus restoring presence for day-to-day maritime security operations and
61
18
(MPA) capability,65 and ensuring that the Royal Air Force’s air control and long-range strike
capabilities are preserved should be priorities.66
Third, balance must be retained in the UK armed forces. Capabilities to deter—and if
necessary fight—militarily capable states should be preserved, even if that means numerous
small pockets of capability that appear inefficient in the short term. This ensures the potential
to scale capabilities back up in the more threatening strategic environment likely to
characterize the 2020s and 2030s, avoiding the need to regenerate immensely complex
military skills and technologies from scratch (pertinent current examples are anti-submarine
warfare, air combat and combined-arms armoured warfare). Drives to configure UK military
forces, particularly the Army, solely for counter-insurgency and stabilization should thus be
resisted, and eventually rolled back. Offshore balancers use their armies infrequently, but
when ground force use for deterrence, coercion or compulsion does become necessary, they
need the firepower-intensive capabilities and scalability to fight other advanced and wellequipped ground forces. Moreover, while certain ‘new’ threats—notably, cyber attacks—are
likely to figure heavily in future interstate conflicts,67 therefore meriting substantial current
expenditure, we must not assume that ‘old’ methods are going to disappear.68
It can be argued, of course, that a call for the UK to roll back from its post-Cold War
interventionism and embrace offshore balancing is already on the cards. Indeed, parliament’s
freeing the Type 26/45s for high-threat environments and carrier group operations: see e.g. UK Development,
Concepts, and Doctrine Centre, Joint concept note 1/12: future ‘Black Swan’ class sloop-of-war: a group system
(Shrivenham: UK Ministry of Defence, May 2012),
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/33686/20120503JCN112_Black_
SwanU.pdf, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
65
This is perhaps one of the single most glaring gaps in Britain’s current capability set, following the 2010
SDSR’s cancellation of Nimrod MRA4, as the House of Commons Defence Committee has identified: Future
maritime surveillance: fifth report of session 2012–13 (London: UK Parliament, Sept. 2012), at
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmdfence/110/110.pdf, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
MPAs are a capability that even comparatively minor maritime powers on the level of New Zealand, Chile and
Norway consider necessary, which starkly highlights the gap for Britain—a major island power with SSBNs to
protect, the north-east Atlantic to monitor and control, global SLOCs to safeguard and overseas possessions to
support. The consequences of the MPA gap became apparent in 2014: see Ben Farmer, ‘Britain forced to ask
NATO to track “Russian submarine” in Scottish waters’, Telegraph, 9 Dec. 2014,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11283926/Britain-forced-to-ask-Nato-to-track-Russiansubmarine-in-Scottish-waters.html, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
66
In short, for both the navy and the air force, strategic lift capability—the ability to insert and sustain a ground
force intervention—should not be discarded, but it must be recognized that it is less vital to national security
than sea and air control capabilities. Other particularly glaring gaps in the air-and-sea-control arena include the
absence from RAF service of a dedicated anti-ship missile, and the frailty of the Tornado GR4 strike jet fleet
(highlighted by late 2014’s Iraq campaign): Mark Urban, ‘“Morale poor” among UK crews at RAF Akrotiri,
Cyprus’, BBC News, 5 Dec. 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30338659, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
67
Paul Cornish, David Livingstone, Dave Clemente and Claire Yorke, On cyber warfare (London: Chatham
House, Nov. 2010).
68
Jean-Loup Samaan, ‘Cyber command: the rift in US military cyber-strategy’, RUSI Journal 155: 6, Dec.
2012, p. 16.
19
decision not to join a Franco-American strike on Syria in 2013 was pivotal in unravelling
international momentum behind such an attack, while documents emerging from the ongoing
Army 2020 review suggest that a shift back towards combined arms manoeuvre warfare at
the expense of the focus on COIN that has recently prevailed may already be under way.69
Any such assumption, however, is prematurely sanguine.
On Syria, the executive branch’s impulse was still to intervene militarily, despite the
absence of clear strategic vision of what this would achieve;70 the government’s drive
towards attack was thwarted only by parliament’s vote against intervention.71 A year later,
this ambition for military intervention against ISIL/Islamic State was eventually fulfilled, in
the form of air strikes (and other involvement) in Iraq. Likewise, in the Chief of the Defence
Staff’s 2013 Christmas Lecture, General Sir Nicholas Houghton argued in favour of Britain
retaining a focus on direct ground intervention ‘in the grey area of conflict prevention and
upstream stabilisation’, and maintaining a focus on equipment and personnel optimized for
such interventions at the expense of state-on-state warfare capabilities, on the grounds that a
decade of COIN has left the UK with a ‘huge national asset’ for such tasks—and despite his
recognition in the same speech of the continuing rise of new Great Powers.72 More generally,
consensus persists within the foreign policy elites of all three principal UK political parties
over both the strategic and the moral necessity of British military interventionism 73—a
consensus that diverges from public sentiment.74
Finally, it is worth pointing out that if certain aspects of the future contingencies
described above come to pass, the retention of balanced UK armed forces equipped for major
high-end war-fighting will be doubly important. If the forecasters are right, Russia will be
69
See e.g. British Army, Transforming the British Army: an update—July 2013,
http://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/Army2020_Report_v2.pdf, accessed 19 Jan. 2015.
70
Max Fisher, ‘Obama wants to punish Assad, not win the Syrian civil war’, Washington Post, 26 Aug. 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/obama-wants-to-punish-assad-not-win-thesyrian-civil-war/, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
71
‘Syria crisis: Cameron loses Commons vote on Syria action’, BBC News, 30 Aug. 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
72
Nicholas Houghton, speech at the Royal United Services Institute, London, 18 Dec. 2013,
http://www.rusi.org/events/past/ref:E5284A3D06EFFD, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
73
Patrick Wintour, ‘Britain must not withdraw from humanitarian role, party leaders told’, Guardian, 10 Sept.
2013, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/10/britain-humanitarian-role-letter, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s inclination towards stabilization projects in conjunction with
European partners and the Ministry of Defence’s inclination to military action alongside the United States both
also augur a continuing commitment to activist military interventionism. See Robert Crowcroft and Owen A.
Hartley, ‘“Mind the gap”: divergent visions of national priorities and the international system within
contemporary British government’, Defence Studies 12: 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 479–502.
74
Andrew Grice, ‘Syria crisis: the British public has its say as two-thirds oppose strikes’, Independent, 3 Sept.
2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/syria-crisis-the-british-public-has-its-say-as-twothirdsoppose-strikes-8795319.html, accessed 7 Jan. 2015.
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Europe’s largest economy by 2050—but the United Kingdom will be western Europe’s
largest.75 Coupled to the likelihood of waning US strategic interest in Europe, this could leave
the United Kingdom as the leading power in a west European defensive alliance seeking to
balance a strong regional rival: a European strategic future with a distinctly historical flavour.
Back to the future: reflecting on—and preparing for—the twenty-first century
In the summer of 1990, John Mearsheimer published an article entitled ‘Back to the future:
instability in Europe after the Cold War’.76 As noted earlier, this argument is now often—and
unfairly—derided. Obsessing about who ‘won’ the argument on the future of intra-western
European relations misses the broader insight emerging from the ‘back to the future’ thesis,
not least because peace among EU members is heavily overdetermined by a range of
institutional, normative and strategic factors. Rather, the key message for European security
scholars and policy-makers should be that the fundamental nature of international politics
may have changed less than is frequently argued, the intra-EU experience notwithstanding.
Thus, once the variables obstructing Great Power competition are removed, there will always
remain the potential for it to reassert itself. And should Great Power competition return, this
would have a substantive impact on the strategic environment—and the grand strategic
response demanded from states—even in relatively amicable western Europe.77
The analysis in this article suggests that ‘back to the future’ may indeed be a fair
characterization of Great Power politics in the decades to come—at least when applied to the
strategic context beyond western Europe, albeit not to intra-west European security relations.
Multipolarity is returning to the international system, and such relative power shifts tend to
produce tension, competition and an elevated risk of conflict. The first signs of a return to
Great Power competition are visible in the economic trajectories and diplomatic relationships
of the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, and it is likely that the global
strategic environment will continue to move in this direction. This is in turn likely to affect
the European strategic context, peaceful intra-regional relations notwithstanding, with
implications for European states’ grand strategic choices.
The United Kingdom, in particular—as a major regional power that has had a
particular penchant for capability-sapping discretionary wars since 2001—needs to conserve
O’Neill and Stupnytska, The long-term outlook for the BRICs and N-11 post crisis, pp. 1–28; Alexander et al.,
Emerging markets take centre stage; Johansson et al., Looking to 2060; McWilliams et al., CEBR world
economic league table.
76
Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the future’.
77
And, as noted above, we have yet to see how the European project itself will cope with the tensions and
pressures of self-protection that could follow from a hollowed-out US commitment to European defence.
75
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its strength if it is to retain the ability to safeguard its own vital interests in a competitive
multipolar world. Only by returning to a maritime grand strategy of offshore balancing,
resourcing defence properly while resisting temptation to overuse the capabilities acquired,
and eschewing all but the most essential direct military interventions will this strength
conservation be achievable.
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