Changing Strategic Environments - British Foreign
Policy and Defense Strategy Responses to Emerging
Threats
‘Active Diplomacy and Delivering Security in
a Changing World’
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Objectives
• Look at the strategic environment.
• The nexus between strategic environment
and policy.
• Current British foreign policy.
• Current British defense strategy.
• Discuss the connection between foreign
policy and defense strategy.
• Questions.
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The Link Between Policy and
Strategy
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Strategy is the overall process of deciding where we want to get to and how
we are going to get there.
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Strategic direction describes the desired future and sets out what needs to
be achieved in order to bring it about. It provides the guiding principles that
give context and coherence to action.
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Policy provides the means of moving in that direction - and often a number
of policies need to work together to deliver particular strategic outcomes.
Policy design work is concerned with identifying how to achieve strategic
objectives, selecting the most suitable policy instruments for doing this, and
detailing how these instruments will work in practice.
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The Link Between Policy and
Strategy
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The Essence of Security
Freedom from:
Doubt and Fear
Harm and Danger
Threat and Intimidation
Need and Want
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Strategic Environment
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Globalization
Weak and failing states
WMD proliferation
Demography
Forced and illegal migration
Natural Resource scarcity
Degraded ecosystems
Pollution
Climate change
Pandemic disease
Inter and Intra state and non-state conflict
Terrorism
International organized criminality (drugs, people, money).
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…in summary
• The world is increasingly complex,
uncertain and interdependent. A oneworld system.
• No state will be able to pursue its
objectives successfully on its own..
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Environmental Security
“The Earth is a system that life itself helps to
control. Biotic and abiotic processes
strongly interact to create the planetary
environment”
“Environmental security is the disarmament policy
of the future.”
Klaus Toepfer - Executive-Director of the United Nations Environment Programme
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Population Growth
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Night lights: 2000
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Night lights: 2070
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Population Growth
Only about 20 percent of the current world's population has a generally
adequate standard of living. The other 80 percent live in conditions
ranging from mild deprivation to severe deficiency.
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Can the planet feed us?
The world’s population increased from 2.5
billion in 1950 to 6 billion in 2000.
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Last Updated: Friday, 14 April 2006, 23:05 GMT 00:05 UK
Britain now 'eating the planet' By Mark Kinver
BBC News science and nature reporter
In 1961, the Earth could have supported everyone having a UK lifestyle. It
would take 3.1 planets to support the current UK lifestyle
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Land available
• Globally, about 36% of the land thought suitable for some type of
crop production is in use. The remaining land is unevenly spread
between regions and is often valuable to wildlife, already occupied
by human settlements or has some soil constraints. Land
degradation is considered a serious problem, although measuring its
extent is difficult.
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Future Water scarcity
• An estimated third of the world's population currently lives in waterstressed countries. This is set to increase to two-thirds within 25 years.
Africa and Asia are already hard-hit by water stress. Increasing
populations will create more pressure in the coming decades.
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Clean Drinking Water
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Soaring use
• The world's population has tripled in the last 100 years, but water
use has increased six fold. A surge in water use in agriculture is
responsible for a large part of the increase.
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Water Consumption
The current 2.2 billion people living under
moderate or severe water stress will rise to
4 billion by 2025. Africa, Asia and South
America all show sharp increases of 73%,
60% and 93% respectively in the ratio of
demand and supply.
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Per Capita Annual Renewable Freshwater
Availability, 1950, 1995, 2050
“At least 400 million people live in regions with severe water
shortages. By the year 2050, it is projected to be approximately two
billion.”
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Deforestation
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Soil Erosion
Nearly 50% of the land surface has been
transformed by direct human action, with significant
consequences.
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Energy: Meeting Soaring Demand
Between 1970 and 1997, the global consumption of
energy increased by 84%. Global energy demand is
projected to increase by 60% in the next 25-30 years as
developing countries industrialize and rich countries
continue to guzzle power. Fossil fuels will continue to
dominate, estimated to account for 85% of new demand.
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Energy Resources
In the last 150-years humankind has exhausted 40% of known oil
reserves that took several hundred million years to generate
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Carbon Emissions
• Carbon emissions - thought to be a major cause of global climate
change - are set to increase by 60%. As developing countries' share of
world energy demand surges from 38% to a predicted 48%, poor
countries are expected to contribute two-thirds of the projected increase
in carbon emissions.
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From the Headlines…
Blair dealt nuclear power blow by
parliament body
Sunday April 16, 12:04 AM
GOVERNMENT ENERGY REVIEW
The government, which has acknowledged it is likely to miss its own
goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2010, is
half way through a six-month review of the country's future energy
needs and how to meet them.
Bound by pledges to slash emissions of greenhouse gases from
burning fossil fuels, it must decide the shape of the country's
electricity supply network for coming decades as demand grows and
North Sea oil and gas run out.
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Global Warming
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Warmer future
• This map assumes that current emissions trends continue, with moderate
economic growth and few measures to reduce emissions. It predicts the
greatest rises in northern polar regions, India, Africa and parts of South
America.
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Rising Sea level
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Rising Sea level - Florida
Using computer models, scientists have
created a series of maps that show
areas susceptible to rises in sea level.
The above map shows that a 6-meter
(20-foot) rise would swamp Miami, Fort
Lauderdale, Tampa, and the entire
Florida coastline, in addition to parts of
Orlando and other inland areas.
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Rising Sea level - Global
44% of the world’s population live
within 150 km of a coastline
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Biodiversity: The Sixth Great Wave
The loss of biological diversity is an
aspect of global change that is just as
important as climate change. In southern
China, the extinction of pollinating bees
has meant that humans have had to take
on the duty.
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Ageing Population
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Natural Resources and Conflict
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British Policy to Meet the
Strategic Environment
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Active Diplomacy for a Changing
World
“What happens abroad has never mattered
more for our security and prosperity…the task
for Government is to seek to understand and
influence the world for the benefit of our
people and all people”.
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Active Diplomacy for a Changing
World
“ At the heart of any foreign policy must lie a set of
fundamental values…We seek a world in which freedom,
justice and opportunity thrive, in which governments are
accountable to the people, protect their rights and
guarantee their security and basic needs….”
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Nine Strategic Priorities for the UK
1. Making the world safer from global terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction.
2. Reducing the harm to the UK from international
crime, including drug trafficking, people smuggling
and money laundering.
3. Preventing and resolving conflict through a strong
international system.
4. Building an effective and globally competitive EU in
a secure neighbourhood [sic].
5. Supporting the UK economy and business through
an open and expanding global economy, science
and innovation and secure energy supplies.
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Nine Strategic Priorities for the UK
6. Promoting sustainable development and poverty
reduction underpinned by human rights, democracy,
good governance and protection of the
environment.
7. Managing migration and combating illegal
immigration.
8. Delivering high-quality support for British nationals
abroad, in normal times and in crisis.
9. Ensuring the security and good governance of the
UK’s Overseas Territories.
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British Defense Strategy in a
Changing World
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What is Strategy?
Strategy is the use made of and the threat of
force for the goals of policy. It is all about the
relationship between means and ends. As an
analogy, it is the bridge between ends and means;
that is, the way.
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British Defense Vision
Defending the United Kingdom and its
interests
Strengthening international peace and
security
A force for good in the world
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Changing Mission
"Resources must be directed at those capabilities that are
best able to deliver the range of military effects required,
whilst dispensing with those elements that are less flexible. It
has historically been the fashion to measure military
capability in terms of the weight of numbers of units or
platforms - of ships, tanks and aircraft. That might have been
appropriate for the attritional warfare of the past but, in
today's environment, success will be achieved through an
ability to act quickly, accurately and decisively so as to
deliver military effect at the right time."
Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon 11 December 2003
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Frameworks for Action
• The UN will remain the main forum for debate
and authorization
• Multinational fora will be used where UN
agreement is not possible
• NATO and the EU (ESDP) are the organizations
of choice for responses to international crisis
• Ad hoc coalitions will remain appropriate in
many instances
• Large-scale operations will be fought alongside
the US
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Defense Strategy
A focus on achieving eight Strategic Military
Effects:
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Prevent
Stabilize
Contain
Deter
Coerce
Disrupt
Defeat
Destroy
“Striking the right balance of capabilities to meet all eight
strategic effects will not be easy…In particular, it is now
clear that we no longer need to retain a capability against
the re-emergence of a direct conventional strategic threat to
the UK or our allies”.
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Military Tasks
• Strategic Intelligence
• Nuclear Deterrence
• Hydrographic, Geographic and Meteorological
Services
• Aid to the Civil Authorities
• Aid to Civil Power in Northern Ireland
• Integrity of UK Waters
• Integrity of UK Airspace
• Public Duties and VIP Transport
• Defence and Security of the Overseas Territories
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Military Tasks
• Defence and Security of the Sovereign Base
Areas of Cyprus
• Defence Diplomacy
• Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster relief
• Evacuation of British Citizens Overseas
• Peacekeeping, Prevention,
• Deterrence, Containment and Stabilisation
• Peace Enforcement
• Power Projection
• Focused Intervention
• Deliberate Intervention
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Navy Capabilities
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RAF Capabilities
"This restructuring is essential and will ensure we continue to deliver a highly
capable, cost-efficient and powerful Air Force, capable of making a winning
contribution both on operations and in humanitarian and relief operations…The
result will be an even more flexible and adaptable Air Force, best organised to
deal with the tasks it will face in the future."
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Army Capabilities
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Concluding Thoughts
• War in its classical form has not gone away, but
is less likely today.
• Wars over resources and after great
environmental upheavals are highly probable.
• Grand Strategists must continue to look forward
holistically.
• Militaries must adapt in order to serve policy, as
driven by the strategic environment.
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Questions
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