A Greater Britain: Rethinking the UK’s Global Strategy

‘Britain deserves to be a strong power in the new century…It needs only to play to its many strengths,’ argues research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute and US Army College, Azeem Ibrahim. His new book A Greater Britain: Rethinking the UK’s Global Strategy sets out to reform Britain’s position in the world and to see the UK emerge as a key strategic actor. Ibrahim’s contention is that Britain has been gripped by decades of decline, some of which was avoidable, and the country lacking any vision of itself to make it a key global player. For Ibrahim, Britain has much to offer including the advancement of liberal democracy and offering the world an alternative to a resurgent authoritarian political order. However, a combination of bad ideas, poor policy making, structural problems and lack of overall purpose has led the UK to being a marginal player and if something is not done, it may become more marginal still. Ibrahim seeks to outline where he thinks the UK has gone wrong and provide a vision for itself to enable it to achieve its potential. 

He argues that following the aftermath of the 1956 Suez War – in which Britain, France and Israel, sought to curtail the growing influence of Arab nationalism led by Egyptian-President Gamal Abdel Nasser by seizing the Sinai and attempting to stop Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal, only to be forced out of Egypt by the United States – Britain found itself even more at the mercy of the United States and subsequent British leaders have failed to articulate a new foreign policy vision for themselves. A fatalism gripped the UK in the 1960s and 70s, which saw Britain as doomed to decline and that the country was fated to either join the European Union or leave it. Many spoke of managed decline, which produced a knee-jerk response to clinging to certain industries, while at the same time failing to adapt to the new geostrategic realities that Britain has helped birth.  ‘One upon a time, Britain had a fierce reputation as an efficient and effective machine of diplomacy and statecraft…Britain brought about the balance of power and economic conditions it needed for growth, trade and empire.’ A key aspect of British statecraft is the practice of bettering the country, however, the British state in recent decades is unable to provide a coherent vision of what betterment of the country consists of. 

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This leaves the UK to be at the mercy of the intellectual whims of the day, which in the UK context has meant an overemphasis on perceived reputational harms over national interest concerns. This line of thinking stems out of academia and leads to poor policy making, according to Ibrahim. A case in point is the debacle over the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean. Control over Diego Garcia enables the UK to project power across the Indian Ocean, act as a linchpin for UK logistics and surveillance across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The UK presence also prevented other actors, such as China, from acquiring dominance in the region. However, as Ibrahim asserts, a combination of poor top-down strategic articulation and bottom-up legal, social and political progressiveness, led to the UK making a strategic blunder. He points out that despite popular perception, the UK island base was not under legal threat and the International Court of Justice ruling was non-binding and only an advisory opinion. Britain’s decision to hand over its base to Mauritius, a close Chinese ally, risks the islands becoming Chinese bases. The decision was driven by what Ibrahim calls low quality legal advice that not only misinterpreted the legal ruling, but was also driven by a kind of moralism that the UK is inherently wrong due to its colonial past. 

Indeed, inflexible moralism on both the left and right has crippled the UK’s ability to adapt a new strategic vision of itself. We see this play out in other areas including in issues connected to economic growth, energy security, taxation and environmentalism. But the real question is why does any of this matter? What benefit does the rest of the world get from Britain being a key global player? A Greater Britain argues the UK has an opportunity to advance the goals of liberal democracy, strengthen international organisations and cooperation, champion free trade and all of these things will be of greater benefit to the world. The case for any of these things as an inherent good is not obvious to many right now, but as the dangerous of authoritarian popularism, disregard for international norms and the proliferation of conflict, the book seeks to convince the reader that throughout effective policy choices, the UK could convince the world of the merits of these ideas. 

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