It will be tempting for the new PM to try to offer a new strategic direction and a fresh approach to the complex and sharpening challenges in the international system. Indeed, the same can be said for any other administrations that may follow in the coming decade – perhaps including Labour governments – who would presumably seek to put their own distinctive stamp on key areas of foreign policy.
Yet as a recent series of Centre for Grand Strategy historical case studies showed, a new administration would be wise to consider carefully before embarking on anything like a major grand strategic ‘reset’ so soon after the last one. As these case studies showed – drawing on British, South Korean, Chinese, Maltese, Indian, Japanese, and other historical examples – successful strategic resets are typically quite rare, in part because they are time consuming to develop coherently and difficult to initiate and pursue effectively. Careful, clear-eyed development is key: the process should begin with a sober evaluation of first-order assumptions and first-order principles, such as the nature and pace of change within the international system; the sources of national influence and power; and the contours of the national interest relative to wider trends shaping the international system. Any decision to rewrite parts (or all) of the Integrated Review should begin with an assessment of the extent to which the four global trends it identified (geopolitical and geo-economic shifts; systemic competition; rapid technological change; transnational challenges) have lost relevance. For the present, it appears, if anything, that the four trends have simply accelerated and intensified.
Should a new administration decide to embark on a new strategy-making journey, a key determinant of success will be the extent to which appropriate resources and sustained senior ministerial attention can be devoted to the process, and with a clear understanding of the opportunity costs involved in committing to the endeavour. If the trends that shaped the approach of the existing strategic direction are substantially still the same, then it is worth asking what a new strategic approach would deliver that the existing one does not – and the extent to which any perceived issues might actually be addressed through the implementation process.
For many involved in the strategy business, it is the writing of new strategy that excites people, not the delivery. The same is true for many external commentators and analysists also. Overall, far less interest and attention are devoted to understanding and improving the process of implementing new national strategies: agreeing objectives and priorities, setting up governance structures, allocating responsibilities and budgets, figuring out methods to evidence and evaluate success, measuring progress, and recalibrating the strategy as needed in an ongoing, adaptive way. Yet the success of any national strategy depends upon the effectiveness, consistency, adaptability, and creativity of its delivery – including the structures and budgets created to facilitate successful delivery – and it may well be in this area that the incoming administration can best demonstrate its competence by investing time, energy, and resources to the successful, integrated, end-to-end delivery of key objectives, and building effectively on what has been done to date. As Georgina Wright has argued (as part of a second set of CGS historical case studies on strategy implementation), this will involve investing in developing the right capabilities, resources and expertise inside of government, and working constructively with Cabinet and Parliament to build buy-in and facilitate constructive scrutiny and challenge. The current context creates some opportunities in this regard: as the case studies showed, the efficacy of a grand strategy can often be dependent on the proximity and intensity of external threats. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the implementation of a relatively new national strategy can be easier in periods of perceived crisis, as opposed to more relatively benign periods.
As the case studies showed, history suggests that a major risk to the successful implementation of national strategy is a disengaged or distracted leadership, absent which key issues can be left to drift as departmental rivalry and opposition grows. Strategic realignments rarely proceed in smooth, linear trajectories, and benefits can arrive years, even decades later, and it can be frustrating for an administration to take the pain of investing for the long term, particularly in constrained economic conditions where domestic consent or the shorter-term asks of key allies and partners make it challenging to stay the course. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether new administration will be able to resist the temptation to tear up the less apparently dynamic parts of the strategy it inherits, and show a willingness to build adaptively upon the foundations laid by predecessors, or choose instead the lure of a blank page.
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For more information on the background to the historical case studies series, see: The Engelsberg Programme for Applied History, Grand Strategy and Geopolitics, an initiative launched in October 2018 and kindly funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation.