Suchergebnisse

"All Britain's strategic relationships will change over the next decade with 2015 as dose to a defence-strategic year zero as is possible. With the withdrawal of the overwhelming bulk of British combat forces in Afghanistan in December 2014 barring shocks Britain will for the first time in a generation contemplate its place in the world without the backdrop of committed operations. The run-up to the 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will see a profound re-assessment of Britain's national interests. As such 2015 will represent Year Zero for British strategic planning when many of the assumptions concerning strategic interests must and will be considered in the light of the exceptional change that is taking place in Europe and the wider World. Strategic planning never takes place in an entirely free space, as Hew Strachan has pointed out. There are always a host of enduring commitments that must be upheld. However, with Britain's future place in the European Union now in doubt and questions as to the future interest of the US in NATO the strategic choices Britain makes over the next five years or so will represent the most profound re-orientation of British foreign, security and defence policy since 1945. The principal aim of British strategic policy is the same as that of any other leading state - influence. The retreat from strategy that has affected much of Europe including London has seen the British political class adopt a series of political clichs that reflect more their own strategic fatigue than fact. In spite of the undoubted change that is taking place in the world London routinely exaggerates the capability and ability of the emerging powers to shape the strategic landscape and under-estimates its own. Britain is today no superpower, nor indeed a global power. However, with an economy worth some 1.81 trillion euro, serving a population of 63.5 million, with a 2012 defence budget of 57.9bn euro Britain remains a global player with interests the world over distinct from those of the European Union. Indeed, Britain remains firmly one the world's top ten economies with a diplomatic and military machine amongst the very best. Brazil may in 2012 have nominally overtaken the UK in terms of the global size of its economy but the Brazilians will be the first to admit that they face deep internal contradictions. By contrast Britain's many problems pale into insignificance and in terms of power and weight Britain is and will remain a major player for much of the twenty-first century if the London elite can break out of their obsession with managing an exaggerated decline. Indeed, 'strategy' so much as it is considered in a British government machine deeply suspicious of 'les grands dessins' has for a long-time been the search for the common ground between the United States, France and Germany. However, that common ground is likely to erode as the United States necessarily 'rebalances' towards Asia-Pacific and France and Germany deepen European political union around the Euro in the possible enforced absence of the UK, which may well leave the EU as a consequence of such historic and from the British perspective deeply unwelcome change." (author's abstract)