The Retreat from Strategy: New Edition

 “Strategy has become politics by another name and thus little more than strategic pretence – the short-term dressed up as the long-term, the irrelevant offered as the substantive, and the management of irreversible decline”.

THE RETREAT FROM STRATEGY

DAVID RICHARDS AND JULIAN LINDLEY-FRENCH

Another big defence lie!

October 27^th, 2026. Britain’s grand strategy, the application of still immense British means in pursuit of high strategic ends is little more than performative politics.  That is the core message of the new paperback edition of The Retreat of Strategy is now published (London: Hurst)!  Field Marshal Lord Richards and I wrote the book to highlight not just the retreat from strategy but the retreat from reality that is the smoke and errors of British defence policy.  It is thus fitting that the British government is facing an investigation into fiddling the defence investment figures.  Ben Wallace, the former Secretary of States (minister) for Defence, has this week reported the Burnham government to the UK Statistics Authority for inflating defence investment to give the impression that Britain is fulfilling its NATO spending targets. It is not. Rather, His Majesty’s Treasury (finance ministry) will include the so-called ‘Single Intelligence Account’ to give the impression of “NATO-qualifying defence spending”.  Under NATO rules it is a lie.  

The gap between what Wes Streeting, the current Secretary of State for Defence, claims is the largest increase in defence expenditure since the end of the Cold War (again, it is not) and reality is some £13 billion or $17 billion.  This latest fiasco simply demonstrates how London weakens itself and NATO and yet pretends otherwise.   Such sleight of political hand with Britain’s security and defence is also why Field Marshal Lord Richards and I wrote The Retreat from Strategy and why it is being re-published in paperback form.   

Virtue imperialism

For the past thirty years Britain’s leaders have confused values with interests by retreating into a theatre de l’absurde of virtue imperialism: the ridiculous belief that if Britain leads on the road to ‘virtue’ the world will follow. Such nonsense has led to chronically poor choices by successive British governments profoundly weakening the security and defence of the British people.  It is failure driven by a profound failure of strategy at the very heart of the British High Establishment both in Parliament and Whitehall. Worse, London has become obsessed with reinventing power and strategy as simply the ways and means to achieve ultra-liberal ends.  Britain’s elite now plays by different rules to those with real power in the world and makes it far more dangerous as a result.   

Worse, British ‘strategy’, such as it is, is guilt-driven and little different from the appallingly self-serving “white man’s burden” of the late nineteenth century.  Indeed, the idea that the rest of the world will follow where Britain leads, be it climate change, migration or a host of other idées du jour is frankly ridiculous.   London’s appetite for putting values before interests is nowhere clearer than in its dealings with Mauritius over Diego Garcia. Part of the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia hosts a British-owned, US air base vital to American operations in the Indian Ocean, Middle East, and the Pacific. And yet, London wants to hand over Diego Garcia to Mauritius, which is over 1500 miles from Diego Garcia, has never had a legitimate claim on the Chagos Islands, and which is deeply in debt to a China which would love to see the Americans expelled from the air base. London also wants to pay Mauritius for the ‘privilege’  Why? To signal virtue.

Restoring trust

The confusion of interests with values is shown in the gap between what Britain’s armed forces are meant to do and what they can or rather cannot do.  The British armed forces are horribly hollowed out and simply unable to fulfil the roles, missions and tasks the government publicly expects of them. The Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force have a little bit of everything but not have much of anything. Worse, on current expenditure, Britain can either afford a small but competent expeditionary force or a bespoke nuclear deterrent but not both.   

Making NATO credible again in its deterrence and defence role is a vital British interest. But so long as London treats NATO as an ‘after you please’ alliance by inviting every other ally to do the collective defending whilst the British retreat ever more onto their nuclear-armed island.  Streeting this week called for Britain to be war ready in 1000 days. Such statements are beyond contempt given that NATO ranks Britain 31^st out of 32 allies for rearmament ahead only of Iceland which does not officially have armed forces.  Stop lying, Mr Streeting!

The Retreat from Strategy will only be arrested if London REALLY re-commits to NATO. Such a commitment would require a major re-capitalisation of the British armed forces. Only then, and only possibly then, will London again be trusted.

Julian Lindley-French