Written evidence submitted by Professor Michael Clarke (INR0018)

1.The COVID-19 crisis has affected the conduct of the Integrated Review in two obvious ways:

• Timing. Sufficient staff work cannot be done satisfactorily either during the official lockdown and its graduated lifting, nor during a period when the second order effects of the COVID-19 crisis will absorb so much of the government’s attention.
• Scope. The crisis is demonstrably affecting world politics and the Integrated Review is having to scale itself against even more rapidly moving political targets than normal, so there are advantages to having a pause before moving the review to firm positions.

2.The aspirations of the review are that it should be an ‘integrated review of foreign policy, defence and development’ that will enhance the UK’s ability to be a ‘problem-solving and burden-sharing nation’.[1]  There are three aspects in the conduct of the review that are particularly relevant to these aspirations.

• The nature of inter-departmental inputs. The COVID-19 crisis may be advantageous in this respect. The crisis changes the landscape for all departments in Whitehall and some genuine soul-searching will be required from virtually all of them as to how they relate to their own external environments in the immediate future.[2] Since 1991, ‘defence’, and latterly ‘security and defence’ reviews, have involved a great deal of work in the MoD and within a small group in the Cabinet Office, but rather brief ‘inputs’ from other relevant departments, usually in the latter stages of the process.

Having to take more time – probably deep into 2021 – to synthesise new and revised thinking from all departments with a direct bearing on the UK’s external relations could become a clear advantage in conducting a genuinely integrated review; albeit that the UK’s external relations will be under intense pressures in the severe economic recession that is now anticipated.

• The input from allies. All previous reviews have enshrined the notion that the UK looks to work closely with its allies wherever possible. The 2015 SDSR, said the Government, was ‘International by Design’, where, ‘we will take a long-term, pro-active approach to our international engagement, rather than just reacting in crises or to events as they unfold’.[3] But the reality of past reviews has been that while allied considerations were always in the minds of review staffers – they were certainly part of normal planning assumptions – officials from most allied countries were nevertheless not consulted about reviews while they were ongoing and in their most formative stages. Allied consultation was usually brought into the process only when a national picture was firmly fixed. And the views of allies on UK strategic thinking were normally collected by UK staff in foreign posts and through the Defence Attaches network – with all the attendant dangers of confirmation bias in the conclusions.

The Integrated Review of 2021 could benefit greatly by consulting UK allies directly in a highly structured and comparable exercise in allied liaison. It should take place at a meaningful political level, and nearer the beginnings of the process, to determine what allies anticipate the UK’s international role to be in the coming decade; what they would most welcome from the UK, or most fear; how the UK’s evolving strategic assumptions post-Brexit, map onto their own working assumptions, and so on. There are, of course, awkward questions about security and disclosure in conducting an international strategic consultation while the review’s national assumptions may still be fluid. But in the current volatile and dangerous international circumstances, a genuine exercise in UK/allied discussion of strategic expectations could be good in itself and demonstrate the UK’s commitment to making its ‘international by design’ stance a reality.    

• New partners and partnerships. Previous reviews have always stressed the importance to the UK of taking a flexible and pragmatic view of security partnerships around the world; but then usually only mention, predictably, the importance to the UK of the United States, the NATO allies, the other states of Europe and the European Union and then Commonwealth countries.  To its credit, the 2015 SDSR did make some specific mention of a number of other potential partner countries in a regional review essay that also encompassed the Gulf, the wider Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.[4]  

But in January 2020 the Defence Secretary – the first time it has been said by a serving minister – took the view that, ‘The assumptions of 2010 that we were always going to be part of a US coalition is really just not where we are going to be.’[5] This was an honest recognition that so much in the UK’s traditional patterns of relationships had become unpredictable. Accepting that UK’s relations with different parts of the US policy establishment will need careful management in the coming decade, and that a traditional UK role as an ‘Atlantic bridge’ may anyway be obsolete, the Defence Secretary was surely right in hinting that the UK may have to relinquish the idea of such a natural ‘partnership hierarchy’ – from the US to NATO, to the EU, and outwards etc – and to pursue more disparate patterns of strategic partnerships, and be good at handling variable geometry arrangements. 

This is not to say that the approach to partnerships in the review should be haphazard. There are clearly core strategic relationships for the UK that should be nurtured by all means possible. But relations beyond that core should not be regarded as merely opportunistic or fortuitous; they could be strategized with the aim of creating more diplomatic weight around the UK as a ‘problem-solving and burden-sharing nation’ than implied through bilateral relations alone.[6] 

Just as significant, strategic partnerships should not only be seen in terms of inter-state relationships. The UK’s soft power assets are likely to be at least as important to its future as its formal foreign and security policy arrangements (see below). The Integrated Review would be well advised to give much more attention than previous reviews; firstly, to how government might further encourage British applied science and innovation within areas most in international demand, such as in medicine, AI, space research, environmental and developmental technologies; and secondly, in promoting private sector international partnerships in such areas, perhaps by underpinning international joint ventures, championing expertise networks, or even directly launching joint international private sector ventures. Similarly, the Integrated Review could seek to strategize ways in which the innovative and energetic UK private sector might contribute more expertise to international organisations.     

Priorities for UK Foreign Policy Strategy 

3.There are many useful discussions of the UK’s strategic, foreign policy priorities as it embarks on its Brexit future, many of which also acknowledge the increased importance of having UK strategy closely serve its economic needs during some difficult Brexit transition years.[7] The depth of the COVID-19 crisis, however – its public health effects, the global economic impact and the geopolitical consequences of them both – confronts UK foreign policy with a more urgent strategic challenge that the Integrated Review must be capable of addressing.

4.That challenge is to create a strategy that is intellectually robust enough, and sufficiently resourced, to cope with two trends created by the COVID-19 crisis that are re-setting the Brexit-Britain foreign policy agenda. Whatever the Integrated Review eventually says publicly, the internal process of the review must show policy-makers that UK foreign policy can cope with (or perhaps even exploit) these two trends.

• The acceleration and exacerbation of some existing and unfavourable developments
• US-Chinese antagonism. This shows every sign of becoming deeper and even structural for the 2020s, as the general effects of the COVID-19 crisis will be prolonged, will certainly outlast the US election campaign, and are becoming deep-rooted in Congress. The Chinese military build-up, its opportunism in the South China Sea and its aggressive disinformation and political pressure campaigns will be difficult for Beijing to back away from.[8]
• Increased global protectionism.  Protectionist pressures will be intensified globally by extensive calls for state aid everywhere to shield economies from global recession, at least for the next 2-3 years, and possibly much longer. Reviews of national resilience in developed economies will try to protect and shorten supply chains and likely designate more ‘strategic’ and ‘protected’ national economic sectors. Long-term low commodity prices stimulate further protectionist demands and deters investment.[9]
• Accelerated challenges to European cohesion. In both economic and security terms, European cohesion is under severe and immediate pressure. The ‘distraction’ of the US from European affairs will likely last longer than the immediate crisis, while Russia and China – notwithstanding their own COVID-19 crises – have made implicit but very evident efforts to exploit European disunity.[10] All European governments will face unpalatable trade-offs between steep tax rises and steep public expenditure cuts as a result of the economic damage of the CIVID-19 crisis, and current levels of defence spending among European countries will be very hard to maintain, either in NATO or EU contexts. The European Union faces a three-pronged crisis: with many aspects of the Single European Market held in abeyance by national reactions to the crisis; the ability of the members and the ECB to go further than the 1 trillion euros so far committed to bail out struggling southern economies; and the prospects for re-establishing fiscal discipline in the Eurozone as EU economies recover.[11]
• Distressed Russia led by an autocratic leadership circle under pressure. The COVID-19 crisis itself has deeply affected Russia, and the way it has exacerbated the oil price collapse is a disaster for the Russian economy, which depends on oil and gas for 70% of its export earnings.[12] Russia has large financial reserves which can cushion the effects of both crises for a while, but domestic opposition continues to grow and up to half of Russia’s National wealth Fund might be thrown into the economy to mitigate the effects.[13] The prospects both for volatility in Russian domestic politics and showy opportunism abroad are currently increasing and must be expected to persist into the mid-20s.
• Regional instabilities that get worse and have more ripple effects. There are ongoing civil wars and insurgencies across the Middle East and North Africa, the Sahel, Central and East Africa, parts of West Africa, in Afghanistan and the Philippines and now, again, in Columbia. Over 41 million people are internally displaced by these conflicts and there are, in addition, some 33 million refugees and asylum seekers, 80% of whom live in countries directly bordering their respective conflict areas.[14]  The world is now distracted while these conflicts persist, and though the COVID-19 phenomenon has helped ‘pause’ some of them (as in Yemen), it has exacerbated others (as in Afghanistan). The ripple effects of such crises are expected to increase, and more uncontrolled migration towards Europe is very likely.

• The appearance or consolidation of new trends arising from the COVID-19 crisis
• A manifest socio/political crisis in the US that diminishes its global presence for a prolonged period. The fierce domestic politicisation of the COVID-19 crisis in the US is being played out against the end of 11 years of record growth and the contraction of the US economy by a level that can only be estimated (4.8% in 2020 Q1 and anything from 30% - 67% in Q2). The ‘peak to trough’ effect of the pandemic itself is estimated to be greater than 12% - three times more than happened in the 2008 financial crisis.[15] It is entirely possible that the US could suffer a long and deep recession that will change the structure of its economy and increase the already deep levels of social and political polarisation. COVID-19 also represents a crisis not just for President Trump’s Administration but more deeply for US Federal Government, following forty years of progressive drawdown in which Washington was increasingly distanced from national management.[16] A deep COVID-19 US crisis might therefore act as the catalyst for an even more painful reckoning within US society that will effectively reduce its presence in world politics for some years.[17] Most analysts rightly reject the ‘America in decline’ thesis[18]; but this crisis highlights some of its symptoms and may reverse many of the assumptions other states make about the presence of the US in the world for much of the 2020s.
• Emergent economies take the biggest economic hits from the crisis. Global trade and economic growth for the 2020s was largely predicated on the performance of the emerging economies, especially in Asia.[19] But those economies are more deeply affected by disruptions to the smooth operation of the global economy and have less natural resilience than slower-growing mature economies.[20] The emergent economies are also significantly more vulnerable to the ‘international lockdown’ which is likely to be an on/off, and geographically patchy, process that will last until an effective vaccine has been administered globally, or else the most deadly COVID-19 strains of the coronavirus have burned themselves out in the individuals they have infected.[21] This latter process could take some years and ‘emergent’ countries, particularly in Latin America, West Africa and East Asia could be vulnerable both to second and third wave COVID-19 infections and political instability caused by the associated economic disruptions.
• More intensive ideological / managerial competition between autocracies and liberal democracies. Some autocracies, from Iran to Venezuela, appear to have been deeply impacted by a COVID-19 health crisis, while others such as in the central Asian republics, may turn out to be less affected. The crisis, both in health and economic terms, poses severe managerial and legitimacy challenges to many autocratic leaderships who already seek to supress evidence of failure to combat the virus, and will be likely to politicise the issue in an assertive competition against the approaches taken by most western societies. These countries may also become highly vulnerable to second and third waves of COVID-19. A new ‘pseudo-ideological’ divide may therefore emerge over the managerial competence of governments, as between autocracies, led primarily by China and Russia, and free market economies, as in the US and most of Europe.[22] This pseudo-ideological competition will not be easily resolved by any objective international consensus on what the results of the COVID-19 crisis tell us when it is finally over. The issue may well act as the focus for more intensive ‘wars of narratives’ between anti-democratic and democratic governments as they all try to cope with the longer-term effects of the crisis. 
• New public priorities for governmental spending in liberal democracies. All western governments will be under intense domestic pressure to re-examine their spending priorities as they try to stabilise their economies as they come out of their different lockdown crises and face the winds of a global recession.[23] The effective harmonisation of policies between natural partner countries – in fields such as foreign aid, defence, regional initiatives, or support to international institutions – may become more difficult. More significantly, the domestic politics of many of the UK’s natural partners may become more volatile in the aftermath of the crisis. Liberal democracies have (again, and in addition) taken on huge debt burdens, which could turn out be sustainable if interest rates remain low for some years and the world economy grows steadily. But the threat of sovereign defaults, attendant austerity programmes and deep national introspection, are a near certainty if the world economy does not perform well in the coming decade. [24]
• Volatile domestic politics play into a new, grassroots, global environmentalism. The interaction between this crisis and global environmentalism is complex as the current trends are contradictory. On one hand;
• Countries may simply ignore their environmental commitments under pressure to get their economies moving again.
• Future national resilience planning may come down to entirely protectionist instincts, as governments compete more aggressively for what they need in international markets.
• Dealing with the COVID-19 health crisis already undermines the growth of reusable materials, generates more waste, re-directs innovation and investment into public health, resilience and welfare projects, and makes it difficult for any environmental mass movement to express its political weight.[25]

On the other hand, however, it is also possible that;

• Public opinion in western countries makes a direct link between environmental degradation and the appearance of hostile pathogens such as coronavirus that creates COVID-19; seeing this pandemic as a sub-set of irresponsible environmental policies generally.
• Environmentalists are able to demonstrate the health advantages of cleaner air and lower pollution – globally – during lockdowns; a dramatic demonstration of the upside of environmentalist arguments they could never have anticipated.[26]
• Environmentalists argue successfully that involuntary economic restructuring caused by the crisis provides immediate opportunities to integrate environment-friendly economic policies into reconstruction efforts.[27] 
• The social effects of lockdowns put the political emphasis on local communities as a focus for political direct action.

A New Emphasis in Foreign Policy Implementation

5. In light of the analysis above, and particularly of the emerging elements noted here, an emphasis on the ability of the foreign policy establishment to implement policy deeply and efficiently will be more important in the volatile world of shifting political trends and global opinion. Too many past reviews have concentrated on creating policy coherence, often alongside explicit targets, without sufficient regard to the ability of existing governmental systems to implement them. This has been particularly true in the foreign policy aspects of previous strategic reviews.[28]

6. There is widespread agreement that the UK’s foreign policy establishment was seriously run down after 2010. Though there may have been ‘no strategic shrinkage’ in the breadth of FCO coverage there was a self-evident shrinkage in the depth of its foreign engagement and routine work.[29] Many analysts have pointed out the need to further re-organise and renew Whitehall structures after the hiatus caused by the Brexit negotiations, which left the administration of foreign policy in too many different hands – something the Integrated Review’s own terms of reference hint at in the notion that it should consider ‘necessary reforms’ to the ‘systems and structures’.[30] This thought has never been set out explicitly in advance in the terms of reference for any previous defence and security review.[31]  There will doubtless be many calls for more resources and structural reorganisation if the foreign policy core – the intellectual guts – of an overall external review is to do its job in providing drive and coherence to the UK’s external relationships for a new era.

7. An aspect of foreign policy implementation that is too easily taken for granted, however, and one which will probably loom ever larger in the international circumstances of the 2020s, is the promotion of the UK’s ‘soft power’ assets. As resources for the better implementation of foreign policy are considered, the relevance of the UK’s soft power in the coming era should be given greater prominence.

8. There is a good case for the Integrated Review to pay special attention to more precise ways of understanding ‘soft power’; of leveraging it more precisely where that is possible, and helping create the environment for its organic success where direct government involvement is not possible or desirable.  The British Council records the belief that ‘The UK is a “soft power superpower”’, and the country scores consistently high (within the top 5) on all independent rankings of soft power status.[32] The FCO designates a senior official as Head of its Soft Power and Strategic Engagement Department, whose responsibilities cover a very wide area that cross most other departmental portfolios. Nevertheless, the popular view of the government’s role in promoting and exploiting soft power tends to focus on the role of institutions such as the British Council, the BBC, the Royal Family or the Commonwealth.

9. The general understanding of soft power is not very precise. It is often assumed that ‘hard power’ describes military or some sort of physical pressure, and ‘soft power’ – a term coined around 20 years ago[33] – is therefore everything else. But the spectrum of hard and soft power does not lie between violence at one end and persuasion at the other. It is better understood as the distinction between a state applying its strength – whether military, economic or political – to achieve an outcome, as opposed to having a natural magnetism and attraction for other reasons, whether or not it applies it directly. So, economic or cultural powers (threatening to cancel cultural exchanges or boycotting Olympic Games, for instance) can be used in a ‘hard’ way if they are specifically applied to pressurise another actor, just as military prowess can be a soft power asset if it creates a political magnetism and a desire on the part of others to imitate it. Hard power is applied; soft power exists, and soft power is particularly effective when it stimulates that desire to imitate, elsewhere in the world. The key is to work across a spectrum that encompasses both what governments do, and what their whole societies represent - exercising political power ‘smartly’.[34]

10. In this respect, the Integrated Review should consider how governmental resources, interest and promotion can best be provided to a wide range of UK societal assets. Some assets, such as the Commonwealth or the British Council, operate intrinsically close to government. But many are far better operating entirely in their own space, without any obvious government connection. Government should nevertheless consider how it might influence the environment in which such assets operate and what other leverage it can derive from their success.

11. The Integrated Review should also consider a net assessment approach to these assets, since their prominence and success in the world was generally established during an era when the cultural dominance of western societies was taken for granted. That era is changing rapidly and international ‘soft power competition’ has become far more intense in the last two decades. If soft power assumes greater prominence as an arm of national policy in the future, then the UK has an important comparative advantage. But there is also a danger of complacency based on the easier soft power environment of the past. A far more proactive governmental approach might be required if that comparative advantage is not to be lost to competitors rapidly closing in on the leaders.

12. A forthcoming analytical study classifies the UK’s major soft power assets according to their most evident behavioural functions, as opposed to their organisational designations, at least for soft power perspectives.[35] In considering how government might better support these organisations, it could review its foreign policy implementation machinery in terms of its support to similar patterns of behaviour. Mapping that onto a net assessment would reveal strengths and weaknesses where evident gaps could be addressed more proactively. 

13. The most effective patterns of soft power behaviour might be classified as:

• Convening; a reputation for being able to bring a wide range of interests together as in the case of the British Council, the Commonwealth, the Royal Family, the Anglican Church, trade bodies, city-twinning exercises, etc.
• Indirect diplomacy; the ability of government officials to sustain deep knowledge of their postings, to promote ‘track 2’ diplomacy, aid diplomacy and proactive promotion of liberal free trade values and internationalism etc
• Research and innovation; having influence to help shape the global technology stage through science and technology, high-end manufacturing, spin-outs and start-ups, and the applied research from higher education.
• International standard-setting; through sectoral leaders and regulators, setting or contributing to international standards in fields such as architecture, finance, law, medicine, communications, engineering, publishing, and so on.
• International entertainment; through film, theatre, mixed-media, BBC and commercial production, sport, music, performing arts, etc
• Cultural recognition and cosmopolitanism; diasporas, cultural and cosmopolitan organisations reflecting modern multi-culturalism, communities, tourism, leisure and hospitality, and international social linkages.
• Education and learning; promoting truthful and self-aware values across the education and higher education sectors, in private schools, galleries, museums, heritage organisations and through on-line education.
• Frontier creativity; in exploring the boundaries of established economic and social sectors, such as through advertising, marketing, consultancy, new computing applications, applied gaming, ‘individuals as brands’, bloggers and ‘influencers’.

14. In respect to the UK’s soft power assets – an element clearly implied by the Integrated Review’s terms of reference and mentioned in the Prime Minister’s statement about it; ‘the totality of global opportunities and challenges the UK faces’[36] – the task of reviewing them in a meaningful way is quite extensive. The enforced pause in the review process should be used by Whitehall to think very carefully about ‘soft’ and ‘smart’ power if it is to be facilitated, or actively mobilised, to the UK’s best advantage in the difficult years to come.

Professor Michael Clarke was Director General of the Royal United Services Institute from 2017-2015 and is now a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI. Prior to that he was Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London, and Deputy Vice Principal for Research Development. He remains a Fellow of King’s College London and a Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, where he is Associate Director of its Strategy and Security Institute.

He was a Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Defence Committee from 1997 to 2019 and has also served as an advisor to the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Joint Committee on Bribery and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He has served on the Prime Minister’s Security Forum and the Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel. In 2014-15 he chaired the Independent Surveillance Review on Behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister.

He currently sits on the boards or advisory panels of the Global Security Forum, Tellus Matrix and the FAROS organisation.

May 2020