During my three years as Chair of the Defence Committee, I regularly asked the big cheeses of the day, “Is our world getting more dangerous or less?” Unsurprisingly, the answers from Prime Ministers; Defence Ministers; and Heads of the Navy, Army, and RAF were consistent. You do not need to work in the Westminster bubble to realise our world has entered a pretty dark chapter and no one leader, nation, or even alliance is in control of how events will unfold.
Aside from the two, headline-grabbing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, there are a smaller set of challenges that confirm our world has never been more dangerous than since 1939.
In total, there are 110 armed conflicts around the world, the highest number since the end of the Cold War. Many of these conflicts are internal struggles, such as in Sudan, Ethiopia, the Congo, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Others are the consequence of international interventions, now abandoned, such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
Simply put, this dark chapter we’ve entered is only likely to get darker as we slide to World War Three. Not a bloodbath like the last world war, but a “world at war”, with multiple conflicts killing off the globalisation that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After 1989, states embraced international trade to help boost their own economies and helped lift millions out of poverty. But, after three decades of relative peace that followed that totemic event, we must finally acknowledge how complacent we became in defending our global order.
Now, we must prepare for the worst. Autocrats have long calculated that there’s been no better time to seriously advance their belligerent agendas. They are starting to group together to seriously challenge where our world is heading. However, China is a Communist Dictatorship, Russia a Centralised Autocracy, and Iran a Theocratic Republic. They make strange bedfellows. In the past, China and the Soviet Union fell out over the true interpretation of Communism. From Peter the Great’s time, Russia intimidated Persia. And, whilst China and Persia have trade relations going back to the Silk Road, Tehran was publicly critical of Beijing for its secrecy over COVID-19.
Yet this unlikely triple alliance poses an ever-higher risk of disrupting the global status quo. The absence of a wider strategy to tackle the decline of our world order has led to bespoke sanctions and restrictions directed at each country, which now, inadvertently, draw these ‘fair-weather’ business partners closer together.
China has made no secret of its desire to lead an alternative interpretation of our rules-based order, with less emphasis on democracy, human rights, and accountability. Its economic statecraft is growing in confidence as Beijing pressures nations to abandon the US dollar for the Chinese renminbi as their secondary currency. Countries like Iran are low-hanging fruit to bolster this. China is now Iran’s biggest trading partner, a fellow member of the BRICs and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Joint military exercises between all three countries are increasing.
If Parliament is your yardstick for appreciating the wider geopolitical picture, you’d be excused for missing the elephant in the room. Growing authoritarianism and the formation of new alliances are actively pursuing a very competing interpretation of global order – yet, we are without a strategy. Indeed, during the recent General Election, scant regard was given to security matters, how contested our world is becoming, and the world’s impact on the UK economy as globalisation is replaced by protectionism and isolationism.
There is a clear demand for international leadership as the axioms and principles of our global order are upturned. What role does Britain want to play? To retreat into a defensive or insular cringe caught between the growing America/China rivalry yet out of sync with continental Europe. Or rekindle our sense of purpose on the international stage to help reshape and upgrade the international alliances required to navigate this darkening chapter. Our leadership in supporting Ukraine offers a hint of what we are capable of. But the sense of urgency to upgrade our hard power, invest in our soft power and craft the grand strategy crucial to influence partners, rivals, and adversaries is still not there. The fundamentals that allowed us to wield such influence over the last couple of centuries and earned us a permanent seat on the UN Security Council are still there. We are the sixth largest economy, with a special understanding of the world – retaining a strong intelligence network, diplomatic reach, and convening power – giving us a reputation for thought leadership and pragmatic problem-solving.
If we are serious about once again shaping the global conversation, we need to begin with a conversation at home – with the British people about just how dangerous our world is becoming. Obsessing about migrant numbers without appreciating why these people abandon their country in the first place suggests we are not having the right conversation.
As storm clouds gather again, if we don’t proactively decide Britain’s place in the world, it will be decided for us.
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