Rethinking Statecraft Studies: New Research Agendas for an Uncertain World
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Since graduating from the University of Oxford more than fifty years ago, there has been one research question I have returned to, time and time again. It is this: how do democratic liberal states best secure themselves against those who wish to do them harm? In this sense, my work has been an ‘appeal to authority’: to encourage the liberal state to act firmly but also lawfully against the opponents of democracy so as to ensure they cannot destroy it. The ‘delivery of security’ for me means urging the Western state to use its power and authority to offer social peace and safety to its citizens in return for their agreement to be governed.
What is called for in promoting statecraft in the next decades of the 21st century is, therefore, the development of good predictive skills, lateral thinking and realistic scenario building especially in respect of future threats. Finally, the psychology of ‘strong men’, neglected as a topic for study in contemporary studies should be reinvigorated.
If the old concept underlying NATO has been rejected by its strongest single member, the USA, then there would appear to be no alternative to Russian aggression, now and in the future, than the development of a European NATO, to include Canada and states in the Asia-Pacific. We note that senior European security officials, government ministers and experts all say publicly European NATO powers must prepare for a Russian attack by 2030, whether by land from the East (invading the Baltic States) or via the Far and unfreezing North (which makes the UK and Norway primary targets). This could take years (although an outbreak of war in Europe, or over Taiwan, would accelerate this process as it did after 1945).
On the domestic front, in a parliamentary liberal democracy, the government’s security policy must not simply keep citizens safe, it must do so in a way which also secures their liberty. This is no easy task: too much security and you end up with a secret police state, too little security and the state itself goes under. To offer more ‘democracy’ is not an answer to the threat posed by subversives and it will not protect democracies from the evil intentions of ‘strong men’. Ever since the rise of Mussolini and Hitler by para-democratic means (based on electoral support) we have known that citizens may well vote for strong men who lie to them and remove their liberties. The horrors of World War Two seemed to consign this possibility to the trashcan of history. It may have been put there, but it was never emptied.
The enemies of late 20th century parliamentary liberal democracies are not hard to identify: their external threat comes from foreign authoritarian states with extreme ideologies, increasingly employing hybrid methods, based on ‘Might is right’ and an almost obsessive interest in the acquisition of territory that does not belong to them. Internally, the enemies of liberty are subversives, often violent and sometimes also revolutionaries, who may come from the Far Right, the Far Left or Islamism (Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia inspired, is to be understood as the abuse of the peaceful religion of Islam to justify acts of terror, the imposition of Sharia law and even the replacement of democracies by caliphates).
Some threats are a caustic blend of foreign and domestic inputs. Islamism is not alone in this respect; domestic subversion can often be externally orchestrated, chiefly by the secret services of Russia, Iran and China who increasingly use as their agents individuals who may have no political, let alone ideological convictions but are more than ready to be recruited for money (and for relatively small sums at that, £21k for a killing, half that for a violent attack).
Recruitment often takes place via the social media (Telegram or the Dark Web) and the outcomes, ‘thuggish tactics, like arson, sabotage and violence; sustained mayhem on British and European streets to disrupt our way of life’ is how a chief of Britain’s Security Service, MI5, described the dangers from Russia and Iran in October 2024.
Today and tomorrow, therefore, we must continue examining both the threats, whether subversive or violent, or both, as well as the organisations and their strategies. Secret agencies have attempted to provide security within the law, so and this effort must be sustained. This necessitates finding a means of allowing greater democratic oversight of secret agencies whilst also permitting them to develop new and perhaps intrusive methods of disrupting plots, suppressing extremist actors, arresting perpetrators and bringing them before the courts. If the possession of suitable weapons, including in the case of the UK nuclear ones, can deter hostile states from aggression, good security service counter-intelligence activity can suppress and deter hostile states from engaging in subversion, sabotage and espionage.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.