S6E22: Delivering National Security Strategies

Former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Sir Mark Lyall Grant discusses the challenges facing delivery of Western security strategies.

In this season of Talking Strategy we have explored many of the key themes of today's security and defence strategies, but the test of a strategy is what changes as a result. A perfectly written strategy that makes the wrong assumptions, or that cannot be delivered, is meaningless at best, and often worse. In the final episode of this season, we examine the vital question of how defence strategy is delivered.

With so many Western strategies built on the assumption of a rules based international order, the fracturing of that system poses profound challenges for our defence strategies. Sir Mark, who chaired the UN Security Council four times, describes how the assumption was perhaps overblown – based on a 'Golden Age' that only lasted for 25 years – and how the world is moving in a disorderly manner towards a three-tier model in which interests are enforced through power.

In this new world, governments need to confront the reality that they cannot guarantee the safety of their citizens alone or without the help of their populations. This affects how governments operate – their structures and processes – and the conversations they need to have with their people and allies.

Further Reading

Mark Lyall Grant, 'The world order in crisis', Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development, vol.21 (2022): 124-133.

Peter Ricketts, Hard Choices: The Making and Unmaking of Global Britain, Atlantic Books, 2021.

Jack Watling, Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, Macmillan, 2026.