Rethinking Security response to the National Security Strategy: a missed opportunity to promote human and common security
Following from the recent Strategic Defence Review (SDR), the government’s National Security Strategy (NSS) had a belated opportunity to set the wider context to that Review, with the wellbeing of the people of the United Kingdom at its heart. It is disappointing that it has comprehensively failed to do this.
While the NSS is coherent with the dark geopolitical tone set by the SDR, it fails to make an adequate assessment of the threats facing the people of the UK, other than those from hostile states. In particular, it vastly downplays the urgent threats from climate and ecological breakdown, seems blind to how domestic democratic deficiencies, divisive political rhetoric and cuts to public services undermine societal cohesion and resilience, and barely acknowledges the importance of upstream conflict prevention.
The ongoing transfer of tens of billions of pounds of UK public resources to the military to meet an arbitrary target dictated by the US Government will further exacerbate the climate crisis, geopolitical tensions and the deepening divisions within British society. The National Security Strategy points us further towards an unstable and unsustainable international order and thus makes us all less safe.
Richard Reeve, Coordinator of Rethinking Security, says:
“This latest National Security Strategy is a wasted opportunity to understand and address the causes of insecurity, division and current and future conflict in the UK and wider world. Adversarial relations with other states are just one part of a complex global environment and pale in comparison to the climate emergency.
“Rethinking Security’s own research demonstrates that the people of the UK consistently prioritise economic wellbeing, access to public services and a supportive local community in defining their own security. The government has failed to engage with its citizens in its rush to produce this Strategy; its conclusions and resource allocations will further undermine what people believe most benefits their security.
“Particularly worrying is the absence of any language in support of international law and human rights in the NSS. Eighty years on from the UK’s instrumental role in founding the United Nations, there is no recognition of its fundamental importance in promoting and regulating an inclusive world safer for all. As demonstrated in its recent reactions to crises in the Middle East, the UK government is increasingly aligned with a ‘might is right’ position at all costs.”