Strategy versus tactics, pragmatism versus principle: Reflections on the Sinews of Peace speech.
Author: Tom Collinge, Head of Policy and Comms at Progressive Britain
I was privileged to attend a dinner recently organised by the coalition for global prosperity marking the anniversary of Winston Churchill’s sinews of peace speech. The subject of the dinner, and of the speech, was what role should Britian play in the world in the context of its longstanding partnership and cultural ties with America. It is indeed the speech where Churchill coined the phrase “special relationship” to describe that warm in principle and often difficult in practice partnership between the two countries.
The conversation, and many others I have had recently me reflect.
So often in these discussions we talk about hard pragmatic realties, and with good reason. How much is the American taxpayer to bear to support Ukraine? Does Starmer have to change his Gaza position because of pressure on his MPs and councillors? Will the Conservatives ever get the trade deal with India they want without giving the visa concessions that will inflame their base?
These are important individual issues. Anyone who has no care for solving these dilemmas pragmatically will never get anything done and is therefore not worth listening to. But hearing as I often do, all of them be calculated individually – how many men and how much money here, and how much there – creates a certain unease. It takes me back to Churchills speech.
In it he speaks admiringly of the American military’s approach to problems. He says they set an “overall strategic concept” and set about finding ways to deliver it. As for what this strategic concept should be he finds the answer simple. “Nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands.”
These are lofty goals indeed, and they were not achieved. Perhaps they were never cleaved to that closely by the leaders of the free world. Perhaps they we derailed by disastrous tactical miscalculations from Vietnam to Iraq. The result seems to be we in the West have lost our faith in this strategic concept. We in fact seem to have lost faith in any strategic concept, especially one rooted in our professed values of freedom and progress. We are nothing but pragmatists now.
Nowhere is this more visible than in the case of America under a potential Donald Trump second term. He has indicated he will go further and deeper than in even his first spell as president, where his admiration for the strength and security (and let’s be honest, opportunities to grift) offered by autocrats around the world pulled American back from its inherited duty in world affairs. Even if he does not win again, Trump’s legacy is to finally kill the idea the West has a strategic concept. It seems no-one believes any more there is a reason to be involved anywhere if we do not stand to quickly, and materially, gain.
I’d argue this is a bad way for Britian and America to carry on. We should have a strategic concept and it should be based on Democracy and Freedom. Why should we root our strategic concept in these principles rather than others? There is more to say about this than I have space for. In one sense the principled case for these principles is as tautological as it sounds. If you don’t not have an intuitive sense of the value of freedom and democracy then a blog is not going to do much for you.
This is also not to say that other cultures and traditions do not have principles, or that we have an exclusive claim to freedom and democracy. But I’d argue they are our strongest principles, and they are our most distinctive offer to a world that has other options. I am no China expert, but their offer seems to be prosperity and stability. From ‘belt and road’, to their investments in Africa to the secret police stations they have set up in Europe, they certainly have a strategic concept even if the exact details of it are less than clear to non-experts.
For those unconvinced by these sentiments, I think there is still a pragmatic case for having a principle based strategic concept. This is based on two ideas. One – when making our tactical decisions if we fail to include our values and long-term goals in the adding up of the profit and the loss we are leaving major elements out of the calculation. This leads to bad decision making.
Having no long-term vision for Afghanistan, rooted in helping that country be free and democratic, led to the embarrassing collapse of ‘our’ regime there, a humanitarian disaster and may have directly emboldened Putin to think Ukraine was there for the taking. When I hear that we might calculate it is not worth our while to stand up to the Chinese over Taiwan, and this does not matter anyway because they will be satisfied rather than emboldened, I feel major parts of the calculation have been left out.
Second, lack of principle or strategy leaves us, as we now look in the West, looking incoherent and unreliable. This makes it massively harder to get a hearing from third countries. In a multipolar world we need these countries on side. The lack of support for Ukraine from non-European nations should be a wakeup call that we are losing the argument.
Inconsistency also helps create global instability. Strategy and principles make us predictable. I can see why in some contexts that a bad thing would be, but predicably defending democracy would have made the Russians think twice about Ukraine and the degree to which the Chinese think we will do it must influence their decision making on Taiwan. There will be future crises and it helps us, rather than hinders if the world knows where we are coming from.
Tactics are vital. Situations around the world are all different and all should be approached with an understanding of what makes them unique. But whether for reasons of principle or pragmatism it is time for Britain, America not to mention Europe and Japan got a strategic concept again.
