Relearning the Art of War

Britain's future as a Euro-Atlantic power depends on industrial production, maritime strategy, and nuclear deterrence

Towering columns

For The Times, Juliet Samuel questions the wisdom of President Trump’s efforts to retreat from Europe and win over Russia as a counterweight to China.

The simpler and more compelling explanation for Trump’s attitude to Russia — which also has the benefit of being explicitly laid out by the US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and others — is that the US is retreating in Europe to shore up its position in Asia. They’re doing it brutally because Europe hasn’t listened to warnings and kind words, which have been emanating from Washington since at least the Obama “pivot to Asia” in 2011. Europe will be forced to accept its share of responsibility, where Nato becomes an alliance of European land forces backed only by US naval and intelligence support, a policy called “dormant Nato” by Sumantra Maitra, a fellow at the Trump-aligned think tank the Center for Renewing America…

…So how can we ensure this new Nato, or Nato replacement, is safely and credibly established, with its dubious US backing and ambiguous borders? When pressed, self-styled American realists and Trump supporters fall back on the argument that Russia, if it’s given its due in a grand bargain over Ukraine, will become a safely “satiated power”. Tummy full, the great bear will roll over and busy itself in licking its wounds. Or as Maitra put it: “Russia is a shadow of its former self, and even though it has captured bits and pieces of Ukraine, the misadventure has come with a crippling cost. Russia is unlikely to be a continental threat anytime soon.”

This rather skips over the part where Russia’s appetite, after years of successful nibbling around its southern and western borders, was repulsed on its way to Kyiv by a barrage of anti-tank missiles and furious Ukrainians. It misunderstands Putin’s motives for the war, which were not just about Nato but are rooted in religious, cultural and demographic anxieties. It assumes Putin is haunted more by the loss of young conscripts and Nord Stream shipments than by his failure to “regather the lands” of “Ancient Rus”. It replaces evidence about who Putin is, based on his behaviour, with an illusory version of the man based on wishful thinking.

At The Critic, David Blagden and Patrick Porter put forward the case for Britain to embrace the development of tactical nuclear weapons.

Britain should give high priority to emulating France and addressing a dangerous gap in NATO Europe’s strategic posture. Russia fields lower-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons that can be used against civilian military targets like fleets, armies or bases, while NATO Europe mostly does not. France has a small (albeit modernising) arsenal of air-launched weapons intended as a “pre-strategic” final warning prior to use of its strategic weapons, but isn’t currently close to being able to match US or Russian tactical nuclear options. Britain’s solely submarine-borne nuclear weapons are so destructive that they are “last-ditch” weapons, which mainly deter the gravest forms of direct attack. An aggressive — or desperate — adversary might well believe that we would not use them in any other scenario than the most extreme, not least because we would fear that any Trident launch detected by Russia would be interpreted as the first round of an all-out NATO strike and invite correspondingly all-out retaliation.

By contrast, tactical nuclear weapons have a different value. Using them can not only hold the adversary’s conventional forces at risk, thus offsetting conventional inferiority. They can also create an escalatory ladder that threatens adversaries with a process that could spiral out of control, while still allowing time for reassessment and talks, as well as nullifying any relative advantage an adversary may see in using its own tactical nukes against an adversary that can’t respond in kind. Of course, “tactical” is a misnomer — there is no use of nuclear weapons that isn’t a profound strategic choice — but as a shorthand, the term conveys a difference in anticipated employment…

…If future European coalitions could field larger, well-equipped and supplied air, sea and land forces backed by weapons that bridge the gap between conventional and all-out nuclear war, it would improve the chances of deterring Moscow’s adventurism. It would increase the adversary’s doubts about whether they could get away with aggression, make nuclear blackmail harder to achieve, lower its chances of prevailing in any direct clash, and buy more time in the event of a crisis. Britain could contribute with land forces, yes, but primarily as one of NATO Europe’s air-maritime and nuclear arms.

For The Telegraph, Robert Tombs believes restoring British maritime power is vital for national and European security.

Let us be honest. The only thing we can usefully do is provide money, training and arms to Ukraine as long as they resist, and encourage other countries to do the same. We have never been able to intervene in central and Eastern Europe: this was as true in 1849 (when we felt sorry for the Hungarians) and 1945 (when we felt sorry for the Poles) as it is today. If we are serious we must aim urgently to make ourselves as invulnerable as possible, so that we might be able to play an effective part in European or global affairs. A crucial aspect of Britain’s historic strength has been such invulnerability, despite its small population, its long coastline and its tiny Army.

Invulnerability was hard won, and only finally achieved after Trafalgar. Previously, invasion was a constant danger. But Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler all realised it was no longer feasible. So they tried to cut off our commerce, food and raw materials. As early as the 1840s, enemies were anticipating the day when Britain would starve. Fortunately, enemy surface raiders and submarines never came even close to winning. Instead, it was Britain that could starve its enemies: during the First World War perhaps 750,000 Germans died in consequence. During the Second World War, Britain could fight off a death blow from the air thanks to 1930s developments in radar and fast fighters, while eviscerating the German war economy and decimating its work force by mass bombing.

And today? We are no longer invulnerable, and we are no longer able to retaliate against attack. Not only surface shipping, which carries 95 per cent of our trade (even the Houthis can attack British ships), but undersea cables, pipelines and offshore wind farms are frighteningly vulnerable. We also discover that we have, at best, inadequate defence against air attack. As for cyber, I hate to think. History rarely gives clear lessons, but this is surely one. To be safe, and to be influential, Britain must be a maritime power. We cannot (except briefly in extreme emergency) be strong on both land and sea. Hardly any state in history has managed this.

At The Critic, Catherine Oliver argues that we have reverted to a Victorian culture of parenting where children should be seen but not heard.

From the buses to the upmarket pizza restaurants, and at every point in between on the socioeconomic scale, it seems to me that children from infancy upwards are still very much on their phones. And it matters: A recent survey found 44 per cent of parents think it’s not their responsibility to teach their children how to use books — children are starting school trying to swipe at the pages. We don’t need a study to tell us that parents and children glued to their phones will be missing out on building essential communication skills (although there is a study, if you want to check). Or that time spent sitting down, staring at a screen is time not spent running around, climbing trees, drawing a picture, reading a book or — groundbreaking idea — interacting with another human being…

…The Victorians believed that children should be seen but not heard, and as modern parents we pride ourselves on being more enlightened. We employ gentle parenting, and we empathise with our child when they have a meltdown, instead of giving them a clip round the ear and telling them to get on with it. We are horrified by the parenting not just of the Victorians but of our own parents and grandparents. Thank goodness we know better, we think.

But the prevalence of screens in the chubby fingers of even our youngest children gives the lie to this delusion. What we really want is for our children to sit still and shut up. And we’ve found a way of doing it that is both socially acceptable and eagerly lapped up by the children themselves. Worse, the insidious nature of the technology means that if we later try to go out for a meal without the iPad and headphones, the children become unbearable. We — and our children — are hoist by our own petard.

For The Telegraph, Guy Dampier identifies the ECHR as the root cause, and main obstacle to reform, for the dysfunction in Britain’s immigration tribunals.

The modern system of immigration tribunals began in 1969, when adjudicators were set up to hear immigration appeals. This was turned into a two tier tribunal in 2010. The lower tier handles initial appeals, while the upper tier deals with appeals on points of law relating to the lower tribunal and also judicial reviews. It only costs £169 to apply and £847 for the final hearing.

In many cases, such as an unmarried couple from El Salvador who claimed they couldn’t be sent home because of the danger of local gangs, applicants are successful on human rights grounds. In that case, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), on the right to family life, enabled the girlfriend to remain even though she can’t speak English and isn’t self-sufficient. The judge ruled that the couple’s desire to stay together outweighed the “public interest in immigration control”. Human rights law is especially important in the UK because the Human Rights Act (1998) incorporated the ECHR rights into domestic law, so going to the court in Strasbourg isn’t necessary.

Sometimes tribunals even impinge on Parliamentary sovereignty, such as the upper tier ruling that allowed a Gazan family of six to join their brother in Britain, even though they were not eligible for any refugee scheme or visa, allowing them to leapfrog the usual rules on entry to the UK. That creates a precedent that anyone overseas who is in danger but has family in Britain could seek to come here, whether they are eligible or not…To curb the excesses of the tribunal system and regain control of our borders, it will require leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act. Much like the European Union, it is impossible to reform these from the inside.

On his Substack, David Skelton wrestles with the problem the Conservative Party has in handling the baggage of its fourteen-year record in government.

Getting permission to be heard is essential for an Opposition. Voters are unlikely to engage with a Party that has been decisively beaten if they don’t acknowledge the reasons for electoral defeat. Historically, there has been nothing more likely to condemn a party to repeated defeats, such as Labour in the 1950s and 80s and the Tories in the 90s and 2000s, than a belief that it was the voters who were wrong, rather than the political parties.

It’s clear where voters clearly felt that Conservatives failed to deliver on promises. And many of these issues are those with the highest salience for voters - record immigration after a promise to reduce numbers; a failure to Level Up in the Red Wall; an NHS that seemed strained; and a rising tax burden. Conservatives have only a small window to acknowledge mistakes and failures and reassure the public that such a failure of delivery cannot be repeated. In doing so, they have to make clear that the repentance is (and also appears to be) genuine. If you’re doing a Mea Culpa, it’s important that it’s clear that you mean it…

…It is, of course, possible to go too far and be seen as spending the entire first few years in Opposition denigrating your record in government. This is clearly counterproductive. Acknowledging errors gives a losing party permission to be heard again. It doesn’t give the losing party permission to spend years lambasting their predecessor for not being conservative enough/ socialist enough. That just makes you seem like a self-interested rabble.

Wonky thinking

Writing for Inference Magazine, Jack Wiseman considers how national power is being transformed by rapidly accelerating technology, particularly artificial intelligence. AI is a dual-use technology that will be increasingly important for a country’s defence capabilities. But Britain has put itself at a disadvantage in the AI race by offshoring its supply chains and reducing its manufacturing base.

In 1962, two years before Stanley Kubrick created the ineffectual Lionel Mandrake, the former US Secretary of State commented that, “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”. This question was never really answered; the UK just followed the US course on neoliberalism. In effect, it was left to intellectuals at the University of Chicago and Mont Pelerin Society. In the neoliberal conception, values and beliefs remain in the private sphere, and in the public sphere, there is just a minimal state to uphold the market. The big question, of what we value collectively, was left to the invisible hand. As Thatcher put it, “There is no such thing as society.” Just as in AI research we pick the objective and hillclimb towards that. The UK has done this to the extreme. In investing terms, the UK took on very high factor exposure to globalisation: becoming an exporter of services and making fewer and fewer things.

During the supply chain crunch in 2021, Ryan Petersen wrote that the issues were caused by an obsessive focus with return on equity: “To show great ROE almost every CEO stripped their company of all but the bare minimum of assets. Just in time everything. No excess capacity. No strategic reserves. No cash on the balance sheet. Minimal R&D. We stripped the shock absorbers out of the economy in pursuit of better short term metrics.”

Britain has “done a Boeing”: outsourced its supply chain, and forgot how to make things. Now the plane is falling apart as we are flying. In 2008, the UK was richer than the US per head, now the UK is poorer than all but the poorest US state. The North of England has become even poorer than former communist countries, like East Germany and Poland. We eked out the gains of financialisation, but we didn’t make anything new in the real world. It turns out that a lot of value exists in the connective tissue between steps in the supply chain, because when you understand the whole process you can innovate. This is how SpaceX and Tesla have done so well.

Emmanuel Macron described the error of the neoliberal consensus in 2019, which applies equally to Britain: “Europe has forgotten that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market, with expansion as its end purpose. This is a fundamental mistake, because it has reduced the political scope of its project, essentially since the 1990s. A market is not a community. A community is stronger: it has notions of solidarity, of convergence, which we’ve lost, and of political thought."

Hollowing out your industries, in pursuit of better GAAP metrics for quarter-end, is not just a bad economic decision, it is a spiritual hollowing out. There is no longer a political project or direction or values; we are “just individuals” in a fragile, exposed, competitive, global economy. Clearly this is not all there is. And for whatever ‘else’ might be, sovereignty is a necessary precondition. Sovereignty is not priced by the market so it cannot be valued by the market alone.

At Works in Progress, Agree Ahmed examines how the Hanseatic League built Northern Europe’s first long-distance trade network, but like all coalitions, it was fragile. The author describes the history of the Hanseatic League, what made them successful, and why they ultimately fell apart. Although the coalition was destined to collapse, it has left a lasting legacy.

The Hanseatic cartel was mighty and menacing when it was united. But as it found out, cartels are notoriously difficult to keep together. The cartel had to navigate defection at every layer. At first, the challenge was maintaining unity between different regional communities. But even after the kontors established themselves, they had to deal with individual merchants defecting from boycotts. And then, when the Hanseatic League formed, it had to deal with the issue of local Hansa merchants ‘leaking’ their trading privileges to their non-Hansa partners.

The Hansa had a single cudgel to deter defection: revoking trading privileges. This cudgel only became viable once there was a formal League of Hansa towns, who could collectively shun a town for failing to keep its merchants in line. But it didn’t keep the towns themselves in line. For example, the Hansa Diet issued multiple edicts requiring ships to travel in convoys during the late 1300s, when the Baltic was unsafe – at first due to a hostile Denmark and then, later, to Mecklenberger pirates. But enforcement of these edicts fell onto the towns. These towns were either unable or unwilling to hold back skippers who didn’t want to wait for other ships before they set sail.

When the Hansa pooled resources to go to war, many towns would free ride or only begrudgingly contribute finances but not troops. In some cases, the towns completely went the opposite direction of Hansa policy. For example, the Wendish towns of Rostock and Wismar harbored the same Mecklenburger pirates that terrorized Hansa merchants on the Baltic. Whenever a Hansa town felt that the responsibilities that came with membership exceeded the benefits it would simply exit, as Breslau did in 1474. But if the Hansa privileges were so coveted, why would any town ever risk losing them? We can find the answer by tracing the evolution of European commerce from the late 1300s. The Hansa were trying to hold together a monopoly built on legacy advantages and legacy alliances. But a group that was united by shared economic interests will naturally fall apart when those interests drift apart…

…The Hansa instructs us on the power and fragility of coalitions. They only work for as long as their interests are united. It is easy to keep a coalition together so long as you have shared goals, but very few will remain loyal to a coalition for reasons of national unity or tradition if their interests are no longer being served.

The Hansa’s structure was always ambiguous. The League was not a state, though it was state-like in many of its actions. It was unique in the history of Northern Europe because unlike kingdoms or counties, it had no formal territory. It lacked a central decision making body, or a robust mechanism to enforce its policies. And even as a formal League, no definitive list of its members has ever been found. While the League may not have lasted, its impact was enduring. Its members would retain unobstructed trade, more shipping, stationary commerce, and a better legal system long after its influence had peaked. Coalitions are often short-lived things. Their fruits need not be.

On the American Compass podcast, Michael Gove and Oren Cass discuss the current state of the Transatlantic New Right. Reflecting on the recent ARC Conference, they covered tariffs, industrial policy, free speech, and the future relationship between the United States and Europe.

Book of the week

We recommend The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy by Andrew Lambert. This account by a leading naval historian examines the profound impact of Julian Corbett, a Liberal lawyer and writer, on the development of British maritime strategy. Learning from the failures of World War One, Corbett used his reading of economics, history, and geopolitics to inform a distinctly British approach, rather than producing a universal theory, that helped lead to major successes during World War Two.

His ‘British way’ of war concept, which explained how Britain, his Britain, a global empire of titanic scale, could be defended in a new century, was the culmination of a sustained intellectual effort dating back thirty years. It was no easy task, hampered by those who feared his ideas would damage their interests – small-minded servicemen, ignorant politicians and lightweight defence commentators. There was something heroic, and also tragic, in the arc of Corbett’s life – not the heroism of physical danger and personal risk, but the heroism of an ageing man in poor health taking on a task that required more time, effort and resource than he could hope to apply. His synthesis of history, strategic theory, international law, education and politics was all encompassing and rich. It provided the intellectual rationale for Jacky Fisher’s dynamic policy and strategy, influenced leading statesmen from Arthur Balfour and Richard Haldane to Lloyd George, and informed the development of defence policy, not least through Maurice Hankey, the maritimeminded bureaucrat who led the CID and the War Council Secretariat.

Corbett was unique. He did not need money; he worked because he had a powerful public service ethic, loved the Navy and relished the intellectual challenge. He integrated history and strategy as the twin pillars of advanced defence education, providing the framework that embraced legal, technical and financial insights, the first coherent exposition of national strategy.

Corbett’s strategic thought was original because it focused on the unique and specific concerns of Britain. The limited maritime methods he set out were only applicable to an insular seapower great power, one that depended on oceanic communications and that could afford to create and sustain a dominant navy for prolonged periods. While all strategic theory is contingent, Corbett’s had especially restricted relevance. His model depended on limiting commitment on land to secure dominance at sea, meeting the heavy costs of naval power through economic success and an inclusive political system. In a total war, this strategy prevented invasion, the obvious mechanism for defeating an insular seapower, and supported continental allies. Britain was not capable to imposing order on Europe, but it could support allies in opposing hegemonic powers. Today, Corbett’s ideas are especially relevant to the liberal, or ‘Western’, economic and security collective, whose members include key elements of Corbett’s ‘Sea Commonwealth’. It favours deterrence over war, dominates the maritime domain, and shows little interest in mobilising large conscript armies. The synergy of this model with the geopolitical thinking of his contemporaries Mahan and Mackinder is not accidental. They were responding to the same concerns. His place in the canon of strategic theory is secure.

Corbett’s ideas endured because they were securely founded in a sophisticated understanding of past experience. Strategic theory imposes system and order on experience, supporting the development of doctrine, the critical output that educates the minds of decision-makers. His key text of 1911, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, was an officially sanctioned doctrine primer. It flowed from the dialectical relationship of history and strategy: history informs strategic questions, which direct further historical research, refining strategic arguments until they can be deployed as doctrine. The constant dialogue between history and strategy that Corbett employed to build the ‘British way’ was difficult to sustain, but vital. Making strategy without history may be easier, but historians have long understood the danger of applying simple solutions to complex political problems. In 1914 the Great German General Staff tried to resolve the existential problems of Imperial Germany with a masterpiece of military operational art. The plan failed, and the empire collapsed, because force of arms was no substitute for domestic reform. The ‘German way’ did not work, even for Germany, while Corbett’s limited maritime strategy met the needs of a unique maritime great power, despite the abberration of a mass conscript army. Strategy is a national construct, a practical response to specific problems, not a universal panacea. Consequently Corbett developed Clausewitz’s theory, replacing the focus on Central Europe with the world ocean and the empire. He used Clausewitz’s concept of friction to explain why in war nothing works as it was intended, but reinforced the point with a peculiarly British variant, ‘the deflection of strategy by politics’. Above all it is essential that we understand that Corbett used history and strategy to educate his contemporaries. He did not expect his methods and his message would still command the attention of those who think about strategy, war and history a century later. Corbett would have agreed with Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘You can explain the past only by what is most powerful in the present.’..

…Corbett’s ideas endured because they were securely based in past experience, accurately appraised, and cogently explained. Corbett was an outstanding educator, as many of his successors have recognised. He would be central to the development and delivery of national strategy before, during and after the First World War; he was studied and used by the Royal, United States, German, Italian and French navies. In France, Raoul Castex recognised that his doctrine primer deliberately challenged received wisdom, forcing students to think with system and logic. He remains a major influence on naval thought today because the same problems persist: busy careers, hierarchical command structures and rapid technological progress allow little time to reflect on the cerebral aspects of professional development.

Quick links

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