As Russia’s war continues, Great Powers are Competing.

As Russia launches the next phase of its Campaign, Great Powers are Competing.

So why is the UK on the Bench?

With overt and covert probing across Europe, a newly undeterred Russia has entered the next phase in its War with the fracturing West. Rapidly developed on Ukraine’s battlefields, Russia is deploying its newfound technological advantage over the West to penetrate the breadth and depth of our continent.

The UK needs to make a huge strategic choice today – do we want to put our Great Power pants on, match our ambitious words with the necessary resource, and compete – or do we let others write our destiny?

To be a great power is to choose.

Introduction

The liberal world order is gone; we are living in an era of great power competition. The rest of the world knows this, but despite our collective nuclear powers, huge GDP, world leading universities, manufacturing base and tech sectors, the UK and key European nations are sat on the bench. Our ambitious Ends in Ukraine unmatched by the necessary Ways and Means. As Russia probes beyond Ukraine, our words – unmatched by deeds – draw obvious parallels with 1914 where miscalculation, uncontrolled escalation and the absence of a mechanism to manage great powers resulted in world war.

Strategic Dissonance

Nowhere is this clearer than with the UK’s recent alphabet soup of grand strategy documents. The SDR, the NSS, the NIS all explicitly accept the arrival of Great Power Competition, and all fail to connect the Ways and Means necessary to compete in it or propose a mechanism for managing it.

These national ‘strategies’ are risky. Firstly, they avoid the profound changes to our state machinery necessary for the management of Great Power Competition. Secondly, they allow political leaders to fudge, pretending they can both defend our nation and maintain unprecedented welfare spend. They can’t. Thirdly, it is simultaneously bellicose whilst spiking our generals’ guns. The limited increase in UK defence spend to ~3% arrives after the most likely window for great power conflict (2026-2029).

Great Powers must be both able and willing

To be a Great Power you must choose to be one. Russia, by force of will, is punching well above its weight, yet commentators overly focus on its relative GDP and Defence spend, somewhat missing the point. Russia is a Great Power precisely because it combines considerable mass and capability with the choice to deploy it – whether we like it or not. It has chosen to mobilise its populous and its industry, it has chosen to integrate rapid technological advances into its arsenal at the speed of relevance. The UK and other European nations manifestly have not.

We chose not to match our Means to our Ends. When Ukraine was invaded, Boris Johnson set the ambitious (and noble) End State: ‘Russia must fail in Ukraine and be seen to fail’. However, our atrophied state machinery failed to allocate the commensurate Ways and Means to achieve this goal. Critically, the safety mechanism failed to highlight the mismatch and force our leaders to choose: Either upgrade our ways and means or downgrade our Ends. This dynamic was replicated across Western capitals, compounding this strategic failure. The US distancing itself and turning off critical capabilities at no notice saw the entire game change – ruining the West’s strategic planning assumptions.

Consequently, Russia is attriting its way toward victory. With Western support fracturing and the frontline moving forward, Russia is winning, and Ukraine is losing. But this direction of travel affects far more than just Ukraine.

Whilst Russia has historically always held the advantage of mass against European armies. The grand strategy changing moment is seeing Russia develop Technological Advantage over the West in Ukraine. Simultaneously exposed daily to Western technology and trialling Chinese and Iranian prototypes on Ukraine’s battlefields, Russia is learning fast and increasingly able to integrate emerging, decisive technologies into its military faster than the West – then it scales.

Historically Western strategy has ‘offset’ Russia’s Mass with its supreme technological capabilities allowing strategic strike from distance. As Russia takes technological advantage, the very strategic planning assumptions upon which Western deterrence rests are no longer valid. Consequently, Russia is no longer deterred. That is why Russia has entered a new expeditionary phase across Europe’s.

Strategic Options – Do Less, Change Nothing, Do More

With a newly undeterred Russia, we have some fundamental strategic choices:

Do Less. We reduce our Ends, accepting Ukraine is undefendable. Whilst morally uncomfortable, this is strategically viable. Trading space for time to reconstitute and reorganise, drawing red lines and dedicating the money and weaponry necessary to create a meaningful deterrent for Russia – acquiring tactical nuclear weapons and a tech-led Iron Curtain 2.0. This reassures the US we are stepping up and heals Western fractures.

The Change-Nothing Option. Our Ends in Ukraine remain unmatched by resource, Russia continues to grind its way toward victory. Beyond Ukraine, Russia’s momentum is channelled into grey zone activities against Europe without America to step in. European politician’s continue writing security guarantee cheques we cannot cash, risking miscalculation and uncontrolled escalation. Without a unifying mechanism to exercise power, the West continues to fracture as an unprecedented China, Russia, Iran and North Korea alliance integrates across diplomatic, military, economic, tech and industrial domains.

The ‘Do More’ Option. Through the power of alliance, we transform our Ways to maximise our Means. A Great Power Coalition unites the UK and key European countries, harnessing hitherto separate, uncoordinated and inefficient nationally led support to Ukraine. A powerful, committed coalition, in it for the long-term, shifts Putin’s calculus.

Critical components would include: a single accountable statesman, a single military commander overseeing one Headquarters using a military planning ‘spine’ with cross government representation, running a cross-Europe deterrence campaign, owning the critical intelligence, targeting, and planning capabilities and the necessary military units under its command, 24/7. An industrial plan is synchronised to the single campaign plan giving industry a single shopping list. A new tech-enabled procurement system connects the battlefield to industry, matching weapons to targets in real time, driving innovation to reassert Western Technological advantage. Critically this coalition holds Contingency Plans to achieve escalation dominance should Russia dial up its aggression.

This orchestra needs a conductor. The UK must lead this Coalition across the European continent with a single mission: Deter to Guarantee – from the High North to the Black Sea, we could build a tech-led Iron Curtain 2.0. Simultaneously deterring Russia whilst reassuring the US that we are still meaningful committed allies.

Allowing NATO to remain the defender of last resort, this Great Power Coalition compliment NATO and fill gaps for which it not designed, namely: uniting key European nations to up their spend and integrate critical capabilities daily rather than in extremis, compete pro-actively in the grey zone before Article V and provide a proactive, multi-domain, multi-national, European-wide deterrence campaign running 24/7.

Common to All – The Vienna Concert 2.0?

Common to All options is the urgent need for a mechanism to manage Great Power Competition. Most assume our existing institutions will manage – this is profoundly unlikely. Arguably it is their failures that have gotten us here.

The Vienna System unquestionably managed a century (1815-1914) of Great Power Competition in Europe – what might it offer as lessons for a Global Concert? It recognised that only a world order based on power has any chance of stability, longevity, and the avoidance of world conflict. Guaranteeing each a seat at the stable, it stopped great powers destroying one another, prioritising stability and maintenance of the status quo. Managing disputes around the globe via consensus was End in itself. Detractors will say we mustn’t sacrifice our values for realpolitik, but they have yet to offer a viable alternative.

The era of Great Powers is back. With its inherent miscalculation, escalation and great power conflict, the Change Nothing option does not appeal. We must lead the world from Great Power Competition to Great Power Cooperation. The UK can drive a grand coalition to stabilise Europe, reassure the US, Deter Russia and usher in a mechanism to manage the resulting status quo. But we must choose to do so.