New Report: UK Foreign Policy Goals Cannot Be Achieved by Military Power Alone
Source: Chatham House
Strategic communications should become a more prominent component at the highest levels of government, at an early stage in the development of government strategies, during a crisis response or a contingency operation and generally as a critical component of policy-making, says a new Chatham House report.
Recent operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have underlined that UK foreign policy goals cannot be achieved by military power alone. Increasingly important are non-military means and ‘soft’ power in order to connect with populations both at home and abroad. Strategic communications, correctly defined, are an integral part of this approach.
Strategic Communications and National Strategy, aims to raise awareness of the role of strategic communications and clarify how it can contribute to facing future security challenges.
The report considers the contribution strategic communications can make to national security strategy in its broader sense as directed, managed and delivered not only by the highest levels of government but by all constituent pillars of governance, including the military, diplomacy and trade, throughout the policy process.
Although the UK government clearly has a good understanding of the importance of strategic communications, this understanding is relatively limited in its sophistication and imagination, and policy in turn proves difficult to coordinate and implement.
