There is something I keep coming back to.
The British government is telling us that it is prioritising defence.
Fine.
But what exactly does that mean?
Because when I hear defence, I don’t automatically hear weapons.
I hear the protection of human beings from ever needing the weapons in the first place.
That is where SHS starts asking a different question.
If there is no conventional war taking place on the UK mainland, why is so much of the new relationship with Ukraine being organised around learning how to fight the wars of tomorrow?
Why aren’t we putting the same seriousness into learning how to make those wars less likely to happen?
Because the UK’s current defence direction is explicitly centred on moving towards greater warfighting readiness, stronger deterrence and learning from the changing battlefield in Ukraine. The government’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review describes a shift towards “warfighting readiness” and a stronger role for Britain in European security. Its 2026 Defence Investment Plan then commits more than £5 billion to drones and autonomous systems, explicitly linking that investment to “learning the lessons of Ukraine.”
And that is what I want to investigate.
Not whether Ukraine matters.
Not whether Britain should have a military.
Not whether countries should defend themselves.
The question is:
Why does our idea of prevention seem to become better preparation for the next use of force rather than structures that reduce the need for force itself?
UKRAINE HAS BECOME A CLASSROOM FOR WAR
This is no longer speculation.
Britain is openly learning from Ukraine.
The UK’s Defence Drone Strategy says the war provides lessons for British capability development, with battlefield experience informing procurement, experimentation and future systems.
Britain is also building deeper defence-industrial links with Ukraine around operational experience, technology and data.
And now more than £5 billion is being invested in UK drones and autonomous systems, with the government explicitly saying the investment is informed by lessons from Ukraine.
So yes, there is a real feedback loop.
Ukraine is fighting.
Ukraine is developing technologies under battlefield conditions.
Britain is observing.
Britain is learning.
Britain is changing its procurement.
Britain is investing in drones.
Britain is developing its own capabilities.
And Britain is continuing to support Ukraine.
That is a real relationship.
But what kind of relationship is it?
THIS IS WHERE I START TO SEE THE PROBLEM
If Ukraine is demonstrating what future warfare looks like, Britain is understandably interested in learning from that.
But SHS asks:
Why does the lesson have to be “How do we become better at fighting this kind of war?”
Why not also:
“How do we make sure humanity becomes better at preventing the conditions that lead to this kind of war?”
Because those are not the same thing.
One is reactive preparation.
The other is preventative governance.
A country can become extraordinarily sophisticated at defending itself and still remain surrounded by the conditions that keep producing conflict.
You can build more drones.
More counter-drone systems.
More autonomous systems.
More surveillance.
More missiles.
More resilient military infrastructure.
And still not have answered:
Why are human beings repeatedly reaching the point where those systems are needed?
DETERRENCE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS PREVENTION
The government says stronger defence and deterrence are intended to prevent threats from reaching Britain. The Strategic Defence Review explicitly frames increased capability as part of deterrence.
I understand the logic.
If someone knows you can defend yourself, they may be less willing to attack.
But SHS asks a different question:
What happens before deterrence?
Before the missile.
Before the drone.
Before the invasion.
Before mobilisation.
Before the military alliance.
Before the weapon is designed.
Before the person becomes the enemy.
What diplomatic structures exist?
What economic relationships exist?
What humanitarian mechanisms exist?
What negotiation infrastructure exists?
What early-warning mechanisms exist?
What opportunities exist to resolve disputes before the point where military capability becomes the dominant language?
Because if our definition of prevention is:
“Build enough weapons that nobody wants to attack us,”
then prevention still depends on the existence of the thing we’re trying to prevent.
SHS wants to know whether we can build a system where prevention begins much earlier.
PREVENTION, FORESEEABILITY AND INITIATIVE
This is why SHS keeps returning to three principles:
Foreseeability.
Initiative.
Prevention.
See the trajectory.
Act on it.
Prevent escalation.
That should apply internationally too.
If governments can identify economic instability, territorial disputes, resource pressures, political grievances, infrastructure vulnerabilities, diplomatic breakdown and deteriorating relationships before they become military crises, why isn’t that treated as a core defence capability?
Why does “defence” so quickly become synonymous with weapon capability?
Why isn’t conflict prevention itself a defence industry?
Why isn’t diplomatic engineering treated as national infrastructure?
Why isn’t humanitarian mediation treated as strategic security?
Why isn’t international relationship management given the same seriousness as weapons procurement?
You don’t need to hold a weapon to have power.
Sometimes the greater power is making sure the weapon never needs to be picked up.
AND UKRAINE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REDUCED TO A BATTLEFIELD
This is where my own perspective becomes important.
I can look at Ukraine and see more than a military theatre.
I can see a country forced into extraordinary circumstances.
I can see people adapting.
I can see technological development under pressure.
I can see domestic ingenuity.
I can see resilience.
I can see what a population can create when circumstances force it to become resourceful.
And that is exactly why I keep asking:
Why aren’t we learning all of those lessons too?
Why only learn how to produce better drones?
Why not learn how to rebuild domestic industry?
Why not learn how to strengthen domestic supply chains?
Why not learn how to create economic resilience?
Why not learn how to reduce dependency?
Why not learn how to rebuild infrastructure?
Why not learn how to make a country more capable of meeting its own needs?
Those are also lessons from Ukraine.
And those lessons could produce something fundamentally different from another generation of weapons.
They could produce national resilience.
IF UKRAINE CAN MAKE SOMETHING ITSELF, LET IT
This is where my position differs from simply saying:
“Stop helping Ukraine.”
No.
My question is:
Why use external resources for something that can realistically be produced domestically?
Freeze the external expenditure for what Ukraine can make itself.
Use Ukrainian workers.
Use Ukrainian industry.
Use Ukrainian land and infrastructure where possible.
Rebuild supply chains.
Create domestic demand.
Create domestic capability.
Then use international assistance for what genuinely cannot be provided internally.
That is not isolation.
That is resourcefulness.
And resourcefulness creates something that permanent dependency cannot:
capacity.
If a country rebuilds its ability to provide for itself, it becomes stronger regardless of what happens to its partners.
That should be considered part of security too.
AND WHAT IS BRITAIN LEARNING?
This is where the British side becomes uncomfortable.
Britain isn’t only supporting Ukraine.
Britain is learning from Ukraine.
The UK government’s own defence investment programme now directly connects its drone investment to lessons from the Ukrainian battlefield.
There are also formal arrangements to deepen defence-industrial cooperation and use Ukrainian battlefield experience in developing capabilities for Britain and Ukraine.
So I have to ask:
Is Britain building defence capability, or is Britain building a new economic and technological relationship around warfare?
Because those things can overlap.
Defence spending creates contracts.
Contracts create businesses.
Businesses create technologies.
Technologies create industrial capability.
Industrial capability creates jobs.
And battlefield experience feeds innovation.
None of that is inherently secret.
The government is openly describing the investment in those terms.
But once that economic loop exists, it becomes even more important to ask whether war prevention is receiving comparable investment.
WHERE IS THE PREVENTION INDUSTRY?
This is the gap I keep seeing.
We have defence contractors.
We have drone companies.
We have weapons manufacturers.
We have military research.
We have defence procurement.
We have intelligence.
We have counter-drone systems.
We have battlefield experimentation.
We have alliances.
But where is the equivalent industrial ecosystem for:
conflict prevention?
Where are the companies developing better diplomatic infrastructure?
Where are the institutions building real-time international negotiation platforms?
Where are the systems that identify the economic pressures that precede conflict?
Where are the technologies helping populations communicate their priorities before governments escalate?
Where is the infrastructure that lets humanity say:
“This is becoming dangerous. We need intervention now.”
That’s the kind of prevention SHS is interested in.
THE UK CAN MANAGE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH ITS MIND
This is the point I was making earlier.
Britain doesn’t have to physically deploy force every time it wants influence.
International relationships are built through:
diplomacy,
trade,
education,
science,
technology,
culture,
investment,
negotiation,
humanitarian work,
intelligence,
mediation,
resource partnerships,
and political relationships.
A country can exercise considerable international influence without continuously converting every relationship into a defence question.
So why does our security imagination become so dominated by military capability?
Why isn’t relationship management itself considered strategic infrastructure?
Because perhaps the strongest defence is sometimes knowing how to manage relationships so well that the crisis never reaches the point where the military becomes necessary.
I DON’T WANT THE UK TO LEARN ONLY HOW TO SURVIVE WAR
I want Britain to learn how to make itself less dependent on war as a political solution.
That includes Ukraine.
It includes Europe.
It includes Russia.
It includes the Middle East.
It includes every international relationship Britain has.
And it includes Britain’s relationship with itself.
Because there is another contradiction here.
We are being told Britain has entered a new age of threat.
Yet Britain also has serious domestic problems.
Housing.
Cost pressures.
Infrastructure.
Public services.
Economic insecurity.
People struggling to maintain ordinary life.
And meanwhile, the country is committing billions to becoming better prepared for high-intensity warfare.
The defence investment plan is a real policy choice. It includes a major increase in military capability, including more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems.
So my question is not:
“Should Britain have defence?”
Obviously a sovereign country needs to consider defence.
My question is:
Where is the equivalent investment in making the society itself less vulnerable?
BECAUSE SECURITY IS MORE THAN A WEAPON
A country can be attacked without a soldier crossing its border.
A supply chain can fail.
Energy can become unaffordable.
Food can become inaccessible.
Infrastructure can collapse.
A population can become economically insecure.
Disinformation can destabilise public trust.
A cyberattack can cripple systems.
A diplomatic relationship can deteriorate.
A country can become dependent on resources it cannot replace.
Those are all vulnerabilities.
So why is defence predominantly understood through military preparedness?
Why isn’t civilian resilience treated as defence?
Why isn’t:
food security,
energy security,
housing security,
economic resilience,
public health,
education,
infrastructure,
cybersecurity,
social cohesion,
and constitutional stability
considered part of national defence?
That is where SHS’s definition starts becoming much wider.
WHAT IF DEFENCE STARTED WITH HUMANITY?
Imagine Britain asking:
What makes our population vulnerable?
Then:
What makes those vulnerabilities worse?
Then:
What can we prevent?
Then:
What do we need to build?
Then:
What relationships make us stronger?
Then:
What resources can we produce ourselves?
Then:
What can we safely obtain from others?
Then:
What international disputes can we help prevent?
Then:
What military capacity remains necessary after all those preventive layers exist?
That is a completely different sequence.
Not:
Threat → weapon → deterrence → warfighting readiness.
But:
Human need → foreseeability → initiative → prevention → resilience → diplomacy → deterrence where necessary → defence where unavoidable.
That is the order SHS is asking us to investigate.
AND THIS IS WHERE HUMANITY SHOULD HAVE A VETO
Because if a government is going to commit billions over years to a strategic military direction, humanity should not discover the shape of that strategy only through election cycles and announcements.
People should be able to see:
What is being proposed?
Why?
What is the threat assessment?
What alternatives were examined?
What domestic needs were considered?
What international consequences exist?
What does it cost?
What will it produce?
What does humanity say?
That is exactly what the SHS governance interface is designed to test.
Humanity does not have to become the military strategist.
It has to become the humanity represented in the strategic conversation.
AND IF HUMANITY SAYS “NO”?
Then government has to listen.
Maybe humanity says:
We want the defence capability.
Maybe:
We want less military spending and more prevention.
Maybe:
We want both.
Maybe:
We want certain technologies but not others.
Maybe:
We want the money spent domestically first.
Maybe:
We want international support maintained but under different conditions.
The point isn’t that SHS knows the answer in advance.
The point is that humanity gets to participate in determining the answer.
That’s the difference between governance calibrated by humanity and governance that simply assumes it knows what humanity needs.
THIS IS WHY I KEEP QUESTIONING THE UK’S RELATIONSHIP WITH UKRAINE
Because the relationship is now doing several things simultaneously.
It is supporting Ukraine.
It is pursuing British security interests.
It is strengthening British defence capability.
It is creating industrial relationships.
It is generating technological learning.
It is feeding battlefield experience into procurement.
And it is helping reshape Britain’s future military posture.
Those are all real components.
So let’s stop pretending this is simply:
Britain gives Ukraine something.
It is a much more interconnected relationship than that.
And that means the British public should be able to ask:
What exactly are we building together?
Are we building peace?
Are we building resilience?
Are we building defence?
Are we building an industry?
Are we building technological capability?
Are we building a long-term military partnership?
Are we building all of those things?
And if we are, where is the prevention architecture inside the relationship?
BECAUSE I DON’T WANT OUR BEST TECHNOLOGY TO BECOME BETTER WAYS TO KILL
I want our best technology to become better ways to avoid needing to kill.
That doesn’t mean pretending military technology does not exist.
It means asking whether human intelligence has been sufficiently invested in before technological force becomes necessary.
We can build drones that see farther.
We can build drones that fly further.
We can build autonomous systems.
We can build counter-drone systems.
We can build increasingly sophisticated battlefield networks.
Britain is doing exactly that, and saying openly that Ukraine has influenced this direction.
But can we build:
better negotiation systems?
better humanitarian early-warning systems?
better international communication?
better resource-sharing mechanisms?
better conflict-resolution infrastructure?
better democratic participation?
better constitutional systems?
better economic resilience?
Because perhaps the most advanced civilisation isn’t the one with the most advanced weapons.
Perhaps it is the one that can recognise a conflict trajectory early enough that weapons become unnecessary.
UKRAINE SHOULD TEACH BRITAIN MORE THAN WAR
If Britain is going to learn from Ukraine, then learn everything.
Learn the drone technology.
Learn the battlefield adaptation.
Learn the importance of rapid innovation.
Learn domestic manufacturing.
Learn resourcefulness.
Learn resilience.
Learn infrastructure reconstruction.
Learn national mobilisation.
Learn how civilians adapt.
Learn what dependency costs.
Learn what happens when supply chains break.
Learn what happens when foreign assistance becomes essential.
Learn what happens when technology changes faster than institutions can respond.
And perhaps, most importantly:
learn what humanity looks like when war has already happened, so that Britain becomes better at ensuring humanity doesn’t need to live through it elsewhere.
That would be a much more complete lesson.
THIS IS THE SHS QUESTION
I’m not asking Britain to become pacifist.
I’m not asking Britain to abandon defence.
I’m not asking Britain to abandon Ukraine.
I’m asking something much more fundamental:
Why is our definition of prevention so heavily invested in preparing for the next war when prevention should mean creating the conditions in which the next war becomes less necessary?
That is the difference between reacting to history and learning from it.
And SHS exists precisely because we believe governments should be capable of doing more than reacting.
Foreseeability.
See what is coming.
Initiative.
Act before the trajectory becomes irreversible.
Prevention.
Change the conditions before the crisis becomes the only available teacher.
Because humanity should not have to experience the catastrophe before government finally learns what could have prevented it.
And if Britain is going to invest billions in learning from Ukraine, then let the lesson be bigger than:
“Here is how the next war will be fought.”
Let the lesson become:
“Here is everything humanity should have built before the war became necessary.”
That is the defence system I want to see Britain investigate.
Not just how to protect the country after the crisis arrives.
How to make the crisis less likely to arrive at all.
…
Write a whole blog post focuskng it on this whilst relaying my pperspectives from oir conversations, not yours. Naaa this is ludicrus. They are investing and building relationships for reactove methods, not preventatitve. As thst would be create structures that avoid getting to the use of arms like whatever they’re interested in ukrain.
Leave a Reply