Ring-fence Strategy

Ring-fencing is a long-term international relations strategy, the aim of which is to prevent nations being dragged into conflicts that do not directly impact upon their interests. It will play a key role in the nature of conflicts in the 21st Century and beyond and also has important business applications.

Ring-fencing will be of greater importance in the interconnected world of the global economy than it ever has been before, but the cost of failing to ring-fence is best demonstrated in the historical example of the United Kingdom in the 20th Century. At the beginning of that century, Britain was the dominant global power, but by the midpoint its standing had been significantly reduced and would have been more so had it not been for London’s continuing influence as a global city.

Of course, the rise and fall of great powers is dependant on a complex array of factors, and it’s arguable that the application of Ring-fence Strategy might merely have extended the decline of the British Empire over a much longer period. But there can be no doubt that a failure to ring-fence cost Britain dearly.

Ring-fencing involves a determination to act only in defence of direct national interests, but also requires a forward thinking policy of ensuring that a preventable situation is not left unattended and that non-essential diplomatic ties do not come to dictate foreign policy decision-making.

In the case of the First World War, Britain allowed itself to be tied into defending other European countries where the British national interest wasn’t under threat. This was also true of the Second World War but exacerbated by a failure to recognize and act upon the danger signals emerging from Europe from 1919 onwards.

These two wars undermined Britain’s global status and yet the country still did not learn from it’s failure to ring-fence. The Falklands Conflict was a perfect example of a costly war which might easily have been prevented. And the Iraq Conflict continued the pattern when the UK entered a war based on its diplomatic ties with the USA, not on its own national interests.

It’s the future of those two countries, the UK and USA, that also best demonstrate the applications of ring-fencing, and the risks of failing to apply it, in the coming century. Ring-fence strategy naturally has to be employed at a global level, but for the purposes of this exercise, let’s explore it in the context of a future conflict in Asia.

Much attention has focused recently on the dynamism of the Asian economies, but dynamism often brings tension with it and in Asia there are many vehicles for that tension, from demographic anomalies in China and India to widespread territorial disputes.

Take the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, a group of small but strategically significant islands which are claimed by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, The Philippines and Vietnam. Or Japan, which has territorial disputes with all of its neighbours – Taiwan, China, South Korea and Russia.
Add to that the status of Taiwan and the long-running disputes between Pakistan, India and China and the scope for conflict is clear. And notice, that’s without even mentioning North Korea.

At the moment, the USA is doing the opposite of ring-fencing in this region. It has stated its determination to defend the status quo in Taiwan and has a strategic commitment to both Japan and South Korea. There are indications that the US wants to extricate itself to some extent, by encouraging Taiwan to defend itself, for example, but any sudden movement towards such ring-fencing could precipitate conflict between Taipei and Beijing.

As things stand, any war in Asia in the next twenty years would inevitably involve the USA – at great cost but in no way defending America’s national interests. If the country does not begin to ring-fence in that region and elsewhere, the 21st Century could well do for the USA what the 20th did for Britain.

Not of course, that Britain, or even Europe, is totally isolated from the threat of Asian conflict. European business is investing heavily in the region and both businesses and governments need to examine possible impacts and contingency measures if an Asian conflict destabilizes the global economy.

But Britain, whilst not directly involved militarily in the region, has a need to ring-fence that is almost as urgent as that of the USA. Should Britain make clear to the US that it will offer diplomatic support but will not become involved in any conflict in the region? Perhaps that wouldn’t be so difficult, but would Britain stand by if Japan was attacked, or if Australia became directly involved in a conflict?

These are the questions raised by Ring-fence Strategy and they demand urgent attention. The use of pragmatic or reactive foreign policy allowed Britain to sleepwalk into two World Wars and undermined its position as a great world power. Ring-fence Strategy is entirely aimed at insuring against such a calamity, and its application will play a big part in determining which nations look back upon this century as winners or losers.