HARD CHOICES: What Britain Does Next.

• Author: Kember, James

HARD CHOICES: What Britain Does Next

Author: Peter Ricketts

Published by: Atlantic Books, London, 2021, 265pp, 9.99 [pounds sterling].

Unfolding events in Ukraine, as well as other challenges being faced by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, attest to the relevance of Hard Choices. Lord Peter Ricketts, now a visiting professor at King's College, London, and regular political commentator, offers a sharp analysis of the prospects for Britain in the face of the global security environment and its exit from the European Union. The book is short-listed in the latest round of UK Parliamentary Book Awards.

Ricketts is well-placed to comment: he has had a distinguished 40-year diplomatic career, that included periods as the political director (2001-03) and head (permanent secretary, 2006-10) of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, permanent representative to NATO (2003-06) and ambassador to France (2012-16). He was also the first United Kingdom national security adviser (2010-12) and established the National Security Council, acting on a campaign commitment by the then incoming prime minister, David Cameron.

Strategic thinking, or the lack of it, is a major theme in this book. Ricketts argues that Western governments, Britain's especially, lost the art of long-term planning, made worse by the lack of interest of many politicians in pursuing this. Tony Blair's decisions on intervention in Iraq and David Cameron's on a Brexit referendum are cited as flawed 'preference[s] for conviction politics over strategic thinking.' The irony was that Cameron's decision to establish a National Security Council if he became prime minister stemmed from the Iraq campaign failures of Blair. Ricketts directs particular criticism towards the Johnson government for such failures post-Brexit and for failing to rise to effective crisis management during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ricketts acknowledges the value of political leadership and in that regard instances Lee Kuan Yew as a strategic thinker for the new state of Singapore, and the work of Jacinda Ardern in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Christchurch in March 2019.

Ricketts packs a lot into a relatively short volume. He begins with a section on post-Second World War international co-operation, notably with the United States. He outlines the durability of some of this co-operation, damaged in part by the 2003 Iraq War, and admits as an aside that all international institutions eventually have their day and...