On Global Dashboard, Alex Evans asks what are we missing? He’s been doing the rounds of “an extensive series of horizon scanning events to feed into the current revision of the National Security Strategy“, and has ended up here:
Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work… For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing… there is nonetheless a worrying set of drivers on the table that raises questions about whether, in (say) 5 years’ time, we’ll be starting to think that states just don’t have the legitmacy and capability they need to manage 21st century challenges.
The problem is simple. The National Security Strategy is a state product, and these consultations are happening within the state framework – and this means that these discussions assume the state and proceed from there. Non-state actors (whether corporate, non-governmental, criminal or private individuals) don’t assume the state – they assume their own interests and start from there. Never the twain shall meet, and that’s why this round of discussions is leaving Alex cold.
The state is a means to an end. If it is no longer an effective means – if it’s not possible to reach your end solely within the state framework – then people are obliged and entitled to seek alternatives. Now that might (and often does) lead to outcomes that are not desirable for the state because they further undermine its legitimacy, but that’s a byproduct. The problem with state-led discussions of these challenges is that they mistake the byproduct for the main aim, and then proceed to treat the actors involved correspondingly.
Needless to say, there have been people who did not believe that states have “legitimacy or capability” ever since states began to form. That the state does have legitimacy and capability is merely a story that the state tells its citizens – it might be true or it might be false, but it isn’t an inherent feature of the state that it possesses either, and once the facade slips, there may be no going back…