Introducing our Strategic Framework to 2025
30. As the outcome of the Integrated Review, we have established a Strategic
Framework, which responds to prevailing trends in the international context and is
intended to provide handrails for future policy‑making to deliver our long-term
approach. The Framework sets the Government’s overarching national security
and international policy objectives to 2025. It identifies how we can bring all the
instruments available to the Government together to achieve these objectives.
It does not provide detailed regional and country strategies or an exhaustive
description of all the activity we will undertake in the coming years. Instead, it sets
a foreign policy baseline and identifies priority actions, reflecting the need for flexibility
in our approach and setting out where further policy work and new sub‑strategies
are required.
31. The Strategic Framework has been used to guide spending decisions under SR
2020, including departmental settlements and funding for several new initiatives
(see Annex A). Future SRs will also be informed by this Framework and will provide
further opportunities to align resources with ambition.
32. The four overarching and mutually supporting objectives set by the Strategic
Framework are:
i. Sustaining strategic advantage through science and technology: we will
incorporate S&T as an integral element of our national security and international
policy, fortifying the position of the UK as a global S&T and responsible
cyber power. This will be essential in gaining economic, political and security
advantages in the coming decade and in shaping international norms in
collaboration with allies and partners. It will also drive prosperity at home and
progress towards the three objectives that follow.
ii. Shaping the open international order of the future: we will use our convening
power and work with partners to reinvigorate the international system. In doing
so, we will ensure that it is one in which open societies and open economies
can flourish as we move further into the digital age – creating a world that is more
favourable to democracies and the defence of universal values. We will seek to
reinforce and renew existing pillars of the international order – such as the UN
and the global trading system – and to establish norms in the future frontiers of
cyberspace, emerging technology, data and space.
iii. Strengthening security and defence at home and overseas: we will work
with allies and partners to address challenges to our security in the physical
world and online. NATO will remain the foundation of collective security in our
home region of the Euro-Atlantic, where Russia remains the most acute threat
to our security. We will also place greater emphasis on building our capacity
and that of like-minded nations around the world in responding to a growing
range of transnational state threats,1 radicalisation and terrorism, SOC and
weapons proliferation.
iv. Building resilience at home and overseas: we will place greater emphasis on
resilience, recognising that it is not possible to predict or prevent every risk to our
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The term ‘state threats’ is now used in place of ‘Hostile State Activity’.
Integrated Review
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