There’s nothing I like better than tucking up with a good, meaty read, so you can imagine the alacrity with which I descended on A Question of Power: Towards Better UK Strategy Through Net Assessment, the latest page-turner from the Policy Exchange thinktank. And it certainly didn’t disappoint.
What, you might ask, is it about? Easy-peasy: “Net assessment is a tool developed for the strategic management of a long-term military competition. Its underlying principles and methods are geared towards analysing trends and strategic interactions… seeking to pinpoint asymmetries in the competition. It develops projections of future force postures across different scenarios and suggests… strategies that could exploit areas of comparative strength and weakness between two or more competitors.”
Agreed, it doesn’t quite have the zip of France’s great military leader of the First World War, Marshal Foch, declaring, “My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack”, but I think you’ll agree it’s pretty snappy stuff and should stop those bellicose Ruskies commandeering Ukrainian ships. Oh…
I feel sure that Baroness Trumpington would have had something to say on Policy Exchange’s offering. In 1992, as an agriculture minister, she answered a question in the Commons thus: “The commission’s proposals for reforming the CAP would replace existing support arrangements by a system of compensatory aid, linked to the cultivated area or the number of animals kept by each farmer… If you understand that, then you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.” A woman after my own heart and a great loss indeed.
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
