Description
A central theme of both the UK’s 2025 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence Review is that the ‘world has changed’. According to the Prime Minister, ‘it is an era of radical uncertainty’ which necessitates a clear strategic focus on the UK’s national interest (HM Government, 2025, p.4). Whilst this does not represent a significant departure from the discourse of post-Brexit defence and security strategy, there is increasing evidence of the UK’s attempts to adapt to the challenges of a transitional world order in its role orientation, national role conceptions and its role performance. This includes a renewed emphasis on more traditional forms of hard power in foreign policy with increases in defence spending, while further reducing soft power capabilities such as ODA. This article draws on role theory to assess UK foreign policy discourse and practice on defence and security in the context of a transitional world order. It argues that understanding how UK foreign policy actors interpret world order is essential for theorising the UK’s role orientation and subsequent national role conceptions and role performance in security and defence as order changes. It therefore contributes to recent scholarship on role theory and post-Brexit UK foreign policy (Webber, 2023, Hadfield and Whitman, 2023) but through a specific focus on how UK foreign policy actors conceptualise world order, its transition, and the UK’s role within it in terms of both their discourse and practice. This is important for understanding not only the construction of UK discourse on its role orientation in the context of a transitional world order, but also how policymakers navigate the complexity of performing these roles as the world transitions to a multiplex order (Acharya 2017, Acharya et al, 2023).
