V. The Lights May Go Out, But the Band Plays On

Abstract

The likelihood of success in achieving national foreign policy goals against a competitor may be drawn from a set of characteristics determined by a view on the threat being posed. In military circles, this has historically been equated to the idea that a threat is equal to the military capability of a state plus their intent to carry out activities against you. This methodology was rapidly adopted by business seeking ‘competitive advantage’ and became lingua franca across the public, private, commercial and military domains before 2005. In military education, where future senior officers and their civil service counterparts are groomed for high office, such basic calculations have become key indicators of military prowess – applied as much as an assessment of one’s own ability to enact foreign policies as it has to other belligerents. In national security terms, and increasingly since 1945, this same calculation has gradually been refined by various states to one that places equal emphasis on military capability and will to fight. Indeed, given the history of Western states, the idea of a will to fight (the intent part of the calculation) has become fixed – first by the ideological position of the Soviet Union as a long-term adversary, later by the idea of terrorism as a singular amorphous entity, and most recently by various insurgent groups