HAGUE SPEAKS ON GLOBAL SECURITY

Inaugurating a new global security seminar series, the University’s Chancellor addressed a packed theatre at the Blavatnik School on 28 April. Speaking to the title of ‘The evolution of global security threats since the Cold War’, Lord Hague began by emphasising the degree to which the world in 2025 is different to the one he inhabited as Foreign Secretary in 2010-14.

He recalled meeting Vladimir Putin in 2011, a time during which he said that ‘we were genuinely trying to improve relations with Russia.’ Most of the meeting, he noted, was given over to Putin trying to sell Russian gas to the UK, even to the point of the Russian leader drawing out a diagram for Nord Stream 2 on a napkin and joking that if Hague wanted it could surface in Yorkshire.

The governing Western mentality then, he recalled, was still that the rules-based international order would endure for a long time and that China and Russia would fall into place over time. ‘We believed that the rest of the world would become more like us.’

That has not transpired, rather the opposite, he reminded his audience.

He likened the current era to chapter three of a book of world history since World War Two, where chapter one was the Cold War (theme: danger) and chapter two was the brief but bright ‘triumph of liberalism’ (theme: excitement). It was inaccurate to think of either period being gilded calm. There were large crises in each, whether the Cuban Missile Crisis or 9/11, not to mention ‘voluntary’ wars such as the invasion of Iraq, and the great financial crash. But overall ‘we were lucky; there was no poly-crisis.’

Chapter three, which began around 2015, is a poly-crisis (theme: danger and excitement combined), and defined by large scale geopolitical cycles including parts of the world going against the west, illiberalism, population growth and migration, and climate and technology ‘super-cycles’, in particular artificial intelligence being ‘the greatest ever challenge for the modern state.’

Hague named ten trends: inflation; the politicisation of energy flows; the pursuit of critical minerals; ‘much, much higher defence spending whether we like it or not’; the increased contesting of environmental, social and governance values; declining global governance; more informal networks and regionalism; the decoupling of China and the US; the paramount importance of resilience; and the need of state sponsorship of technology rather than leaving it to the free market, with particular reference to security and defence.

Lord Hague took issue with US President Donald Trump’s geopolitical strategy. ‘Russia will take the USA for a ride and stay close to China for political and economic reasons, not a strategy I’d recommend.’

For the United Kingdom, he spoke about the need for energy resilience and reinvention; the need to repair relations with Europe particularly around defence and security; the need for a thriving defence sector of the economy with strong relations to Ukraine; a ‘whole society’ approach to defence rather than relying on 0.3% of the population to provide professional military services (implying possible ‘competitive national service’); enhanced biosecurity; and the broad contribution of universities to all these areas.

The lecture by Lord Hague of Richmond, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, inaugurated the Calleva-Airey Neave Global Security Seminar Series.