Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — Hoover Distinguished Visiting Fellow John Bew led production of the United Kingdom’s new national security strategy.
Released in June, National Security Strategy 2025 sets out a comprehensive approach to protecting the British people in an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world. It highlights the need to adapt to the evolving geopolitical landscape, emerging security threats, and challenges such as illegal migration, cyber risks, and keeping up with rapid advances in science and technology.
Bew spent over five years, from 2019 to 2024, as the prime minister’s foreign policy advisor for four different administrations, before leaving in September 2024. In that time, he wrote the 2021 and 2023 national security strategies. He was also involved in the shaping of the most recent NATO Strategic Concept as part of the secretary general’s Reflections Group.
Currently a professor of history and foreign policy at King’s College London and a senior advisor at the Australian College of National Security, Bew joined Hoover in October 2024 and helps support the work of the Workshops on Urgent Security Choices research project, led by Senior Fellow Philip Zelikow.
Urgent Security Choices focuses on significant challenges facing the United States and allied states over the next one to two years, zeroing in on policy questions that lie on the immediate horizon.
“It was an honor to be asked to help the government design a new national security strategy—the third in which I’ve been involved,” Bew said. “The document is intended to be a guide to all aspects of homeland security, defense, and foreign policy out to the end of this session of parliament. My work at Hoover has been invaluable in shaping my understanding of the international security environment.”
The document establishes a new strategic framework comprising three core pillars: security at home, strength abroad, and enhanced sovereign and asymmetric capabilities.
It outlines an integrated response that includes stronger borders, proactive intervention to tackle illegal migration, the leveraging of diplomacy to protect jobs and enhance industrial strength, and significant investment in renewing and revitalizing the armed forces and defense sector.
The overarching goal of National Security Strategy 2025 is to defend the UK’s interests domestically and internationally, pursue economic opportunities, and bolster national competitiveness for the long term while making tangible improvements to the lives of British citizens, military personnel, and communities across the country. It has a strong emphasis on the importance of frontier technologies and AI.
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
