Baroness Catherine Ashton, formerly the European Union’s lead for foreign and security strategy, discusses challenges, opportunities and tips for collaborative strategy-making.

As the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton was at the heart of international strategy making between 2009 and 2014 working on some of the world’s most intractable problems. She was appointed by the UN Security Council to lead the P5+1 negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran and was in post when Russia first invaded Ukraine, seizing Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014. She also led peace negotiations in the Western Balkans between Serbia and Kosovo, for which she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In this episode, she reflects on strategy-making in an international and supranational context, the challenges facing Europe today and how ‘false binaries’ – such as those that posit the EU and NATO as being in opposition – stifle effective strategy elaboration. She argues that strategy makers need preparedness of thought and action, the ability to ground their ambition both in reality but also in individual and organisational values, as well as the will to ask, and respond to, the key question of any adaptive strategy, ‘And then what?’.

In an illustrious career, The Rt Hon The Baroness Catherine Ashton of Upholland LG GCMG PC was a minister, Leader of the House of Lords, the UK’s first female Commissioner in the European Union and the High Representative and First Vice President for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in the Barroso Commission establishing the European External Action Service as a major actor in international affairs.

General Nasution's journey from insurgent to Army commander and strategist fighting against communist insurgents in Indonesia is described by Colonel Dr Almuchalif Suryo.

Trained by the Dutch as part of the Netherlands East Indies Army, General Abdel Haris Nasution (1918-2000) fought with them against the Japanese during the Second World War and then against them for Indonesian independence. Having become an expert guerilla commander, he was then charged with creating Indonesia's state army, a force that had to unite elements trained by the Dutch and the Japanese, as well as citizen soldiers. One of the first tasks of this new army was to counter a communist insurgency in which Nasution himself was a target. Narrowly surviving an assassination attempt that killed his 8-year old daughter, he fell afoul of Indonesia's politics and was removed from post by President Sukarno. Nasution was rehabilitated under President Suharto before the two fell out. Towards the end of Nasution's life, they reconciled, and Nasution became one of only three five-star generals in Indonesia's history.

Colonel Dr Almuchalif Suryo was an infantry officer in the Indonesian Army, where he was the school commander of the Combatant Training Centre and Head of Total War Study at the Republic of Indonesia Defence University. Now retired, he still lectures there. He speaks to us in a personal capacity.

FURTHER READING

Abdul Haris Nasution, Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965.

Abdul Haris Nasution, Towards a People's Army, Djakarta cv Delegasi, 1964.

C.L.M. Penders and Ulf Sundhaussen, Abdul Haris Nasution: a political biography, University of Queensland Press, 1985.

Almuchaif Suryo, The Dual Function of the Indonesian Armed Forces and the Concept of Citizen Soldiery, Norwich University, 1999.

Admiral John (Jacky) Fisher radically transformed the Royal Navy in terms of its people, doctrine, equipment and structures. Dr Richard Dunley explains how.

Few service chiefs have had such a profound effect on their service as Admiral of the Fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, Chief of the British Royal Navy in 1904-1910, and again in 1914-1915, before resigning in frustration over Churchill's Gallipoli campaign.

Joining a wooden-hulled, sail-powered Royal Navy at the age of 13, by the time he retired aged 74, his Service was operating steel-hulled, oil-powered and technologically advanced battleships, with submarine and aviation arms. He was at the forefront of many of these reforms, but his impact went beyond the technology, overseeing profound changes in naval strategy (working alongside Julian Corbett - Season 1, Episode 1), doctrine, force disposition, personnel and training. Like other great strategic leaders, he was adept at shaping the political environment, securing for the Royal Navy the lion's share of the defence budget. Yet his legacy is mixed - his Royal Navy was undoubtedly a stronger, more capable fighting force but, according to our guest, was institutionally damaged and divided, and took some time to recover.

Dr Richard Dunley is a senior lecturer in history and maritime strategy at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, where he teaches at the Australian Defence Force Academy. His research focuses on the relationship between navies and technology, with a particular emphasis on the Royal Navy in the early 20th century.