Events, dear boy, events,” Harold Macmillan’s famous answer when reportedly asked the biggest challenges for a statesman. Well, there have been a number of those since the last NR grappled with a world seemingly shifting on its axis in the early months of the Trump administration. Nevertheless, in a sense, we don’t appear to be much further along: there is still no lasting let-up in the Middle East, nor around tariff policy, nor a resolution to the Ukraine crisis. Here, the SDR and subsequently the National Security Strategy have landed. It is not the first time the government has suggested a…
