Published 13 March 2023
Last updated 16 May 2023 — See all updates
Integrated Review Refresh 2023:
Responding to a more contested and volatile world
Details
The 2021 Integrated Review (IR2021) provided a comprehensive
articulation of the UK’s national security and international
policy in the context of a world moving towards greater
competition and multipolarity. In the two years since its
publication, that transition has happened more quickly and
definitively than anticipated. The 2023 Integrated Review Refresh
(IR2023) responds to a more contested and volatile world.
The broad direction set by IR2021 remains right, and IR2023
maintains significant continuity across most policy. But in a few
areas, the UK’s policy has evolved in the last two years, or
needs to be updated to reflect key changes in the global context,
including but not limited to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In this context, IR2023 sets out the four ways in which the UK
will protect its core national interests – the sovereignty,
security and prosperity of the British people – as well as its
higher interest in an open and stable international order of
enhanced cooperation and well-managed competition based on
respect for the UN Charter and international law:
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Shape the international environment. The UK
will actively shape, balance, cooperate and compete to create
the conditions, structures and incentives necessary for an open
and stable international order and to protect global public
goods.
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Deter, defend and compete across all domains.
We will strengthen our integrated approach to deterrence and
defence, to counter both state threats and transnational
security challenges. We will also work to uphold strategic
stability, establishing new frameworks and building a new
international security architecture to manage systemic
competition and escalation in a multipolar environment.
-
Address vulnerabilities through resilience. We
will develop the UK’s approach to resilience, addressing the
economic, societal, technological, environmental and
infrastructural factors that leave the UK exposed to crises and
hostile actors.
-
Generate strategic advantage. We will
reinforce and extend IR2021’s focus on strategic advantage –
the UK’s relative ability to achieve our objectives compared to
our competitors. We will cultivate our national strengths and
update our tools of statecraft to maintain the UK’s freedom of
action, freedom from coercion and our ability to cooperate with
others.
IR2023 will guide the allocation of resources across national
security and foreign policy for the remainder of the Parliament.
We will ensure all government’s instruments work together,
coordinated at the centre, to achieve our objectives.
