How to Make Alliances Succeed Across Multiple Dimensions of Power: Atlantic, Indo-Pacific, and Historical Lessons
Speakers: Sir John Sawers (Former Head of MI6); James Schoff (Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA); and Arne Westad (Yale University)
Date: 19 October 2021
Speaker Session Summary
SMA hosted a speaker session with Sir John Sawers (Former Head of MI6), James Schoff (Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA), and Odd Arne Westad (Yale University), as part of its SMA UK MoD Strategic Advantage Speaker Series.
Managing political alliances and relationships for the US is crucial as its international strategic competition for influence with China continues to escalate. Sir John commented that successful alliances are usually defined by three factors: a) clarity of purpose among members, b) trust and reliability between members, and c) members’ willingness to perform their roles as leaders, followers, and stewards of their individual relationships. Less powerful or less wealthy alliance members can share the burden of collecting information, collecting resources, or carrying out crucial operations. Mr. Schoff commented that competition or poor communication between allies can cause the alliance to weaken or fall apart. Also, it is important that members of an alliance articulate a coherent strategy and mission statement to maintain their operational focus and purpose. This clear and strong communication is especially important as the strategic environment continues to evolve and change.
Dr. Westad commented that understanding the history surrounding current and past alliances is crucial to understanding how they may adapt over time. Also, it is vital to recognize that strategic competition with China is not the same as competition was with Russia during the Cold War. Having a single peer competitor allowed the US and the rest of NATO to become the most successful alliance in history. Today, many more countries can compete with information operations, their militaries, and their economies, which creates a more multipolar world order than during the first Cold War. This increased amount of multipolarity between the US, its partners, and its adversaries will increase the need to be ready for more security compromises. However, there should always be a central objective that all alliance members can focus on achieving.
The SMA Strategic Advantage Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.
Speaker Session Recording
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Briefing Materials
Biographies:
Sir John Sawers (Head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, from 2009-2014) is Executive Chairman of Newbridge Advisory, a firm he founded in 2019 to advise corporate leaders on geopolitics and political risk. He is also a Non-Executive Director of BP. Sir John has 36 years of experience in diplomacy and intelligence, culminating in five years as Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) until he left public service in 2014. As MI6 Chief, he was a member of the UK National Security Council and the Joint Intelligence Committee, contributing to the strategies and policy decisions on how to promote and protect British interests around the World. He led the Service through a period of international political upheaval and high terrorist threat, including against the 2012 London Olympics. He also modernised the way the Service works and created a more open approach to public accountability. Prior to leading MI6 he was the UK’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Political Director of the Foreign Office, Special Representative in Iraq, Ambassador to Cairo and Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. In his earlier career he worked overseas in Yemen,Syria, South Africa and Washington, and at home was involved in policy on the EU, Russia and the Middle East. Sir John became Chairman and Partner at Macro Advisory Partners after he left public service until he set up Newbridge Advisory, his own company. He studied at the universities of Nottingham, St Andrews and Harvard. In addition to his corporate work, he has pro bono roles with King’s College London, Chatham House, the Royal United Services Institute, the Bilderberg Association, the Ditchley Foundation and Sevenoaks School.
James L. Schoff (Senior Director, Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA) is currently Sr. Director at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA in Washington, DC and leader of its “US-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative” (a new forum for bilateral dialogue, networking, and the development of joint recommendations involving a wide range of policy and technical specialists). Prior to joining SPF USA, Schoff was a senior fellow and director of the Japan Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for nine years, following two years as senior adviser for East Asia policy at the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. At the Department of Defense, he supported strategic planning and policy development for security cooperation with Japan and the Republic of Korea. Schoff’s career spans over 30 years working in the fields of business, education, government, and the non-profit sector, all related to Japan, East Asia, and the U.S.-Japan alliance. This includes six years living in Japan and one year in Saipan. A description of the initiative can be found here: https://spfusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/News-Release-Mr.-James-Schoff.pdf
Odd Arne Westad (Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs, Yale University) Odd Arne Westad is a scholar of modern international and global history, with a specialization in the history of eastern Asia since the 18th century. He studied history, philosophy, and modern languages at the University of Oslo before doing a graduate degree in US/international history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he primarily worked with Michael H. Hunt. Westad has published sixteen books, most of which deal with twentieth century Asian and global history. In the first part of his career, Westad was mainly preoccupied with the history of the Cold War, China-Russia relations, and the history of the Chinese civil war and the Chinese Communist Party. He published two monographs, Cold War and Revolution, which deals with US and Soviet intervention in the Chinese Civil War in 1944-1946, and Decisive Encounters, which is a general history of the Chinese civil war and the Communist victory in the period from 1946 to 1950. He also edited several books on Sino-Soviet and Cold War history topics. Since the mid-2000s, Westad has been concerned with more general aspects of post-colonial and global history, as well as the modern history of China. The three key works from this period are The Global Cold War, which argues for ways of understanding the Soviet-American conflict in light of late- and post-colonial change in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean; Restless Empire, which discusses broad trends in China’s international history since 1750; and The Cold War: A World History, which summarizes the origins, conduct, and results of the conflict on a global scale.
The SMA Strategic Advantage Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.
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