National Security Strategy 2025: Security for the British People in a Dangerous World

1. National security is the first responsibility of government and the foundation for our prosperity and way of life, along with secure borders and a stable economy. It means protecting the British people, promoting British interests and making the country stronger, more sovereign and more competitive in the long-term. 

2. Protecting the UK and promoting British interests is becoming increasingly hard, however. Threats are proliferating. We are entering a period in which we are likely to face indirect and potentially direct confrontation with adversaries, the intensification of strategic competition – including the increasing salience of nuclear weapons in the policies, doctrines and approaches of our adversaries – and a radical renegotiation of the terms on which we cooperate with allies and other partners, with major implications for how and where we invest our resources.

3. The UK must therefore adapt its approach to national security in response to dramatic changes in the world around us, and to growing threats at home and in cyberspace. Decisions taken in the next few years – on illegal migration, the future of Ukraine, Euro-Atlantic security, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific and in the fields of science and technology – have the potential to reverberate through the rest of this decade and beyond. Our ability to ensure public safety on our streets and online, defend our democracy and generate economic growth will be tested. So it is vital that we approach the coming years with a hard-headed understanding of the strategic context and clarity about what we are trying to achieve, and what we can achieve. 

4. The purpose of National Security Strategy 2025: Security for the British People in a Dangerous World (NSS 2025) is: to identify the main challenges we face as a nation in an era of radical uncertainty; and to set out a new Strategic Framework in response, covering  all aspects of national security and international policy. This includes three mutually reinforcing components: (i) security at home; (ii) strength abroad; and (iii) increased sovereign and asymmetric capabilities.

5. NSS 2025 brings together the various strands of work relating to national security that have been underway since the 2024 general election. This includes the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), Strategic Security Review, AUKUS Review, Resilience Strategy, China Audit, the Industrial and Trade Strategies and work on supply chains, intelligence assessment, development assistance, soft power, artificial intelligence (AI) and technological advantage. While recognising the uncertainty of the present moment and the need for continued adaptation, NSS 2025 is designed to last the duration of this Parliament.

6. This work takes on new significance because of our 2025 NATO Summit pledge - a historic commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This is a generational increase in defence and security spending, underlining the UK’s commitment to national security and honouring our commitment to be a leader in NATO. As the second largest economy in Europe and the third largest in NATO, this will have a considerable impact on the strength of our alliance. The UK has long argued that NATO needs to focus more on national resilience as well as conventional military threats. We have set the foundations for a new era for defence in the SDR. But unless we do more to increase our competitiveness and sovereign strengths – in crucial areas like science and frontier technology – we will lose our ability to generate wealth and risk falling behind our adversaries. National security today means so much more than it used to – from the health of our economy, to food prices, to supply chains, from safety on the streets to the online world. And as we move to 5%, we need a plan for how we will maximise this opportunity to make our nation stronger. That is the purpose of NSS 2025.

7. Taken as a whole, NSS 2025 represents a hardening and a sharpening of our approach to national security across all areas of policy, already seen in a shift towards more investment in hard power and an emphasis on increasing the lethality of our armed forces. This needs to be accompanied by realism and frankness about the world in which we operate. The months and years ahead will see difficult compromises and trade-offs on resource allocation and prioritisation, short-term and long-term goals and, potentially, values and interests. We have already taken the difficult decision to cut spending on overseas development to allow us to increase investment in our armed forces. More tough choices can be expected as we head towards higher spending on defence and national security. 

8. Against this backdrop, NSS 2025 therefore signals the need for a major cultural shift in government to help us navigate the new era in which we find ourselves. We will need to be more unapologetic and systematic in pursuit of our national interests. These interests will be defined as the long-term security and social and economic wellbeing of the British people.

9. It remains the case – as it has been for many decades – that British interests are best served by the preservation of international security and effective multilateral cooperation on issues from economic stability to energy policy. However, we must equally recognise that many people in the UK feel exposed to the negative effects of globalisation – such as de-industrialisation and mass migration – and see the rules being ignored, undermined or flouted by others, to their disadvantage. Answering such concerns will be at the forefront of our agenda. Meanwhile, we are entering a period in which we may have to act outside our comfort zone and take extraordinary steps if we are to strengthen our borders, deter and defend ourselves against threats, and achieve both technological advantage and our higher objectives of growth and renewal. In other words, multilateralism and institution building will not be enough. Our statecraft needs to adapt to a world in which there will be fiercer competition and a more transactional approach on migration, defence, trade, energy, technology and raw materials.

10. It follows that the starting point of the government’s approach to national security is to identify, anticipate, address and tackle risks to the British people and homeland (including the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies). This threat-focused paradigm places particular importance on the role of our armed forces, intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies. The SDR has identified the most acute threat as that posed by Russia and prescribed a “NATO first” but not NATO-only plan for the modernisation of our military – with a more integrated, digitally-enabled and lethal force. The Strategic Security Review has identified the need to address a wide range of threats to domestic security – from terrorism, serious organised crime, and extremism to state threats – to which our responses are outlined in this document.

11. However, NSS 2025 is also clear that taking a defensive crouch – in which the primary activity is to manage risk – will not be sufficient to deliver on the government’s agenda, including the Plan for Change. Instead, as NSS 2025 lays out, we will adopt a campaigning approach to: minimise the ability of others to coerce us or undermine the foundations of our national strength; and maximise opportunities to enhance our security and prosperity, sometimes acting alone but mostly acting in concert with others. This will require ingenuity, creativity and calculated risk, as well as consistency, perseverance and effective implementation. It will be built around a long-term goal to build the necessary sovereign capabilities and competitive edge that ensures we take control of our own future in an uncertain world. As such, when we come out of this period of turbulence, the net assessment of our position should be that we are in a stronger position – economically, militarily, diplomatically and in terms of overall resilience and national well-being – with respect to adversaries and competitors than we were before. 

12. There are important areas of continuity in NSS 2025 to stress at the outset. We will build on strong foundations in our armed forces, diplomatic service and intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies. Despite the persistent threat from terrorists and extremism, we have one of the best-regarded domestic security and counter-terrorism systems in the world, disrupting 43 late-stage terrorist attack plots between 2017 and 2024. We have a lattice-work of international partnerships and a seat at the table of global decision making, such as at the IMF and World Bank and through our permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Our highly skilled and admired diplomatic presence across the globe, with deep expertise in multilateralism, development and conflict resolution, helps us tackle challenges such as emerging security crises or mass migration. We remain committed to addressing the threats to our national security and economic prosperity from the climate and nature crisis. Alongside our international partners, we are taking action to deliver secure energy, financial security and green growth at home, restoring the UK’s position as a climate leader on the world stage. Our relationships with the US and Europe will be our priority focus, as they have been historically. We will continue to abide by the important principle – shared by NATO and its key partners – that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions are inextricably linked. We will maintain our major capability programmes such as AUKUS and Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and our partnerships in economically vibrant and geopolitically important regions like the Gulf and Asia. We will cultivate existing national strengths across the Union, such as our soft power and cultural reach and our financial, services, science and technology, energy and higher education sectors. 

13. However, there are a number of distinguishing characteristics to NSS 2025 that show how we are hardening and sharpening our methods, while breaking new ground from previous national security reviews. A shift to 5% of GDP on national security requires us to align our national security objectives and plans for economic growth in a way not seen since 1945. Therefore, the essence of our approach will be: to harness the nation’s productive, industrial, technological and scientific strengths more closely to our national security objectives to an extent not seen since wartime; and to do more to answer the concerns of everyday British working people through a more systematic approach to pursuing national interests. That will start at home with new measures to make the UK a harder target for adversaries and criminals, accepting that we cannot stop every hostile actor. From that basis, our foremost mission beyond our shores will be to revise and reforge our collective security arrangements – starting with the Euro-Atlantic, strengthening NATO with new burden-sharing arrangements and fortifying Ukraine – to achieve long-term deterrence against adversaries. As part of this, and to spur more economic growth, we will: pursue greater strategic depth in our key alliances, from security to trade to deepening technological and nuclear cooperation; build resilience into our defence industrial base; and introduce a new emphasis on developing sovereign capabilities and asymmetric advantage as a nation, from innovation in frontier technologies to nuclear-powered submarines. 

14. In support of this new approach, we will: 

• Expand our legal and law enforcement toolkit, to ensure the UK becomes a harder target for hostile state and non-state actors including criminal gangs engaged in illegal migration.
• Roll out a series of new measures to strengthen our borders, defend our territory and enhance the resilience of our critical national infrastructure, ranging from enhanced defence of our island territory to stronger upstream measures and cyber capabilities.
• Deliver the largest sustained investment in our armed forces since the Cold War, with an emphasis on greater lethality, warfighting readiness, deeper stockpiles of munitions and innovation in, and adoption of, new technologies. 
• Introduce an explicit prioritisation of NATO in our defence planning as part of our efforts to bolster collective security, alongside the delivery of major capabilities like AUKUS and GCAP that complement but are not tied to NATO alone.
• Place a new premium on the “defence dividend” for the UK – translating increased investment into more British jobs, skills and a stronger and more resilient defence industrial base, supported by major procurement reforms.
• Pursue both a deeper trade, technology and security deal with the United States and a closer economic and strategic partnership with the European Union, going further than the agreements we have already struck and supporting our objective of achieving greater strategic depth with key allies.
• Sharpen our diplomatic focus on countries that are geographically dispersed but economically vibrant and technologically advanced – particularly those (from Canada through the Gulf States, to India, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) who are interested in cooperation on trade and security, sit outside large regulatory blocs and share a similar interest in shaping international norms to mitigate and manage the effects of great power competition.
• Identify, nurture and protect sovereign areas of strength in the UK’s industrial, scientific and technological base with the explicit goals of improving our knowledge and research base, enhancing economic security, achieving breakthroughs or leads in key sectors, boosting our economy and enhancing our leverage within a broader international ecosystem. 
• Build the UK national security agenda for AI and other frontier technologies around three pillars: creating more national capacity (including data, research, investment, talent and regulation); accelerating adoption in key sectors; and advancing understanding of the national security risks. 

15. Bringing this together, we will seek to partner with all parts of society, business, academia, and devolved and local governments in a new national resilience effort on the journey to 5%. This process starts with building greater public awareness of the threats we face, outlined in the Strategic Context that follows, and builds towards a new social contract between government and the British people, spanning every corner of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Read the full strategy below.

Source: UK Government: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-security-strategy-2025-security-for-the-british-people-in-a-dangerous-world 

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