The Retreat From Strategy w/ David Richards & Sir Martin White
Cowes,
PO31 8AZ
We live in a very unstable era. What’s gone wrong and where do solutions lie?
Join Field Marshal the Lord David Richards, an ex-Army commando, co-author of The Retreat From Strategy and proud Gunner who led operations in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan, commanded NATO forces in Afghanistan and became Chief of the Defence Staff – the professional head of Britain’s armed forces and their strategic commander. He will be in conversation with Major General Sir Martin White, whose illustrious Army career included ejecting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, becoming head of the Royal Logistics Corps responsible for 20,000 personnel and when retired becoming the Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight – Queen’s representative on the Isle of Wight for 13 years, to explore the answers to a very complicated question.
About the book
Britain is sleepwalking to disaster, because London has abandoned all forms of proper strategy. That is the sobering message of this powerful analysis exposing the great failings of British security and defence policy. 
Britain long ago abandoned the art and science of grand strategy, even though this is crucial for establishing the country’s direction of travel. Without grand strategy, national strategy has been reduced to little more than a political game of how much threat Britain can afford, and who gets what from an ever-shrinking resource pot. However, it is Britain’s defence policy where the contradictions and self-delusion of abandoned strategy are most apparent, and which explains why the balance between ends, ways and means—as sound strategy would demand—has become not just elusive, but nigh on impossible.
This essential, incisive book offers Britain a pathway back to strategic realism, by ending the profound confusion of interests with values that has done so much damage to Britain and its vital place in the world of the twenty-first century
About the author
David Richards (Field Marshal The Lord David Richards of Herstmonceux) commanded British troops in East Timor and Sierra Leone and the NATO campaign in Afghanistan 2006/7, before serving as Chief of the Defence Staff and a National Security Council member.