Grand strategy: do medium-sized states need it?
On 8 May 2025, Norway published its first national security strategy, identifying three main directions: stronger defence, greater societal resilience and stronger economic security. Publication does not mean the country had never thought strategically before. It signals a decision to bring separate priorities into a clearer framework. The example challenges the belief that “grand strategy” is a luxury reserved for states competing for global leadership. Norwegian strategy
For Iraq, the economic and regional shocks of 2026 sharpen the question: how should defence, diplomacy, finance and energy be coordinated so that one policy does not undo another? Does a medium-sized state need greater ambition, or a better ability to organise what it can actually do? I use “medium-sized state” here to describe a state unable to impose its terms on the international system, not as an official classification placing Iraq in a fixed rank.
“Grand” describes coordination, not the scale of a claim
Grand strategy is used here to mean a framework connecting long-term interests with the allocation of military, diplomatic, economic and institutional instruments over time. It need not coincide with a document carrying that title. Budgets, partnerships and repeated decisions can reveal a practical direction different from a published text. Its presence is therefore assessed through coherent choices, not page counts or the breadth of an objectives list.
The need becomes evident when instruments that appear desirable separately compete. A trade partnership may expand economic options while increasing dependence on a sensitive source. A defence acquisition may provide a needed capability while consuming resources intended for its maintenance. A transport project may promise revenue but create financial obligations before demand materialises. These examples do not reject partnership, acquisition or investment; they explain why assessing each file within one ministry is insufficient.
The World Bank's regional update of 6 October 2026 described conflict's effects on activity, trade and energy. It offers no strategic prescription for Iraq, but illustrates an environment in which assumptions of stable revenues and supplies require testing. Regional update The weakest response would be to expand commitments in every direction without deciding which can continue if resources contract.
What does international comparison add?
The UK's 2025 strategy combines security at home, strength abroad and sovereign capabilities in three connected components, linking defence, economic and technological instruments with external partnerships. This is a stated structure for connecting policy areas, not proof that every commitment has succeeded. British strategy
Comparison with Norway offers a useful observation. The countries differ in resources and roles, yet both seek to connect external protection with domestic and economic foundations. What can be transferred is the question of complementarity and conflict. Alliance priorities, deployments and specialised capabilities cannot automatically be transplanted to Iraq because they rest on different institutions, obligations and geography. National strategy begins with Iraqi conditions, not the selection of an elegant foreign document.
Iraq already has a National Security Strategy for 2025–2030, made available through the Ministry of Justice. Discussion therefore need not begin by claiming a complete vacuum or commissioning a competing document. Published Iraqi strategy It begins by examining how the existing framework connects to sectoral decisions and the budget, and how competing priorities are resolved rather than merely placed beside each other in a text.
A national framework does not eliminate sectoral or local plans. Its role is to define shared boundaries and make a decision's effects on other sectors visible before approval. If the state chooses to reduce a dependency, procurement, training and investment should support that direction, or exceptions and their costs should be explained. Without this test, a ministry can announce an objective while its next contract reproduces the problem.
Autonomy requires usable options
Debate sometimes presents a simplified choice between complete alignment with a partner and independence from everyone. Practical autonomy concerns the ability to make a decision and bear its cost, not the number or absence of agreements. A considered partnership may increase that ability by supplying a skill or alternative, while narrowing it if an essential function becomes dependent on an irreplaceable supplier. Grand strategy thus connects to defining the national interest before selecting the instrument.
Diversification itself needs scrutiny. Different supplier names do not ensure independent sources if they share a critical component or route. Excessive diversification can also raise training and maintenance costs and complicate coordination. The objective should be alternatives with genuine value within available resources, rather than the largest possible number of partnerships. This trade-off must be documented for each function; it does not impose self-sufficiency across all sectors.
For Iraq, I favour testing external commitments against their ability to protect sovereign decision-making, sustain essential functions and broaden production. Success on one criterion is insufficient if it weakens the others beyond tolerable limits. This is a proposed analytical test, not a claim that balancing the objectives is easy or that all parties will agree on their relative importance.
The economic foundation also requires a horizon beyond the immediate crisis. Skills and infrastructure do not produce results as quickly as emergency action, but repeatedly postponing them can leave the state in recurring need. The chapter on moving beyond the rentier state examines part of this issue within Iraq Vision 2045. That reference extends the discussion; adopting a vision would not itself establish that economic transformation has occurred.
A strategy capable of saying “not yet”
Priorities require a rule for declining and postponing commitments. If every objective is equally important, none is a priority. If all projects depend on the same revenue during the same period, one disruption may trigger wider competition for funds. A better approach compares packages that remain affordable under different conditions, distinguishing what preserves essential functions from what can be delayed without irreversible harm.
Such comparison requires clear political responsibility. A technical committee cannot alone decide society's acceptable level of risk, but it can make alternatives, costs and assumptions visible. Decisions then remain subject to lawful oversight while genuinely sensitive details are protected. The budget and public finance framework in the political programme provides material for discussing the connection between commitments and funding capacity, as a policy proposal rather than a description of an operating system.
Strategy also needs revision when a major assumption changes, not merely when public rhetoric changes. An objective may remain stable while its instrument or timing changes. Preserving a goal does not justify continuing a project whose conditions have disappeared, just as a crisis does not require abandoning every long-term investment. A sound review explains why the change is necessary, what it preserves and what it gives up.
A medium-sized state needs grand strategy because its margin for error is limited, not because it seeks a role beyond its means. The decisive difference between a useful framework and a ceremonial document is that the former leaves a trace in decisions, finance, timing and review. When the state can specify what it protects first, which dependencies it accepts and what it postpones, its capacity to choose grows even if its resources do not.