Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, both Defence Studies Department, King’s College London The piece here constitutes the evidence submitted by the two authors to the United Kingdom government’s Integrated Review of defence, security, development and foreign affairs. The actual publication of the final Integrated Review document is expected in the next few weeks. The three… Read More Why UK Defence needs more mass, not less: Evidence to the Integrated Review

Nina Lesikhina and Doug Weir International attention on environmental security has increased markedly during the last decade, especially within the UN’s Security Council, General Assembly and its Environment Assembly. Yet in spite of the increasing number of statements and resolutions that have accepted the importance of the environment throughout the cycle of conflicts, a number… Read More Russia often securitises the environment – but only on its own terms

Zeno Leoni and Duraid Jalili, both Defence Studies Department, King’s College London It remains to be seen whether the most pronounced effects of global warming – the melting of ice caps in the Arctic, for instance – will serve as a wake-up call for ambitious multilateral action or as an opportunity to exploit new resources… Read More Britain’s Arctic Conundrum (Part 2): Great Powers and Naval Gazing

Dr Jasper Humphries, Director of Programmes, The Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict and the Environment, King’s College London The Armed Forces in the United Kingdom should not be surprised or complain if the public started taking a closer interest in their ‘green’ profile. This is especially so in regard to everyday elements such as… Read More ‘Greening’ the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces (Part Two): some suggestions

Dr Duraid Jalili and Dr Zeno Leoni, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Nestled amongst the various catastrophic implications of global heating is an increasingly prominent discussion on the impact melting ice caps have for international collaboration and conflict within the Arctic region itself. Conservative estimates indicate that the Arctic Ocean could be navigable in… Read More Britain’s Arctic Conundrum (Part 1): Climate Change and Strategic Uncertainty

Dr Simon Saradzhyan, Director, Russia Matters Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, recently published his take on Russia’s responses to this year’s crises in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Trenin infers from these responses that Russia’s foreign and security policies continue to be… Read More How Putin’s Karabakh calculus can undermine Russia’s clout in Post-Soviet Eurasia

Dr Jasper Humphries, Director of Programmes, The Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict and the Environment, King’s College London. Lieutenant-General Richard Nugee, the Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy Lead for the Ministry of Defence, officially retired from the British Army in December. Before leaving, however, he oversaw an important report reviewing how the UK military… Read More ‘Greening’ the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces: the ‘Nugee Paradox’

Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, both of Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Currently, the focus of Western militaries tends to be on how to best counter sub-threshold (‘hybrid’) warfare and how best to conduct, in US terms, multi-domain operations or, in UK thinking, multi-domain integration. Where the Russian military is concerned, however, the stated… Read More Russian Military Latest: The ‘priority’ emphasis on nuclear weapons (Part One – ICBMs)

Dr Jasper Humphreys, Director of Programmes, Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict and the Environment, Department of War Studies, King’s College London While one can debate whether climate-change and war are currently locked in a dialectical dead-end or observe Geoffrey Parker’s unwillingness to nail down the connection between climate-change and conflict in his Global… Read More Climate-change and War (Part Two): Atmospheric Intervention

Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Late last month, a Pentagon report accused the UAE of providing financial support to Wagner, the Russian private military company (PMC) operating in Libya. For such a public denunciation to be made by the United States of an ally – the UAE – speaks… Read More What is Russia’s interest in Libya? From regional influence to hunting NATO submarines