Professor Ashley Jackson, Defence Studies Department While perhaps unworthy of a title echoing Spike Milligan’s Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, the fact that I have a Second World War ‘experience’, despite being born over a quarter-century after VE Day, says something about the conflict’s resonance in British society.[1] What was it that brought the… Read More The Second World War: My Part in Our Victory
Conor O’Neill Mission command is firmly built into UK and Allied military doctrine. It has become an article of faith that it produces better results as it “…encourages initiative and decentralized decision-making” and thus “promotes…speed of action…”. UK doctrine argues that the British approach goes further than the Allied one, with use of the concept… Read More The Perils of Mission Command – A Historical Perspective
Professor Peter Grindrod CBE Introduction The UK MOD’s increasingly urgent pivot to develop, embed, and otherwise deploy data science and AI (hereafter DS/AI) technologies, and associated practices, is a critical play in many ways. Arguably, the priority that Russia has shown for DS/AI supremacy is one of a few major drivers. Others include the consequent… Read More On MOD AI and Data Science
Craig Harvey Credible commitment problems are a long-understood challenge in the international environment. They can manifest themselves in a number of ways, but they are generally understood to apply in situations between two or more parties to a conflict who, after years of brutal war, have finally agreed upon a peace settlement. The problem, though,… Read More Credible Commitment Problems In Civil War
Hannah West Coronavirus is not only a disease but a human security threat. We are used to seeing the, predominantly male, Armed Forces deploy in response to a conventional security threat. But, the NHS frontline is disproportionately manned by women. Nurses symbolise the frontline of the medical profession in their hands-on capacity caring for patients… Read More Nightingale’s legacy: Women on the COVID ‘frontline’
Michael C. Davies Among the more interesting aspects of the debates over victory in war is that most scholars, when discussing the topic, assert that it stands amongst the most “misunderstood” aspects of modern war and warfare. They will contend that “little attention” has been paid to it, or that there has been a “paucity”… Read More The Gates of War, Just Not of Victory
Rod Thornton and Marina Miron In respect to China, it seems to be the case that in the United Kingdom the penny has finally dropped. The UK government now sees a threat from having Huawei technology embedded in the country’s communications infrastructure. This may be part of a fundamental reappraisal within the UK of the… Read More The advent of the ‘third revolution in military affairs’; is the UK now facing the threat of AI-enabled cyber warfare(?)
Tracey German The perceived threat posed to Russia from so-called coloured revolutions – popular uprisings attributed by Moscow to malign sponsorship by external forces – has become a central theme in Russian security discourse. There is a deep-rooted concern that coloured revolutions are part of the character of conflict in the 21st century, a new… Read More Colouring Russian views of conflict in the 21st century
Geraint Hughes Following Anna Karenina’s suicide in Tolstoy’s eponymous novel, her lover Count Vronsky enlists to fight for the Serbs against the Turks. Vronsky’s decision reflected the contemporary reality of Russian volunteers taking up arms against the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan crises that preceded the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, and it provides a reminder… Read More Historical Reflections On The ‘Grey Zone’
Geraint Hughes The terms ‘defence diplomacy’ and ‘defence engagement’ are used to describe some of the aspects of military activity that fall outside the direct use of force. These can include multinational exercises, the diplomatic liaison work of military attachés posted at embassies, port visits by naval vessels, the provision of training teams and loan… Read More Defence Diplomacy in the Cold War: The Experiences of British Military Attachés in Egypt, 1968-1973
