An earlier version of the article was published by Aspenia Online. DR ANISEH BASSIRI TABRIZI On May 19, about 45 million Iranians participated in the twelfth presidential election, in which incumbent President Hassan Rouhani gained a determined majority of votes. The election was widely perceived as a referendum on the achievements of the Rouhani’s administration,… Read More The Iran nuclear deal under Rouhani 2.0
Dr Robert J. Downes and Dr Christopher Hobbs In a nuclear world, there exists the possibility that nuclear weapons and their constituent materials could drift out of the control of states and into the hands of terrorists. This statement is uncontroversial and has a distinguished lineage. In 1946, during closed congressional testimony, Robert Oppenheimer opined… Read More Nuclear terrorism: There is no spoon
The material in this post is drawn from the author’s forthcoming book – The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 – which is published by Oxford University Press in July 2017. This post originally appeared in The European Financial Review. DR DAVID MORGAN-OWEN Strategy, it seems, matters. No forward thinking business, organisation, or government… Read More Strategy: Creating Power or Justifying Reality?
DR CHRISTIAN TRIPODI In September 2015 I accompanied the Headquarters of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) to Sicily, a trip which I’ve described in a previous post. My role, in concert with my colleague Professor Niall Barr, was to act as an historical advisor to the assorted gathering of senior officers, civil servants and… Read More Strategy, Theory, and History
DR JEFFREY MICHAELS In the anti-war film Go Tell the Spartans, set in Vietnam in 1964, the conflict is described as ‘going nowhere, just around and around in circles’. Perhaps a slightly more accurate representation can be found in the work of Franz Kafka, such as Der Prozeß, in which his protagonist seems to make… Read More Stuck in Endless Preliminaries: Vietnam and the Battle of the Paris Peace Table, November 1968-January 1969
DR JONATHAN FENNELL Military personnel are rarely placed at the centre of analyses of social and political change in the twentieth century. The growing consensus that the wars of the twentieth century ‘laid the basis’ for important reforms, most notably the birth of the modern welfare state, has been driven almost exclusively by studies of… Read More Soldiers and Social Change
DR BEN KIENZLE and DR INEZ VON WEITERSHAUSEN This post originally appeared on the LSE’s Brexit Blog – a multidisciplinary, evidence-based blog run by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Follow the LSE’s Brexit blog on Twitter @lsebrexitvote Foreign policy, security or defence are traditionally considered matters of ‘high politics’, i.e. areas over which… Read More Brexit has given an impetus to reshape Europe’s foreign, security and defence policies
DR CHRISTIAN TRIPODI As the annual Advanced Command and Staff Course at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom progresses toward its conclusion, the students will shortly divide into three separate modules for the final term. One of those, the ‘Ends’ module, will draw the students into deeper consideration of the dynamics and processes underpinning… Read More History & Policy
DR GERAINT HUGHES Concepts of grand strategy generally stress the requirement of governments to outline clear strategic goals, and to ensure that all elements of national power are co-ordinated by ministers and senior officials (civil service and military) to achieve them. In recent history, one state achieved the apparent success of devising a ‘total’ strategy… Read More ‘TOTAL NATIONAL STRATEGY’: A CAUTIONARY TALE
DR DAVID MORGAN-OWEN This post originally appeared on The Wavell Room – a new blog to encourage the discussion of thinking within the British armed forces. Follow the Wavell room on Twitter @wavellroom The long-await report of Sir John Chilcot’s commission on the Iraq War is feeding a dangerous illusion in the British Armed Forces: that… Read More The British Army & the Chilcot Report: Strategy isn’t the answer
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