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NSS/SDSR 2015: Rapid Strike Response to Rapid Strike Brigades – A Historian’s Initial Thoughts

by DR HUW J. DAVIES “Events, dear boy, events.” So said Harold MacMillan when asked what the single biggest impediment to the development of a coherent strategy. Unexpected events have derailed many defence reviews in recent years. The Nott Review was rendered almost immediately irrelevant by the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands. Options for… Read More NSS/SDSR 2015: Rapid Strike Response to Rapid Strike Brigades – A Historian’s Initial Thoughts

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COUNTER-INSURGENCY: A QUESTION OF VICTORY

DR CHRISTINA GOULTER As Dr Huw Davies suggested in this post, how successfully the British armed forces incorporate their recent experience of counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq into doctrine and planning is likely to shape future perceptions of those campaigns. The fight against the Taliban has not ended, even for the West, because some advisory work by… Read More COUNTER-INSURGENCY: A QUESTION OF VICTORY

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LIBYA: SOME CONTEXT BEHIND THE ONGOING UNREST

This post is based on a paper presented at an event organised by the Defence Culture and Languages Centre (DCLC) and King’s College London’s Regional Security Research Centre (RSRC), titled ‘Regional Study Day: North Africa’, which took place on 21 October 2015. By DR AMIR M KAMEL After four years since Libya first experienced its own… Read More LIBYA: SOME CONTEXT BEHIND THE ONGOING UNREST

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What Private Security Contracting can Teach Us About Recruitment and Retention in the Armed Forces

DR ALISON HAWKS —The data presented here was drawn from a large-scale study of armed private security contractors, of which this blog post is one aspect. The study set out to explore the perceptions and realities of being a private security contractor after military service. Of the men and women who completed the survey (n=1516),… Read More What Private Security Contracting can Teach Us About Recruitment and Retention in the Armed Forces

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UK in the Gulf: to Engage or not to engage?

DR DAVID ROBERTS On 1 November 2015, the UK Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond inaugurated the beginning of works constructing the UK’s first permanent military base in Bahrain in the Persian Gulf since 1971 when the UK withdrew from the region. Using language that almost seemed to deliberately hark back to Britain’s colonial days in the… Read More UK in the Gulf: to Engage or not to engage?

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Film Portrayals of Counterinsurgency and Nation-building in Vietnam

DR JEFFREY MICHAELS AND DR ANDREW GAWTHORPE In a recent article in a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies, we considered the contribution Hollywood has made to our understanding of counterinsurgency and nation-building during the Vietnam War. The war has been the subject of so many blockbuster films that it is inevitable that they… Read More Film Portrayals of Counterinsurgency and Nation-building in Vietnam

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