DR CHRISTOPHER TUCK The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 (SDSR15) document is in many respects both muscular and ambitious. It has a global focus, taking the view that ‘engagement is not an optional extra’ on the basis that domestic and international security are now linked inextricably. It argues for the need to ‘act decisively’… Read More SDSR 15: Five Questions
DR GERAINT HUGHES Harold Wilson once noted that a week was a long time in politics, and the current Leader of the Opposition may well agree with him. On Sunday 29th November Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC not only that he opposed proposals for Britain to participate in coalition air-strikes against Islamic State (IS) in… Read More The UK Decision on Syria: The Labour Party and Air-Strikes against Islamic State
PROFESSOR WYN BOWEN The National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) 2015 has brought deterrence back to centre stage for the United Kingdom more than at any other time since the end of the Cold War. The primary context for this in SDSR 2015 is the resurgence of state based threats. This… Read More SDSR and the Return of Deterrence
DR TIM BENBOW The Strategic Defence and Security Review presented a mixed picture for maritime capabilities. On balance, those at the top of the Royal Navy are likely to be raising a glass to toast the result… but the glass is perhaps only half full. Moreover (and I am trying to keep my cliché count… Read More NSS/SDSR 2015: The Maritime Issues
DR EDWARD HAMPSHIRE This seems, at first glance, to be a highly unusual defence review: there have been announcements of additional spending – on special-forces and on drones, of the re-creation of lost capabilities with the purchase of maritime patrol aircraft, and of the establishment of two new rapid response brigades, two new Typhoon squadrons,… Read More NSS/SDSR 2015: The 2015 SDSR in context: a very unusual defence review?
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
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
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?
by Dr. HELEN McCARTNEY A new survey by Ipsos MORI and King’s College London has provided a fascinating insight into the way publics view their armed forces. The international survey was conducted in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, France, and the US and compared public beliefs about the armed forces with reality. The results for Britain… Read More Public Views of the Armed Forces in Britain: Misperceptions and Implications in 2015
by DR HUW J. DAVIES On Friday afternoon, I was asked if I would participate in a discussion on the BBC News Channel on ‘how history will view the recent campaign in Afghanistan’. I’m usually asked to participate in interviews that are way outside my comfort zone. This, whilst not entirely fitting within it, was… Read More Was it worth it? How History will view the British Campaign in Afghanistan
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