by DR GERAINT HUGHES As a tactic, terrorism is as perennial as warfare itself, but it was during the 1970s that international terrorist groups began to be seen by the Western powers as a global problem. Atrocities such as the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics massacre in September 1972, and… Read More THE WAR ON TERRORISM: FORTY YEARS AGO
by DR CHRIS TUCK ‘The airstrikes at the moment are a holding operation… Nobody has pretended the battle against Isil can be won from the air alone.’ These comments, made last week by Philip Hammond, the British Defence Secretary, speak to two essential truths in war: first, land power, ‘the ability to exert influence on… Read More Land Power and the Islamic State Crisis
by DR JONATHAN FENNELL ‘What are they going to do’, said one young man protesting in Hong Kong this week, ‘they can’t kill us all’. While one may admire the confidence and determination of youth, two points spring to mind. First, the Chinese authorities certainly could have killed the thousands of protestors massed in downtown Hong… Read More ‘They can’t kill us all’: Morale and the Study of Strategy
by DR HUW J DAVIES History is a dangerous thing. Parallels between contemporary events and history are all too easy to arrive at. In unskilled hands, historical events can be manhandled to seemingly deliver lessons and solutions to apparently intractable contemporary problems. This is ‘instrumentalising’ history. In reality, history can be misleading, its so-called ‘lessons’… Read More The Instrumentalisation of History
by DR AMIR M. KAMEL The Islamic State’s (IS) rise to being at the forefront of global security concerns has prompted an increasingly united international response. The current cocktail coalition, which includes the US, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, among others, have agreed on the need to respond militarily to the terrorist threat. Additionally, Russia… Read More (Non)Western responses to Islamic Terrorism
by BILL PARK The 10th June fall of Mosul to the irregular forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), now calling itself the ‘Islamic State’, accompanied as it was by the total collapse of the lavishly equipped and US-trained Iraqi army, presented both threat and opportunity to the Kurdistan Regional Government… Read More The war against the Islamic State and the plight of Iraqi Kurdistan
by DR GERAINT HUGHES On 19 August the militants of the Islamic State (IS) released a video showing the beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, who had been captured in Syria two years previously. Since their offensive into Northern Iraq in June 2014 IS has committed shocking atrocities against captured Iraqi soldiers and civilians.… Read More FROM ‘CALLAN’ TO ‘JIHADI JOHN’
Defence-In-Depth 