DR ELLEN HALLAMS During the first week of February I was asked to deliver a talk at the annual Norwegian Air Power Conference at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy in Trondheim. The theme this year was ‘NATO: Threats and Challenges’ and I was asked to reflect on whether NATO today has common threats and… Read More Walking a Tightrope: NATO, Russia, Islamic State and the new brinkmanship
DR TRACEY GERMAN On December 31st 2015, while most of the world was focused on plans to welcome in the new year, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled an updated National Security Strategy (NSS). While it builds on some long-running themes in Russia’s foreign and security policy, it also makes it clear that Moscow has a… Read More In with the Old: Russia’s New National Security Strategy
After a turbulent 2015, members of DSD’s Regional Security Research Centre (@KingsRegSec) look forward to the coming year and examine the issues that they believe will be prominent in 2016, including the US presidential elections, continuing instability across the Middle East and the various coalitions seeking to counter IS, talks between India and Pakistan on… Read More Reasons to (not) be cheerful in 2016…Russia: coming in from the cold?
DR SIMON MOODY Thinking about future war is important. Very important. History is replete with examples of military organisations that became the unwitting authors of their own demise because they failed to adapt to the changing military environment in which they operated. The French were out-fought and out-thought in 1940 because of a stagnant military… Read More Future War: Thinking the Thinkable
DR TRACEY GERMAN Events in Ukraine are likely to transform the presence and role of Western institutions such as NATO and the EU across the post-Soviet area. The crisis has starkly revealed the limits of their influence within Russia’s ‘zone of privileged interest’, as well as the lack of internal unity within these organisations vis-à-vis… Read More Countering Russia? Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic Choice
by Dr ROD THORNTON There has been much sabre-rattling by Moscow recently. Russian military activity has increased markedly since the Maidan events in Ukraine in early 2014. Russian troops initially massed on Ukraine’s borders in what was ostensibly a scheduled military exercise, but which was also clearly a means of applying psychological pressure on Kiev.… Read More ‘The Russians are coming!’ Well, not just yet…
This is the fifth in a series of posts from members of the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research Centre, focusing on Russia and the implications of its increasingly assertive posture on the international stage. This post builds on a previous post to examine the prospects for conventional arms control in the wake of the… Read More Conventional Arms Control After Ukraine
by DR HEATHER WILLIAMS Yesterday’s ceasefire in Ukraine can hardly be considered a Valentine. Tensions remain high between Russia and NATO over Ukraine, and past attempts at compromise failed or proved to be short-lived. A recent Washington Post op-ed by Anne Applebaum called on the international community to focus on a long-term strategy for dealing… Read More Arms Control After Ukraine
This is the second in a series of posts from members of the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research Centre, focusing on Russia and the implications of its increasingly assertive posture on the international stage. This post examines NATO’s response to recent Russian actions, particularly in Ukraine. It will be followed subsequent Mondays with posts… Read More Russia and NATO: A New Cold War?
by Dr ELLEN HALLAMS, Dr TRACEY GERMAN, and Dr PAAL HILDE On October 24th 2014 the Defence Studies Department (DSD) marked the launch of its Regional Security Research Centre with a NATO roundtable held at the Defence Academy. The event also marked the start of a new partnership between DSD and the Norwegian Institute for… Read More NATO at Newport: Back to the Future II
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