Clifford Beal is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Exeter University and the former editor-in-chief of Jane’s Defence Weekly
Keir Starmer has now been shamed into increasing the defence budget to 2.5 percent by 2027, a welcome move but one that will barely touch the sides of the problem. With the Strategic Defence Review being released in a few months (maybe), hard choices will still have to be made on which capabilities to fund.
Aeschylus is credited first for the time-worn aphorism that in war, truth is the first casualty. But in the next major conflict, truth could find itself joined by virtually all information. As a society at war, we face becoming blind, deaf and dumb once the balloon goes up. Britain and most western countries have put
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the West entered a new age: it was the era of the ‘shadow war’, in which American – and Western – might was ranged at preventing the export of terrorism from the Middle East. That was, of course, before the futile exercise of ‘nation building’ in Afghanistan and
