The UK is among a diminishing minority of countries that recruit children to their armed forces. It does so despite ethical considerations, higher costs, lower outcomes of training, and the inability to deploy under-18s operationally. Jim Patrick Wyke makes the case for a more efficient all-adult military. The UN Convention on the Rights of the … Continue reading Minor Problems: The benefits of an all-adult recruitment model for the British Armed Forces
SDR: Ten suggestions for a real ‘root and branch review of UK defence’
In its first weeks in power the new Labour government launched a Strategic Defence Review, the UK’s fifth in nine years. In the first of a new series, Richard Reeve draws on Rethinking Security’s evidence submission to the SDR to suggest ten ways that Reviewers should depart from their narrow script to begin a genuinely strategic, transformative approach to UK defence and global security.
The Meaning of the Jenin Raid
The recent Israeli military operation in the Jenin camp marks a change and escalation in Israel’s tactics in the West Bank as it tries to control Palestinian responses to the recent rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territory, writes Paul Rogers.
Monarchy, the Military and Democracy
The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth was a carefully choreographed reminder of the symbolic unity of the British monarchy, militarism, Church and empire. Diana Francis reflects on how these linkages both determine and distract from the crisis of our deeply flawed democracy and undermine the interests of ordinary people.
The MOD’s Accidental Roadmap to Peace: A radical reading of the Integrated Operating Framework
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) has been doing some rethinking about how it operates in peacetime, wartime and somewhere in-between. ‘Cassandra’ looks at the MOD’s Integrated Operating Concept and finds an unexpected roadmap for building peace in a world already at war, but only when read from back to front.
Searching for humane alternatives to the ‘whole society’ approach to security
In the first of a series of blog posts reflecting on our Alternative Security Review, Joanna Frew highlights some of the common themes in the first three of Rethinking Security’s roundtable discussions with civil society on human security issues.
Ukraine and Costa Rica: A tale of two futures?
As Europe divided into armed camps in the late 1940s, Costa Rica decisively rejected the military that had long undermined its democracy, becoming the most peaceful, prosperous and healthy state in Central America. Sean Howard believes that Europe must learn from it to achieve the unrealised dream of a “Europe whole and free”. Responding to … Continue reading Ukraine and Costa Rica: A tale of two futures?
Afghanistan: Spinning an Unwinnable War
Is a lack of political stamina to blame for the catastrophic failure of the West’s 20-year war in Afghanistan? Or, as Paul Dixon argues, did the generals spend decades spinning an unwinnable war as unlosable?
The British Military, Democracy and the Limits of ‘Legitimate Debate’
The UK’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went badly wrong, but who was to blame? In response to Simon Akam’s controversial new book The Changing of the Guard, Paul Dixon questions why the military command’s undemocratic political influence in promoting these wars has not been discussed more widely.