Eighty years on from the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima, the UK and Europe are rearming at breakneck pace, including with more US nuclear weapons. Kirsten Bayes reflects on the waning of arms controls and the rise of the politics of distraction and demonization, suggesting three crucial responses. During my teenage years in 1980s rural Essex, … Continue reading Drawing Circles: Reflections on Hiroshima Day and European rearmament
25 Years of Women, Peace and Security in the UK: An opportunity to align feminist commitments at home and abroad
After a quarter-century of bipartisan British commitment to the Women Peace and Security agenda, the current Labour government suddenly seems loath to mention or fund it. Toni Haastrup and Jamie J. Hagen make the case for reprioritising the feminist principles of gender equality and inclusion in UK policy. By Toni Haastrup and Jamie J. Hagen … Continue reading 25 Years of Women, Peace and Security in the UK: An opportunity to align feminist commitments at home and abroad
Don’t Look Up, Don’t Look Down: The radical certainty of Labour’s National Security Strategy
The UK’s latest National Security Strategy heralds a radical redistribution of national resources from social spending to defence. Richard Reeve argues that it not only brushes aside the looming reality of irreversible climate breakdown but also represents a fundamental abandonment of an eight-decade project to learn the catastrophic lessons of World War Two. ‘Security for … Continue reading Don’t Look Up, Don’t Look Down: The radical certainty of Labour’s National Security Strategy
The G7 Statement on the Israel-Iran War: an epitaph to international law and Western values
Supposedly the guardians of Western, democratic values and a 'rules-based' order, the leaders of the G7 nations' joint statement on the Israel-Iran War is yet another selective application of international law that makes us all less secure, write Ian Davis and Paul Ingram. Keir Starmer and the other G7 leaders appear to have lost the … Continue reading The G7 Statement on the Israel-Iran War: an epitaph to international law and Western values
‘Organised irresponsibility’: How Britain’s defence strategy clings to a bygone world
The UK's new Strategic Defence Review is another example of the government talking tough while failing to make tough choices. Mary Kaldor and Luke Cooper argue that the SDR strategizes for a bygone age, in which the US was a dependable ally rather than a threat to European democracy. The German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, coined … Continue reading ‘Organised irresponsibility’: How Britain’s defence strategy clings to a bygone world
Erased from Security: Why the 2025 SDR fails the Women, Peace and Security agenda
The Strategic Defence Review is sub-titled ‘Making Britain Safer’, so where is human security? Eva Tabbasam argues for the urgent recentring of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in UK defence and security strategies. Just days after attending the third annual Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Forum in Kosovo, themed The Security Code for Our … Continue reading Erased from Security: Why the 2025 SDR fails the Women, Peace and Security agenda
SDR 2025: America First, Last and Everything
The UK's new Strategic Defence Review is a squib. Not because its ambitions are under-funded, but because its ambitions centre on keeping the MAGA state engaged in European defence at any cost. Richard Reeve argues for an urgent and open national conversation that confronts the unsustainable and unstable myths at the heart of UK security policy.
A ‘Peace Lens’ for the New UK National Security Strategy
For twenty years, violent conflicts and related deaths have been spiralling, while forced displacement has nearly doubled in ten years. Why is this happening? And could a ‘peace lens’ help the UK respond more effectively in its forthcoming National Security Strategy? In this short piece, Larry Attree, Hillary Briffa, Thomas Martin and Richard Reeve discuss the challenges and ways forward, drawing on a roundtable convened on 01 May 2025 to explore this question.
Lessons from the Anti-nuclear Movement of the 1980s
In an era of polycrisis and realignment, what can we learn from the successes of the European peace movement in the 1980s? Martin Shaw argues for a new security politics of the left that mobilises citizens, civil society and parties to link peace, politics and democracy for a Europe whole, free and equal.
The Case for Parliament to Scrutinise the UK’s Nuclear Weapons Programme
Increased UK military spending is in the political spotlight but the huge and increasing proportion that is spent on nuclear weapons is not. Steve Barwick and Tim Street make a compelling and urgent case for much greater scrutiny of the UK nuclear weapons programme by Parliamentary Committees.
Bridge to Nowhere: UK security strategy in the ruins of Atlantis
As Western security alliances fragment, Richard Reeve charts the implications for the UK’s most fundamental strategic assumptions, and makes the case for ‘thinking beyond the unthinkable’ in the government’s next National Security Strategy.
A Cuckoo in the Nest: Eight ways NATO states can respond to Trump 2.0
February 2025 looks like being a defining month for European security and the eight-decade transatlantic alliance. With European leaders unsure whether the Trump administration identifies more with Putin’s Russia than EU democracies, Ian Davis proposes eight ways in which European security might be rethought and reclaimed, within NATO or beyond it.