Britain and the origins and future of the European defence and security mechanism

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the UK played a key role in the creation and development of a flexible and sustainable mechanism for European defence and security. Beatrice Heuser reviews the history of this engagement, and argues that changes in the UK’s institutional relationship with European partners should not be allowed to undermine the overarching principles of defence cooperation. Lessons learnt from history can be wrong or irrelevant, but one lesson that to a student of international relations seems both right and relevant appears to have been forgotten: that Britain’s security depends on a peaceful Europe; that Europe’s stability is enhanced by a firm British commitment to the defence of democratic states in Europe; and that the fine skills of British officials have been essential in overcoming many a crisis not only in transatlantic relations, but also in intra-European relations. Yet, today, Europe’s carefully crafted defence mechanism, engineered above all by Britain, is crumbling. This mechanism and the rules to guide its employment took decades to construct, and Britain was one of the leading powers in initiating, amending and then fine-tuning it. In key periods, this was achieved along with France; in others mainly alongside the US and West Germany. It was a mechanism that allowed for dynamism, elasticity and perpetual adjustments to ever-new events, which had to be accommodated without undermining the foundations of the entire structure. The British leaders and officials involved drew on centuries of failed experiments with alternative structures, all of which were eventually unable to keep the British Isles out of the two world wars, resulting in unprecedented numbers of casualties, damage and suffering. The mechanism, designed as much as cobbled together in ad hoc salvage operations by British politicians and defence planners, was at once robust and flexible, allowing it to weather a series of crises. But it relied and still relies crucially on Britain as the central lynchpin keeping the construct together. The British withdrawal from the EU risks removing this central lynchpin, upon which the entire construct may come apart

Military exercises and the dangers of misunderstandings: the East-West Crisis of the Early 1980s

The East-West Crisis of the Early 1980s demonstrated that one should never overestimate the degree of mutual understanding between two adversarial states. Military and command post exercises, thought to be entirely transparent in their purely defensive purposes by the West, were seen as potential smokescreen for a surprise attack in the East. While the crisis did not lead to war, the fact that it went as far as producing a Soviet nuclear alert in response to a command post exercise points to the inherent dangers of military exercises as crisis-destabilising

Strategy before Clausewitz: linking warfare and statecraft, 1400-1830

The theorising and practice of Strategy in a modern sense did not begin only with Napoleon and Clausewitz. The case studies of this book show that strategic thinking existed well before then, despite the lack of a commonly agreed word for it, if we define strategy with Kimberly Kagan as involving a ‘the setting of a state’s objectives and of priorities among those objectives’, and the allocation of limited resources in pursuit of them. The book uses a variety of approaches. The Introduction explores the strategic thinking of three monarchs whose biographers have claimed to have identified this in their warfare: Edward III of England, Philip II of Spain, and Louis XIV of France. Then the focus is on strategy-making in the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604, the first in which action spanned the globe. Meanwhile, many contemporaries saw no Military Revolution taking place, but sought to emulate the Ancients. A further diachronic chapter tracks the evolution of a single strategic concept – that of the rule of the sea – from Antiquity to the present. And several chapters are dedicated to the works of individual strategic thinkers, some of whom were also practitioners. These are Christine de Pizan, Lazarus Schwendi, Matthew Sutcliffe, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and Count Guibert, ending with the debts that Carl von Clausewitz owed to previous authors

Ordinances and Articles of War before the Lieber Code, 866-1863: the long pre-history of international humanitarian law

Key textbooks and reference works on international humanitarian law treat it as though it had not existed before the American Lieber Code, a set of ordinances for conduct in war, was adopted unilaterally in 1863. The Lieber Code, however, was only one in a series of such ordinances which can be traced back in Europe at least to the ninth century. These were indeed established norms and traditions, as the application of the four criteria listed in Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice show: they were applied by (here: military) tribunals and other law courts; they were treated as customary law (defined in in the Statute of the International Court of Justice as “international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law”); they were seen as “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations”; and finally, they were discussed in “judicial decisions and [in] the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.” International humanitarian law, thus, has its roots in Europe, and has a far longer pedigree than is generally assumed

Fortuna, chance, risk and opportunity in strategy from Antiquity to the Nuclear Age

Taking risks might be encouraged, both in business and military strategy, when the potential price of losing would not be excessive while the gains in winning, worth wagering such a bet. In military contexts, a side set on aggression and conquest might take such a risk. Chance, fortuna, determining the outcome of risk taking has been seen differently throughout history – fatalistically, as prevalent in the Middle Ages – as been something that could not be influenced, or, as in Antiquity and in more recent times, as a factor open to influence by the astute and forceful military commander, or to prudent planners. New situations could be seen as dangerous and risky, with risks against which one has to hedge. Or they could be seen as a chance to change things in one’s own interest. This might be done through extensive contingency planning, or by seizing an opportunity quickly, applying the genius general’s coup d’oeil to turn a new development to one’s advantage, always conscious that this was a gamble and the outcome uncertain. While such a gamble could win or lose a battle and in turn a war, in the nuclear age, such a gamble would seem difficult to justify given the potential negative outcomes

Welche Friedenslösungen für den Russland-Ukraine-Krieg? Gedanken zu Strategien des Friedenschließens

Especially in the German discussion of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we hear repeated calls for quick diplomatic fix to end the war. A variety of war endings are imaginable, only none of them has the potential to form the basis for a lasting peace. Looking at past cases of war termination in European history, it becomes clear that the only strategic aim in order to bring about an enduring peace when confronted with such a nationalistic and uncompromising actor as Russia is to aim for regime change. This cannot, however, be effected from the outside. Therefore, a countervailing strategy on the part of the West is the only remaining strategic option for the time being

COVID-19: Policy-Options, Effects and Resulting Scenarios

Over the coming 11-17 months (until end 2021), governments around the world are faced with the four options of (I) continuing the lockdown until a vaccine is found (estimated at 11-17 months from now), (II) periodic suspension of lockdown measures and their re-imposition until then, (III) a partial suspension of lockdown measures, and (IV) end of all lockdown measures. We estimate that (I) would have unaffordable economic consequences. (II) might be the optimal balance between the most humane treatment of the illness on the one hand (hospitalisation of all needing medical attention) and economic cost, but the economic costs would still be high, and could only be borne with most effective use of opening periods. Given supply chains and interconnectedness with the economies of other countries, this would work effectively only if very closely harmonised with those other countries’ own lockdown periods. (III) would be economically more desirable but would lead to more cases needing hospitalisation than the NHS can cope with. Even this option would be economically more sustainable with close trading and other co-operation with EU countries. (IV) is unacceptable in terms of human suffering caused to infected populations, with the NHS being completely overwhelmed several times over and fatalities in UK alone well into six figures. The prospects of the fiscal and economic recovery of the UK from 2022 depend very much on which of the above options are chosen now and in the coming 6 weeks. Everything else – Britain continuing to take a leading role in the world politically, economically, in defence and security – will flow from that. We sketch three possible resulting scenarios, each of which would set the UK on different courses in the recovery period after the immediate pandemic period

Guerres asymétriques : l’orientalisme militaire contre la Voie de la guerre en Occident

La façon dont une société fait la guerre est souvent vue et présentée comme un reflet de ses valeurs. Depuis l’Antiquité on trouve des auteurs qui pensent pouvoir établir une différence entre la façon dont « nous » faisons la guerre, par opposition à celle qui caractérise les ennemis. Les auteurs parlent des barbares, des bandits, des rebelles, et voient leur façon de faire la guerre comme entachée d’irrégularités. Déjà au xve siècle avant J.-C., un roi hittite, Mursilis, se plaignait des att..

Politische Dimensionen von Militärübungen und Manövern – ein Projektbericht

Die virtuellen Kriege und Operationen, die in Militärübungen gespielt und geprobt werden, können entweder der Abschreckung dienen oder aber Angriffe vorbereiten bzw. zur Maskierung tatsächlicher Angriffe dienen. Für Beobachter ist es vielfach nicht offensichtlich, um welche Art von Militärübung es sich handelt. Die Ergebnisse eines vierjährigen internationalen Projektes zu politischen Dimensionen von Militärübungen richten das Schlaglicht insbesondere auf Missverständnisse und deren ungewollte politische Auswirkungen, die im Extremfall unbeabsichtigt zum Krieg führen können

Common variants at ABCA7, MS4A6A/MS4A4E, EPHA1, CD33 and CD2AP are associated with Alzheimer's disease

We sought to identify new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer's disease through a staged association study (GERAD+) and by testing suggestive loci reported by the Alzheimer's Disease Genetic Consortium (ADGC) in a companion paper. We undertook a combined analysis of four genome-wide association datasets (stage 1) and identified ten newly associated variants with P ≤ 1 × 10−5. We tested these variants for association in an independent sample (stage 2). Three SNPs at two loci replicated and showed evidence for association in a further sample (stage 3). Meta-analyses of all data provided compelling evidence that ABCA7 (rs3764650, meta P = 4.5 × 10−17; including ADGC data, meta P = 5.0 × 10−21) and the MS4A gene cluster (rs610932, meta P = 1.8 × 10−14; including ADGC data, meta P = 1.2 × 10−16) are new Alzheimer's disease susceptibility loci. We also found independent evidence for association for three loci reported by the ADGC, which, when combined, showed genome-wide significance: CD2AP (GERAD+, P = 8.0 × 10−4; including ADGC data, meta P = 8.6 × 10−9), CD33 (GERAD+, P = 2.2 × 10−4; including ADGC data, meta P = 1.6 × 10−9) and EPHA1 (GERAD+, P = 3.4 × 10−4; including ADGC data, meta P = 6.0 × 10−10)