BY NICHOLAS ENGERT To be born in the 1950s and spend one’s childhood in the 60s was to enjoy a good fortune denied to the previous generation. Whilst I wish in many ways that I had witnessed the 1930s and 40s, to be born in a time when the horrors of the Second World War were but a memory felt like a privilege. Even though … Continue reading The Colour of Conflict
BY PAUL T HORGAN The ‘Guilty Men’ narrative in the Britain of July 1940 was a necessary myth. The state had given itself such massive powers in the wake of the Dunkirk evacuation as to be a revolution from above, so a superficially credible legend had to be created, as is the case for all revolutions, to justify the legal appropriation of so many traditional liberties. The rapid German … Continue reading Ponzi, Panzer, and Plunder
BY PAUL T HORGAN The news from what is being described as the ‘Iran War’ is that there is no news, well none about the actual fighting. This is normal. A study of war reporting, especially of the wartime periodicals that would emerge for every major conflict up to WWII, demonstrates that the actualité of the combat would take at least several days if not weeks or … Continue reading The Hormuz War
BY PAUL T HORGAN Perhaps it is because it was my teen years, but it seems to me as though the 1970s were the high-point in popular books about wars and militaries, not least because full-colour printing allowed illustrations of the weapons used to be depicted other than in drab monochrome. Certainly WHSmith was packed with these books and the stores were also packed with … Continue reading Blunderissimi
BY PAUL T HORGAN The analogy isn’t precise, but seems similar. Consider the origins of the Great War. Serbian fanatics in Bosnia, a province administered by Austria-Hungary since 1878 and annexed in 1908, assassinate the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown. There is a tenuous link between the fanatics and the Serbian Kingdom. Austria-Hungary is given a ‘blank cheque’ by Imperial Germany to crush Serbia in … Continue reading War-gaming Iran
BY JONATHAN LEVITT I wrote an article for Country Squire shortly after the start of the Israel-Gaza war entitled ‘Genocide or War?’, broadly in favour of the war, setting out the reasons I thought it was justified at the time. At this point, a few weeks short of a year after October 7th, I am now of a different opinion. I think people on all … Continue reading Other Means
BY NIGEL FARQUHARSON “All war is deception” is one of those truisms that resonates through the ages simply by dint of being accurate. By way of an example, I was privileged to serve under General Mike Rose in his Sarajevo-based Bosnia theatre command. Like every commander ever, he needed hard, clear information upon which to direct his resources and achieve his mission (of stopping the … Continue reading All War Is Deception
BY PETER HARRIS Rightly do D-Day and the Normandy beach landings grip the imagination. Its scale was immense: it was the largest seaborne invasion in history involving thousands of boats, ships and aircraft and around 160,000 troops from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. (If I have left out any nation, please correct … Continue reading Blood Spattered Sceptre
BY MARK TAC Some of my thoughts on the war in Ukraine… The Ukrainians have been busy attacking Russian early warning radars with drones, a long way from the front. On 23rd May, a radar was attacked by drones at Baronowski, 600 km from the Ukraine-Russian front, near Armavir (east of Stavropol), in the region of Krasnodar. Five days later, on 28th May, another radar … Continue reading Ukraine Update
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN My old friend, the academic and author Dr Denis MacEoin—an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly—died from complications from COVID-19 in 2022. We cowrote a think tank report together which did the rounds in Westminster in 2008 and led to some positive change. Denis, a non-Jewish Northern Irishman who was an active member of … Continue reading The Wisdom of Denis
BY DANIEL JUPP Thinking about what constitutes and doesn’t constitute a just war is in fact a very old process. The Egyptians did it, as did the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. We have surviving Egyptian inscriptions telling us why particular Pharaohs were justified in their conquests, and these told us three things. A Pharaoh was allowed to conquer because he was a legitimate authority, … Continue reading Israel’s Just War?
BY JONATHAN LEVITT The word ‘genocide’ is loaded with emotional and political impact and needs to be used very carefully. The dictionary gives: ‘The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.’ Which, of course, does not define ‘large’ and does not determine what is ‘deliberate’ and what is not. I would say … Continue reading Genocide or Just War?
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Last night, as every night of late, I sat in my chair in the summer room, poring over papers, analyses and tweets. I find the requisite silence there in that place. There are no disturbances save the occasional hoot from an owl. The cantilever floor lamp shines only on my work, so the rest of the room seems packed with darkness. The … Continue reading Her
BY STEWART SLATER It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Ukrainian War is a NATO provocation designed to provide the justification for an invasion of Russia, a hold-out against the plan of Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum to deploy 5G nanobots in Western Covid vaccines, eliminating a large proportion of the world’s population and bringing about the “Great Reset”. OK, perhaps “universally … Continue reading Mad Vlad & the 5G Nanobots
BY ALEX STORY The Russian invasion of Ukraine has revealed a great deal. The West can bark but lost, seemingly, much of its teeth. The alliance, whatever that means, is strong on words but feeble in deeds. And it is, as the Good Book reminds us, “by their deeds” that “you shall know them”. We have wagged our finger at the Russian Bear with gusto, … Continue reading By Their Actions
BY STEWART SLATER What is the iconic image of WWII? It probably depends where you come from. If you are British, it is likely St Paul’s, standing proud, wreathed in smoke and flame. If you are Russian, it is probably a Soviet soldier flying the hammer and sickle from the top of the Reichstag. For an American, it is surely the Marines raising the flag … Continue reading The Image of War
BY EFFIE DEANS It is difficult to write about a fast-moving conflict with limited information and much disinformation. But it is impossible to write about anything else as every other topic looks trivial. I am uninterested in the domestic politics of the UK and cannot bring myself even to notice whatever Nicola Sturgeon might be saying about it or anything else. The key with news … Continue reading Putin the Terrible
As US and British troops withdraw from Afghanistan, it is well worth reading this analysis dating back to Sep 2009 – offered as advice to British officers in theatre. The author is a former British SAS officer with long experience of terrorist and insurgency operations. It is difficult to find even well-informed people who can explain why NATO is fighting in Afghanistan, and this leaves … Continue reading View from Outside Afghanistan
