An Update on UK Defence: The MoD’s Report on the Modernising Defence Programme

01/22/2019
Late last year, the UK Ministry of Defence provided an update on its 2015 report on defense modernization. As one commentator put it with regard to the report: A combination of strained alliances and ever-expanding political demands explains the MOD’s determination to secure funds to rebuild UK military capability. After…

The F-35 Global Enterprise: Working Global Logistics: The Case of Japan

01/22/2019
The F-35 has come at the time of the strategic shift for the liberal democracies from dealing primarily with the land wars to preparing for crisis management with peer competitors. We referred a decade ago to the coming of the F-35 as the renorming of airpower which was a clear…

“The Sky Is The Limit”: Renewing France’s Space Capabilities

01/21/2019
By Murielle Delaporte When the French minister of the armed forces, Florence Parly, visited the heart of space technology in Toulouse last September, she stressed how much space has become over the past years a key domain for national security. She noted that the Russian satellite Luch-Olymp had recently been…

Russia, China and Collaborative Actions: An Alliance in the Making

01/19/2019
By Stephen Blank A virtual flood of studies and articles continues to appear concerning Russo-Chinese relations.[i] Although the expert consensus remains that no alliance or no formal alliance between Russia and China exists despite their visibly growing intimacy; I would dispute that finding.[ii] Indeed, Moscow keeps inventing euphemisms to disguise…

Brexit and Identity Politics: A Case Study of Globalization in Flux

01/18/2019
By Kenneth Maxwell On January 15, 2019, the British prime minister, Mrs Theresa May, suffered the greatest parliamentary defeat in British history when members of the House of Commons voted 432 to 202 to kill her BREXIT deal which sets out the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU on…