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Begin New Search Political Geography United Kingdom Content Type Policy Brief Publication Year within 10 Years Publication Year within 5 Years Publication Year within 1 Year

1. Facing Pressure: Iran executes former Defence Minister

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
Iran executed on January 14, 2022, a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, defying calls from London and Washington for his release. Alireza Akbari was arrested in 2019 and accused of spying for Britain. He served as a defence minister between 2000 and 2005 under former President Mohammad Khatami, and he fought during the Iraq-Iran war. He also served in other high-ranking positions in the navy and the ministry of defence’s research centre, and was appointed as the general secretariat of the national security council.
Topic:
Security, Elites, and Capital Punishment
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Iran, and Middle East

2. Building a Mature UK Trade Policy

Author:
David Henig
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Abstract:
Global Britain has not delivered according to the hopes expressed by supporters of leaving the EU. Trade with the rest of the world has not grown to make up for leaving a bloc with seamless trade, early Free Trade Agreements with Australia and New Zealand are of minor economic significance, and it is hard to discern much of a strategy beyond completing a few more similar deals. Meanwhile the world of trade policy is transformed since 2016, negatively. The US has essentially declared its national interests to be more important than global rules, while the EU wants to act unilaterally as the global regulator. In both, the climate crisis is being used as an excuse to reintroduce protectionist measures threatening economic damage and global stability. Expectations of what a UK outside of the EU could achieve were exaggerated, but nonetheless the country could be doing a lot better in its trade policy. There is no good reason for such tensions as exist with a broad range of frustrated stakeholders, the absence of clear purpose on UK strengths such as services, or the defensiveness that seemingly takes pride in secrecy and resistance to proper scrutiny. Adjustment time was inevitable, but six years should have been enough.
Topic:
Economics, European Union, Free Trade, and Trade Policy
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

3. British Nuclear Policy

Author:
Peter Watkins
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
Nuclear deterrence has been a major pillar of British defence policy since the mid-1950s. The United Kingdom maintains a minimum, credible, independent strategic nuclear deterrent force, assigned to the defence of NATO. Its purpose is purely defensive: to deter the most extreme threats to the security of the UK and to that of her NATO allies. Potential adversaries must thus take into account the UK’s nuclear capabilities when facing UK conventional forces deployed as part of NATO’s forward deterrence and defence posture, not least the UK-led battlegroup in Estonia. The UK does not see a contradiction between cooperation with allies and having an “independent” deterrent – its nuclear force is operationally independent and only the UK Prime Minister can authorise the use of the UK’s nuclear weapons, even as part of a wider NATO response. Today, the Soviet Union is gone – yet a weaker but more dangerous Russia as well as an increasingly powerful China create a potential “two peer” nuclear challenge. The UK is currently renewing its nuclear deterrent as the existing capability is aging – but continues to seek opportunities for multilateral nuclear disarmament as the strategic circumstances allow. In light of the international security environment, the 2021 change to the warhead ceiling reflected that. But the UK needs to ask itself whether bigger changes will be needed for the future.
Topic:
NATO, Nuclear Weapons, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and Estonia

4. Rebooting the Entente: An Agenda for Renewed UK-France Defense Cooperation

Author:
Alice Billon-Galland and Élie Tenenbaum
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
The Franco-British Summit on March 10th, 2023, will mark a much-needed reset in bilateral cooperation, following years of strained relations. With a recently re-elected French president and a new British Prime minister, both sides are committed to making this summit a success and re-launching a positive agenda for bilateral cooperation. The summit, the first since Sandhurst in 2018, will focus on three key topics: migration, energy, and foreign policy. Defense cooperation will also be addressed, as it remains the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship, though it may take a less prominent part than on previous occasions. Rebooting the Entente: An Agenda for Renewed UK-France Defense Cooperation Download 1.38 Mo Several concrete topics for joint work should therefore be discussed and agreed, from strategic discussions on European security frameworks to joint operational deployments and capability projects. It is crucial to ensure that the symbolic reset of the bilateral relationship at the summit leads to a realistic yet ambitious defense roadmap, with concrete commitments and deliverables. As the Franco-British Summit approaches, defense cooperation remains the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship. As the war in Ukraine continues, it increases the rationale for resuming closer UK-France defense cooperation. Lessons needs to be drawn from the Lancaster House Treaties : overly ambitious and structuring plans are less likely to succeed than pragmatic, budget-conscious and ready-to-use projects. The need to prepare for high-intensity warfare opens new perspectives for capability development in all domains and for operational cooperation across the globe. This Briefing is part of a joint Chatham House-IFRI research project, the "Cross-Channel Strategic Dialogue", investigating prospects for UK-France defence and security cooperation.
Topic:
Defense Policy, International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, and High Intensity Warfare
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, Ukraine, and France

5. Assessing the Risk of Foreign Influence in UK Search Results

Author:
Bret Schafer and Peter Benzoni
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS)
Abstract:
As the de facto gateway to the vast troves of information available online, search services play a critical role in the modern information ecosystem. They are often the starting points for people’s questions about the world around them, from the innocuous to the deeply consequential. The results generated by search algorithms can therefore influence everything from consumer behavior to people’s political and social preferences, often in ways that are imperceptible to users of those systems. Given this significant power, search services are also targets of those who seek to manipulate information to advance a particular, and at times malign, agenda. This includes those working for or on behalf of autocratic foreign governments, who can attempt to leverage search results to whitewash human rights abuses, attack opponents, or interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. The threat is particularly acute with well-resourced states that operate global state-backed media outlets, troll farms, and other state-aligned information outlets that allow them to exploit search services through strategic content production, search engine optimization, or intentional manipulation. DOWNLOAD PDF To evaluate this potential risk, we analyzed data over a 30-day period across six search products on four search services (Google Search, Google News, Microsoft Bing, Bing News, Yandex Search, and Baidu Search) to assess the prominence of foreign state-linked websites, or those that reproduce content from those websites, in search returns for queries related to topics of national importance to the United Kingdom. Importantly, we could not assess, nor was it our intention to assess, whether the prominence of any state-linked sources in search results was the result of deliberate manipulation by those states or merely the product of search algorithms determining that the content produced by those sites was relevant to a given query. We also did not assess the relative quality of any individual state media outlets. We recognize that state-backed information sources exist on a broad spectrum in terms of their authoritativeness and journalistic standards, and that a connection to a foreign state is not necessarily problematic and should not be viewed by search services as an inherent risk. In short, our efforts to understand the prominence of state-linked sources in search results should not be viewed as an attempt to document wrongdoing, either by the sources themselves or by the search services that surfaced those sources. In addition, although we attempted to select topics that were important to UK interests instead of those that favored the interests of any one foreign government, some of the chosen queries—notably those related to the war against Ukraine—were more likely to be the focus of messaging from certain countries. Results from this study should therefore not be used as comparative data points to suggest that any one state is more influential in UK search results than any other. Instead, the goal of this research was simply to gain a better understanding of how and how often content from websites with direct or indirect links to foreign states—primarily state-backed media outlets but also websites directly or indirectly linked to foreign governments or foreign intelligence services—surfaced in search results in the four constituent countries of the UK. Though we offer several illustrative examples highlighting specific vulnerabilities uncovered by our research, the bulk of this report is focused on assessing a potential risk of foreign interference by identifying the types of variables—from the topic searched for to the language used—that regularly generated search results from state-linked websites, without assessing whether the content of those search results is potentially illegal under the UK’s newly created Foreign Interference Offense included in the National Security Act 2023. We did, however, pay particular attention to the presence of content produced by media outlets currently sanctioned by the UK government, namely Russian state media outlets that were sanctioned after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Democracy, Media, and Disinformation
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe