A triple hit of weakness ‘Please believe these days will pass’, said David Hockney and other international artists as the world went into COVID-19 lockdown. Indeed, they will. But equally, when these days finally pass, they will also usher in a new political world, both at home and abroad. It will have changed a good …
Continue reading Britain can be picked off – even by its friends. By @MikeClarke2020s
The following comment and analysis by General Sir Richard Barrons, Commander Joint Forces Command (2013-2016), now Co-Chairman of Universal Defence & Security Solutions, is published here too by the Global Security Forum of which General Barrons is an Advisory Board member. The Surveillance Pandemic All eyes are focused on the extraordinary effects of the COVID-19 …
Continue reading ‘The Surveillance Pandemic’ by General Sir Richard Barrons KCB CBE
Most people talk about ‘soft power’ as somehow the opposite of military or coercive ‘hard power’. But it is much more complex than that. Britain has relied on its subtle soft power capabilities for a long time. But if it does not think more carefully about it very soon, there is a danger that complacency …
Continue reading Time for Some Hard Thinking About Soft Power, by Michael Clarke
The concept of ‘Soft Power’ will be increasingly important to all European ‘middle powers’, and not least to Britain, in the troubled years to come, as the world deals with the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasingly antagonistic relations between the major powers. The western liberal democracies will have to rely …
Continue reading A Call for Commentary: British ‘Soft Power’ in the 2020s
Tipping Point 