David H. Ucko's Blog

By the graces of social media, I just came across rare footage of several of Switzerland’s covert defence installations. In true James Bond style, the country has used its terrain to camouflage major military assets that, when the time is right, transform into fully fledged and primed weapons systems. Most of these were built in the 1970s to withstand a possible Soviet invasion, raising the germane question of whether Ukraine (and perhaps NATO’s easternmost members…) should have invested in s...

Last week, John Kerry and William Hague,the foreign ministers of the US and the UK, met to discuss the scourge of sexual violence. Their discussion led to the publication of an articlefor theHuffington Posttitled ‘Preventing Sexual Violence is a National Security Imperative’. In parallel, the United States announced a measure to prevent anyonewho has ‘presided over or engaged in or knew of or conducted these kinds of attacks’ from receiving an entry visa to the USA. This June, London will hos...

Though some claim counterinsurgency is dead, the debate about it is still going strong. It remains to be seen whether the raft of recently released and soon-to-be-published books on the topic are the last, parting shots or just another salvo in a campaign with no end. What is certain is that there is still much to be said and understood about the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan, about military intervention, and the proper application of strategy. As contributions to this debate, I alert you to th...

Though some claim counterinsurgency is dead, the debate about it is still going strong. It remains to be seen whether the raft of recently released and soon-to-be-published books on the topic are the last, parting shots or just another salvo in a campaign with no end. What is certain is that there is still much to be said and understood about the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan, about military intervention, and the proper application of strategy. As contributions to this debate, I alert you to th...

James Kitfield, author of the classic text Prodigal Soldiers, has penned an interesting ‘five takeaways’ article about the two US Special Operations raids in Somalia and Libya last week. One of his observations is that the raids vindicate the advocates of CT – or counter-terrorism – in their ‘heated debate’ with the advocates of counterinsurgency. He concludes that ‘the news of the nearly simultaneous U.S. commando raids this past weekend drives home just how decisively advocates for a limite...

Last week I attended an event at the New America Foundation where Ryan Evans, Peter Neumann and Ambassador Omar Samad presented the new ICSR report, Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History?.The presentations were short, incisive and clear, and the question and answer session a constructive addendum to the event. I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in this topic to read the report and watch the video.

The report is sceptical about the value of talking with the Taliban, at leas...

US drone strikes are the new Guantanamo – a focal point for all those railing against America and the excesses of its War on Terror efforts to counter violent extremist (CVE). The arguments against drone strikes against suspected terrorists will be familiar to the readers of this blog and need scarcely be repeated: the collateral damage ensures radicalisation (and thus more terrorism), the infringement on other countries’ sovereignty equally so, it is a method in search of a strategy and the...

Many of our UK-based readers will be familiar with the so-called Muslim Patrol videos posted online earlier this month. The videos feature some young Londoners, presumably Muslim, approaching and intimidating passers-by for drinking alcohol or dressing the wrong way in what they claim are ‘Muslim areas’. The videos are filmed in Whitechapel, east London, whose population is 40% Bangladeshi, and have made an immediate splash not just in London but further afield. Understandably, many of those...

There is not much to be said about the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ trailer – and the reaction to it in several Muslim-majority countries – that has not already been said. More enlightened commentary has emphasised the right to free speech and expression and framed the violent response as a predominantly local competition for power, to determine the future politics of specific countries or, they hope, of an entire religion. Of course the nuanced analysis is almost by definition reserved to those wh...

The Washington Post has a very interesting article on Sri Lanka’s apparent slide ‘toward dictatorship’. Since the military defeat of the LTTE in 2009, the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has become increasingly autocratic, stifling opposition and silencing – sometimes violently, so the article suggests – those who speak out against it. Family members of the president are occupying influential governmentpositions and following his last electoral victory, Rajapaksa changed ‘the consti...