The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) should be clearly defined and understood by all. It is a UK national security force multiplier that uses Official Development Assistance (ODA) means and resources to help achieve political, strategic, and security goals. However, the strategy the ISF is designed to support is [...]
Many will be suffering from whiplash due to recent events. Navigating the new normal and responding to it is challenging. The news that the UK will increase its defence budget at the expense of its development budget is disheartening. The world isn’t black and white. Situations don’t lend [...]
In the world of today, everything has to be measured, weighed and assessed. Businesses are judged by their profit; armies are judged by their success deterring or defeating enemies; development projects by their learning and contribution to poverty reduction. But what of diplomacy? How to measure diplomacy [...]
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is an awkward beast. Looking for an identity and a purpose (despite the Dad’s Army like attempt to convey strategy and vision), it is still struggling with the implications of a merger more akin to pushing repelling magnets together whilst trying [...]
Time to put the red, white and blue at the disposal of a better world in which our shared values – currently much better articulated and enacted by Europe – deliver common benefit for all. Ukraine has set the cat amongst the pigeons. The war [...]
Boris Johnson has announced the merger of DFID into the FCO. He cites the need to fully integrate all arms of foreign policy into a single coherent whole as his motivation. But the characterisation of DFID as a lone wolf or a “cash point in the sky” is [...]
COVID-19 (C19) is throwing out the normal rule book; and causing everyone to have to think again about what they do, how they do it and why. There has been a rapid re-purposing of almost everything, demanding a much sharper clarity of purpose. Resources are being aligned to the [...]
In amongst all the hullabaloo over future funding for the UK military, we have learnt that the UK estimates – probably rightly – that there are a number of “Tier 1” threats to the UK’s security. One of these threats is the possibility of conventional warfare with [...]