CHACRDIGEST
MIDDLE EAST
As primers for the events in Iran and Israel, RUSI’s Understanding the Israel-Iran Conflict and Chatham House’s podcast What does the Iran-Israel war mean for the region and the world? are worth consuming. Equally, Peter Frankopan points out that historians like to think about specific turning points and whilst 7 October was one, what is more significant is that it unlocked a sequence of opportunities for which Israel has been preparing for more than a generation.
FIERY MONTH
Flaming June, Sir Frederic Leighton’s 1895 painting (pictured left), is often described as the ‘Mona Lisa of the Southern Hemisphere’, its enduring appeal coming from the beauty of its composition. Sadly, ‘Flaming June’ can also be used to describe the past month. Dramatic events in Ukraine and the most aggressive Iran-Israeli conflict in a generation have taken place in the context of a NATO Summit and the publication of the UK Defence Review. Indicative of an era where policy is announced on social media, the azimuth of events has changed on an hourly basis. As ever, the best insights are based on an understanding of the historical, social and geopolitical context that led to current events.
The views expressed in this Digest are not those of the British Army or UK Government. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. chacr.org.uk
While commentators were trying to make sense of a rapidly changing situation, the theme of Iranian strategic weakness was the feature of both a Chatham House and Foreign Affairs article. The latter piece outlined how in the past two years Iran’s hard-liners have overplayed their hand whilst Israel had seriously degraded Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran’s ally, Assad’s Syrian regime, had fallen. The article concludes: “Ali Khamenei and the IRGC have lost; the regional status quo they established is finished.” However, The Economist highlighted that postponing Iran’s ability to produce a weapon will not eradicate the know-how accumulated over decades and is likely to redouble the regime’s desire to achieve a nuclear weapon. These factors were also raised by a Politico article whilst the Financial Times highlighted that as long as Iran possessed enriched uranium, it could continue its efforts to produce a nuclear bomb.
Written prior to the US missile strikes, a Foreign Affairs article suggested the Gulf States are now primary players in President Trump’s push for a new nuclear deal and, rather than the traditional US-Israel closeness, are the “fulcrum of a reconfigured regional order” – something America’s kinetic intervention now calls into question. On the evolving issue of US Intelligence assessments, The Economist’s Inside the spy dossier that led Israel to war concluded that American intelligence agencies were sceptical of Israeli claims that Iran’s nuclear programme was close to delivering a viable device. It concluded that “Mr Trump may decide this is a job for America, whatever his spooks say”. Somewhat upsettingly for President Trump and the social media generation, the one thing that is clear is outlined in the New York magazine Intelligencer article We Won’t Know for Weeks If the U.S. Strikes in Iran Worked
UNITED KINGDOM
The long awaited Strategic Defence Review recognised the UK armed forces’ limited capacity and that ‘business as usual’ was no longer an option, prompting a reform plan for ‘high-low’ equipment, reshaped forces and a reinvigorated defence industrial base. However, IISS and the Chatham House podcast War plan or wish list pointed out that funding will be key to implementation and “radical changes to procurement, defence innovation, industry practices and societal changes, including in education and training, are required to move towards ‘war-fighting readiness’”. Equally, whilst commentators praised recognition of lessons from Ukraine, industrial production, the whole-of-society effort to fend off unconventional warfare, and attacks on infrastructure, Chatham House questioned the positioning of the US as the UK’s key military partner noting “if the Trump administration becomes distracted by domestic problems... fundamental assumptions in the Review may need revisiting”. This reliance is most apparent in space. Whilst nearly 20 per cent of UK gross domestic product depends on satellite-enabled services, the Ministry of Defence only has one military surveillance satellite and disruption to, US Space Force owned, GPS would cost the UK economy £1 billion per day.
A number of other commentators evaluated the review process. Matthew Savill at RUSI lamented a “Schrodinger’s Review” that included the negative aspects of an independent and dependent review at the same time. He also criticised the review for providing “direction, not strategy”, with little on planning assumptions, force employment rationale or prioritisation, beyond ‘NATO First’, concluding that “if the usual inertia and budgetary churn prevail, the Review may be remembered more for what it failed to force through than for what it achieved”. More positively, Grace Cassy, part of the team that produced the Review, discussed how by shifting the locus of defence innovation from well-established prime contractors to agile start-ups and a ring-fenced budget for novel technology, the UK would deliver a Digital Targeting Web, enhancing tempo dominance and the ability to sense, operate and decide across domains. The coherence needed to deliver this will come from the new CyberEM Command, which is also tasked to deliver national strategic resilience against the reported 90,000 ‘sub-threshold’ cyberattacks on the UK in the past two years.
The RUSI article, The Kremlin Views the UK’s SDR as a Declaration of War, characterised the Russian reaction to the Strategic Defence Review as a mixture of derision, caution and blame, towards the UK, for Russia’s foreign and domestic woes. The article also warns of a growing narrative that the UK is subverting President Trump’s peace negotiation. Ultimately, it concludes, there is a concerning lack of insight by Russia, and a lack of clarity by the UK about its stance on countries Russia cares about.
UKRAINE
On 1 June, Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web prompted commentators to exclaim that it had “rewritten the rules of war” and “redefined asymmetric warfare”. By smuggling quadcopters hidden in trucks deep into Russia and destroying nearly 20 per cent of Russia’s most important, expensive and hard-to-replace strategic bombers, Ukraine delivered an old-fashioned raid using new technology. Using the Russian mobile telecommunications networks, remote human control drones with elements of autonomy and, potentially, AI-assisted functionality, minimised the distance between launch and impact, enabling Ukraine to bypass Russia’s layered air defence systems. The raid challenges some conventional assumptions about the scale, autonomy, cost and vulnerability of drones and highlights that strategic infrastructure remains vulnerable without dedicated counter-UAV defence measures. Equally, Dr Ben Connable explained that nothing about Operation Spider’s Web changes either the nature or character of warfare. He argued the overreaction to the mission, and more broadly the use of drones and AI, demonstrated “a yawning gap in modern military historical analysis [that] has made it difficult to put emerging events in context”. (As an aside, it’s worth checking out the War on the Rocks article I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck.) In reality, Ukraine traded risk for effect; an SAS style raid would have destroyed more aircraft but, indicative of other modern operations, technology was used in place of humans at the point of attack. Dr Connable concludes with the imperative to understand history in width, depth and context to better understand the present and forecast the near future. And, in light of the incursion into RAF Brize Norton, recommends a review of NATO airfields’ security measures.
More broadly, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies debunked the assumption that Russia holds “all the cards” in Ukraine, revealing that the Russian military has advanced slower than the Somme offensive in the First World War. Its assessment is that Russia is pinning its hope on the United States cutting aid to Ukraine and argues that the United States holds the cards in Ukraine and “just needs to start playing them”.
Meanwhile, prompted by the new EU strategy for the Black Sea region, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlighted that the balance of power in the Black Sea has shifted to Moscow’s disadvantage and has become the fulcrum of Europe’s security order, with the West pulling its collective weight against Russia. Despite President Putin’s camaraderie with President Erdoğan, Turkey will continue to benefit from Ukraine’s curbing of Russia’s naval forces. The Carnegie article also suggests that the Black Sea, as a microcosm, illustrates the uncertainty about US involvement in European security affairs.
Prior to the NATO Summit, Chatham House brought together experts including HR McMaster, Ben Hodges and Sir Peter Rickets to comment on how Europe can save NATO. Thereafter, commentators argued that the summit’s scant discussion of Ukraine highlighted that meeting the Russian threat required not just money, but strategy. To be effective, signalling to Russia must be backed by action, specifically coordinated and joint investments and public support for increased defence spending. Anna Wieslander, Director of Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council, points out that five per cent by 2035 may be too late. However, as one commentator noted: “NATO’s ultimate deterrence is its unity, and leaders were able to deliver that message from The Hague – at least for now.”
USA
Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the United States stays strong argue Robert Keohane and the late Joseph Nye Whilst military might and trade deficits provide leverage over partners, coercion of allies and withdrawal from international institutions yield only short-term gains. Fundamentally, Keohane and Nye warn the policies undermine the “patterns of interdependence that strengthen American power,” and “instead of making America great again,” President Trump could “bring the era of U.S. dominance to an unceremonious end”.
INDO PACIFIC REGION
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared that Chinese technology is enabling Russia to reconstitute at pace and China’s rapid military expansionism, notably in ship building, is causing concern for NATO’s partners Japan and South Korea. These comments were followed by an Economist article that described China as the most important – perhaps decisive – enabler of Russia’s war machine. Whilst China has avoided large-scale transfers of lethal aid, Chinese arms are less vital than components and tools and China is keen to test the performance of its material on a live battlefield. Equally, Russia shares captured western technology from Ukraine. The article concludes that, without China’s help, Russia’s defence industry would be crippled, although deep-rooted fear and prejudice about over-reliance remains. Reuters reported that the Chinese foreign ministry denied supplying weapons to parties in the Ukraine war, accusing “relevant NATO personnel” of slandering China’s “normal military build-up”.
Taiwan’s Africa strategy isn’t just symbolic, argues the Lowy Institute. Its strategy is about relationships and, in a multipolar world where non-traditional diplomacy is gaining traction, Taiwan’s approach contrasts sharply with the more transactional nature of Chinese aid. The article concludes “in a world where power is defined by networks rather than borders, Taiwan’s strategy in Africa may be a glimpse of what diplomacy looks like in the 21st century”.
AFRICA
The World Bank highlights Africa’s significant but uneven progress since 2000, marked by gains in health, education and investment. However, persistent poverty, institutional weakness and climate threats continue to hold back inclusive growth. The report urges African nations to embrace a development model grounded in human capital, clean energy, digital transformation and accountable governance to unlock the continent’s full potential. Whilst life expectancy rose from 50 (1998) to 61 (2022) and school enrolment increased, 90 per cent of the world’s extreme poor may live in Africa by 2030, with 83 per cent of employment in the informal sector.
A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace article highlights the existence and importance of understanding ‘climate mobility’. The International Organization for Migration estimates that weather-related disasters have resulted in more than 218 million internal displacements over the past ten years. In 2024 the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that natural disasters resulted in more than double the number of internal displacements caused by conflict. However, existing definitions and international legal protections for refugees, such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, do not extend to those displaced by climate or environmental factors and terms such as “climate refugee” are not recognised under international law. Understanding the scale and direction of climate mobility is not a straightforward endeavour, but one, the article argues, that is increasingly important.
