This report assesses the costs and benefits to the UK of its defence and security relationship with Saudi Arabia, as well as the extent to which the UK is able to exert leverage and influence over Saudi Arabian foreign policy. Read more
This report is a first attempt to evaluate the gaps between contemporary strategies and activities in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Read more
Between 2004-2015 Britain engaged in capacity building operations across Yemen’s police, military, and intelligence agencies. This briefing seeks to provide a critical review of these efforts, their successes, and the causes of their ultimate failure, in order to identify lessons for future training and assistance missions. Read more
This briefing looks at those issues and also the reaction of the main actors in the current complex civil war – the Assad regime, Russia and Iran as well as the Kurds, Turkey, Islamic State (IS), Israel and Saudi Arabia. It also makes an initial assessment of the consequences of the attack. Read more
This briefing updates these earlier analyses and discusses political developments in Europe, the United States and Iran. It examines the risk that markedly rising tensions in the coming months pose a significant risk of an unintended escalation to violent conflict. Read more
To move towards a resolution, recognising that the time may not yet be ripe for a meaningful peace agreement, ORG and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies (SCSS) are working to strengthen local capacity for more inclusive and strategic dialogue in two of Yemen’s key regions, Marib and Hadhramout. Read more
This primer explains what presence, relations and obligations the UK military has in the Arabian Peninsula, including the six monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Yemen, as well as the international waters of the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. Read more
20 March 2018 will mark the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Despite President Trump’s confident assertions that the Islamic State is defeated there and in Syria, if ORG’s predictions from before that invasion continue to hold true, we may be only half-way through a generational struggle. Indeed, dispersal of combatants from Iraq and Syria means that this is becoming an increasingly globalised war in which the West is ill-equipped to prevail. Read more
This report summarises the discussion at a roundtable on the war in Yemen and the potential for supporting peacebuilding capacity in the region. The event took place on 1 December 2017 at the Conflict Analysis Research Centre (CARC) at the University of Kent and was a joint event organised by CARC and Oxford Research Group (ORG). The roundtable took place under the Chatham House Rule, so comments are not attributed to specific individuals or the organisations they are affiliated to. Read more
On 21 December 2017 the Palestine Strategy Group (PSG) published the English translation of its most recent strategic report: Relations between Palestinians across the Green Line. Read more
This briefing therefore looks back to 2002 in making a preliminary assessment of where we are now. Is the war with IS really over, are new forms of warfare effective, has the attitude to the “Axis of Evil” changed, especially in the case of Iran and North Korea, and is there still a need to consider other approaches to security? Read more
Despite winning a historic fourth term as German Chancellor, Angela Merkel is in her weakest political position yet, having lost millions of votes to the far right. This is likely to further harden Germany’s once generous position on admitting refugees and bolster European resolve to securitise migration policy within African states. Read more
Did we really need 2.6 million words and 7 years of investigations to be told we should be making better decisions when we go to war? Oxford Research Group was clear – as is now decidedly stated in the Chilcot report – that invasion would intensify the risks of internal strife and Al-Qaeda activity in Iraq. But there was no room for critics of the war as a small sofa cabal of advisors to Tony Blair were already convinced of the its efficacy. Read more
After three years and over 22,000 air strikes, the Levantine ‘Caliphate’ manifestation of the Islamic State seems destined for destruction in 2017. Yet the revolt of radicalised Sunni Arabs is unlikely to abate in Iraq or Syria, with the battlefield shifting to localised guerrilla insurgency, increasing attacks within western states, and the opening of new fronts in the global margins, not least Asia and Africa. Read more
It is possible that the Trump administration's signal of readiness to tolerate Assad encouraged the Syrian government to barge ahead for more military gain and to use gas against its own citizens. Read more
Is the Trump era likely to make a major difference to the global security outlook or is it more likely that realities of international relations will limit the capacity for the change Trump seeks? Read more
One of the concerns of Oxford Research Group over more than thirty years has been to explore conflicts and tensions as viewed by the parties directly involved. If seeking to do so involves areas of fundamental disagreement this can be subject to considerable criticism, a case in point being any attempt to see the world from an al-Qaida or Islamic State (IS) perspective. Even so, ORG would argue that it is a necessary task, and there are a number of ways of going about it. Read more
This Airwars study for the Remote Control Project explores transparency and accountability issues within the US-led Coalition. It is based partly on in-depth briefings from senior officials from four sample belligerents (the US, Canada, the UK and Denmark) – and in part on two years of extensive Airwars modelling of the war against ISIL. Read more
This briefing by Emily Knowles examines the extent of the UK’s involvement in the current crisis in Yemen. Read more
The paper sets Yemen’s multiple conflicts in the context of the ‘remote control’ approach to warfare – focusing on the use of special forces, mercenaries and armed drones. It highlights the moral and political risks for Western governments training and arming regional protagonists, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Read more
This briefing continues the analysis by looking at the wider issues that were mentioned in the June briefing and that appear to be aiding support for IS in the Middle East, North Africa and the wider world. Read more
This briefing brings in the other major issue in the current conflict, the state of the bitter and hugely violent civil war in Syria, brought to the fore during the latter part of September by a partial ceasefire which subsequently collapsed. Read more
This paper offers an overall conceptual framework for the venture. What is the difference between strategic studies and conflict resolution? Why do strategic studies and conflict resolution both need to adapt in response to changing patterns of contemporary conflict? How can they mutually inform each other? And what are some of the wider implications for possible future collaborative work? Read more
There have been many developments in the past month which relate to the current position of IS and while they complicate the view that IS is in serious and possibly terminal decline, they do throw light on the wider dimension of a possible post-IS world. Read more