No Such Thing as a Quick Fix: The Aspiration-Capabilities Gap in British Remote Warfare

Emily Knowles and Abigail Watson

July 30 2018

The current gap between aspirations and activities heightens the risk that contemporary British military activity is not sufficiently integrated into an overarching political strategy. This report is a first attempt to evaluate the gaps between contemporary strategies and activities in Iraq, Syria and Libya. It is structured around two main sections:

Analysing the post-Iraq changes to the internal decision-making structure and the system of external oversight in the UK.
The long-term prognosis for stability and the strategic coherence of current military operations, focussing on the antiIS Coalition in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Image credit: ECHO/DDG/Flickr

About the authors

Emily Knowles is Director of the Remote Warfare Programme.

Abigail Watson is a Senior Research Officer at the Remote Warfare Programme.

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