I heard on the World at One (BBC) – on the 3rd – several speakers talking about the closure (or winding down) of the Defence Academy at Shrivenham. The relevant bits run from about minute 7 to minute 15.
The report discusses the closure of the analytical sections of the Defence Academy – with only three junior researchers (their words, not mine) being left in post.
This would be a curious decision on the part of the MoD. Whilst the Defence Academy is undoubtedly flawed (in many respects really), it does bring together some seriously bright people (particularly in what was ARAG-CSRC). The latter has been responsible for some enlightened analysis on Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Whilst the Defence Academy, and non-applied thinking (that which cannot be used this minute now) is clearly low-hanging fruit for bankrupt politicians and treasury bean-counters, it flies in the face of the developments across the pond. Over in the States there is a serious investment in ‘thinking work’; be it through the Human Terrain System, or the twenty-odd thousand analysts employed to pour over the important questions in defence and security. Which, in complex war-fighting environments (mixed in with development and state re-building), has been seen to be incredibly important.. and possibly more important than buying a few helicopters, which should have been bought years ago anyway..
So, my view is that this is a serious blooper from the MoD. We need more thinking and work done on defence, not less. Wrong cut, wrong time.
On the Ali, Tony and Gordon show – it was good to see the former PM fully emboldened on the question of Iraq; it was like he’d consumed the Steve Bell cartoon portrayals and adopted them as his persona. As for the current PM, Clare Short’s testimony that he’d ignored the question of Iraq and instead focussed on being paranoid about his current position.. well, it just sounded all too plausible. More interesting is Alistair Campbell sounding fully behind his former boss, to then sound choked this morning on the Andrew Marr show – whatever one thinks of Campbell, and I am generally speaking in awe, one cannot help but feel that of all the political actors involved in this, Campbell is the one who will reflect on it privately and face his own demons or justifications honestly. The FCO lawyers stood out as shining beacons too, but of the political class on display thus far a heady mixture of the Westminster village and an overdose of hubris has been writ large.. anyhow, this inquiry will be the gift that keeps giving, I’m sure.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Rob, I agree with your assessment of Campbell’s capacity for personal reflection. On Sunday he looked like someone for whom the penny has dropped on the specific issue of intelligence ‘doubt’ and thus the very real prospect of a misleading of Parliament; a question Tony Blair also deflected at the Chilcot Inquiry, when the phrase, ‘your doubt’ was put to him. For Campbell, the previous certainties of his position (the hubris) must feel as if they are being whipped away – we’ve all been there in our lives, albeit on a somewhat different scale.
In another environment (i.e. not a TV interview), had Campbell not paused in order to gain composure, one could quite easily imagine him pleading for sentencing leniency instead.
Off message – but I’d like to draw attention to this week’s Private Eye where KCL and JSCSC receive front-page billing! I wonder which are the ‘historians’ who this has caused concern to?
The crux of the matter here for King’s is that the loss of ARAG will lead the MoD to put more pressure on King’s own DSD department to produce more soul-destroying directed research. Kings have treated DSD as a cash cow for years, but the only thing that makes it semi-bearable to work there has been preservation of the traditional academic freedom to conduct independent research which doesn’t necessarily have immediate contemporary relevance. The real cause of complaint here I suspect is that what KCL deliver at JSCSC is about to be put into sharp focus by the loss of the ‘spare capacity’ represented by ARAG.
Pericles, was your piece on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan directed research or a topic which just took your fancy? I really liked it. Used it in my COIN course last week. In fact I’ve drawn from it quite a few ideas from it which I will use from a debate we’re doing here on the 23rd on ‘what does success in Afghanistan look like?’ It’s me, MGEN Gordon Messenger and Theo Farrell. I’m planning to say that if we could manage it as well as the Soviets did we should be be relieved at the lucky break. There are worse ways to leave–ones which it would prove much more difficult to portray as any sort of success. I read somewhere Boris Gromov quoted as arguing that it was vital that we stay–or at least not be seen to scuttle from the place in unseemly haste.
Hi Dave
No, that was just a piece that took my fancy, I’ve always liked reading Gareev, as memory serves we both shared a kind of admiration for the guy. Which is indirectly kind of also what I was getting at-directed research is not terrible per se, but it’s not why most people become academics, and it’s not necessarily going to produce terribly inspired work. If you liked the article, you’re most welcome to pilfer it for ideas/arguments, and anything that is good about it, dare I say it, is a product of the fact I wasn’t compelled to look at that particular subject by anybody. I genuinely admired the ARAG people, both because they produced some good product to deadlines, they had some true giants in the field who were just quietly always very very good (Charles Blandy for example), but also because they took away the pressure that one in DSD always felt could potentially be turned on us to be more ‘relevant.’ I do think there is a broader question raised by all of this as well about where in the UK one should position a RAND-style organisation, because we probably do need one. I just think it would be a real mistake by contrast to assume you can instead double-hat all lecturing academics to work on doctrine, but I fear it may come to look like an increasingly attractive ‘austerity’ measure. I hope I’m wrong.
Yes, I like Gareev. Coincidentally I was looking at Kipp’s translation of Gareev’s If War Comes Tomorrow? recently and I must say for a thing written in the mid-90s about the future of war it stands up pretty well. Beats the hell out of Owens’ Lifting the Fog of War at any rate.
Speaking of Russian generals though, I think the fellow we admitted a shared admiration for was Akhromeyev who was also no slouch intellectually but whom I admired for having the power of conviction. He came back from retirement to support the coup against Gorbachev and when it failed he killed himself. Compared to the other coup-plotters (drunken and feckless, generally), and to the Soviet elite by and large (cheerfully transitioning from Soviet oligopoly to post-Soviet kleptocracy), I always thought that noteworthy. I don’t recall anyone else falling on their sword.