Gary Cartwright
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Gary Cartwright
Britain’s Defence Crisis Is the Product of Political Failure Across Two Governments
The revelation that Britain’s entire available fleet of hunter-killer submarines has reportedly been confined to dockyards for maintenance and repair should have triggered a political earthquake. Instead, it has been greeted with the sort of weary resignation that has become…
Britain’s Defence Delusion: A Nation Rearming in Slow Motion
As Europe confronts its most dangerous security environment since the end of the Cold War, Britain’s political leadership appears trapped in a familiar cycle: ambitious declarations, strategic reviews and spending pledges that repeatedly fail to translate into meaningful action. The…
Duty, Courage and Chance: The Remarkable Life of D-Day Veteran Bill Redston
The death of Royal Navy veteran Bill Redston at the age of 101, just days before today’s 82nd anniversary of D-Day, marks the passing of a man whose life spanned some of the defining events of the modern era. It…
Europe’s Army Dream Faces a Reality Check
Strategic autonomy sounds compelling. However, building a European army would be far harder than Brussels admits. For decades, the notion of a European army has hovered over Brussels like a political mirage. It reappears whenever the transatlantic relationship comes under…
Britain’s Military Industrial Base Is Growing — But Not Fast Enough
For much of the post-Cold War era, Britain treated defence manufacturing as an industrial inheritance rather than a strategic necessity. Shipyards shrank, ammunition plants closed, and procurement policy drifted towards a model that prioritised global supply chains over sovereign capability.…
How Trump Is Weakening the Atlantic Alliance
For decades, the great strategic assumption underpinning the Western alliance was simple: the United States might at times be impatient, overbearing or self-interested, but it remained fundamentally committed to the security and sovereignty of its allies. That assumption is now…
Keir Starmer Promises Rearmament While His Government Unravels
For a Prime Minister fighting for his political life, there is nothing quite so comforting as a large number with a pound sign in front of it. Sir Keir Starmer’s reported £18 billion “boost” to defence spending has all the…
Tristan da Cunha: How Britain’s Paratroopers Pulled Off a Modern Miracle
Every so often an operation comes along that reminds the country precisely why the British soldier still commands admiration across the world. The extraordinary parachute mission to Tristan da Cunha — the world’s most remote inhabited island — was one…
The Decline of British Military Power Is Europe’s Greatest Security Risk
For decades Britain has comforted itself with a dangerous fiction: that it remains one of the world’s foremost military powers. The uniforms are still impressive, the ceremonial pageantry remains unmatched, and politicians continue to speak the language of “global Britain”…
Trump’s Blind Spot: How America’s European Bases Serve Washington, Not Brussels
Donald Trump’s periodic threats to reduce—or even dismantle—America’s military footprint in Europe betray a strikingly narrow understanding of what those bases are for. The popular shorthand, often repeated in political rhetoric, is that the United States stations troops in Europe…