Gary Cartwright
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Gary Cartwright
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…
Britain Faces a “Severe” Threat — But Starmer Won’t Say From Whom
The decision to raise Britain’s national threat level to “severe” — meaning an attack is now “highly likely” — should have been one of those moments demanding clarity, honesty, and resolve. Instead, what we have from Sir Keir Starmer’s government…
Ypres Reveals Its Dead: Two Lost Officers of 1915 Finally Identified
The long silence of the Western Front has a way of keeping its secrets. Even now, more than a century after the guns fell quiet, the earth around Ypres still yields the dead — and, occasionally, their names. This week,…
Bucharest Backs Europe’s Defence Ambitions with €8.3bn Boost
Romania has taken a step towards strengthening both its own security and that of Europe as a whole, after lawmakers in Bucharest approved €8.33 billion worth of EU-funded defence contracts. The move, passed with commendable urgency, clears the final political…
The Falkland Islands: A Dispute Settled in Battle, Confirmed in Law, Revived in Politics
Argentina’s periodic reawakening of its claim over the Falkland Islands is as predictable as it is politically useful. Each resurgence tends to coincide less with any meaningful shift in international law than with domestic pressures in Buenos Aires. The latest…