Hybrid warfare has been an important topic in much of Western national security discourse in the ... more Hybrid warfare has been an important topic in much of Western national security discourse in the past five years, albeit with many different labels. The concept is problematic in that it can be applied to a range of activities that, while coercive, might have been considered part of routine statecraft and has been applied to a range of contexts where the actual activities being described are quite different. In this article, Ewan Lawson discusses how the concept of hybrid warfare is important for policymakers as it reinforces the idea that conflict and competition should not be seen through a simple peace–war dichotomy. It also highlights the importance of a whole-of-government response and the risk of seeing it through a purely military prism.◼
burden of EOKA intimidation from the necks of the Greek Cypriot community’. Members of EOKA manag... more burden of EOKA intimidation from the necks of the Greek Cypriot community’. Members of EOKA managed to kill more Cypriots than British, targeting Turkish Cypriots, those on the left who sought self-determination through peaceful means, and anyone it suspected rightly or wrongly, of being ‘informers’. David French has produced a detailed, incisive assessment of the British response to the EOKA revolt, its failures and relative successes. His account is a welcome addition to existing literature on the subject, not least because of the clarity of his writing and his ability to clearly contextualise individual acts of violence within the broader political picture.
This commentary briefly reviews the challenges associated with the concept of cyber deterrence. I... more This commentary briefly reviews the challenges associated with the concept of cyber deterrence. It considers the concept of deterrence more broadly before identifying the specific issues that make both deterrence by denial and by punishment particularly difficult in cyberspace. However, overall, it argues that the concept is valid and indeed essential in contributing to delivering strategic stability.
The nature of the geostrategic and military challenges facing the UK and NATO is changing in ways... more The nature of the geostrategic and military challenges facing the UK and NATO is changing in ways that necessitate a significant rethink of the approach to defence, Ewan Lawson and Richard Barrons argue. Developments in technology have the potential to redress the balance but only with new conceptual approaches and a commitment to spend appropriately.
The cultural heritage sector has huge amounts of metadata about their collections. Much of this s... more The cultural heritage sector has huge amounts of metadata about their collections. Much of this sits in isolation in institutional silos. To a limited extent, institutional metadata has been made
conversation. Central to the discussion is the exceptionality of Sierra Leone’s formal institutio... more conversation. Central to the discussion is the exceptionality of Sierra Leone’s formal institutions. After all, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was not only unique in its foundations – as the world’s first court to be administered jointly by the UN and the government of Sierra Leone – but also established new legal precedents for what constitutes a crime against humanity, and was the first to indict a head of state for his crimes in another state. Furthermore, it was the first internationalised tribunal to work alongside a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) – designed to produce a report on the causes and contours of the war based on the testimony of victims and perpetrators – in a formal two-track process. Though acknowledging arguments made by ethnographers such as Rosalind Shaw and Tim Kelsall regarding the merits of ‘directed social forgetting’ postconflict, the volume is largely legalistic in character. Alternating its lens between microand macro-level processes, it explores two main questions: first, how success should be defined in transitional justice; and second, how broadly lessons of success/failure in transitional-justice schemes might be applied in new contexts. To answer those two main questions, it aims to distinguish between norms of good practice (that is, beliefs regarding what effective transitional justice entails) and more objective, evidence-based assessments of impact. Despite the evidence of reconciliation in Sierra Leone and the groundbreaking nature of a formal two-track approach to transitional justice, the contributors to Evaluating Transitional Justice differ greatly in their appraisal of what effect the SCSL and its partner TRC had on the preservation of peace. While Brenda J Hollis, prosecutor of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, lauds the success of the SCSL in fulfilling its mandate of delivering retribution and accountability, arguing in her chapter that it enabled good-governance reforms, Wayne Jordash and Matthew R Crowe challenge assertions of fairness in the SCSL trials in their chapter. Inequality, they write, struck ‘at the heart of the SCSL legacy’: while members of the government-backed CDF received a fair application of international law, the RUF ‘suffered from a surfeit of novel principles designed to ensure that the accused were convicted’ (p. 120). The contributors similarly differ in their observation of how political drivers informed the design and implementation of the peace process. Chris Mahony, for example, draws attention in his chapter to the broader politics surrounding the court’s creation and argues that it was an ‘instrument’ for the UK and US to effect their strategy of regime change in Liberia and to ensure the protection of the administration of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in Sierra Leone. Kieran Mitton, by contrast, focuses on the political dynamics within Sierra Leone – citing the fragile but pragmatic ‘pact of accommodation’ that allowed the war to end and the need for deeper reconciliation on a communal level. The power of the international agenda to shape local attitudes and practices is yet another source of dispute. While Mohamed Sesay uses his chapter to describe how international law undermined customary traditions in Sierra Leone, Rebekka Friedman describes how local activists effectively resisted and supplanted an international agenda through their own local restorativejustice programmes. She cites the NGO Fambul Tok (Krio for Family Talk) – which organises local bonfire ceremonies to promote community-level reconciliation – as an example of how spontaneous and traditional practices can emerge from more formal, programmatic approaches. Evaluating Transitional Justice seeks less to derive consensus on what worked in Sierra Leone so much as to generate awareness regarding how priorities and biases varied among local and international actors. Ambitiously holistic in approach, it showcases the divergent uses of seemingly straightforward concepts like ‘success’ and ‘accountability’, and thus makes an invaluable contribution to the current scholarship on transitional justice. While the reader certainly comes away with useful lessons regarding the importance of long-term planning and adequate funding, the volume is inconclusive by design. On the one hand, it celebrates the role of the international community in facilitating the SCSL and TRC so that Sierra Leone could pursue justice and promote truth. On the other hand, there is a sense among some of the contributions that anything international is – by default – antithetical to local aims, and that this was the case in Sierra Leone. It is perhaps an unsurprising paradox: local ownership often depends on external engagement, while external engagement often undermines local ownership. Nevertheless, while the reader is left eager for greater arbitration between competing claims and less ‘reflexivity’, Kirsten Ainley’s term for evaluating multiple perspectives with due…
Violent conflict continues to be a drain on Africa economically, and a disruption politically. Ef... more Violent conflict continues to be a drain on Africa economically, and a disruption politically. Efforts at conflict prevention and peacekeeping have grown in scale with the UN firmly in the lead in the latter with substantial missions in Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The African Union Peace and Security Architecture continues to develop with the aspiration to replace the UN as the focus for peace and security in Africa. Key to the African Union’s success will be its relationships with the regional organisations within the continent although the development of these is inconsistent. Whilst ECOWAS continues to develop strongly in West Africa for example, North Africa regional organisations generally remain underdeveloped. Given the continuing need to build peace and security across Africa, perhaps the focus at this time should switch from the regions to the state with the African Union acting as a broker in bringing together ‘coal...
As the UK reviews its 2010 Protection of Civilians (PoC) strategy, RUSI and Save the Children hav... more As the UK reviews its 2010 Protection of Civilians (PoC) strategy, RUSI and Save the Children have conducted research on how to strengthen the content and the implementation of the new strategy, with the aim of contributing to critical thinking around the review. The research included two roundtables and 15 semi-structured interviews and draws on the experiences of experts that sit both within and outside government seeking to protect civilians in armed conflict. This Whitehall Report sets out these reflections in three parts. The first outlines key challenges for the creation of a new strategy, shining a spotlight on differing perspectives on definitions and the format a strategy should take. The authors recommend the new strategy focuses on ensuring a common understanding of protection and of the UK’s role in PoC, including providing clear guidance to the various actors across government of their roles in achieving this goal. Second, the report sets out the main factors for the success of a new strategy, arguing this needs to raise awareness, to take into account specific protection needs of vulnerable groups, including through meaningful engagement with communities to address their key protection concerns, and to respond to emerging challenges which have appeared in conflicts over the past decade. Third, the report explores the essential elements a strategy should include to translate protection into policy and practice within the diplomatic, defence and aid sectors. To achieve this goal, the UK government should adopt a cross-Whitehall approach, ensure processes and frameworks effectively operationalise the strategy, include mechanisms to track civilian harm and record civilian casualties, and strengthen key training on protection as well as frameworks for civil–military cooperation. All these measures are critical for the integrity of civilian protection objectives working from policy to operations in conflict and for the UK to play a vital role in leading and shaping the global agenda on the protection of civilians
Hybrid warfare has been an important topic in much of Western national security discourse in the ... more Hybrid warfare has been an important topic in much of Western national security discourse in the past five years, albeit with many different labels. The concept is problematic in that it can be applied to a range of activities that, while coercive, might have been considered part of routine statecraft and has been applied to a range of contexts where the actual activities being described are quite different. In this article, Ewan Lawson discusses how the concept of hybrid warfare is important for policymakers as it reinforces the idea that conflict and competition should not be seen through a simple peace–war dichotomy. It also highlights the importance of a whole-of-government response and the risk of seeing it through a purely military prism.◼
burden of EOKA intimidation from the necks of the Greek Cypriot community’. Members of EOKA manag... more burden of EOKA intimidation from the necks of the Greek Cypriot community’. Members of EOKA managed to kill more Cypriots than British, targeting Turkish Cypriots, those on the left who sought self-determination through peaceful means, and anyone it suspected rightly or wrongly, of being ‘informers’. David French has produced a detailed, incisive assessment of the British response to the EOKA revolt, its failures and relative successes. His account is a welcome addition to existing literature on the subject, not least because of the clarity of his writing and his ability to clearly contextualise individual acts of violence within the broader political picture.
This commentary briefly reviews the challenges associated with the concept of cyber deterrence. I... more This commentary briefly reviews the challenges associated with the concept of cyber deterrence. It considers the concept of deterrence more broadly before identifying the specific issues that make both deterrence by denial and by punishment particularly difficult in cyberspace. However, overall, it argues that the concept is valid and indeed essential in contributing to delivering strategic stability.
The nature of the geostrategic and military challenges facing the UK and NATO is changing in ways... more The nature of the geostrategic and military challenges facing the UK and NATO is changing in ways that necessitate a significant rethink of the approach to defence, Ewan Lawson and Richard Barrons argue. Developments in technology have the potential to redress the balance but only with new conceptual approaches and a commitment to spend appropriately.
The cultural heritage sector has huge amounts of metadata about their collections. Much of this s... more The cultural heritage sector has huge amounts of metadata about their collections. Much of this sits in isolation in institutional silos. To a limited extent, institutional metadata has been made
conversation. Central to the discussion is the exceptionality of Sierra Leone’s formal institutio... more conversation. Central to the discussion is the exceptionality of Sierra Leone’s formal institutions. After all, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was not only unique in its foundations – as the world’s first court to be administered jointly by the UN and the government of Sierra Leone – but also established new legal precedents for what constitutes a crime against humanity, and was the first to indict a head of state for his crimes in another state. Furthermore, it was the first internationalised tribunal to work alongside a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) – designed to produce a report on the causes and contours of the war based on the testimony of victims and perpetrators – in a formal two-track process. Though acknowledging arguments made by ethnographers such as Rosalind Shaw and Tim Kelsall regarding the merits of ‘directed social forgetting’ postconflict, the volume is largely legalistic in character. Alternating its lens between microand macro-level processes, it explores two main questions: first, how success should be defined in transitional justice; and second, how broadly lessons of success/failure in transitional-justice schemes might be applied in new contexts. To answer those two main questions, it aims to distinguish between norms of good practice (that is, beliefs regarding what effective transitional justice entails) and more objective, evidence-based assessments of impact. Despite the evidence of reconciliation in Sierra Leone and the groundbreaking nature of a formal two-track approach to transitional justice, the contributors to Evaluating Transitional Justice differ greatly in their appraisal of what effect the SCSL and its partner TRC had on the preservation of peace. While Brenda J Hollis, prosecutor of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, lauds the success of the SCSL in fulfilling its mandate of delivering retribution and accountability, arguing in her chapter that it enabled good-governance reforms, Wayne Jordash and Matthew R Crowe challenge assertions of fairness in the SCSL trials in their chapter. Inequality, they write, struck ‘at the heart of the SCSL legacy’: while members of the government-backed CDF received a fair application of international law, the RUF ‘suffered from a surfeit of novel principles designed to ensure that the accused were convicted’ (p. 120). The contributors similarly differ in their observation of how political drivers informed the design and implementation of the peace process. Chris Mahony, for example, draws attention in his chapter to the broader politics surrounding the court’s creation and argues that it was an ‘instrument’ for the UK and US to effect their strategy of regime change in Liberia and to ensure the protection of the administration of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in Sierra Leone. Kieran Mitton, by contrast, focuses on the political dynamics within Sierra Leone – citing the fragile but pragmatic ‘pact of accommodation’ that allowed the war to end and the need for deeper reconciliation on a communal level. The power of the international agenda to shape local attitudes and practices is yet another source of dispute. While Mohamed Sesay uses his chapter to describe how international law undermined customary traditions in Sierra Leone, Rebekka Friedman describes how local activists effectively resisted and supplanted an international agenda through their own local restorativejustice programmes. She cites the NGO Fambul Tok (Krio for Family Talk) – which organises local bonfire ceremonies to promote community-level reconciliation – as an example of how spontaneous and traditional practices can emerge from more formal, programmatic approaches. Evaluating Transitional Justice seeks less to derive consensus on what worked in Sierra Leone so much as to generate awareness regarding how priorities and biases varied among local and international actors. Ambitiously holistic in approach, it showcases the divergent uses of seemingly straightforward concepts like ‘success’ and ‘accountability’, and thus makes an invaluable contribution to the current scholarship on transitional justice. While the reader certainly comes away with useful lessons regarding the importance of long-term planning and adequate funding, the volume is inconclusive by design. On the one hand, it celebrates the role of the international community in facilitating the SCSL and TRC so that Sierra Leone could pursue justice and promote truth. On the other hand, there is a sense among some of the contributions that anything international is – by default – antithetical to local aims, and that this was the case in Sierra Leone. It is perhaps an unsurprising paradox: local ownership often depends on external engagement, while external engagement often undermines local ownership. Nevertheless, while the reader is left eager for greater arbitration between competing claims and less ‘reflexivity’, Kirsten Ainley’s term for evaluating multiple perspectives with due…
Violent conflict continues to be a drain on Africa economically, and a disruption politically. Ef... more Violent conflict continues to be a drain on Africa economically, and a disruption politically. Efforts at conflict prevention and peacekeeping have grown in scale with the UN firmly in the lead in the latter with substantial missions in Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The African Union Peace and Security Architecture continues to develop with the aspiration to replace the UN as the focus for peace and security in Africa. Key to the African Union’s success will be its relationships with the regional organisations within the continent although the development of these is inconsistent. Whilst ECOWAS continues to develop strongly in West Africa for example, North Africa regional organisations generally remain underdeveloped. Given the continuing need to build peace and security across Africa, perhaps the focus at this time should switch from the regions to the state with the African Union acting as a broker in bringing together ‘coal...
As the UK reviews its 2010 Protection of Civilians (PoC) strategy, RUSI and Save the Children hav... more As the UK reviews its 2010 Protection of Civilians (PoC) strategy, RUSI and Save the Children have conducted research on how to strengthen the content and the implementation of the new strategy, with the aim of contributing to critical thinking around the review. The research included two roundtables and 15 semi-structured interviews and draws on the experiences of experts that sit both within and outside government seeking to protect civilians in armed conflict. This Whitehall Report sets out these reflections in three parts. The first outlines key challenges for the creation of a new strategy, shining a spotlight on differing perspectives on definitions and the format a strategy should take. The authors recommend the new strategy focuses on ensuring a common understanding of protection and of the UK’s role in PoC, including providing clear guidance to the various actors across government of their roles in achieving this goal. Second, the report sets out the main factors for the success of a new strategy, arguing this needs to raise awareness, to take into account specific protection needs of vulnerable groups, including through meaningful engagement with communities to address their key protection concerns, and to respond to emerging challenges which have appeared in conflicts over the past decade. Third, the report explores the essential elements a strategy should include to translate protection into policy and practice within the diplomatic, defence and aid sectors. To achieve this goal, the UK government should adopt a cross-Whitehall approach, ensure processes and frameworks effectively operationalise the strategy, include mechanisms to track civilian harm and record civilian casualties, and strengthen key training on protection as well as frameworks for civil–military cooperation. All these measures are critical for the integrity of civilian protection objectives working from policy to operations in conflict and for the UK to play a vital role in leading and shaping the global agenda on the protection of civilians
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Papers by Ewan Lawson
This Whitehall Report sets out these reflections in three parts. The first outlines key challenges for the creation of a new strategy, shining a spotlight on differing perspectives on definitions and the format a strategy should take. The authors recommend the new strategy focuses on ensuring a common understanding of protection and of the UK’s role in PoC, including providing clear guidance to the various actors across government of their roles in achieving this goal.
Second, the report sets out the main factors for the success of a new strategy, arguing this needs to raise awareness, to take into account specific protection needs of vulnerable groups, including through meaningful engagement with communities to address their key protection concerns, and to respond to emerging challenges which have appeared in conflicts over the past decade.
Third, the report explores the essential elements a strategy should include to translate protection into policy and practice within the diplomatic, defence and aid sectors. To achieve this goal, the UK government should adopt a cross-Whitehall approach, ensure processes and frameworks effectively operationalise the strategy, include mechanisms to track civilian harm and record civilian casualties, and strengthen key training on protection as well as frameworks for
civil–military cooperation.
All these measures are critical for the integrity of civilian protection objectives working from policy to operations in conflict and for the UK to play a vital role in leading and shaping the global agenda on the protection of civilians
This Whitehall Report sets out these reflections in three parts. The first outlines key challenges for the creation of a new strategy, shining a spotlight on differing perspectives on definitions and the format a strategy should take. The authors recommend the new strategy focuses on ensuring a common understanding of protection and of the UK’s role in PoC, including providing clear guidance to the various actors across government of their roles in achieving this goal.
Second, the report sets out the main factors for the success of a new strategy, arguing this needs to raise awareness, to take into account specific protection needs of vulnerable groups, including through meaningful engagement with communities to address their key protection concerns, and to respond to emerging challenges which have appeared in conflicts over the past decade.
Third, the report explores the essential elements a strategy should include to translate protection into policy and practice within the diplomatic, defence and aid sectors. To achieve this goal, the UK government should adopt a cross-Whitehall approach, ensure processes and frameworks effectively operationalise the strategy, include mechanisms to track civilian harm and record civilian casualties, and strengthen key training on protection as well as frameworks for
civil–military cooperation.
All these measures are critical for the integrity of civilian protection objectives working from policy to operations in conflict and for the UK to play a vital role in leading and shaping the global agenda on the protection of civilians