| Iran's nuclear programme |
After the IAEA’s Board of Governors meets in the week beginning 6 March and discusses the latest report on Iran by Director General Mohammed ElBaradei, the report will be sent without further ado to the UN Security Council for deliberation. The 4–6 February Board meeting put into operation the two-stage strategy decided by the permanent members of the Security Council when they met in London on 30 January – reporting the Iran file to the UN in New York, but giving an extra month for further diplomacy before the Security Council takes action. Iran has not used that month to help its case. |
| Negotiating with the Iraqi insurgency |
US counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq have been dominated by a muscular approach that has failed to produce sustained success. The military thus revisited its overall strategy in August 2004 in an attempt to develop a more overtly political approach and divide the insurgency. Radical non-Iraqi jihadists fighting for militant transnational Islamist objectives were to be split from indigenous Iraqis, and the Iraqi arm of the insurgency had to be drawn into substantive negotiations. The first set of discussions failed because both the US government and the resistance were not organised enough to enter into a meaningful or sustained dialogue. There now appears to be greater coherence on the Iraqi side than before. |
| Britain’s defence-industrial strategy |
The British government has completed an exercise that, if carried through to its conclusions, will mean large changes for the defence industry and for the Ministry of Defence’s acquisition practices. It has tried to establish which capabilities are, from the perspective of defence, essential in an onshore defence industry, and which are not. The Defence Industrial Strategy, published in December 2005, could provide a model for some other countries to follow. |
| The future of nuclear deterrence |
The two developments that could reduce the incentives for the declared and other known nuclear powers to continue to possess nuclear weapons to the point of disarmament are advances in missile defences and more muscular and airtight arms-control regimes. Over the past several years, however, these eventualities have grown more distant. In consequence, some form of nuclear deterrent will probably be regarded as a security imperative for current possessors of nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Others will continue to have incentives to acquire such capabilities. |
| Southeast Asia’s naval forces |
Southeast Asian states face an unprecedented range of maritime security challenges, but the new naval capabilities that they are attempting to develop – at great cost – are not always relevant to the most acute threats. These are increasingly generated by non-state actors, rather than rival states. To respond to these concerns effectively, some Southeast Asian states might need to invest less in developing capabilities based on large, guided-missile equipped warships and submarines and more in coast-guard type forces equipped with large numbers of relatively inexpensive patrol vessels. |
