Security and Defence

Over the past five decades the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has become the most important independent forum for the exchange of views by international security policy decision-makers. Each year it brings together about 350 senior figures from more than 70 countries around the world to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges.

One is struck with an unsettling scenario when watching Skyfall: an unseen invader reaches into your infrastructure from afar and manages to cause untold chaos and carnage whilst sat behind his desk sipping Red Bull. Cyber-terrorism is yet to approach its zenith, but that time is not very far away.

In 1405 A.D. the legendary Admiral Zheng He set the sails of his mighty armada for the first time. Over the following decades he went on seven journeys for the Emperors of the Ming dynasty. With up to 300 vessels and 30,000 men he came as far as Burma and India. China was the dominant naval power in the world – until Emperor Zhengtong had the entire fleet burnt down.

In the current round of nuclear talks with Iran, the international community must not be guided by dreams but by reality. Too often, the world has been deceived by the regime in Tehran. The sanctions have to be kept in place.

The attack on Nairobi demonstrated that al Shabaab has peaked and is attempting to reverse its seemingly unstoppable decline.

Yom Kippur, October 6th 1973, at five minutes past two precisely, 4,000 artillery pieces, 250 aircraft and dozens of FROG missiles struck Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and the Sinai, at the same time along the Golan Heights 1,400 tanks advanced towards Israel.

Whilst al-Qaeda has never been a particularly centralised organisation, in recent years it appears to have shifted from a model of a centralised franchise, which supports other groups to carry out attacks in their name, to a fractured structure of regional groups, each with its own internal politics and personal missions.

The EU somehow managed to cover up its failure in Libya and Mali, but the disaster of its Syria policy cannot be squashed as easily. The time has come for the member states to ask themselves how far they want to go in terms of a common foreign and security policy.

Whilst it is widely agreed that the Arab Spring will have an enormous impact on al-Qaeda and the worldwide jihadist movement, there is no consensus on what this impact will look like. On one hand, there are optimists like Fawaz Gerges and Peter Bergen who think the Arab-Spring is a death blow to the jihadist movement.

The RAF interception of Syrian Jets over Cyprus is a sign that Britain can still be sucked into Syrian intervention through regional spill over and unforeseen events.