News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is a cyber policy competition run by the Atlantic Council for students on both sides of the pond, with an annual competition event dedicated to UK universities and supported by the UK government. This year the competition took place virtually and we were lucky to be […]
Beirut, 4 August 2020. In the midst of what came to be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history, an image of a young nurse holding three premature infants while clutching a telephone, surrounded by blood, chaos and destruction, went viral. The picture not only spoke of the young […]
For the past year I have been running a humanitarian mission in Yemen. It is not the first armed conflict I witness, yet the scale of carnage and suffering, destruction to civilian infrastructure, and continuous collapse of peace negotiations have been shocking. Nonetheless, the past few months have left me […]
Most diplomats and policymakers who decide their nation’s security policy or shape UN resolutions in New York and Geneva on conflicts in Syria, Yemen or Mali have never lived through a war, or seen one close-up. Like most of us, they must imagine war. They must see it in their […]
A couple of years ago I found a letter from the Red Cross dated 1997, responding to an enquiry from my mother. They had received her file on her missing brother who was killed during the Srebrenica Genocide in 1995 and confirmed they would undertake an investigation to find his […]
The devastating toll of the coronavirus pandemic has ignited a debate about the intersection of public health and national security. Once recognised as global leaders in pandemic preparedness, the United States and the United Kingdom have struggled to integrate policy responses to COVID-19 into existing security frameworks and to allocate resources accordingly. Indeed, public health spending in both countries pales in comparison to spending on counter-terrorism, even though more America lives have […]
The role of law enforcement during the COVID-19 crisis has come into sharp focus the world over. Last April, the Blavatnik School of Government organised a webinar for its alumni on policing and pandemics. Led by Christopher Stone, Professor of Practice of Public Integrity at the School and international expert […]
Donald Trump’s pledge to withdraw US ground troops from Syria and Afghanistan has become one of the most controversial foreign policy decisions of his presidency. The political backlash following Trump’s abrupt announcement to immediately remove all 2,000 troops from Syria last December has caused a series of partial reversals, with […]