DOCSLIB.ORG

Download Journal

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download Journal Inspiring Issue 3 2019 Join the The challenge combinations to institutions Anthony Painter asks conversationRawthmells is open Mon-Fri, how we can create a new J Rawthmells8.30am–9pm. is Joinopen us Mon–Fri, for coffee, 8.30am– institutional landscape OURNAL 9pm.all-day Join dining us for and coffee, cocktails, all-day and dining andbe inspired cocktails, by andour befantastic inspired offers: by our Pankaj Mishra on inequality, fantastic offers: democracy, nationalism and compassion JUNE Baroness Wolf addresses Celebrate the start of British summer with a Whitehall’s shortcomings 10%glass of Pimm’sdiscount paired with potted for salmon JULY anyDo it the groupFrench way and booking enjoy a glass ofof Crémant over with 10a cheese people plate AUGUST OfferMake theavailable most of 6pm–9pm the last days Mon–Fri of summer Emailsunshine [email protected] with an Aperol Spritz and to savecicchetti your space ONLY £5, from 5.30pm each day Not to be used with any other offer All profits from the sale of food and drink help to fund the RSA’s social change programmes OurProfits 21st from century the enlightenmentsale of food and coffeehouse, drink in our Rawthmells,21st century isenlightenment designed to fostercoffeehouse the creative help to thinking fund the and RSA’s collaborative social change action programmes. needed to address Our high- today’squality ingredientssocial challenges. are sourced Take to and The produced Steps, our in linemini-amphitheatre, with best ethical enjoy our livelypractices events and programme, our waste cooking or just comeoils are along collected to enjoy and the converted vibrant atmosphere.into biofuels. Find out more www.thersa.org/coffeehouse Patron of the Society Executive RSA Journal From Georgian grandeur HM The Queen Chief executive officer Editor Matthew Taylor Milena Bellow President Chief operating officer ([email protected]) to ultra-contemporary HRH The Princess Royal Natalie Carsey Creative director Chief research and impact officer Ben Barrett and urban chic Board of Trustees Anthony Painter Senior designer Chair Johan Shufiyan Tim Eyles Publisher Deputy chair RSA (The Royal Society for Emma Fisher Philippa Wilson the encouragement of Arts, Production director Treasurers Manufactures & Commerce), Angela Derbyshire Stephen Gleadle 8 John Adam Street, Production manager Jill Humphrey London WC2N 6EZ Jack Morgan Tel +44 (0)20 7930 5115 Managing director, Wardour Ian Coleman www.thersa.org Claire Oldfield Lucy Griffiths Registered as a charity in England CEO, Wardour Andrea Kershaw and Wales, no. 212424 and in Martin MacConnol Shonagh Manson Scotland no. SC037784 Commissioning editor Charlotte Oades Rachel O’Brien Nick Parker RSA Journal, Volume CLXV Distribution Jan Portillo No. 5579, Issue 3 2019 Richard Caldecourt John Towers ISSN: 0958-0433 The RSA Journal is published for the RSA by Wardour, 5th Floor, Drury House, 34–43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA Tel +44 (0)20 7010 0999 www.wardour.co.uk HE 2019 T T LO • A N E D C O I N V R V Thematic Councillors Area Councillors International Affiliate Chairs E E S N R WINNER U Creative Learning Central North South West Australia and New Zealand E E M A W and Development Peter Clitheroe** Sharon Jandu Stephen Horscroft Mark Strachan O OF THE BEST A T S R U Lucy Griffiths*** Jay Singh-Sohal Pamela Ball Nick Parker* HISTORIC D C S E A Chris McLean Rachel Sharpe Maurice Ward Michelle Preston United States of America U VENUE N N D E S V I L Ric Grefé T V S E E R B F R Economy, Enterprise Ireland Scotland Wales O and Manufacturing Suzanne Lyle Neil McLennan Leonie Ramondt Jan Floyd-Douglass Gerry Scullion Lesley Martin Vacant Ann Thorpe The RSA Journal * Fellowship is printed on 100% Public Services London South East Council (FC) chair recycled paper, Featuring 11 unique event spaces for up to 220 guests, RSA House is the ideal and Communities Bhavani Esapathi Caroline Clark ** FC deputy chair which is Forest Stewardship Council location for your event, whether that’s a conference, party or wedding. Claire Haigh Kuki Taylor Don Mclaverty *** FC Trustee certified and Brian McLeish Ann Longley Jim Zalles representative Carbon Balanced. Hold your event with us from November 2019 to March 2020 and receive up to 50% discount on venue hire and minimum catering spends. Please quote ‘RSA House’ at © The RSA. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without prior permission of the RSA. The RSA and Wardour the time of enquiry. T&Cs apply. accept no responsibility for the views expressed by contributors to the RSA Journal, or for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations, or for errors in articles or advertisements in the RSA Journal. The views expressed in the RSA Journal are not necessarily those held by the RSA or its Trustees. For more information about how we use your personal data, visit www.thersa.org/privacy-policy. 2 RSA Journal Issue 3 2019 Comment Matthew Taylor “Institutions need to be agile and adaptive; as able to learn from failure as scale up success” t home and internationally, we are going not with the concept but with being able to work in through difficult times. It is far from clear this way. Thinking systemically involves developing Awhether we have the capacity to address some parsimonious but insightful ways of understanding of our most pressing challenges. Weak and unpopular the core dynamics of systems. One approach focuses institutions – such as those comprising our democratic on three core drivers of change and of motivation system – not only fail to address these issues, often which interact to hold a system in place: authority, they make matters worse. In this edition of RSA values and incentives. System analysis requires a range Journal, we have taken a closer look at institutions and of quantitative and qualitative data, some of which how we can renew them. As my colleague Anthony will demand close and sustained engagement with key Painter argues in his article, our ability to renew social actors. Having analysed the current position, the next progress relies today, as it has in the past, on whether stage is to envision a new and better equilibrium. This we can build new institutional capacity. visioning process involves convening the main players Whether looking at the media (as Meera Selva does across the system, developing realistic and resilient in her article), aid (Ravi Gurumurthy) or government forms of collaboration and then carefully monitoring (Baroness Wolf), how might we assess whether an progress towards shared aspirations. institution is fit for purpose? Reactively, effectiveness Acting like an entrepreneur means focusing not lies in an ability to manage and respond to change. just on what we want to change but on where change Proactively, it is about being able to articulate and seems most possible. New leadership, technological effectively pursue a progressive purpose. capabilities or shifts in stakeholder or public attitudes There have been many analyses of why public may all be enablers. Change can come seemingly out policies and social interventions so often fail to achieve of the blue. Take the recent award of the Stirling Prize their objectives. Two problems seem particularly to an innovative, green, community-focused council common. First, what could be called the ‘Kerplunk’ housing project in Norwich. Literally overnight, it effect, in which the inherent instability and complexity became much more possible for similar ideas to be of a system confounds efforts to change just one or taken seriously. In addition, institutions need to be two variables. Second, as it is generally necessary to experimental, agile and adaptive; as able to learn from win a mandate to pursue change, interventions suffer failure as scale up success. As Matthew Cain wrote in from forms of path dependency, which make it hard his book, Made to Fail, a common mistake is to fall to adapt when neat plans meet messy reality. Rather too deeply in love with your first idea. than admit that things are not going as intended, As Pankaj Mishra and Katharina Bauer argue from the temptation is to double down. An old colleague their different starting points, focusing on the process of mine, former Number 10 head of strategy Geoff of change should not distract us from difficult and Mulgan, has memorably described this process as inherently political questions about what change we the journey from “evidence-based policymaking” to want to achieve and to whose benefit. Nevertheless, “policy-based evidence making”. at a time of unprecedentedly high levels of social The RSA’s response to these inherent difficulties is pessimism in many countries, it is vital that the RSA a change model we call ‘thinking like a system and shows that, with the right approach, well-intentioned Matthew Taylor is Chief acting like an entrepreneur’. Speaking to a wide people working though effective institutions can still Executive of range of organisational leaders, I find the problem is make a difference. the RSA www.thersa.org 3 Contents ISSUE 3 2019 Long read Medium read 18 A NEW WAY OF GIVING Ravi Gurumurthy proposes a way in which international aid could be improved 34 BREAKING NEWS Meera Selva examines the problems facing the media today 10 A CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY? Anthony Painter addresses our current institutional unravelling. How can we bring about a new institutional landscape? 30 ON GOOD AUTHORITY There are three key areas where the civil service needs to reform, writes Baroness Wolf 40 TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT Matt John puts forward the case for effective service user engagement 24 IN CONVERSATION In a wide-ranging discussion, writer 44 AN AGE OF CHAOS? Pankaj Mishra speaks with Matthew It seems that some people Taylor about democracy, nationalism, just want to watch the capitalism and inequality world burn.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Gaza-Israel: the Legal and the Military View Transcript
    Gaza-Israel: The Legal and the Military View Transcript Date: Wednesday, 7 October 2015 - 6:00PM Location: Barnard's Inn Hall 07 October 2015 Gaza-Israel: The Legal and Military View Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC General Sir Nick Parker For long enough commentators have usually assumed the Israel - Palestine armed conflict might be lawful, even if individual incidents on both sides attracted condemnation. But is that assumption right? May the conflict lack legality altogether, on one side or both? Have there been war crimes committed by both sides as many suggest? The 2014 Israeli – Gaza conflict (that lasted some 52 days and that was called 'Operation Protective Edge' by the Israeli Defence Force) allows a way to explore some of the underlying issues of the overall conflict. General Sir Nick Parker explains how he advised Geoffrey Nice to approach the conflict's legality and reality from a military point of view. Geoffrey Nice explains what conclusions he then reached. Were war crimes committed by either side? Introduction No human is on this earth as a volunteer; we are all created by an act of force, sometimes of violence just as the universe itself arrived by force. We do not leave the world voluntarily but often by the force of disease. As pressed men on earth we operate according to rules of nature – gravity, energy etc. – and the rules we make for ourselves but focus much attention on what to do when our rules are broken, less on how to save ourselves from ever breaking them. That thought certainly will feature in later lectures on prison and sex in this last year of my lectures as Gresham Professor of Law but is also central to this and the next lecture both on Israel and on parts of its continuing conflict with Gaza.
    [Show full text]
  • Reserve Forces Review 2030 Unlocking the Reserves’ Potential to Strengthen a Resilient and Global Britain
    Reserve Forces Review 2030 Unlocking the reserves’ potential to strengthen a resilient and global Britain May 2021 Contents Executive summary 7 Reserve Forces Review 2030 recommendations 11 Chapter 1 – Context and the imperative for change 15 Chapter 2 – Redefining the relationship between the reserves and society 25 Chapter 3 – Expanding the role of the reserves 43 Chapter 4 – Unlocking the potential of reservists 55 Chapter 5 – Transforming support to the reserves 73 Engagement log 88 Glossary 102 Reserve Forces Review 2030 3 4 Reserve Forces Review 2030 Foreword Brigadier The Rt Hon The Lord Lancaster TD VR When the Chief of the Defence Staff asked me to chair an independent review into the reserve forces, I leapt at the opportunity. For over 32 years, the Army Reserve has been an integral part of my life and perhaps the one constant of my adult years. Like many fellow reservists, my service has been part of a fairly consistent juggling act between the competing demands of a hectic professional career, private life and soldiering. In writing this foreword I recognise that so much has changed. Rather than looking ‘down and in’ at the use of The reserves have evolved from almost entirely reserves by the single services, we have been contingent forces – that trained at weekends tasked with looking ‘up and out’. and annual camps, recruited locally, and were At its heart, this Reserve Forces Review 2030 encapsulated by names such as ‘Territorial (RF30) is about people and skills, and how Army’ and ‘Royal Auxiliary Air Force’ – to the Defence, industry, government and wider reserve forces we have today across all three society can share them.
    [Show full text]
  • A Silent Prayer for Peace the Friend Independent Quaker Journalism Since 1843
    11 March 2016 £1.90 the DISCOVER THE CONTEMPORARYFriend QUAKER WAY A silent prayer for peace the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 COntents VOL 174 NO 11 3 Thought for the Week: 12 ‘Fierce Feathers’, ambulance trains A silent prayer for peace and surrealism Jane Taylor Simon Colbeck 4-5 News 13 Poem: Water of life 6 Moving beyond difference Bob Morley Gretchen Castle 14 God is reality 7 Pisac and equality Abigail Maxwell Daniel Hewitt 15 Austerity 8 Housing and inequality Don Atkinson Fred Ashmore 16 q-eye: a look at the Quaker world 9 Letters 17 Friends & Meetings 10-11 Living out our faith: Passing the problem by Ian Beeson …Slavery as an evil shared many of the qualities of the present housing situation – it benefited the wealthy, created an underclass and denied them human rights.… Quaker faith & practice 23.23 Cover image: Graveyard at Hitchin Meeting, Hertfordshire, which will be included in their new commemorative garden. Photo courtesy Hitchin Meeting. See story page 4. The Friend Subscriptions Advertising Editorial UK £82 per year by all payment Advertisement manager: Editor: types including annual direct debit; George Penaluna Ian Kirk-Smith monthly payment by direct debit [email protected] £7; online only £63 per year. Articles, images, correspondence For details of other rates, Tel/fax 01535 630230 should be emailed to contact Penny Dunn on 54a Main Street, Cononley [email protected] 020 7663 1178 or [email protected] Keighley BD20 8LL or sent to the address below. the Friend 173 Euston Road, London NW1
    [Show full text]
  • Ministry of Defence Disclosure of Senior Staff Hospitality 2009-10 Quarter 4 (1 January – 31 March 2010)
    MINISTRY OF DEFENCE DISCLOSURE OF SENIOR STAFF HOSPITALITY 2009-10 QUARTER 4 (1 JANUARY – 31 MARCH 2010) Name Post Date Organisation Name Type of Hospitality Received Air Chief Marshal Chief of the Air 5 January The Union Jack Club Reception Sir Stephen Dalton Staff 12 January EADS and Airbus Reception 20 January Bahrain International Air Reception Show Dinner Lunch 25 January Soldiers in the Air Reception 9 February Birmingham University Dinner 10 February Sir Neville Trotter Lunch 18 February Sailors, Soldiers, Reception Airmen and Families Association 22 February Bob Barton Lunch MINISTRY OF DEFENCE DISCLOSURE OF SENIOR STAFF HOSPITALITY 2009-10 QUARTER 4 (1 JANUARY – 31 MARCH 2010) Name Post Date Organisation Name Type of Hospitality Received Air Chief Marshal Chief of the Air 23 February Royal Air Forces Dinner Sir Stephen Dalton Staff Association 1 March BAE Systems Dinner 5 March Charlie Gilbert Lunch 17 March The Guild of Air Pilots Dinner and Air Navigators 22 – 24 March BAE Systems Lunch Reception Dinner Thales Reception MINISTRY OF DEFENCE DISCLOSURE OF SENIOR STAFF HOSPITALITY 2009-10 QUARTER 4 (1 JANUARY – 31 MARCH 2010) Name Post Date Organisation Name Type of Hospitality Received General Sir Nick Vice Chief of the 12 January Airbus Reception Houghton Defence Staff 21 January Cohort PLC Reception 25 January Fujitsu Refreshments 9 February Fujitsu Reception 18 February Sailors, Soldiers, Reception Airmen and Families Association 10 March Centre for Policy Dinner Studies 12 March Gold Cup Race Lunch and Ticket for the Races
    [Show full text]
  • The Civil Society-Military Relationship in Afghanistan
    UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE PeaceBrIeF56 United States Institute of Peace • www.usip.org • Tel. 202.457.1700 • Fax. 202.429.6063 September 24, 2010 LISA SCHIRCH The Civil Society-Military Relationship E-mail: [email protected] in Afghanistan Phone: 540.383.4859 Summary • The intense challenge of coordinating government civilians with military actors in the Interna- tional Security Assistance Forces’ Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan has inhibited development of military relationships with civil society. • The counterinsurgency strategy of “shape, clear, hold, build” invites civil society organizations (CSOs) to play key roles in the final “build” stage at the operational level. Yet many CSOs resist “coordination” in a mission and strategy different from their own. • CSOs seek greater policy dialogue and “communication” with high-level ISAF decision makers, particularly during planning stages. An ongoing, high-level forum for civil society-military policy Both CSOs and ISAF dialogue could help address tensions, provide a mechanism for CSOs to share their conflict as- “leadership recognize the need sessments, and explore areas for possible collaboration such as in security sector reform. for a ‘mature’ civil-military dialogue, including Afghan Introduction National Security Forces, There are different types of civil-military relationships in Afghanistan. The International Security which is sustained by relation- Assistance Forces’ (ISAF) stated mission in Afghanistan is to protect the population while extending ships built over time where the legitimacy and effectiveness of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and decreasing the effectiveness of insurgent elements. The Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) a degree of trust allows for model attempts to link security, governance, and development by bringing together military and honest conversation.
    [Show full text]
  • NATO Senior Civilian Representative Report
    NATO Senior Civilian Representative Report A Comprehensive Approach Lessons Learned in Afghanistan 15 July 2010 Executive Summary The Secretary General instructed the NATO Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) in Afghanistan to provide a concise report which portrays lessons learned in Afghanistan that are relevant to the further development of NATO’s contribution to a comprehensive approach (CA) in the context of the revised Strategic Concept. Although the Secretary General specifically asked for the experience and views of the SCR, the SCR directed a more inclusive approach, and therefore the findings presented in this report embrace the ideas of senior NATO leaders in Kabul, including the Commander International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Commander ISAF Joint Command, the UN and EU Special Representatives in Afghanistan, as well as the views of the SCR himself. Four consistent propositions emerged: • The application of a well-resourced comprehensive approach might not ensure success; but without it, we will fail. • Application of a comprehensive approach is a persuasive way for NATO to address contemporary crisis response operations and is fundamentally important to NATO; however, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’. • It is essential that the analysis, planning and preparation of multi-agency crisis response operations are addressed collectively by all actors, building political will early and sustaining it throughout the campaign. • A comprehensive approach demands unity of effort across the political, military and civil pillars embodied in military unity of command, where all actors share a unity of purpose realized by harmonising efforts, sharing burden and sustaining political will in order to achieve an overarching political goal that is shared by the host nation and external actors.
    [Show full text]
  • LAND FORCES Key to Staff Numbers: Total (Civilian : Military : Locally Employed Civilians)
    As at 10 September 2010 LAND FORCES Key to staff numbers: Total (Civilian : Military : Locally Employed Civilians) Total Staff including Senior staff: 102194 (15646:81006:5542) Chief of the General Staff Total Salary Costs: £2913M (OF-9) General Sir Peter Wall 131 (8:123:0) Commander in Chief Land Forces Commander Allied (OF-9) Rapid Reaction Corps Gen Sir Nick Parker Provost Marshal (OF-8) Army Inspector Assistant Chief of the 328 (0:6:322) (Army) Lt Gen Sir Richard (OF-6) General Staff (OF-6) Shirreff 20 (0:20:0) (OF-7) (Note 1) Maj Gen R L Barrons (Note 2) 454 (0:454:0) 6 (0:6:0) 20 (0:20:0) Brigadier General Brigadier Equipment Brigadier Media and Staff Strategy Communications (OF-6) (OF-6) (OF-6) 54 (0:54:0) 16 (0:16:0) 59 (0:59:0) Notes: 1. Under Operational Command of Chief of the General Staff, independent of the Chain of Command for legislative reasons. Work ongoing to refine all aspects of Provost Marshal (Army). 2. Commander Allied Rapid Reaction Corps is a NATO controlled force so is not part of the Land Forces TLB. As at 10 September 2010 LAND FORCES Key to staff numbers: Total (Civilian : Military : Locally Employed Civilians) Commander in Chief Land Forces (OF-9) Gen Sir Nick Parker 328 (0:6:322) Non-Executive Non-Executive Member Command Command Chief of Staff Member (Temp) (Temp) Secretary Secretary Land Forces (SCS2) (SCS2) (Resources) (Secretariat) (OF-7) 0 (0:0:0) 0(0:0:0) (SCS2) (SCS2) Maj Gen M W Poffley £100k-105k £80k-85k 429 (414:15:0) 1 (1:0:0) 2 (2:0:0) Commander Joint Deputy Command Deputy Command Commander
    [Show full text]
  • Sir Nick Parker, Chair of Step up to Serve General (Retd) Sir Nick Parker Was Appointed As Chair of Step up to Serve in 2014
    Sir Nick Parker, Chair of Step Up To Serve General (Retd) Sir Nick Parker was appointed as Chair of Step Up To Serve in 2014. Having joined the Army in 1973, his last appointment, in the rank of full General, was as Commander in Chief, Land Forces. He is a Director of The Military Mutual, advises Moloney Military Services and is also the Chair of Team Rubicon UK, a charity that mobilises veterans in response to international disasters. Haroon Ahmed, #iwill Fund Leadership Board member Haroon is a member of the #iwill Fund Leadership Board. He provides a young person's perspective on youth social action, having been a participant, facilitator and organiser at different points, working with organisations including WE and NCS. Simon Antrobus, Children In Need Simon was appointed Chief Executive of BBC Children in Need in November 2016. Previously he was the Chief Executive for Addaction, and before that was Chief Executive of Clubs for Young People. He has worked in both the voluntary and public sector and has held senior positions in a number of organisations including Scope and Parkinson’s UK. BBC Children in Need and #iwill are exploring how youth leadership can play a part in supporting young people to take on active roles in local communities, particularly those communities affected by knife crime and violence. Professor James Arthur OBE, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues Prof. Arthur is Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham. He is also Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Staffing and Professor of Education and Civic Engagement at the University.
    [Show full text]
  • News@Pulteney No
    REGISTERED BY AUSTRALIA POST PP 53615500023 news@pulteney No. 102 Terms 2& 3 , 2012 FROM THE PRINCIPAL Writing this article during the term three break two revelations provided the theme. The first was observing the School quad from my office one bright morning. Usually the area is brimming with students in all manner of conversations and activity. During a break their absence leaves the benches idle and the wind the only chatter. The absence of movement dulls the scene and the mosaic of the slate stands unappealingly bare. My second moment was standing in two empty rooms in my house. I had cleared both my two youngest sons’ bedrooms in preparation for painting and all the toys and trinkets of their lives had been moved elsewhere. The rooms were as lifeless as the playthings that usually captivate their energies. Mind you they come very much alive hurtling through space with well aimed throws! My touchstone for this article, then, is the awakening of our own lives in our relations with others, most particularly in a school setting, such as Pulteney, where children shape our own being. At Pulteney, in the normal run of things, I have any number of childrens’ lives and activities to fill the quad a hundred times. There are boundless stories and enough adventures to write a girls’ or boys’ own tale to rival the very best intrigues. I anticipate that any age of any school would be the same and it is why we can all take such heart and joy from our various involvements and associations in Pulteney Grammar School.
    [Show full text]
  • Obama Takes Command
    Now for Germany the game inside Max 25C, min 7C Thursday June 24 2010 | thetimes.co.uk | No 69982 £1 Obama takes command General McChrystal out, architect of Iraq surge in ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES Giles Whittell, Michael Evans er in Afghanistan, will assume overall Catherine Philp Washington leadership of the 140,000 Nato troops. A dramatic morning of negotiations President Obama fired his top general at the White House culminated in an in Afghanistan yesterday and replaced address to the nation in which Mr him with America’s best-known war Obama insisted that the change was hero as he attempted to halt the one of “personnel, not policy” but fallout from a humiliating exposé of warned: “I welcome debate among my the Administration’s team in Kabul. team, but I won’t tolerate division.” Mr Obama forced the resignation of Flanked by General Petraeus and General Stanley McChrystal after sum- Vice-President Joe Biden, Mr Obama moning him to the Oval Office to ex- framed the decision as a test case for plain a magazine article in which he dis- civilian leadership of the US military. paraged the entire civilian team lead- Remarks by General McChrystal and ing the US war effort in Afghanistan. his staff quoted in Rolling Stone did not The President, using his authority as “meet the standard that should be set Commander-in-Chief, announced that by a commanding general”, he said. The article “undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the President put politics core of our democratic system”. White House staff claimed that Mr before military tactics Obama had not made up his mind Leading article, page 2 before meeting General McChrystal, but sources said later that it was clear to the general from the moment he en- General David Petraeus, the architect tered the Oval Office that the Presi- of the successful surge strategy in Iraq, dent had no intention of keeping him.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Reviews British Generals in Blair's Wars
    BOOK REVIEWS British Generals The book is divided into five parts: in Blair’s Wars • Part I: Setting the scene in which by Jonathan Bailey, Richard the political context is described Iron and Hew Strachan (eds.) and in which former Prime Farnham, Surrey, UK, Ashgate Minister Tony Blair comes under a Publishing, 2013 great amount of criticism, for inter 385 pages, $51.70 (softcover) alia, not thinking through the con- ISBN 978-1-4094-3736-9 sequences of his decisions, in par- Reviewed by Colonel ticular those which led to British (Ret’d) P.J. Williams intervention in Iraq in 2003; ne of the generals • Part II: Hard Lessons, which who wrote a chap- focuses largely upon the early ter for this book, stages of Britain’s involvement in commenting on the Second Gulf War; other generals who • Part III: Iraq 2006-2009, and Ohad also authored chapters in this which is sub-titled, “Success of a volume, including some with whom Sort;” he had served, noted: “The major- • Part IV: Improving in Afghanistan; ity I would rate as fair, a few I and would gladly join and assault hell’s gate, and some I wouldn’t follow • Part V: What Have We Learnt? to the latrine.”1 Another, speaking of the press, observed: “You will To those lay readers who might hear media presenters tell you that expect this work to be a series of criti- they are committed to obtaining cal diatribes written by “intellectual an objective assessment of the news. Rubbish.”2 Having spent thugs” (which is how one of my professors characterized my three years on exchange with the British Army, I became very fellow cadets and I at the Royal Military College), there is not aware that the writing style of the Brits remains quite different a bit of that here.
    [Show full text]
  • William Mcnulty (Relief Organization Founder) - Wikipedia
    11/29/2017 William McNulty (relief organization founder) - Wikipedia William McNulty (relief organization founder) William McNulty (born 1977) is one of two co-founders of the international disaster relief organization Team Rubicon. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Inspiration for founding of Team Rubicon 3 Honors 4 References 5 External links Early life and education A Presidential Leadership Scholar, the Midwestern born and raised McNulty earlier earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and communications studies from the University of Kansas and in 2007 a Master of Arts in Government from Johns Hopkins University.[1][2] Born of a family tradition of Naval and US Marine Corps service, McNulty served as both a TOW gunner and an intelligence specialist with the Corps. Applying their Marine Corps training in aftermath of the disastrous 2010 Port- au-Prince earthquake, McNulty and former US Marine Corps sergeant, Iraq and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McNulty_(relief_organization_founder) 1/3 11/29/2017 William McNulty (relief organization founder) - Wikipedia Afghanistan combat veteran, and sniper Jacob Wood (born 1983) recruited a team of fellow US Marine veterans and doctors to aid with the Haitian relief effort. Team Rubicon treated thousands of patients in camps deemed too dangerous by other relief organizations.[3] Inspiration for founding of Team Rubicon Observing in aftermath of the Port-au-Prince earthquake that the skills of these military veterans provided thereto largely unavailable bridge services which met the pressing needs of victims in the dangerous environment present immediately after the quake and until the scene settled sufficiently to allow safe inpour of major relief, McNulty and Wood decided to build on their organization.
    [Show full text]