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Thinking the future through fiction or the Influence of popular culture in Security: The Red team case study
Ourahli, Marine ; Jackson, Peter (vedoucí práce) ; Bragagnolo, Manuela (oponent)
Popular culture artefacts have had a profound influence on the collective imagination, an influence that can be seen not only in the way people think about security today, but also in the strategic thinking of decision-makers. This reality may have only recently entered the academic arena, but it has been present in decision making spheres for much longer. Countries have created a real link between the political sphere and the major cultural players. The United States is a figurehead in this field, and the relationship between Washington and Hollywood is almost as old as the American film industry itself. Beyond being a simple influence, fiction, and mainly science fiction, has been used as a real player in security decision-making. The United States was the first country to create a team of science fiction writers to advise decision-making in the 1980s, and while this initiative was unique at the time, many other countries have now decided to create similar initiatives. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces is behind the Red Team initiative, a team of science fiction writers, scientists and military personnel working together to draw up scenarios of future threats to France. While this initiative is not exclusive to France, it does have a number of unique features.
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Adapting restrained military capabilities to the prospect of interstate conflicts: The cases of French and British defence planning
Sarfati, Joachim ; Ludvík, Jan (vedoucí práce) ; Jackson, Peter (oponent)
In the last two decades, Western militaries were largely shaped to address threats from non-state actors. Many European countries joined the United States in the so-called "war on terror", although on the backdrop of a steady decrease of their defence budgets, which started after the end of the Cold War. As deployments in these theatres are now coming to an end, the reduction in size of European militaries is being called into question, because of the growing concern for potential escalations towards armed conflicts against rival states. While the invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022 by Russia prompted European states to pledge important resources to strengthening their arsenals, France, and to a lesser degree the United Kingdom, had already decided to increase their military budgets in previous months or years. This study focuses on the discourses, plans, and debates surrounding this agenda of military resurgence in France and the UK. Researchers interested in defence analysis have often focused on equipment plans to assess the preparation of forces to given threats. Defence planning, as an institutional practice, has also been a major object of study for academics. Finally, the roles of values and ideas in threat identification and defence policy have been an important strand of study in...
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Narrating strategic rivalry: A case study of narrative-building in the securitisation of the US in China
Arzumanyan, Armine ; Jackson, Peter (vedoucí práce) ; Karásek, Tomáš (oponent)
The United States of America and the People's Republic of China have a record of a complex relationship of both cooperation and competition. The perceptions and narratives prevailing in the US authoritative circles and broader society about China's role in what Washington has formally characterised as strategic competition and the threats attributed to it have been subject to numerous interdisciplinary studies. Yet the reverse phenomenon-the perceptions of the US as a strategic rival in China's authoritative circles and broader society-has gone relatively under-researched in Western academia. The present dissertation seeks to fill in the gap. There is no publicly available white paper or strategy, directly and explicitly addressing China's evaluation of and policy for managing the Sino-American rivalry. Nonetheless, collecting and evaluating the US-related sections of broader publicly available authoritative statements in text and speech can help identify at least some elements of Beijing approach to the competition. The ultimate research question of this dissertation can thus be formulated as follows - how do the Chinese authorities narrate the United States as China's strategic rival in publicly available authoritative statements? To answer the question, the dissertation differentiates between...
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Tracking the Flow of Military Assets and Logistics for OSINT: The Case of the Syrian Civil War
Sutea, Ionut ; Jackson, Peter (vedoucí práce) ; Pili, Giangiuseppe (oponent) ; Ludvík, Jan (oponent)
Tracking the Flow of Military Assets and Logistics for OSINT: The Case of the Syrian Civil War July 2019 2338035 17116325 25113386 Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of International Master in Security, Intelligence & Strategic Studies Word Count: 20,971 Supervisor: Peter Jackson Date of Submission: July 25, 2019 Table of Contents 1. Introduction............................................................................................................... 1 2. Theoretical Background .......................................................................................... 2 2.1. Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT).............................................................................. 3 2.1.1. What Is OSINT and Why Is It Important?...................................................................... 3 2.1.2. How To Exploit OSINT?................................................................................................... 6 2.1.3 At OSINT's Edge: Challenges, Limitations and Ethics............................................... 15 2.2. Military Logistics......................................................................................................... 18 2.2.1. What Are Military...
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