People matter—especially when frigate crews are too small

People are getting carried away with the virtues of small warship crews. We need to remember the great vice of having few people to run a ship: they’ll quickly tire.

Yes, the navy is struggling to recruit and retain enough people, so needing fewer on each ship is superficially attractive. The wages bill will be lower, too. But the experience of Royal Australian Navy people, including me, tells us that a ship’s endurance is measured in the size of its crew more than almost any other data point.

Moreover, overloading people with work will only worsen the retention challenge. It almost certainly is doing so already.

In a 28 February article in The Strategist, Eric Lies expounds the virtues of the Mogami-class frigate, a derivative of which is being offered to Australia for its requirement for up to 11 general-purpose frigates. Among its advantages, he says, is that the ‘design needs a smaller crew’.

Even US aircraft carriers, with crews of more than 5,000, are limited by people. Each carrier has only one flight deck crew.  When those people need rest, it’s not negotiable. A carrier captain will husband the ship’s flight deck and air crews every bit as carefully as each other.

No amount of automation will change the dependency of ship endurance on crew endurance. Getting the endurance requirement right for a warship is one of the most vital capabilities to set. It’s simple: a navy’s ability lies in its people.

It follows that the small crew of the offered Mogami derivate, probably similar to the 90 in the original design that’s in service with the Japanese navy, would be a major limiting factor for a frigate in Australia’s sea conditions and enormous operating area. We need substantial endurance if our ships are going to be on station where we want to sustain a presence.  No presence is no deterrence.

A Mogami with a crew of 90 or so (presumably including an embarked helicopter flight of six aircrew and nine maintainers), will be exhausted after a fortnight on operations, even at low intensity and in good weather.

Trying to solve the navy’s recruitment and retention problems with small crews misses the essential point. If a ship is not designed with enough endurance to deliver the capability requirement sought, especially crew size and all the supporting facilities to sustain that crew, such as food storage, then the demand placed on each person aboard will be excessive.

I have no doubt that shrinking crew sizes has contributed significantly to the Royal Australian Navy’s recent poor retention. My experience tells me that we have been asking more of our people than is reasonable and that they pass judgement in the only way they can.

This matter is critical to the sustainability of naval power. Our history has useful pointers. The 4500-tonne Perth class destroyers built in the 1960s, one of which I commanded, had crews of 330. My Adelaide-class frigate, of much the same size and completed in 1993, had a crew of 220 plus an embarked helicopter. That is, it had a mission the destroyers did not have. My frigate crew became tired much more quickly than my destroyer crew.

In my frigate, everything we did as part of normal business—such as replenishing fuel at sea, launching and recovering the helicopter, firing weapons, myriad mundane domestic tasks,  plus simulated fire fighting, plugging up of holes and patching up of people in the event of battle damage—very quickly consumed everyone available. In navy parlance, almost everything was a whole-ship evolution, requiring the entire crew be put to work. No one except the captain had the luxury of having just one job. There was no redundancy.

The smaller Anzac class frigates have essentially the same set of missions as the FFGs, although with less capability overall. As fleet commander, I saw that fatigue in their crews of around 180 was a sharper problem than in earlier ships.

With the same suite of missions as an Anzac but half the crew, the endurance of a Mogami-derivative ship would be even more limited.

The smaller the crew, the more a ship can do things in only sequence because there are just not enough people to do them in parallel. Commanders may not have a choice about that. And, even when they do, the crew will always need rest sooner if the ship, for want of people, has no redundancy.

History shows starkly what has been happening.  Australia’s future Hunter-class frigates will reportedly be around 10,000 tonnes, with crews of 180. The heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, which served in World War II, also displaced 10,000 tonnes but her crew was greater than 800. In many respects, Australia was a much simpler ship, equipped for fewer missions, albeit more labour intensive to operate.

Reducing crew numbers is incompatible with increasing the size of ships, the number and complexity of their missions, their technological complexity and the variety of their systems. Our experience already tells us this.

Unity is the answer to Europe’s defence woes

US President Donald Trump’s hostile regime has finally forced Europe to wake up. With US officials calling into question the transatlantic alliance, Germany’s incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, recently persuaded lawmakers to revise the country’s debt brake so that defence spending can be boosted. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for an €800 billion fund to strengthen the EU’s hard power. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, hoping to hit 3 percent by 2030.

All of this is long overdue. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk put it in early March, it is absurd that ‘500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians’. Tusk meant that Europe has enormous defence potential, much greater than Russia and even greater than the United States, which has been guaranteeing Europe’s security since the end of World War II.

Tusk is right, of course: EU countries, plus Britain and Norway, are home to more than 500 million people. And if we add Turkey, Ukraine and Canada, the figure approaches 700 million. These countries have about three million active soldiers and another 1–1.5 million reservists. Mathematically, therefore, Europe has nothing to fear even if Trump were to withdraw the US from NATO, or condition the US’s response to aggression against an ally on, say, the ally’s elimination of tariffs on imports from the US.

That is hardly a far-fetched scenario. Poland must take seriously Elon Musk’s rude remarks to our foreign minister. Nor can we afford to dismiss the incoming US ambassador’s threat of ‘retaliation’ if our government introduces a tax on Google and Apple. It is not lost on us that other countries with such a tax—but which do not share a border with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine—have faced no similar threat by the US.

Today, no one can guarantee that Trump will honour Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, according to which an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. Will the leader of an EU or NATO country attacked by Russia be publicly berated and bullied by Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office, as happened to Volodymyr Zelensky?

Fortunately, European politicians are recognising what needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of extending France’s nuclear umbrella to cover all European NATO countries is a good starting point, as are discussions about constructing a European arms industry, which is virtually non-existent in many EU countries today. For example, the weapons and ammunition Portugal produces every year could pay for the purchase of only six or seven Abrams tanks.

The problem lies in the lack of genuine market unification in Europe. Imagine that I run a one-man company in Poland. To operate in another EU country, I would have to go through so many formal procedures—registration, opening a bank account, learning about national regulations (the labour code, workplace safety rules, environmental protection, personal data protection and more)—that it doesn’t make economic sense to try. In practice, a small company from one EU country cannot operate in another country.

The EU itself recognises this, which is why it has created a special corporate status, officially called the European Company. Such a company can operate according to a single set of regulations throughout the EU, but it must be large, with subscribed capital of at least €120,000. The giants can operate from Madeira to Bratislava, but for most companies the single market is still an unattainable goal.

The F-35 fighter jet and the Abrams tank are produced by many companies and subcontractors in different states across the US. In Europe, by contrast, politicians in individual countries protect entire industries, because their re-election hinges on the national economy, not the EU-wide economy. This is why Poland buys tanks from South Korea, even though Germany, Britain, France and Poland itself also produce tanks.

The subordination of Europe’s interests to the national interests of its member states is clearly visible today in the nuclear industry. Poland’s government wants a US-designed nuclear power plant in Poland, Hungary wants a Russian nuclear plant and Germans want no nuclear power at all. On paper, however, the EU is a leader in this field—the world’s second-largest producer of nuclear-generated electricity after the US, with China far behind.

Europe can be a global power. But as long as the governments of EU countries are accountable only to their own countries’ voters, that will not happen. Instead, Europe will continue to discuss the need for joint munitions production or research projects, but artificial intelligence will continue to be developed separately in centres in France, Britain, Poland or Germany.

We can then be happy that European countries have several million soldiers and a combined research budget exceeding that of China. But it will still be a paper tiger.

Australian politics needs clearer national security boundaries

We need to establish clearer political boundaries around national security to avoid politicising ongoing security issues and to better manage secondary effects.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed on 10 March that the Dural caravan laden with explosives and an antisemitic note naming Jewish community targets, discovered 19 January, was a hoax orchestrated by criminal actors.

Political debates around national security have focused on the caravan since its discovery. The AFP’s revelation voided much of the rampant speculation, perfectly demonstrating the need to establish better political boundaries.

The AFP confirmed the caravan was essentially a ‘criminal con job’—an ‘elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore.’

The AFP believe that those responsible were trying to ‘change their criminal status’, likely attempting to leverage information about the plot in exchange for reduced sentences. In short, criminals sought to exploit security fears for personal gain. While police are clear that, for various reasons, there was never a real terrorist or mass casualty threat—there was no detonator, for example—it is important to acknowledge that the plot was convincing and created real safety concerns for Jewish Australian communities.

Despite a lack of formal designation, the caravan was initially presented as a terrorist plot, including by NSW Premier Chris Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It followed months of hate crimes and December’s designated terrorist attack against the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.

However, this quick political designation and ensuing discussions likely heightened community fears and enhanced criminal actors’ ability to exploit them.  The caravan was discussed repeatedly in federal and state parliaments and the media despite the ongoing police investigation, often alongside criticism of governmental responses to rising antisemitism.

Silence in the face of national security threats is a problem, and government messaging around the Dural caravan and other incidents has been lacking. But loud inaccuracies can be as bad or worse—particularly if they create secondary psychological effects that criminals are trying to exploit, such as public fear.

Clearer government statements would have better informed the public and managed fears. Delays in messaging also leave further room for misinformation. But the political handling of the Dural case is also defined by a heavily partisan approach and politicking at the expense of accuracy. Clearer messaging in the first instance is needed, but so are mechanisms to reduce the misinformation window of opportunity.

Partisan discussion of the Dural caravan was clear in Parliament. In February, Liberal member of parliament Julian Leeser, while discussing a motion to condemn antisemitism, said that the plot was evidence that Australia faces a ‘domestic terrorism crisis’ and criticised the government for failing to adequately support the Jewish community.

That same day, opposition foreign affairs spokesperson David Coleman raised the caravan while specifically criticising Albanese:

 … extraordinarily, a caravan packed with explosives, apparently targeting Jewish addresses, and a prime minister who was in the dark—oblivious. This is an extraordinary failure by a weak prime minister, and it is marking our national character.

Days later, Jason Wood, another Liberal MP, listed a series of antisemitic attacks, calling Dural ‘the big one’ before echoing Coleman’s sentiment:

the prime minister should have been very strong on this right from the very start, instead of trying to walk on two sides of the road at the same time.

While firmer leadership was needed, we now know there were complex factors to consider. Investigators suspected early in the process that the plot was a hoax. The operation was not straightforward, and there actually were a few sides of the road to walk—often the case with such investigations.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton raised the caravan matter with the media on multiple occasions, repeatedly criticising Albanese’s handling of the case. Speaking to the ABC, Dutton criticised Albanese for not being immediately briefed on the caravan incident, which he labelled ‘potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history’, and said the prime minister’s actions constituted ‘an absolute abrogation of his responsibility’. He also speculated that NSW Police may have had concerns the prime minister’s office would leak the information and that this may have been the reason Albanese wasn’t briefed.

In contrast, when pressed for particulars, the prime minister often noted that the Dural caravan was subject to ongoing investigation.

This discourse had flow-on effects. The caravan was repeatedly cited in debate relating to the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crime) Bill. Critics of the government were pushing for mandatory minimum sentences—an objective they eventually achieved.

Due to the incident’s recency, greater consideration should have been given to the investigation process. Misrepresentation of the incident was not intentional, but it was speculative and premature, affecting the integrity of debate and legislation.

Media should hold politicians to account. Law enforcement can better support this by more quickly and more directly making information available to reporters, even if limited only to reminders that investigations are ongoing, details are classified or claims are unsubstantiated. Importantly, this aligns with national security objectives by managing secondary effects and preventing social division.

FPV drones: transitioning from sport to battle

It’s one thing for military personnel to hone skills with first-person view (FPV) drones in racing competitions. It’s quite another for them to transition to the complexities of the battlefield.

Drone racing has become a valued way for members of armed services, and not just Australia’s, to advance from a beginners’ level in using the little aircraft, which are revolutionising warfare.

But the battlefield is far more complex than the racing environment. Military drone pilots must be ready to fly under pressure, dealing with battlefield stresses and threats.

Australia should take note of evolution of the British armed force’s organisation for training drone operators: it’s now moving to bridge the gap.

FPV drones are attractive because they’re cheap, easy to build and fly and have a huge, supportive online community that shares knowledge. The open-source nature of their design also means they can be quickly adapted and improved, which is great for both racers and soldiers looking for a competitive edge.

In racing, military drone operators learn problem-solving and technical skills by designing, building, operating and maintaining drones and relevant equipment.

But even experienced FPV racing pilots are used to a controlled environment in which safety risks are minimised, letting them concentrate on flying the best possible course. FPV drone racing is a highly structured sport, with rules to manage risks related to the drones, pilots, tracks and environments.

Racing teams have the advantage of managing their own time, resources, training and support, shielding themselves from avoidable outside pressures. Safety measures reduce risks to pilots and ensure fair play.

But knowing how to fly a racing drone is just the first step toward using drones in the military. This is described as the difference between flying and fighting the aircraft.

Military pilots face chaotic situations where their control stations might be unsafe, radio frequencies might be jammed, visibility is limited and the drone might be carrying a lethal payload. On top of all that, the pilot bears the weight of responsibility for mission success or failure.

While racing pilots aim for precision to avoid obstacles on a known track, attack drone pilots need that same precision in unpredictable circumstances, where they may have only one chance to hit their target.

Drone flying, whether for sport or military applications, requires strong decision-making skills and the ability to solve problems quickly. Technically, pilots learn the performance limits of their equipment and how to adapt their drones and flying styles to different conditions.

Understanding the limitations of drone technology is important in both contexts, but especially in a military setting. This understanding is necessary for improving designs, increasing resilience and developing countermeasures against enemy drones. The adaptable nature of FPV drones allows for constant innovation and improvement, which is essential on the ever-changing battlefield.

In 2024, the British armed forces hosted an international drone racing tournament in London, featuring teams such as the championship-winning Australian Defence Force. Britain’s newly established jHub Drone Academy played a key role in organising the tournament and introducing British defence personnel to the sport.

The academy is expanding its training programs, moving beyond racing competitions to military exercises where British combat units compete and refine their drone skills in realistic battlefield scenarios, using both surveillance and attack drones.

The ongoing development of drone technology, coupled with realistic training scenarios such as those fostered by the jHub Drone Academy, is crucial for preparing military personnel to effectively use drones in modern warfare.

Late last year, the Australian Army officer Thomas Gash proposed such a framework for the ADF. The framework’s proposed pathway involved reshaping the ADF’s drone racing community into a military centre of excellence. This recent thought leadership will need to be analysed among the plethora of new capabilities currently being fielded by the ADF with a focus on how they complement the Australian army’s other lethality systems. Bridging the gap between sport and combat drone piloting is a normal process for the army, but it could be enhanced by the current talent pool of drone racing pilots.

Myanmar’s desperate condition: fragmentation, drugs, money-laundering and more

Myanmar was a key global site for criminal activity well before the 2021 military coup. Today, illicit industry, especially heroin and methamphetamine production, still defines much of the economy. Nowhere, not even the leafiest districts of Yangon or the grandest avenues of Naypyitaw, escapes the distorting effects of national-scale money laundering.

Then there are the imports and exports of weapons and people, to say nothing of the vast quantities of illegally mined jade, gold, and rubies.

The tumult of recent years—Covid-19, the coup and the insurrections that followed—helped supercharge inequality and desperation. The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan has also changed global drug markets.

Myanmar is again the world’s top producer of opium and heroin and continues to churn out enormous quantities of methamphetamine.

Myanmar’s military government, starved of revenue, with few friends internationally and with less territorial control than ever, is not motivated to stop the flows. Drugs are simply another way for Myanmar’s impoverished masses to keep the lights on.

Burmese women are also trafficked in large numbers to brothels, into forced marriages, and far away to lives of domestic servitude at risk of long-term harm.

Young men who escape conscription often do not do much better. Some find themselves in the region’s fishing ‘ghost fleets’, where anybody who causes trouble can disappear. Others end up doing the dirty and dangerous jobs that Thais, Singaporeans and Malaysians have long avoided.

In the borderlands across the mountains and valleys of eastern and northern Myanmar, criminal, political and military forces have, going back to the Vietnam War, built large militias that now run relatively autonomous micro-states.

In the west, the Arakan Army, a relative newcomer to this scene, is frequently accused of drug smuggling to Bangladesh, as well as war crimes.

Ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Rohingya, Kachin and Karen, and people from the most remote and downtrodden regions are particularly vulnerable.

In recent months, more attention has been paid to the development of ‘scam cities’ in Myanmar’s borderlands. Fuelled by small armies of entrapped workers, some held as slaves, these engines for exploitation and economic harm trick people in China, Malaysia, the Philippines or Africa to part with their hard-earned money.

Generations of leadership in both Beijing and Bangkok have accepted a certain level of cross-border criminal activity. At times, key interests have probably enriched themselves by taking a cut, looking away from the misery caused by illegal businesses and the destabilising effects of drug, people and weapons trades.

But China’s tolerance has limits. In February, a scam hub at Shwe Kokko, a town on the Myanmar-Thailand border, was raided and Chinese nationals were repatriated. The operation was a joint effort between officials from China, Myanmar and Thailand. China’s assistant minister of public security, Liu Zhongyi, even visited the region to oversee efforts. The generals in Naypyitaw have also authorised Chinese private military companies to operate in Myanmar for the first time.

Such interventions are justified by growing concern that Myanmar is at risk of wholesale fragmentation, which would exacerbate problems for its neighbours. They may think keeping Myanmar together under military rule to be preferable to its disintegration into feuding statelets, all eager for foreign support but without any economic basis, except for more crime, on which to sustain their rule.

While de-facto fragmentation is Myanmar’s new reality, any future official recognition of an independent Wa State, Kawthoolei or Kachinland would complicate efforts to manage the transnational effects of criminal activities.

So, Myanmar’s neighbours, especially China and Thailand, are looking very warily at the deterioration of security conditions in early 2025.

Rhetoric from Washington about eliminating global trades in cocaine and fentanyl could, in time, influence the perspectives of hard-line leaders in Myanmar’s immediate neighbourhood. In 2003, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a nationwide ‘war on drugs’, with a reported 2800 direct casualties as police and paramilitary forces settled scores with alleged criminals around the country. Today, his daughter is Thailand’s prime minister.

While many people in Myanmar dream of the end of military rule and the steady implementation of a democratic federal system, there is no serious appetite for global investments in required costly and drawn-out institution-building processes.

But what are the alternatives? Surrender Myanmar to vassal status under Chinese Communist Party oversight? Accept the perils of further impoverishment, criminalisation and despair? Or, finally, finding a way forward that invests in the shared ambition of tens of millions of Myanmar people to rebuild their shattered country?

That last path will be arduous, expensive and not without considerable risk. Still, the alternative is to condemn Myanmar’s people and their neighbours to new kinds of harm over the long term.

It’s been done before: pay for more defence spending with debt

Australia, Britain and European countries should loosen budget rules to allow borrowing to fund higher defence spending, a new study by the Kiel Institute suggests.

Currently, budget debt rules are forcing governments to finance increases in defence spending with savings elsewhere or with taxes. But the study, examining military build-ups across 22 countries over the past 150 years, shows that defence spending increases have almost never been funded by spending cuts and that tax increases generally come later.

The larger the military build-up, the more governments rely on deficit and debt financing. These findings are consistent with economic theory, which suggests a mix of deficit and tax financing, with deficit financing playing a dominant role in large, short-term build-ups.

Australia has been under pressure to increase defence spending ever since 2010–11, when cuts reduced the defence share of GDP to just 1.6 percent, the lowest since 1938.

Earlier Kiel Institute research shows defence spending across the G7 advanced nations has been at a record low. The Trump administration has pushed allies to raise defence spending above 3 percent of GDP and has challenged their assumption that the US military would always be there as a backstop to their national security.

Last week, Germany’s incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union, won agreement from the Social Democrats and the Greens to exempt defence spending from the country’s strict limit on debt, enabling a defence build-up.

The European Union has also proposed bending its fiscal rules to allow member states to lift defence spending by up to 1.5 percent of GDP over a four-year period.

In contrast, Britain’s Keir Starmer is sticking to rules demanding a return to a balanced budget by 2029. The Labour prime minister said reaching a defence target of 3 percent of GDP would have to be funded by tax increases and spending cuts, starting with a cut to foreign aid from 0.5 percent of GDP to 0.3 percent.

In Australia, the fiscal strategy of the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese requires that spending growth be limited until government debt is ‘on a downward trajectory’ and that most of any improvement in tax revenue should be used to lower debt.

The rule is not ironclad and allows for exceptions. But in practice, the increased defence outlays recommended in the Defence Strategic Review have been funded largely by cuts to existing defence programs until 2027–28, when Treasury predicts gross debt will start falling.

The Kiel Institute says Britain showed the folly of putting budget rules ahead of national security in the 1930s.

Despite massive external threats, it maintained a balanced budget and reduced its debt to GDP ratio until the late 1930s. It thus places concerns of debt sustainability and currency stability above the growing concerns of war.

Britain’s Treasury regularly rejected requests for increased defence spending during the 1930s and, the Kiel Institute argues, contributed to the British policy of appeasement. Britain’s defence spending was below 3 percent of GDP until 1937. In contrast, German military outlays had been more than 10 percent of GDP since 1935. While the British budget was balanced, Germany ran large deficits, funding its military with debt.

The defence spending increase being envisaged across the advanced world is much smaller than would be needed to prepare for war. During World War II, combatants devoted between 40 and 70 percent of their resources to the war effort. In Australia, spending rose to 40 percent of GDP in the early 1940s.

The Kiel Institute research, which excluded both world wars, identified 113 examples of military build-ups where spending rose rapidly over at least two years.

On average, military build-up raised defence spending by about 1.5 percent of GDP and occurred over a five-year period.

The central finding was that health and education spending grew at similar rates during periods of military build-up and when defence spending was level or declining. Total non-military spending rose more rapidly (about 0.75 percent of GDP a year) during periods of military build-up than when military outlays were level or falling.

During military build-ups, budget deficits grew by an annual average of almost 0.5 percent of GDP but declined on average in normal times. This shows the dependence on debt. Tax revenues rose by about 0.75 percent of GDP a year during military build-ups, compared with about 0.5 percent in normal times.

The paper said governments should rely on borrowing to fund increased defence, at least in the short term.

To manage the resulting debt burden in the medium term, governments could raise taxes, reduce tax avoidance and exemptions, and temporarily freeze the growth of consumptive government spending, such as social transfers and subsidies.

France is prominent in efforts to shape Syria’s future, again

As Syria and international partners negotiate the country’s future, France has sought to be a convening power. While France has a history of influence in the Middle East, it will have to balance competing Syrian and international interests.

After the fall of Damascus on 8 December 2024, Paris moved rapidly to personalise ties with factions in Syria that it wants to see accepted and engaged in Syria’s national reunification and reconstruction.

On 11 December, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot held talks outside Syria with the Syrian Negotiation Commission. The commission was set up in 2015 by Syrian opponents to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and was recognised by the United Nations as the official opposition and responsible for negotiating a political resolution in Syria, but it has since been largely sidelined.

On 17 December Paris followed up with a diplomatic mission to Damascus to meet the real figures of power in Syria: senior Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leaders, notably former al-Qaeda operative and jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, president of the interim government, who now goes by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. This French delegation was the first in 12 years to visit Syria.

Then on 13 February France convened an international conference to discuss Syria’s situation and outlook. Representatives of 20 countries, the European Union, the UN, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council attended.

Previously, France sought to shape the situation in Syria through its firm support through UN General Assembly Resolution A/71/248 for the 2016 creation of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism. This mechanism supports justice by collecting evidence of war crimes and during the Syrian civil war was assisted by 28 Syrian civil-society organisations. It has been supported by funding from the UN and 32 countries.

France’s interest in the Levant dates back to its historical competition with Britain over access to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and overland trade from Antakya on today’s Turkish coast to Baghdad, Basra and the Indian Ocean. France tussled with Britain over the status of Antakya until Turkey annexed the region in 1939, generating a flight of Christians and local Alawites into Syria.

France also considers protection of Christians as part of its residual influence in the region. This is especially true in Lebanon, but francophone Christianity extends into Syria and remains a social and economic current with subsurface political links.

So, Paris convening of the 13 February summit is no surprise, as there’s currently no other high-level international activity on Syria other than by the UN Security Council.

But with several countries and international groups pushing their interests in Syria, France faces an uphill battle to set the agenda.

EU states are concerned that the potential loss of Kurdish control of foreign-funded camps housing thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) adherents may allow detainees to walk free and spread their destructive ideology across Europe and the Middle East. There are 800 Swedish citizens in detention as ISIS supporters, 6000 ISIS family members from 51 countries in al-Hol camp and 10,000 ISIS combatants in 28 prisons in northeast Syria.

Such detainment centres are controlled by the US-backed Syrian Defence Force, so the EU can’t suppress ISIS without full cooperation, if not leadership, from Washington.

The EU has some ability to influence the Syrian interim government led by al-Sharaa. The EU can use its sanctions-lifting power and aid delivery as tools to shape Syria’s approach to governance and the facilitate the return of Syrian refugees. Given the opportunities available in Europe and continuing instability in Syria, few Syrian refugees will rush to return. So, the EU must not lift sanctions without a significant deal with the new government.

Turkey wants to limit Kurdish organisations and military formations. Skirmishes continue between Ankara and the largely Kurdish Syrian Defence Force. Ankara sees the force as a cover for the Kurdistan Workers Party, which the EU, Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organisation. Limiting Kurdish power would grant Turkey full control along and inside Syria’s northern border. Al-Sharaa has agreed with Turkey, his major backer, that Kurdish separatism has no place in the new HTS-run Syria.

The United States supports Kurdish forces, whom it pays to keep ISIS-linked families and others in camps and to control captured Syrian territory. US bases such as al-Tanf in eastern Syria have acted as tripwires against Iranian efforts to supply weapons to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But US President Donald Trump may withdraw US troops. This would reduce US influence, strengthening Turkey’s position.

Religion plays a deep and unavoidable role in Syria. The EU has partially linked sanctions relief to al-Sharaa’s promise of freedom of worship for minority religions. The EU has also promoted the importance of women’s rights, freedom of expression and due legal process. Delayed lifting of sanctions and aid delivery threaten domestic upset, so HTS is under pressure to meet Western expectations.

Lifting sanctions too quickly may disincentivise HTS from maintaining engagement with international partners and instead allow it to suppress religious expression, squash political debate, shut down human rights organisations and reduce regime transparency.

However, Washington’s early easing of sanctions against certain HTS leaders made diplomatic talks possible.

It’s clear that few Syrian representatives reflect the kaleidoscope of interests in the country. The Turkish-backed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, a cluster of players who aimed to rid Syria of Assad, is no longer visible; nor are its members. Turkey may back the new HTS regime at the cost of dialogue and the risk of reigniting civil war.

High-impact climate risks, low-probability? Think again

In a recent presentation, I recommended, quite unoriginally, that governments should have a greater focus on higher-impact, lower-probability climate risks. My reasoning was that current climate model projections have blind spots, meaning we are betting on best case scenarios.

Irresponsible at best and ‘fatally foolish at worst’, this approach is inconsistent with other security issues—I don’t know many analysts assessing nuclear escalation or a potential Taiwan Strait crisis from the best-case angle.

Globally, January 2025 was the warmest January on record. This included severe heatwaves across Australia, with maximum temperatures as high as 17 degrees C above average.

This warming was unprecedented and, importantly, unexpected. This is an ever-increasing climate-related trend—reality continues to outstrip scientific expectation. Given this, my use of the term ‘lower-probability’ was itself, in hindsight, an example of this best-case mentality: designating high impact climate events as low probability is likely, at best, a dangerous underestimate.

Beyond blind spots in climate model projections, theories and scientists (their calculations and biases) are not infallible. Therefore, the accuracy of probability estimates depends on the accuracy of the underlying logic. Regarding probability:

… if climate modellers wish to determine the implications our greenhouse gas emissions will have … their model/theory will not be adequate [at predicting relevant system features at useful levels of precision and frequency] unless it tells them the changes in the local temperature and precipitation.

Yet, current models seem unable to adequately predict global, let alone local, climate changes. In June 2024, for the first time, global mean surface temperatures reached the Paris Agreement’s aspirational threshold of 1.5 degrees C of warming for 12 consecutive months—again, much earlier than expected.

This is particularly concerning given that most climate impact research of the past decade has been based on temperature rises of 2 degrees C and below, this despite greenhouse gas trajectories setting the world on track to warm by more than 3 degrees C by 2100. Various studies even suggest that we cannot discount increases of up to 6 degrees C.

Various factors drive the mismatch between warming estimates and research coverage. Firstly, as 2 degrees C is the benchmark of international targets, research likely reflects policy demand. Secondly, due to well-funded misinformation campaigns, scientists have been labelled alarmist and want to avoid such dismissal. Thirdly, the consensus process of the International Panel on Climate Change is inherently conservative, which also compounds the previous factors.

How can we deem potential climate impacts low probability if we haven’t properly researched them and their potential dynamics under the higher temperatures we are headed towards?

Further, we today are locking in the events that will undoubtedly happen tomorrow. This is often overlooked and underestimated by security practitioners—unlike military conflict, for example, people are not fully in control. Feedback mechanisms exist within Earth’s systems that, once initiated by rising temperatures, will cause abrupt, self-perpetuating and effectively irreversible changes.

Thermal inertia reinforces this lack of control. The ocean stores more than 90 percent of Earth’s excess heat. Even if man-made greenhouse gases were to cease tomorrow, the world would continue warming for at least another several decades as this stored heat is released.

Due to the factors outlined above, there is uncertainty regarding the reliability of probability estimates for specific events, when they might occur, and the chains of cause and effect that may trigger them.

However, uncertainty does not equal low probability. A lack of certainty around calculation inputs merely lowers confidence in the accuracy of probability estimates. Consequently, the actual likelihood of a particular event occurring may be much higher than predicted.

Moreover, given existing blind spots and biases, it is highly likely that probabilities around singular high-impact climate risks are underestimated, particularly within the security community.

If we analyse climate threats on a cumulative risk basis, the margin for error grows, increasing the collective probability estimates of climate events occurring. Hence, we can have confidence, given our current trajectory, that the collective probability of at least some high impact climate events materialising is high. We shouldn’t use terminology suggesting otherwise.

We must stop analysing events in isolation and begin to better comprehend event compounds, cascades, and concurrency—and fast. This is especially true for probability, as it informs much of the world’s risk and security analysis and management.

All trajectories are subject to change and human decision. But until this change happens, we are heading into uncharted territory.

We can, however, learn from another high-stakes area in which decisions rely on scientific evidence: public health. Patients are not treated by scientists undertaking clinical research, but rather by general practitioners. Justine Lacey and Mark Howden argue that a similar separation between scientist and practitioner would support better climate-science advice to policymakers.

This separation can facilitate relevant and targeted advice encompassing a range of views, largely independent of specific researchers. It could improve the interpretation and translation of advice, enhancing decision-makers’ understanding. This could reduce conflicts of interest and avoid narrowly informed and disciplinary-siloed advice. It would also create shared responsibility, alleviating pressure on the climate science community.

Although intermediaries cannot remove uncertainty, they could help manage it—to the benefit of probability estimates, decision-making and the public.

In a divided world, momentum behind negotiations grows

At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive. From the start, the battle lines were clearly drawn: Russia on one side, Ukraine and the West on the other, and much of the Global South hoping only for the conflict to end. Now, however, alignments are shifting. Whether this will advance efforts to resolve the conflict and strengthen global stability remains to be seen.

After more than three years, Europe—including the European Union, Britain and Norway—remains largely steadfast in its support of Ukraine. The largest armed conflict in its neighbourhood since World War II has deeply affected the European psyche, as it has challenged basic assumptions about continental security and revived the spectre of nuclear annihilation that loomed over Europe throughout the Cold War. The prevailing view has always been that a Russian victory—including a peace deal that ceded some Ukrainian territory to Russia—would amount to an existential threat.

The United States, however, has decided that it no longer wants to ‘pour billions of dollars’ into what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls a ‘bloody stalemate, a meat-grinder-type war’. So, US President Donald Trump is seeking to negotiate a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To press Ukraine to accept the concessions such an agreement will undoubtedly entail, the Trump administration suspended and later resumed military aid and intelligence support.

This is not about ending a ‘savage conflict’ for ‘the good of the world’, as Trump claims. While years of sanctions were supposed to drain Russia, economically and militarily, to America’s benefit, they bolstered an unholy Sino-Russian alliance against the West, while sustaining a conflict that kept US attention and resources in Europe. With his push for a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump is seeking to cut the US’s losses and shift its strategic focus and military resources toward the Indo-Pacific—the home of America’s real enemy: China.

As Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden recognised, only China has the resolve and capability to surpass the US as the foremost world power. Yet the US still has more than 100,000 troops stationed in Europe. That is why US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently warned that the US can ‘no longer tolerate’ an ‘imbalanced’ transatlantic relationship that ‘encourages dependency’. Europe must take ‘responsibility for its own security’, Hegseth said, so that the US can focus on ‘deterring war with China’.

The question is whether Europe is capable of managing its own security. The answer probably should be yes. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently pointed out, Europe does not lack economic strength. Nor does it lack people: there are ‘500 million Europeans begging 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.’ What is missing is the EU’s belief that it is a global power. The result is a rudderless Europe.

When it comes to supporting Ukraine, Europe has another critical shortcoming. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has noted, Europe lacks the necessary military-industrial base to provide sufficient arms support to Ukraine. That is why some, including Rutte, want to make a deal with the US: you keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, and we will foot the bill. Unless the Trump administration accepts such an arrangement, the British-French plan to build a ‘coalition of the willing’ to do the heavy lifting on Ukrainian security will face powerful headwinds.

Meanwhile, the Global South is still struggling to cope with the Ukraine war’s economic fallout, especially sharply higher food and energy prices, which have had particularly devastating consequences for small and vulnerable developing countries with limited foreign reserves. Sri Lanka is a case in point. In the months that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing global prices drained its reserves, leading to fuel, food, medicine and electricity shortages. The resulting economic meltdown pushed a frustrated population over the edge, triggering widespread protests that toppled a political dynasty.

This explains why developing countries remain largely unified in advocating an early negotiated end to the war, even if that means leaving a sizable chunk of Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation. If anything, calls for a peace agreement have grown since 2023, with even NATO member Turkey and close US ally Israel charting more independent stances on the conflict. It does not help that, for many countries in the Global South, the West’s contrasting responses to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza reek of hypocrisy.

For now, Ukraine and Europe remain committed to seeking peace through strength. But as admirable as Ukraine’s resistance has been, and as important as it is to defend the international legal principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that Russia has flagrantly violated, the fact is that the conflict has reached a stalemate, while the international fallout continues to grow. Rather than repeat the mistakes of the 1950-53 Korean War—in which an armistice agreement was reached only after two years of military deadlock—all parties should adopt a realistic approach to ending the war and negotiate accordingly.

Europe can still prevent a Russian victory

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he knew that he was upending Europe’s security order. But this was more of a tactical gambit than a calculated strategy and he could not have predicted what would follow. Though Donald Trump’s return to the White House has caught Europe flat-footed, it can still keep Putin from walking away a winner.

For now, Putin seems to hold all the cards. The transatlantic relationship is fracturing, as Trump’s isolationist administration criticises its European allies and casts doubt on his commitment to NATO. Worse, Trump appears to be aligning the United States with Russia in the Ukraine war. While he has threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and peace deal are reached, he has blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the fighting and suspended military aid and intelligence support for Ukraine (now apparently set to resume).

But Europe still has a chance to turn things around. Already, it is abandoning its post-Cold War ‘end of history’ mindset, according to which international law reigned supreme, European militaries were for keeping peace, not fighting wars, and the US could be counted on to safeguard Europe’s security.

Finland and Sweden were perhaps the first to realise that history is back, and their accession to NATO—in 2023 and 2024, respectively—provided a major boost to the Alliance’s northern flank. Now the European Union also appears to be coming to terms with its new security situation, having just announced an $840 billion rearmament plan. Even Germany, for which the return of history is particularly fraught, is preparing to rearm: incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his likely coalition partners have agreed to create a €500 billion infrastructure fund and loosen fiscal rules to allow for greater investment in defence.

The significance of this move should not be underestimated. Since the end of World War II, Germany has eschewed hard power in favour of the soft kind, serving as an engine of European integration and a bulwark of the rules-based world order. Beginning in the 1960s, this included the pursuit of constructive engagement—a foreign-policy approach known as Ostpolitik—with the Soviet Union and then Russia. This explains former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s embrace of Russian energy supplies, despite the objections of other EU members and the US.

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine drove a stake through the heart of Ostpolitik. Within days, Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, announced an ‘epochal change’ (Zeitenwende) in Germany’s defence and foreign policy. But it is Merz who is set to oversee a true break from Germany’s postwar past—a change that will require the country to confront the most daunting, destructive ghosts of its history.

For starters, there is the fiscal revolution. Germany’s frugality has been a source of considerable tension in the EU, particularly during the eurozone debt crisis of the early 2010s. But Germans—not least Merkel—recalled all too well how hyperinflation had paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler, and in 2009 Merkel’s first government introduced a constitutional restriction on structural budget deficits to 0.35 percent of GDP annually, also known as the debt brake. Against this backdrop, Merz’s planned overhaul of borrowing rules—including the modification and possible elimination of the debt brake—represents a radical change in Germany’s priorities.

More broadly, Merz appears prepared to embrace European leadership. Despite being the EU’s largest economy, Germany has long been reluctant to assume a genuine leadership role in Europe, particularly in the security domain. The combination of Russian revanchism and US isolationism, however, has made this stance untenable. As Europe’s most populous country, situated in the continent’s ‘geostrategic centre’, Merz says, Germany must ‘take greater responsibility for leadership’ on defence.

Any effort to keep Europe secure starts with Ukraine. As it stands, Trump wants to have his cake and eat it: ‘negotiate’ a peace deal—which will almost certainly involve capitulation to Russia and an economic shakedown of Ukraine—then walk away and let Europe enforce it. But what good is a peace broker who offers no guarantees?

To avoid a repeat of the Munich Agreement of 1938—when France and Britain forced Czechoslovakia to cede territory to Hitler, setting the stage for WWII—Europe must step up quickly to improve Ukraine’s position on the battlefield and, thus, at the negotiating table. Fortunately, substituting lost US financial aid will not be as difficult as Trump would have us believe: to date, Europe has provided far more support for Ukraine’s war effort in dollar terms than the US has. Fulfilling the weapons gap would, however, be far more challenging and probably impossible in the all-important short term.

Once a peace agreement is reached, Europe will have to act as its guarantor—and that means delivering effective deterrence against Russian aggression. A credible nuclear umbrella is essential. That is why Merz has suggested replacing US nuclear warheads in Europe with French and British alternatives. There is even talk of Germany becoming a nuclear power itself.

When NATO intervened in the Kosovo War in 1999, Germany’s then-chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, ruled that sending ground troops to fight in a country that had once been occupied by Hitler’s Wehrmacht was ‘unthinkable’. Today, as Merz seems to recognise, the unthinkable has become necessary. Only if Germany—and Europe as a whole—puts aside its moral and political inhibitions can it continue to perform its most important role: as a global force for peace and a defender of democratic principles.