The United Kingdom

Abstract

Since 9/11, governments around the world have been struggling to describe and respond to a radically changing international security landscape, and to extrapolate lessons for domestic security and defence policy. This has not been a calm and detached intellectual exercise, but has been accompanied and influenced by a series of diplomatic shifts and other, often much noisier events: military operations in Afghanistan; improved relations between the United States and Russia; the enlargement of NATO; the opening up of the Central Asian republics, diplomatically and militarily; the non-compliance of North Korea with nuclear non-proliferation norms and practices; and Libya’s decision to declare and renounce its development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. At the time of writing (September 2004), disagreement over the US-1ed military action against Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath continued to divide the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and to undermine the United Nations Security Council. Governments have also renewed their interest in the old, cold-war problem of ‘civil defence’: how to prepare for a major attack on cities and facilities, and how to manage the consequences of such an attack for domestic society and government.