New publication! ‘Old Wine, New Bottles? The Challenge of State Threats’

Today see’s publication of the much anticipated research by Matthew Redhead into state threats!! This new research, launching this evening with a RUSI expert panel including Matthew Redhead, Professor Rory Cormac, and RUSI Trustee, Suzanne Raine, with introductory remarks by SOC ACE Director, Heather Marquette, offers insights on the understanding and assessment of state threats activity. It examines the scale, scope and significance of the contemporary state threats landscape and considers future trends, highlighting how states are diversifying, decentralising and experimenting in their statecraft.

The research notes that besides the apparent explosion in the volume and range of hostile activities, there is much that is “new” about them, from the combination of traditional intelligence tradecraft with new technologies, attempts to innovate, a willingness to take greater risks, and a growing willingness to contract out violent and/or dangerous clandestine and covert activities to both licit and illicit non-state actors – especially organised crime groups. It is also clear that many hostile activities take advantage of new vulnerabilities in society that have never existed before, such as the ubiquity of social media and societal reliance on technology.

Overall, the research shows how state threats have become more important as tools of policy due to “geopolitical climate change”. Perceived changes in global power balances and receding agreement on international norms of behaviour are permitting and encouraging more states – non-aligned and Western, as well as authoritarian opponents of the West – to use hostile acts that mostly fall short of war to achieve their political ends. Their relative cheapness and apparent lack of political risk are likely to make them an attractive form of coercive statecraft in the medium term.

Read the new publication here and click through to the project page to keep an eye out for a coming series of briefing notes to accompany the full research paper!