Policy Forum Discussion Group - New Cold Wars? UK Defence now and next.
To be held at 1a Heath Road, NW3 2RU. Light refreshments on arrival.
Alex will be leading a discussion on the issues facing the defence of the nation.
He will be leading the discussion, moderated by Esther Baroudy (Chair of our Policy Forum), based on his wide-ranging career in the Army. Alex Donnelly is one of our three council candidates for Belsize ward. Alex was recruited and trained by a reservist Royal Navy intelligence unit. At the same time, an undergraduate studying Arabic and Farsi at Cambridge University, and following graduation, he spent a year living in Damascus before deploying to Iraq with a special duties unit. He was seriously injured in Basra in an attack which killed both his special duties colleagues and two members of the Royal Marines. Alex was medically discharged from the military in 2008 but has maintained an active interest in defence issues: he was a Research Associate at the Changing Character of War Centre while a Mellon-Sawyer fellow at Oxford between 2014 and 2018, and was attached to the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs while a Frank Knox fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2015 and 2016. More recently, in 2023, he was consulted by the Cabinet Office in their design of the UK’s College for National Security, and in the same year, he was invited to Kyiv to advise the Ukrainian Government on their development of a national PTSD treatment strategy.
Alex has delivered numerous defence-related talks, including keynotes to the Directorate of Special Forces, the Royal College of Defence Medicine, and Defence Intelligence. His talk will aim to: situate where UK defence strategy currently sits in the wake of this year’s Strategic Defence Review and National Security Strategy; flag national security issues coming down the track; and suggest a couple of policies which could enhance Britain’s defence capability while also activating the public’s inherent trust in the Conservative Party as guardians of British defence, drawing a clear dividing line between strong Conservatism on the one hand and Labour sheepishness and Reform amateurism on the other.