Boris Johnson’s government has announced an increase in the UK’s arsenal of nuclear arms and now threatens to use it against non-nuclear-weapon states. These policies are illegal and are likely to increase global tensions.
Military
Aircraft carrier base threatens endangered whales
British officials did not consider the environmental impact of a new naval base in the Indian Ocean, despite evidence it will have ‘large adverse’ consequences for a species of whale ‘at high risk of extinction’, Declassified has found.
Largest protests since Arab Spring sweep Oman as UK support for regime rises
As Oman’s UK-trained police confront popular protests against unemployment and corruption in the dictatorial Gulf state, the British military prepares to deploy an aircraft carrier to a new UK naval base in Oman, and the head of the Royal Air Force praises his Omani counterpart.
UK spends millions training security forces to control Palestinians in West Bank and Lebanon
British aid projects supporting Palestinian security forces appear to be as much about helping to stop threats to Israel, the occupying power, as they are about enhancing Palestinian state-building.
How the UK military supports Israel’s combat operations against Palestinians
As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine, we take readers through the expanding military relationship between the UK and Israel, which has been erased by the British media. The deepening alliance involves UK military training of Israel for combat, joint exercises, arms deals, as well as intelligence cooperation.
‘The tail wagging the dog’: How Scottish independence could transform British foreign policy
With pro-independence parties poised to secure a significant majority at the Scottish parliament elections, Declassified explores how Scotland could soon forge a radically different foreign policy from the rest of the UK. We asked Scottish politicians, campaigners and thinkers for their views on nuclear weapons, Russia, China, the arms trade and human rights.
Burma bloodbath is a lesson Britain must learn from
The terrible scenes of young people being gunned down by Burma’s military junta should make British diplomats think hard about why their policy of aiding and trading with the regime went so wrong.
Secrecy: British special forces were more transparent during World War 2 than today, study finds
The UK government refuses to provide information to Parliament about the role of the military’s special forces in overseas wars, routinely claiming this is a ‘long-standing policy’ – but new research finds this was invented in the late 1980s to deepen the culture of secrecy in Whitehall.
The UK military’s secrecy problem
A new book, revealing abuses by the British army in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, illustrates how the Ministry of Defence and the military establishment try to censor, bully and threaten publishers and journalists, often successfully.
The final frontier: Could Britain’s new spaceports embroil the UK in future star wars?
Britain wants to put satellites into space from home soil next year. At first, the futuristic ‘spaceports’ were aimed at commercial users. But now they could become embroiled in star wars, with the military telling Declassified it has met entrepreneurs from more than half of the UK’s launch pad companies.