Edward Lucas
If Britain were properly governed, Keir Giles would still be “institutionalized in the Ministry of Defence” as he tells me. But Britain is in a mess, and one sign of this is that he is out of public service and able to describe its plight.
In 2010, the UK government dissolved the Conflict Studies Research Centre, a defense analysis outfit with a decades-long record of analyzing Kremlin behavior and thinking. Giles, along with its other experts, was considered surplus to requirements. Insights on Russia were, to use George Orwell’s phrase from 1984, “oldthink”: no longer necessary. Worse, they were “wrongthink”. Russia was a big emerging market, not an enemy. The priority was promoting trade and investment, not reviving pointless, expensive security worries from long ago.
Giles (disclosure: a long-term friend and ally of mine) has sounded the alarm with exemplary prescience and clarity in articles and think tank pieces. His books include Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West (2019) and Russia’s War on Everybody (2022). His latest, published this week, is called Who will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent.
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