Air Marshal Edward Stringer (Ret’d) CB CBE
Senior Fellow
Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB CBE is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange. He is a retired senior Royal Air Force officer and Director-General of the Defence Academy. He also served as Director-General of Joint Force Development, Strategic Command from April 2018 to March 2021. He served as Assistant Chief of the Air Staff from April 2013 to January 2015, and as Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) from March 2015 to 2018.
Related Publications
The Iran Question and British Strategy
Download Publication Online Reader British strategy must go beyond preserving the status quo. This no longer exists. Two decades of Iranian expansion and regional turmoil (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) have produced a new and evolving balance of power that currently favours Iran. British policy objectives should include maintaining freedom of access to and movement through the Middle East’s maritime chokepoints, in coordination with allies the […]
Affording the Integrated Review
Download Publication Online Reader The West should address energy security as it would in wartime – as a key government responsibility addressed with an appropriate balance between risk and threat. Now that it is over a year since the Government published its Integrated Review of Foreign, Security and Defence policy, Air Marshal Stringer looks at the challenges facing the UK in the short, medium and long term. Air Marshal Stringer, […]Related Blogs
The Global South
It may horrify us that Vladimir Putin can call an international conference and the leaders of China, India, Brazil, the UAE, the UN and many others of the BRICs+ all willingly turn up. But this is not an aberration but part of a plan to sideline us and our allies in the club of democracies often referred to collectively as ‘The West’. And in our casual use of “The Global […]
Defence Review: What Next?
The debate over whether or not to commit to spending 2.5% of GDP on Defence immediately has resurfaced this week after Keir Starmer’s announcement of a Strategic Defence Review. It has featured in several items of the Radio 4 Today programme, where some of us have been interviewed. The most recent on Thursday was the new shadow Secretary of State for Defence: James Cartlidge. This, by the way, is an […]
How do you fix Defence - two approaches from opposite sides of The House
Last week saw two important speeches on defence reform. Speeches by two politicians on opposite sides of the House but who have both thought clearly about the failings of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Those chronic problems have been saliently rehearsed by the recent House of Commons Defence Committee (HCDC) report into military readiness, and this week’s report by the PAC on the MOD’s equipment programme and its unaffordability. Given […]
Annual lecture by CDS: an appraisal
“Statecraft” featured heavily in the annual Chief of the Defence Staff’s (CDS) lecture to RUSI. It is a term that is difficult to define precisely but we know it when we see it. For the purposes of this article it is defined as an appreciation of the long-term, animating factors of the geopolitical arena combined with a will and ability to maximise national and allied power to deal with them. […]
Shadow Defence Secretary echoes Policy Exchange recommendations in keynote speech
In his recent and welcome speech to RUSI on Labour’s emerging thinking on Defence, held at the IoD on Wednesday, shadow Defence Secretary John Healey echoed several recommendations from our ‘Affording the Integrated Review’ paper published in October. The thrust of that paper was to recognise that Ukraine’s war is our war. We should resource it accordingly while being grateful that someone else is shouldering the burden of doing the […]
Strong on the analysis, but can the MOD deliver?
On Wednesday, the 14th December, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin gave his second annual defence lecture to RUSI. It concentrated mainly on the ongoing war in Ukraine and why it was vital to our collective security to see Ukraine prevail and Putin’s violent autocratic rule be defeated. Rightly, he championed the power of democratic alliances when challenged. This was a straightforward resume of what the UK and the MOD have done […]
The Newport Wafer Fab: What Next?
The decision over Newport Wafer Fab provokes conflicting responses, and not just from the opposing camps but within concerned individuals. Policy Exchange has recently published two papers related to the matter, Geoffrey Owen’s Semiconductors in the UK: Searching for a Strategy, and Edward Stringer’s Affording the Integrated Review. Policy Exchange has long championed a more strategic approach to dealing with the challenge posed by China’s rapid economic and military expansion, […]
Admiral Boyce (2 April 1943 – 6 November 2022)
Admiral of the Fleet, Baron Boyce of Pimlico died on 6th November 2022 at the age of 79. A much respected officer, Admiral Boyce had held all three of the senior, four-star appointments in the Royal Navy – Second Sea Lord, Commander-in-Chief Fleet, and First Sea Lord – before been chosen as the Chief of Defence Staff in 2000. At the time, those Royal Navy commands included NATO responsibilities, and […]
Nuclear Brinksmanship, Nuclear Fear
Emmanuel Macron’s recent comment that France would not, if Russia uses nuclear weapons, retaliate with its own has caused a diplomatic kerfuffle in the Atlantic Alliance. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has claimed Macron “revealed his hand”, thereby weakening the ambiguity that Western strategists have employed to counter Putin’s nuclear threats. Yet they follow the equally significant comment President Biden made on 6 October at a Democratic fundraiser, that there is […]
Staying Power — How Ukraine can prevail tactically and strategically
At a recent event at Policy Exchange the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, made an eloquent, well-argued and ultimately moral speech on the necessity to stand up to Putin and deny his aggression and his war crimes in Ukraine any legitimising veneer. For all our futures, it was necessary for Russia to be defeated in its aims in Ukraine. She reminded the audience that Ukraine needed help to resource […]