Editor’s Introduction

This 2019 edition of The Military Balance is published 60 years after it first appeared as an 11-page pamphlet in late 1959. The international security environment is again as uncertain today as it was then. Great-power competition still dominates contemporary Western policy discussions, but now it is not only Moscow’s actions that generate attention. China perhaps represents even more of a challenge, as it introduces yet more advanced military systems and is engaged in a strategy to improve its forces’ ability to operate at distance from the homeland. At the same time, while Western armed forces – particularly after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 – are refocusing on more traditional security challenges, though characterised by disruptive new elements, they are having to do this alongside, not instead of, the range of post-9/11 tasks. The threat from terrorists persists, as does the impact of conflict and instability in Africa. And while the war in the Middle East against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, might have succeeded in eradicating its territorial base, ISIS could revert to insurgent tactics. Meanwhile, the civil war in Syria grinds on, with the regime in the ascendant. Tentative diplomatic progress at the end of 2018 raised hopes that the effects of the conflict in Yemen might be alleviated, if not an immediate end brought to the war. In Asia, the unexpected North Korean moratorium on missile testing led to renewed diplomatic contact on the peninsula, and between Pyongyang and Washington. However, although summits continued, there remained no progress on the issue of North Korea’s denuclearisation. In Europe, NATO’s eastern members worry about Russia, while simmering conflict continues in eastern Ukraine. In late 2018, Russia began flexing its muscles once more, this time in the Sea of Azov.