Battle Lines

Ajax was meant to be the British Army’s modern embodiment of the mighty Greek warrior, strong, unbreakable, unstoppable. Instead, it’s become a national embarrassment. This week the Army suspended the entire fleet after 31 soldiers fell ill inside vehicles that were supposed to protect them. We’re talking tingling hands, ringing ears and troops vomiting on Salisbury Plain.

It’s a £6.3 billion “world-beating” programme that’s be...

Nigeria is facing a security crisis. Extremist violence, mass kidnappings and deepening food insecurity has created what the UN has called the country’s worst emergency in a decade.

Recent weeks have seen a spate of high profile abductions, including 300 schoolgirls and teachers from Niger state.

Security officials now fear these pupils could be used as human shields to deter a military intervention being threatened by the ...

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced the return of military service in the country, 25 years after mandatory national service was phased out. And he's not alone, with the German parliament set to vote on similar measures, while Belgium and the Netherlands have already introduced voluntary military service.

But what do the measures entail exactly? How effective, or even necessary are they, and will the UK follow suit?

Donald Trump’s latest effort to end the war in Ukraine unleashed a week of diplomatic turmoil.

And some of the most dramatic diplomatic twists and turns bear the finger prints of one man: Jonathan Powell, the British national security advisor, not only led a diplomatic rescue mission to recast Donald Trump’s original Russian-inspired proposals in Ukraine and Europe’s favour. His influence can also be seen in Anglo-French plans f...

With conflicts raging around the world, aid budgets are being slashed in favour of defence spending. 

But experts are warning that cutting aid may not just hurt the world’s most vulnerable, it could make life in Britain more dangerous.

This week, Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, tells Venetia and Arthur why cutting aid to boost defence actually makes us less safe. 

Plus we hear from the author o...

Xi Jinping is the most authoritarian and longest serving Chinese leader since Mao - and probably the most powerful man on earth. But what makes him tick, and what does is upbringing tell us about his behaviour today?

Joseph Torigian spent nine years researching this question. The result is The Party's Interests Comes First - a biography of Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun. Torigan sat down with Roland Oliphant to discuss what he discove...

TNT, the unglamorous but indispensable ingredient of modern warfare, is now in critically short supply and Britain is feeling the consequences. A new parliamentary report warns that the UK’s war-fighting readiness is being eroded not only by dwindling stockpiles but by its failure to meet Nato Article 3 obligations to maintain the capacity to resist armed attack.

The shortage of TNT is particularly alarming: Europe and the Unite...

More children are being killed by explosive weapons than at any other time in history, according to a major new report by Save the Children and Imperial College London.

It’s clear there has been a shift in the way wars are being fought, and children are being caught in the crosshairs. 

In this exclusive interview, Arthur and Paul ask George Graham, Executive Director for Global Impact at Save the Children, and Shehan Het...

America is flexing its muscles in the Caribbean and the world is holding its breath. Washington has trained its sights on Socialist-run Venezuela, and the arrival of the colossal USS Gerald Ford has sparked the biggest military buildup since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Operation Southern Spear is now under way: a dozen warships, thousands of troops, and a barrage of so-called “anti-narco” strikes that have already left scores dead. T...

The Syrian civil war raged for years, wrecked a nation, and then quietly vanished from the headlines. Last December, a jihadist faction once aligned with Al-Qaeda toppled Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. Their leader, al-Sharaa is now President of Syria and he met Donald Trump this week in the Oval Office, yes, really.

Al-Sharaa is calling it a “new era” for Syria, no enemies, just friends. He’s courting everyone: Russia, Israel,...

For more than two years a vicious civil war has been raging in Sudan. It’s been defined by massacres, rapes, displacement, and starvation. 

As the UN has long said, it is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century.

Most media didn’t pay attention until Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab published satellite images of bodies and bloody sand. Suddenly, there was hard visual evidence of the scale of the slaughter...

Sanctions, nationwide protests, even Israeli airstrikes haven’t broken the Iranian regime. Could a drought finally bring the Islamic Republic to its knees?

Iran is running out of water and now the president has warned that if the rains don’t come, all of Tehran may have to be evacuated. This isn’t a war fought with bombs or bullets, it’s far more devastating. Roland Oliphant is joined by The Telegraph’s Iran correspondent, Akhta...

Germany is rearming, and fast. A sentence that once sent shivers down Europe’s spine is now a shocking reality. This isn’t the Germany of old; it’s a nation powering up for a new era of danger. With Putin’s war machine grinding on, Berlin’s gone from pacifist to powerhouse, pledging a staggering 3.5% of GDP to defence by 2029, outpacing the UK. So what’s behind this dramatic transformation? And is it enough to protect Europe from a...

In Ukraine, tens of thousands of soldiers have returned from the frontlines without limbs. Most of them will require support in some form for the rest of their lives. 

But not all of those amputations are purely the result of direct hits on the battlefield. Ukraine’s Chief Military Surgeon has said the improper use of tourniquets could be responsible for as many as one in four lost limbs. 

Have medics become too rel...

Donald Trump’s been on a triumphant tour of Asia, shaking hands, signing peace deals, and lapping up royal treatment fit for, well, himself. From Tokyo Tower lit in red, white and blue to 250 cherry trees gifted in his honour, it was a spectacle of ego and diplomacy rolled into one. In South Korea, they even played YMCA as he strutted past a military band. Trump’s “12 out of 10” meeting with Xi Jinping was big on smiles but is it e...

There’s a rhythm to wartime atrocity. First come the warnings, ignored, dismissed. Then the whispers, the shaky videos, the satellite images that no one can quite believe. And finally, the horrific truth. That’s where we are today in el-Fasher, Sudan, where the militia calling itself the Rapid Support Forces is perpetrating a massacre that can literally be seen from space. The crime has refocused attention both on Sudan's war, and ...

It's been over two weeks since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in Gaza. While the full-blown war has stopped, the World Health Organisation is warning that Gaza is experiencing a health "catastrophe" that will last for "generations to come".

How do we make Gaza healthy again? How do you heal a city that’s been under siege and rebuild a health system destroyed by war?

To find out, Arthur and Venetia are...

As the Arctic ice melts, a new Cold War is heating up. Russia and China are rewriting the rules of global power, testing missiles, flexing muscles, and pushing into the world’s last frontiers. A 294-metre container ship has just blazed through the Arctic route from China to Europe in record time. If trade can flow through, what’s to stop warships? Are we watching the start of a polar power grab? Should NATO be bracing for a Chinese...

The Caribbean is heating up and Trump’s fingerprints are all over it. U.S. warships, stealth fighters, elite troops… and whispers of regime change. Is Donald Trump about to launch a full-scale invasion of Venezuela? Behind the “war on drugs” rhetoric, Washington has been quietly building up military power near Maduro’s shores, reopening bases and even authorising covert CIA operations. Venezuela’s leader says America is t...