On 15 July, Jason's article 'In the Arctic, cooperation with Russia is simply too important' was published by the NATO Defense College Foundation, providing strategic insight into how the West can cooperate with Russia to tackle climate change from further damaging the Arctic:

The need to help Ukraine is self-evident. Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s people deserves our full condemnation. But there are crucial areas — such as climate change and preservation of the Arctic — where our and global interests will be worse off if we don’t work with Russia.

As polar regions grow warmer, there are no winners from a failure of co-ordination on Arctic policy...It does not have to be this way. Functional Arctic coordination should not diminish the west’s ability to assist Ukraine. Arctic institutions have long been able to compartmentalise and, in the case of the Arctic Council, put security aside entirely in order to focus on pressing global environmental or community-centred issues...

From 12-13 July, Jason attended and spoke at The Henry Jackson Society's 'Engaging Taiwan: Securing the Taiwan Strait with the Indo-Pacific Tilt' conference. Jason spoke on the panel 'What does AUKUS say about the Global Britain Agenda' with Sam Armstrong (Director of Communications, Henry Jackson Society) and Katherine Thompson (Research Fellow, Henry Jackson Society; former lead policy staffer for US Senator Mike Lee), moderated by Aliona Hlivco (Strategic Relations Manager, Henry Jackson Society). While the conference was off-the-record, we can share a snippet of Jason's speech here:

The post-Brexit Global Britain implicitly agenda acknowledges a failure of British strategic vision: the giving away of the ‘biggest threat’ title from Russia to China in a way that codifies Britain’s political and strategic move away from Europe. This is the potential Achilles heel of British geostrategy. As Halford Mackinder wrote in 1904, Eurasia is the focus of World history and Ukraine is its cockpit...I do believe Global Britain can have a major role in the Indo-Pacific while playing a key role in European security. Deferring to and seeking to bolster American hegemony in the Indo-Pacific will hopefully help entrench a strong Western rules-based order in the region, and the UK can be a part of that. But now, Global Britain needs to think more European – focusing on NATO, the EU, and punishing violations of international norms closer to home.

The keynote speaker, Andrew Hastie MP (Shadow Minister for Defence, Australia), delivered excellent public remarks on the need for collective action to restore a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific:

When given a choice, people migrate towards democracy and away from autocracy. For as Shakespeare wrote: ‘when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner’. Our values must act as a beacon—for ourselves, for our partners and those yet undecided in this dangerous new world. We are not perfect—either as individuals or nations. We will make mistakes. And we will fail to live up to our rhetoric as free peoples. But we can only reform ourselves if we hold ourselves accountable to the standard of our own democratic values.

It was wonderful to meet Andrew and we look forward to working with him and others from the conference in the future. Jason and his team would like to thank the Henry Jackson Society for organising this important discussion focusing on how we can challenge the Enduring Disorder in the Indo-Pacific.

From the Indo-Pacific to Libya - on 14 July, Jason was interviewed by Al-Jazeera English on the recent dismissal of the National Oil Corporation's (NOC) Chairman Mustafa Sanallah. Jason questioned the legal authority of the Government of National Unity (GNU) to replace the NOC Chairman as the GNU's mandate is expired -- noting however that until June the GNU would have had the authority as per the Skhirat Agreement to replace Sanallah without going through the complex Article 15 consensus-building mechanisms. For Jason, foreign powers are behind these machinations, and he noted that it is a major win for disordering nations like Russia and the UAE:

The desire to replace Sanallah has been a longstanding desire of the Dabaiba camp in the West and the Haftar camp in the East. This is about personality politics and who can deliver favours to the UAE, Russia, and Saudi Arabia so as to stay in power...Sanallah has done miracles in the past to get the Libyan oil back online...it's not about the oil, it's not about the interests of the Libyan people. This is a win for Russia and the Emirates so as to have higher food prices and to deny oil and gas to members of the coalition like Italy who are wavering in their commitment to Ukraine.