Dr Rathmell is playing a key role in establishing the Institute, which carries out research, consultancy and teaching in the fields of global security and strategy. He is also helping design the Institute’s Masters in Applied Security Strategy, which will be offered starting October 2013. The program aims to produce a new generation of strategists able to guide foreign, security and development policy in the UK and further afield.
“The United Kingdom has sought to implement a hugely ambitious foreign policy in recent years, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but also with its attempts to transform fragile states and promote reform in the Middle East and North Africa,” Dr Rathmell said.
“However, there have been many failings in the development and execution of strategy along the way. Having worked to help design and implement UK policy in these areas for a number of years, and now with Coffey as an implementing partner, I am delighted to be involved with a serious attempt to fix the UK’s ‘strategy gap.’”
“Exeter’s Masters in Applied Security Strategy will be a uniquely powerful tool to develop the next generation of UK strategists,” Dr Rathmell continued. “My role will be to advise on the shape, content and targeting of the course as well as to help teach elements of the course. This is a great opportunity for me to combine my practitioner experience, experience in academia and experience in government.”
Dr Rathmell is a Senior Principal in Coffey’s Governance, Security and Justice practice in the United Kingdom. He has extensive experience working with the UK Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID, as well as NATO and the US Department of Defense, on the development of peace-building and state-building programs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Prior to his consulting work with Coffey, Dr Rathmell served as a strategy director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as Director of Planning, Policy and Analysis at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and as Director of the Defence and Security Program at RAND Europe.
Further information on the new Strategy and Security Institute can be found here.
Dr Rathmell's publications include:
Operationalising the Comprehensive Approach: Learning from the Field (Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, February 2012)
Adapting Government for Stabilisation and Counter-Insurgency Operations
(RUSI Journal, December 2009)
Multilateral Approaches to Security: Choices for Defence
(RUSI – Future Defence Review, October 2009)
Photo: Dr Andrew Rathmell
