Paul Schulte

Paul Schulte is currently Senior Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS), in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. He is Honorary Professor at Birmingham University Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, and an active contributing member of the Alphen Group of multinational strategic experts. 

Paul is a former senior British career civil servant. After a social science degree from the LSE, his career was spent mostly in UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), working successively as a desk officer on central budgeting, counterterrorism, human rights and economic policies in Northern Ireland, the British Army equipment programme, Middle Eastern Defence Commitments, Military Medical Reorganisation, treatment policies for PTSD and Gulf War Syndrome, and Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and Conventional Arms Control, where he coordinated the joint MoD and FCO response to the US (Star Wars) Strategic Defence Initiative, and originated, and helped negotiate, a key aspect of Chemical Weapons Convention, on managed access for Challenge Inspections.

He later became MoDUK Director of Proliferation and Arms Control, ex officio British Commissioner on the two UN Commissions for Iraqi Disarmament (UNSCOM and UNMOVIC), Director of Defence Organisation for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Founding Head of the interdepartmental UK Stabilisation Unit, and Chief MoD Speechwriter for two Defence Secretaries.

He has also been a member of the Senior Officers Course at the Royal College of Defence Studies, a Weatherhead International Fellow at Harvard, and, after retirement from the Civil Service, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program, and the Advanced Research and Assessment Group (ARAG) at the UK Defence Academy, a frequent invited participant and speaker in Ditchley and Wilton Park, IFRI and FRS in Paris, PISM in Warsaw, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, the Harvard Sussex CW Programme, and numerous NATO seminars related to nuclear strategy, conventional and WMD arms control and disarmament.

He has practised within the NHS as an Honorary Group Psychotherapist, expanding a lifetime interest in psychological and ethical aspects of international security, and was for many years the (rigorously secular) co- chair of the UK Council of Christian Approaches (CCADD).

Areas of expertise

• Disarmament, arms control and connections with international institutions and global order
• Deterrence
• Nuclear strategies and nuclear psychogeopoloitics
• Proliferation (CBRN and novelties) and its emerging strategic impacts
• Strategic cultures and their historical, philosophical and theological origins
• Information warfare, disinformation and strategic communications
• Military ethics and the strategic and political consequences of moral issues
• Fourth generation warfare, cyber security and cross domain deterrence
• Drone warfare and AI
• Terrorism, counter terrorism and insurgency, especially psychological and religious aspects 
• Post-conflict reconstruction and contested state building

Current project

“Tracing and Mitigating the Wider Systemic Shocks of Putin’s Nuclear Backed 2022 Offensive against Ukraine, for Global Arms Control and Disarmament.

Impacts on the evolution of negotiated systems of restraint involving WMD and conventional forces.”

Publications  

• 'Mitigating the Coming Infodemics and The Impacts of Information Disorder on the British Body Politic,' written evidence for, and referred to, in the Report by The Joint Parliamentary Select Committee on the National Security Strategy on: 'Biosecurity and National Security' published 18 December 2020. 
• 'Drones, Terrorism, AI and Counter Terror,' Chapter in 'Handbook Of Terrorism And Insurgency Post 9/11,' edited by David Martin Jones, Paul Schulte and Carl Ungerer, Edward Elgar, 2019.
• 'The Discreet Indispensability of Unpiloted Assistance? Remote Aerial Capabilities in Upstream Preventative Stabilisation Interventions,' Chapter in 'Before Military Intervention: Upstream Stabilisation in Theory and Practice,' Palgrave Macmillan 2018.
• 'The UK, France, and the Nuclear Ban Treaty,' Chapter in 'Breakthrough or Breakpoint? Global Perspectives on the Nuclear Ban Treaty GLOBAL SECURITY SPECIAL REPORT,' European Leadership Network (ELN), December 2017 online.
• 'Probing the Biggar Line: Strong Points and Vulnerabilities of an Anglican Defence of Britain’s Latest Belligerent Century and of Wider Just War Theoretical Positions,' Article in Studies in Christian Ethics, August 2015.
• Sections on strategy, politics, and ethics in 'The Security Impact Of Drones: Challenges And Opportunities For The UK' Birmingham University Policy Commission, October 2014 online.
• 'What We Do If We Are Never Going to Do This Again: Western Counterinsurgency Choices after Iraq and Afghanistan.' Chapter in 'The New Counterinsurgency Era in Critical Perspective.' Palgrave Macmillan 2014.
• 'Proliferation, Intelligence and the Case for Normalising a Technical Accountability Obligation in Arms Control, Article in Intelligence and National Security, June 2014.
• 'The Strategic Risks of Devaluing Nuclear Weapons,' Article in Contemporary Security Policy, April 2013.
• 'NATO's Protracted Internal Nuclear Conflict: Contestants, Dynamics and Potential Outcomes,' Chapter in 'The Future of Extended Nuclear Deterrence in NATO,' Zurich Centre for Security Studies, Autumn 2013.    
• 'Tactical Nuclear Weapons in NATO and Beyond: A Historical and Thematic Examination,' Chapter in 'Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO,' US Strategic Studies Institute, 2012.
• 'Morality and War,' Chapter in 'The Oxford Handbook of War,' OUP, 2012.
• 'The Future of Nuclear Non-Proliferation' in 'Forging UK-China Consensus on a Strengthened NPT Regime' With Prof Shen Dingli of Fudan University, Shanghai, Royal United Services Institute, March 2012.    
• 'Looking Beyond the Chicago Summit: Nuclear Weapons in Europe and the Future of NATO' With George Perkovich, Malcolm Chalmers and Steve Pifer, Carnegie Paper, April 2012.
• 'Going Off the Reservation into the Sanctuary: Cross-Border Counterterrorist Operations, Fourth Generation Warfare and the Ethical Insufficiency of Contemporary Just War Thinking,' Chapter in 'Just War against Terror? A Christian and Muslim Response,' Ashgate Publications, July 2010.
• 'Stymieing Leviathan: A Very Short Practical Handbook How Non-State Actors Deter States, Chapter in 'Framing Deterrence for the 21st Century,' RUSI 2009.
• 'Rogue regimes, WMD and hyper-terrorism: Augustine and Aquinas meet Chemical Ali,' Chapter in 'The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-First Century,' Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• 'Just Wars of the Future? Applying Just War Theory to 21st-Century Rogue Regimes,' Article in RUSI Journal August 2008.
• 'I am Osama bin Laden: A Strategic Warning and Challenge to the West,' Article in RUSI Journal June 2002.
• 'Motives And Methods Of Future Political Violence: Landscapes Of The Early Twenty First Century,' Chapter in 'Hype or Reality? The New Terrorism and Mass Casualty Attacks,' The Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, Alexandria, Virginia 2000.