Ideas of smart power and Global Health Diplomacy have developed considerable prominence over the past decade in, respectively, the foreign policy and public health communities. Although in some respects separate, both suggest the potential for using health assistance to generate political as well as health benefits. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan provide an opportunity to examine these assertions at the ‘sharp end’. We consider both the health and wider strategic benefits of health assistance in these conflicts, as well as some of the ethical challenges involved. We conclude however that we should adopt the precautionary principle because: there is doubt over the quality of health services provided in such circumstances; concern over the wider effects of politicising health aid; and little proof that the claimed strategic benefits materialise in practice.

The causes and consequences of HIV and AIDS are social are well as biomedical. Given the scale of the pandemic, understanding the social dimensions of HIV and AIDS is vital. One key argument is that there is a link between conflict and the spread of HIV. This appears to be particularly the case for sub-Saharan Africa where high levels of HIV prevalence are matched by violent conflict and state instability. Recent evidence however suggests that HIV prevalence does not always increase in conflict and that in some instances it may even reduce. This article attempts to explain why HIV has not increased in some sub-Saharan conflicts. To do this it moves beyond the use of risk factors to offer a new explanation based on susceptibility and vulnerability. It uses this explanation to examine four cases – Sierra Leone, Angola, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – where conflict did not lead to a significant increase in the prevalence of HIV. The article concludes that, despite the fears of a few years ago, conflict does not readily act as a vector for the spread of HIV, though the potential for this to occur does still exist under certain circumstances.

Over the past decade, health has become an increasingly important international issue and one which has engaged the attention of the foreign and security policy community. This article examines the emerging relationship between foreign and security policy, and global public health. It argues that the agenda has been dominated by two issues – the spread of selected infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS) and bio-terror. It argues that this is a narrow framing of the agenda which could be broadened to include a wider range of issues. We offer two examples: health and internal instability, including the role of health in failing states and in post-conflict reconstruction; and illicit activities. We also argue that the relationship between global public health, and foreign and security policy has prioritised the concerns of the latter over the former – how selected health issues may create risks for (inter)national security or economic growth. Moreover the interests of the West are prominent on this agenda, focusing (largely though not exclusively) on how health risks in the developing world might impact upon the West. It is less concerned with the promotion of global public health.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the US response have been widely described as heralding a new kind of war. For over a decade previous to 11 September, however, a body of literature had developed arguing that during the 1990s a new kind of warfare had begun to emerge for the West. This article examines whether 11 September and its immediate aftermath – the US campaign in Afghanistan – confirmed these trends, or whether it really did constitute a different kind of war. It does so through a four-part framework: that during the 1990s wars were localised; that the enemy was not a state but a regime or individual leader; that civilian deaths should be minimised; and that wars were fought on behalf of the West by professionals, but that the risks to these forces should also be minimised.

Publishers' lists and new acquisition shelves reveal a profligacy of writing on strategy. Moreover, this vast quantity covers a rich variety of approaches to the subject, such as case studies, policy oriented studies, narrative histories, behavioural analyses, thinking on the 'big' questions of war, peace and security, and thinking about thinkers. This article reviews books covering three very different approaches to strategy, two traditional and one highly original. Of the three only the last explicitly considers method, yet the three reveal very different methodological concerns which have perhaps received too little attention in the study of strategy.