General (Retd) Professor Sir Paul Newton KBE

Chair in Security and Strategy, Director of Strategy and Security Institute

Paul Newton spent 38 years in the Army. Educated at Sandhurst - and later at Camberley and then Cambridge University - he joined his local county infantry regiment at 19.  He completed 8 operational tours in Northern Ireland (including Command of 2nd Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (2PWRR) and most recently as Commander 8 Infantry Brigade for which he was awarded a CBE) and two in Iraq. 

In 1999 he graduated from the Joint Higher Command and Staff Course and was immediately seconded to the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) to write the plan for the Kosovo operation.  He exercised command over Brunei Garrison, helping to plan and deploy the force to East Timor.  Later, he then went to Sierra Leone to complete the DCMO strategic assessment, and in addition planned and mounted several other contingency operations. 

In 2003 Paul Newton attended the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) where he completed PhD research training with KCL, but left early to become the Chief of Defence Staff’s Liaison Officer to the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs in Washington, working on Iraq.  He deployed from there to Baghdad as the Deputy, Strategic Planning in HQ Multi-National Force Iraq for which he was awarded the US Legion of Merit.  In January 2005 he took over the Intelligence Division at the UK’s PJHQ, a year dominated by Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.  Promoted to Major General in February 2006, he briefly went back to RCDS, followed by a return to Baghdad in early 2007 to lead the Coalition reconciliation effort as head of a new Force Strategic Engagement Cell, for which he was awarded a Legion of Merit, First Oak Leaf Cluster.  He later ran the MOD Developments, Concepts and Doctrine Centre producing Global Strategic Trends, the first UK doctrine for stabilisation and the MOD position paper on the Future Character of Conflict in time for the Security and Defence Review.

In April 2010 Lieutenant General Newton became Commander Force Development & Training and a member of the Executive Committee of the Army Board charged with ‘leading and driving’ change: he took delight in being the Army’s constructive contrarian, and he helped lay the ground work for Army 2020.

Awarded a KBE in 2012, he is the founder and first Director of the Strategy and Security Institute (SSI) at the University of Exeter.  This institute works closely with RUSI on a broad range of contemporary global security issues through innovative teaching, policy-facing research and field-based consultancy drawing on a broad base of expertise.  From October 2013 it will deliver a unique Masters in Applied Security Strategy: a highly selective course designed primarily for future leaders and strategists from the fields of diplomacy, defence, security and intelligence, and also those who may view global events from a different perspective such as the media and Non-Government Organisations - all will see themselves as future security/strategic ‘players’.

He has a niche business, ‘Paul Newton Strategic Consulting’ and has recently been appointed a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI. 

He is currently co-editing and contributing to a book on the Arab Spring.

Areas of expertise

Paul has particular expertise, and welcomes PhD supervisions, in the following areas:

Paul Newton

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Contact

Email: P.R.Newton@exeter.ac.uk