Julian Lindley-French is Chairman of The Alphen Group (TAG), Senior Fellow at the Institute for Statecraft in London, Director of Europa Analytica, Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and a member of the US-German Loisach Group of the George C. Marshall Center and the Munich Security Conference. He has published twelve books and many articles and reports. In January 2022 he published the TAG NATO Shadow Strategic Concept co-written (inter alia) by a former NATO Secretary General, a Deputy Secretary General, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Chairman NATO Military Committee, UK CHOD, COMUSAREUR, Assistant Secretary-General Policy Planning, Deputy Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Secretary of Defense, and two Permreps.
In 2021, Lindley-French published a major new book entitled Future War and the Defence of Europe (Oxford University Press) with US General (Ret.) John R. Allen and US Lieutenant General (Ret.) Frederick (Ben) Hodges. In 2022, Franck Kosmos Press published a German language edition. In 2021, he also published a report for CEPA in Washington entitled, Military Mobility: Moving Mountains for European Defence. In April 2021, he completed a major report for the European Parliament entitled Honest Broker? The EU, Strategic Autonomy and Security in the Future Arctic, whilst in Septemberhe completed another entitled The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and the Eastern Partnership.
Lindley-French was educated at the University of Oxford, UEA and at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He holds three advanced degrees, has held three professorial chairs (Professor of Military Art and Science and Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy, Netherlands Defence Academy and Special Professor of Strategic Studies, Leiden University) and senior policy and project positions for the EU, NATO and the UN. He was Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association in Brussels and Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow of the National Defense University in Washington. In 2015, he was made an Honorary Member of the Association of Anciens of the NATO Defence College in Rome.
He served General Sir David Richards and General Sir Nicholas Houghton on the UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Group and was Head of the Commander’s Initiative Group (CIG) for Lieutenant General Sir Richard Shirreff, COMARRC. In November 2017, he was lead writer for the The Future Tasks of the Adapted Alliance (The GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Reports) as part of a team with inter alia Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, and General John R. Allen with the final report presented to the NATO Secretary-General and can be downloaded here. In 2021, he was appointed director of the high-level The Future War and Deterrence Conference. In May 2023 he will publish NATO: The Enduring Alliance (3rd Edition) and in 2024 The Retreat from Strategy with General Lord Richards of Hurstmonceux.
In 2022 he was Director of the highly-successful Future War and Deterrence Conference at Wilton Park. In October 2023 he will be the Director of the Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference.