Tom McKane is a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS and a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Tom spent more than 36 years as a civil servant, mainly in the UK Ministry of Defence, including substantial spells on defence policy and planning.
In his last six years in the Ministry of Defence Tom was, successively, Director General for Strategy and Director General for Security Policy. In the former role he led the Ministry of Defence’s contribution to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. He continued to lead the strategy team after he moved to the Security Policy role where he was the Department’s principal adviser on all aspects of security policy, including multilateral and bilateral defence relations.
In a career, which included secondments to the Northern Ireland Office, the Cabinet Office’s Overseas and Defence Secretariat (the forerunner to the National Security Staff) and the British Embassy in Riyadh, Tom developed a particular interest in the UK nuclear deterrent, overseeing the team in the Ministry of Defence which was responsible for the 2006 Nuclear Deterrent White Paper and chairing the Department’s Defence Nuclear Executive Board from 2011 to 2014. A three year spell as the Private Secretary to the late Sir Michael Quinlan, when he was the Department’s Permanent Under Secretary had provided a firm foundation for this aspect of Tom’s career.
Between 2007 and 2009, Tom was Principal Private Secretary to Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, from whom Tom learnt most of what he knows about statesmanship and politics. This period included the 1998 Strategic Defence Review and the Kosovo Conflict. He also acquired an interest in defence reform which he subsequently pursued in the Acquisition Organisation Review, which he led in 2005/06, and Defence Streamlining, which he implemented in 2007/08.
Two years as a Voluntary Service Overseas teacher in Egypt in the 1970s and two years in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s gave Tom an abiding interest in the Arab World, which he continues to draw on in his capacity as Chief of the Saudi Armed Forces project, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.