Sir Paul Newton spent 38 years in the Army before accepting a post as Professor of Strategy at the University of Exeter in 2012. Educated at Sandhurst and later at Camberley and then Cambridge University, he completed 8 operational tours in Northern Ireland (including Command of 2nd Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (2PWRR) and Commander 8 Infantry Brigade (for which he was awarded a CBE) and two tours in Baghdad.
After graduating from the Joint Higher Command and Staff Course (1999), was seconded to the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) to write the plan for the Kosovo operation. Whilst exercising command over Brunei Garrison, he helped to plan and deploy the UK force to East Timor. Shortly after he went to Sierra Leone to complete the UK strategic assessment.
In 2003 he became the Chief of Defence Staff’s Liaison Officer to the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs in Washington, working on Iraq. Deploying to Baghdad as the Deputy, Strategic Planning in HQ Multi-National Force Iraq, he was awarded the US Legion of Merit. In January 2005 he took over the PJHQ Intelligence Division. Promoted to Major General in February 2006, he briefly served at the Royal College of Defence Studies as Army Director before returning to Baghdad to lead the Coalition reconciliation effort heading a new Force Strategic Engagement Cell, for which he was awarded a Legion of Merit, First Oak Leaf Cluster. He later ran the MOD Development, 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.
Awarded a KBE in 2012, upon leaving the Army Paul founded and became first Director of the Strategy and Security Institute (SSI), working on contemporary global security issues through innovative teaching, policy-facing research and field-based consultancy. He has established ‘Paul Newton Strategic Consultancy’ and is strategic advisor to a FTSE 100 international service delivery and engineering company. Recently appointed a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, he has co-edited and contributed to ‘After the Spring: Prospects for the Arab World in 2013, UNA-UK’, published in December 2012 and has written a chapter entitled ‘Adapt or Fail: The Challenge for the Armed Forces after Blair’s Wars’ for Professor Sir Hew Strachan's book, 'Blair’s Wars' published in June 2013. Sir Paul Newton continues to serve in various honorary appointments, including as Colonel Commandant of the three infantry regiments that comprise the Queen's Division.