At the beginning of 2015, defence and security planners were reflecting on a preceding year that added extra crises to an already increasingly complex and fractured global security environment. European security faced its most significant challenge since the end of the Cold War with Russia's annexation of Crimea and fomenting of instability in eastern Ukraine. In the Middle East, meanwhile, rapid advances by ISIS in Syria and Iraq threatened the Iraqi state and led to greater military extroversion by regional states. The year ended with the US again committing to deploy troops on a training mission to Iraq; at the same time it was also leading a broad multinational coalition in offensive operations against ISIS.
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