DR CLARE MAKEPEACE Clare is an historian, writer, lecturer and consultant in the cultural history of the First and Second World Wars. Her debut book Captives of War. British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War was published in 2017, and she holds the position of Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. You can… Read More Civil Resettlement Units – a lesson from the past
DR KEN PAYNE Know yourself, know your enemy, and in 100 battles you’ll never be defeated. It’s the only bit of Sun Tzu everyone remembers, and that’s good news for me, because the Master and I are of one mind. We’re both thinking about emotional intelligence (EI) and its role in war. A note for… Read More EI, meet IR: the emotionally attuned strategist
DR CHRISTOPHER SIMS Christopher Sims is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point. The muscular force posture articulated in the United States 2017National Security Strategy emphasizes a return to symmetrical military confrontation. Some important historical clues as to the future trajectory and priorities involved in facing a return to great power rivalry can be found… Read More The Misdirection of Military Keynesianism
DR SIMON MOODY The British Army was remarkably quick in getting to grips with the conceptual challenges posed by the arrival of nuclear weapons, with a rich body of theoretical literature emerging in service journals during the 1950s. The basic tactical problem identified was that mass would suffer most on a nuclear battlefield – nuclear… Read More Prophets of Nuclear Land Combat
PROF JOSHUA R. SHIFRINSON Josh Shifrinson is an Assistant Professor of International Relations with the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts was published with Cornell University Press in 2018 (a copy can be ordered here or here). Additional research has appeared in International Security, the Journal of Strategic… Read More Rising States, Declining States, and the Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations
by Dr Robert T. Foley The First World War came to an ignominious end for Imperial Germany. On 6 November, Matthais Erzberger, a Centerist politician, was appointed to the commission to negotiate an armistice with the Western allies. Germany’s strategic and internal political situation was dire, as its allies sued for peace and mutiny and… Read More Reflections on the First World War: The German Perspective
PROF PATRICK PORTER Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. He is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London. He researches the interaction of power and ideas in the making of foreign and defence policy in the U.S. and U.K, and in shaping their… Read More Iraq and the Limits of Power
DR ANDREW TAYLOR November 11this a significant day in the calendars of the British and Commonwealth states. It is principally Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of the First World War and reflecting upon the great cost in human life. It is also a significant date for scholars of maritime strategy. November 11th1992 was the date… Read More Gretton: Reflecting on his Enduring Lesson about Sea Control
Review of Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics, Nathan K. Finney and Tyrell O. Mayfield (eds.) Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018. DR DEANE-PETER BAKER Deane Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre… Read More Trust Me, I’m a Military Professional
DR CHRIS TUCK The concepts of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ are fundamental to effective strategy; winning, after all, is surely one of the key objectives of having a strategy for an armed conflict. In addition, reaching some accurate consensus on whether we are winning or losing provides one of the crucial steps for understanding if our… Read More Gender, Victory, and Defeat
