by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY In a recent post, I examined the growing availability of governmental archival sources covering the First World War. In this, I want to look at the increasing number of official histories of the war that are becoming available online. In this post, I will concentrate on texts covering land operations.… Read More Digital First World War Resources: Online Official Histories — The War on Land
This is the fourth in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. An audio recording of this roundtable can be listen to or downloaded from the Defence Studies Department’s SoundCloud page. by… Read More The Kurds as Proxies against the Islamic State
This is a response to a previous Defence-in-Depth post by Dr Chris Tuck entitled “Lidl Heart: Cut Price Strategy and the Perils of Influence”. by EWAN LAWSON Aside from having the cleverest title of a Defence-in-Depth blog so far, Lidl Heart: Cut Price Strategy and the Perils of Influence says much about the challenge of being… Read More ‘Lidl Heart II’: Thinking about the challenges of Influence
This is the third in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. Subsequent posts will come out on Wednesdays and will cover topics such as the responses by the Kurds, Turkey, and… Read More Migrating to the Land of Jihad: Why European Muslims fight in Syria
by DR HUW J. DAVIES On Friday afternoon, I was asked if I would participate in a discussion on the BBC News Channel on ‘how history will view the recent campaign in Afghanistan’. I’m usually asked to participate in interviews that are way outside my comfort zone. This, whilst not entirely fitting within it, was… Read More Was it worth it? How History will view the British Campaign in Afghanistan
This is the second in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. Subsequent posts will come out on Wednesdays and will cover topics such as the motivations for joining IS and the… Read More The Political, Religious, and Everyday Allure of Islamic State’s Utopianism
by Dr DAVID ROBERTS On 23 January 2015, King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud died and his half-brother, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, in a smooth transition, became king. This was the sixth succession in Saudi Arabia since it formally became ‘Saudi’ Arabia in 1932 under King Abdul-Aziz al-Saud (d.1953). So far, each Saudi ruler has been… Read More Grappling with the Implications of Saudi Arabia’s Transition
This is the first in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Rise of the Islamic State (IS): Ideology, Strategy, and Implications’ roundtable organized by Regional Security Research Centre on 4 February 2015. Subsequent posts will come out on Wednesdays and will cover topics such as the motivations for joining IS and the… Read More CALIPHATE, STATEHOOD, AND GOVERNANCE IN ISLAMIC POLITICAL THINKING: HISTORICAL ROOTS, CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
This is the fifth in a series of posts from members of the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research Centre, focusing on Russia and the implications of its increasingly assertive posture on the international stage. This post builds on a previous post to examine the prospects for conventional arms control in the wake of the… Read More Conventional Arms Control After Ukraine
Defence-In-Depth 