VIPUL DUTTA The Great War inhabits an elusive space in India today. Not entirely forgotten nor actively remembered, it oscillates between memory and oblivion. However, the buzz surrounding the Centenary celebrations in India raised some important questions about how we remember our past and forget it at the same time. The First World War is… Read More India and the First World War
by Dr. HELEN McCARTNEY A new survey by Ipsos MORI and King’s College London has provided a fascinating insight into the way publics view their armed forces. The international survey was conducted in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, France, and the US and compared public beliefs about the armed forces with reality. The results for Britain… Read More Public Views of the Armed Forces in Britain: Misperceptions and Implications in 2015
by DR HUW J. DAVIES The repercussions of the Battle of Waterloo were many and varied. Principally, it was a victory for the peace treaty obtained at Vienna and secured the balance of power in Europe. It also gave Viscount Castlereagh the opportunity to propose the Concert of Europe, on which I have written about… Read More “Nothing so Melancholy…” The Repercussions of Waterloo
by DR HUW J. DAVIES 200 years ago, almost to the hour, the battle of Waterloo commenced. The dramatic final showdown of 22 years of war, Waterloo had all the makings of a swashbuckling drama. It was the only occasion when Wellington and Napoleon encountered each other. Having escaped from the tiny Mediterranean island of… Read More Why was Waterloo important?
DR TIM BENBOW The Battle of Waterloo is a military victory well worth commemorating, even celebrating. The brilliant generalship of the Duke of Wellington and the fighting skill of his coalition army (with its German, Belgian and Dutch as well as British troops) together with their Prussian allies achieved a famous victory. It deserves its… Read More The Battle of Waterloo and its strategic context
by Dr HUW J. DAVIES ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me’. With these words, uttered in an anteroom at a ball famously hosted by the Duchess of Richmond three days before Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, commanding an allied army composed of Dutch, Belgian, German, and British… Read More The Road to Waterloo
BLEDDYN BOWEN The politics of war and peace in space is an overlooked field. Space is a quiet and lonely place in war studies – despite space systems performing critical infrastructure roles in war, peace, politics, economics, and nuclear stability. In the mid-1990s John Sheldon and Colin Gray bemoaned the fact that there is no… Read More Clausewitz in Orbit: Spacepower Theory and Strategic Education
DR CHRIS TRIPODI In an era of supposedly unparalleled challenge and complexity (ignoring for one moment the fact that it isn’t in any way unparalleled), ‘Understanding’ appears to be the current doctrinal plat du jour for Britain’s armed forces. Particularly so for the Army, that service which by and large interacts most closely and personally… Read More The Doctrine of ‘Understanding’ and the Illusion of Control
DR TRACEY GERMAN Events in Ukraine are likely to transform the presence and role of Western institutions such as NATO and the EU across the post-Soviet area. The crisis has starkly revealed the limits of their influence within Russia’s ‘zone of privileged interest’, as well as the lack of internal unity within these organisations vis-à-vis… Read More Countering Russia? Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic Choice
by VICTORIA SYME-TAYLOR On 2/3 May, a symposium on “Art and Conflict” was held at Wolfson College, Oxford. This was an interdisciplinary event that included artists, anthropologists, forensic scientists and literary, military, and cultural historians. The event was co-organised by the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, Cranfield Forensic Institute at Cranfield University, The School… Read More Conference Report: Can Art Heal the Societal Impact of Conflict?
Defence-In-Depth 