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?
This is the second post in a series of posts to come out of the ‘Regional Study Day: The Middle East’, held at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom on 13 May 2015. This study day was organized by the Defence Culture and Languages Centre (DCLC) and the Defence Studies Department’s Regional Security Research… Read More Saudi Arabia and Its Challenges
by DR KENNETH PAYNE Behavioural economics is all the rage these days. Thanks in large part to the Nobel prize winning research of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, economics has discovered some powerful insights about how humans really behave when it comes to making life choices. That is really behave, as opposed to the dominant approach hitherto, which was to assume… Read More Behavioural Strategy: Exploring the Psychology of Strategy
In a recent post, Dr Nick Lloyd described 1915 as the ‘forgotten year‘ of the First World War. To correct this, in occasional posts throughout 2015 members of the First World War Research Group based in the Defence Studies Department will examine unknown or forgotten aspects of the war during 1915. by Dr IAN GOODERSON… Read More Towards Systematic Bombing: The Royal Flying Corps and Experience on the Western Front, 1915
by Dr ROD THORNTON There has been much sabre-rattling by Moscow recently. Russian military activity has increased markedly since the Maidan events in Ukraine in early 2014. Russian troops initially massed on Ukraine’s borders in what was ostensibly a scheduled military exercise, but which was also clearly a means of applying psychological pressure on Kiev.… Read More ‘The Russians are coming!’ Well, not just yet…
by Dr GERAINT HUGHES My last post on Defence-in-Depth described a battlefield tour of Oman, studying the Dhofar conflict waged between insurgents and the Sultanate from the mid-1960s to late 1975. Thanks to the declassification of British government archives under the 30 Year Rule we now have greater knowledge of the covert operations conducted during… Read More The Secret War in South Yemen, 1972-75
In a recent post, Dr Nick Lloyd described 1915 as the ‘forgotten year‘ of the First World War. To correct this, in occasional posts throughout 2015 members of the First World War Research Group based in the Defence Studies Department will examine unknown or forgotten aspects of the war during 1915. by Dr DAVID MORGAN-OWEN… Read More The Turning Point of the First World War, 1915
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
Defence-In-Depth 