Dr Rod Thornton, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Is Vladimir Putin safe in his position as president of Russia? It seems obvious that the invasion is not going to plan; can this lead to his removal?  In but one example of a plan that is going definitively awry, the accidental release (and then removal)… Read More What are the chances of a “palace coup” in Moscow?

Dr Rod Thornton and Dr Marina Miron, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London It seems that the Putin’s war in Ukraine was supposed to last just two days. The fact that it is still dragging on has created, in just the last few days, increasing opposition within Russia. In terms of examining this opposition and… Read More What happens when the Russians’ “two-day” war drags on?

Andrew Corbett, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London On 7 February 2020, French President Macron made a speech at the Ecole De Guerre on French deterrence strategy.  This continued a tradition started by President de Gaulle in 1959 and sustained by every incoming French president since.  Every French president makes a keynote speech on nuclear deterrence and its… Read More ‘Supreme emergency’: How Britain lives with the bomb

Deborah Sanders, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London  The decision by President Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine marks an effective return to a Cold War relationship with Russia. Notwithstanding the recent fashion for hybrid warfare, in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and in terms of the wider regional political and strategic ramifications,… Read More Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Maritime implications in the Black Sea

Mark Hilborne (Defence Studies Department, King’s College London), Pawel Bernat (Military University of Aviation, Dęblin, Poland) and Graeme P. Herd (George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies) This piece is a summary of the discussion at the latest workshop of the current series of online Great Power Competition Seminar Series (GPCSS) webinars held on… Read More The Sino-Russian military nexus in outer space: strategic implications?

Christopher Kinsey, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London and Col. Christopher Mayer (U.S. Army Retd) Changes to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers: legitimising mercenary-like activity and organisational failure. Ever since the French Revolution and the rise of the levée en masse, the role of mercenaries in war has been delegitimised. The mercenary… Read More A step too far: how the ICoCA actions could unintentionally help to privatise war (Part Two)

Christopher Kinsey, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London and Col. Christopher Mayer (U.S. Army Retd) This is the first of a two-part piece. In December 2021, the International Code of Conduct Association for Private Security Providers (ICoCA) voted to change the definition of security services, significantly expanding their scope and covering their entry into roles that, arguably,… Read More A step too far: how the ICoCA actions could unintentionally help to privatise war (Part One)

Assala Khettach, Assistant Editor of Insight, a Turkish journal on politics and international affairs, and Christopher Kinsey, Reader, Defence Studies Department. King’s College London Ever since the early 1960s, Africa has been plagued by mercenaries. They started to apply their trade, first in the Congo, then later in Nigeria, Angola, Libya and other countries where… Read More Local Libyan Perceptions of Russia’s Wagner Corporation 

Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Much has been made of last month’s destruction by Russia of one of its defunct Soviet-era satellites (Kosmos 1408) in a test-firing of a Nudol direct-ascent anti-satellite missile (DA-ASAT). The possibility of the debris produced by this strike hitting the International Space Station (ISS)… Read More Russian space weapons: Testing the Nudol and Putin’s political warfare agenda

Dr Kevin Blachford, Defence Studies Department. King’s College London The “Western way of war” (TWOW) is a concept that was most notably defined by the historian Victor Davis Hanson who viewed the Ancient Greeks and their form of decisive infantry battle as the wellspring of a unique Western tradition. It is an ideal of well… Read More Which Greeks in the Western Way of War?