by DR JONATHAN FENNELL ‘What are they going to do’, said one young man protesting in Hong Kong this week, ‘they can’t kill us all’. While one may admire the confidence and determination of youth, two points spring to mind. First, the Chinese authorities certainly could have killed the thousands of protestors massed in downtown Hong… Read More ‘They can’t kill us all’: Morale and the Study of Strategy
by DR AMIR M. KAMEL The Islamic State’s (IS) rise to being at the forefront of global security concerns has prompted an increasingly united international response. The current cocktail coalition, which includes the US, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, among others, have agreed on the need to respond militarily to the terrorist threat. Additionally, Russia… Read More (Non)Western responses to Islamic Terrorism
by BILL PARK The 10th June fall of Mosul to the irregular forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), now calling itself the ‘Islamic State’, accompanied as it was by the total collapse of the lavishly equipped and US-trained Iraqi army, presented both threat and opportunity to the Kurdistan Regional Government… Read More The war against the Islamic State and the plight of Iraqi Kurdistan
by DR GERAINT HUGHES On 19 August the militants of the Islamic State (IS) released a video showing the beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, who had been captured in Syria two years previously. Since their offensive into Northern Iraq in June 2014 IS has committed shocking atrocities against captured Iraqi soldiers and civilians.… Read More FROM ‘CALLAN’ TO ‘JIHADI JOHN’
by DR ANDREW STEWART Just before 9 a.m. on 3 September 1939 the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, had arrived at the Foreign Ministry to deliver an ultimatum. This final opportunity for Germany to withdraw its military forces from neighbouring Poland, which had been attacked and invaded on 1 September, was delivered to… Read More The Twentieth Century’s Second European War
Welcome to Defence-in-Depth, the research blog of the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, offering in-depth contemporary and historical analysis of the issues behind defence. The Defence Studies Department is based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College of the UK Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. It is an interdisciplinary department comprising a mixture… Read More Welcome to Defence-In-Depth
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