PROF PATRICK PORTER Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. He is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London. He researches the interaction of power and ideas in the making of foreign and defence policy in the U.S. and U.K, and in shaping their… Read More Iraq and the Limits of Power
DR ANDREW TAYLOR November 11this a significant day in the calendars of the British and Commonwealth states. It is principally Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of the First World War and reflecting upon the great cost in human life. It is also a significant date for scholars of maritime strategy. November 11th1992 was the date… Read More Gretton: Reflecting on his Enduring Lesson about Sea Control
Review of Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics, Nathan K. Finney and Tyrell O. Mayfield (eds.) Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018. DR DEANE-PETER BAKER Deane Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre… Read More Trust Me, I’m a Military Professional
DR CHRIS TUCK The concepts of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ are fundamental to effective strategy; winning, after all, is surely one of the key objectives of having a strategy for an armed conflict. In addition, reaching some accurate consensus on whether we are winning or losing provides one of the crucial steps for understanding if our… Read More Gender, Victory, and Defeat
DR DEANE-PETER BAKER Deane Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Military Ethics at Kings College London. He is a panelist on the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (IPRAW), however his comments here… Read More Autonomous Weapons and the Epistemology of Targeting
My reading this summer included Edward Burke’s recent book on the British Army in Northern Ireland, An Army of Tribes, which has already been discussed by the author in a Defence in Depth post. Burke provides a detailed examination of two battalions committed to Operation Banner (the 1st Battalion the Scots Guards, and the 1st… Read More DSD Summer Reading #8
CHIARA LIBISELLER A few new concepts have come to dominate the more recent Western discourses on security and defence, both in the academic and practitioners’ sectors; these concepts include ‘hybrid war’, ‘cyber war’, ‘narratives’ and ‘resilience’.[i] They are invoked to help us understand, explain and react to threats that Europe and the United States are… Read More Conference Report: 2018 Vienna Conference on Strategy
DR RICHARD DUNLEY Richard Dunley is a Lecturer in History at UNSW, Canberra and has recently published Britain and the Mine, 1900-1915: Strategy, Culture and International Law with Palgrave Macmillan. Why do military organisations develop and adopt some technologies with ease, whilst others face deep institutional opposition? This is a hugely important question in an… Read More Infernal Machines: the Royal Navy and the asymmetric challenge of mine warfare
DR GERAINT HUGHES On the night of the 20th-21st August 1968, Soviet paratroopers and spetsnaz soldiers seized Ruzyne airport outside Prague, proceeding subsequently to take over key points in the Czechoslovak capital. The following day, 22 Soviet Army divisions – augmented by contingents from four other ‘fraternal’ Warsaw Pact states (Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic,… Read More The End of the Prague Spring – Fifty Years On
DR BEN KIENZLE Finally: it’s summer. The time of skimming books and speed reading has come to an end (albeit only for a short time). Summer also offers the opportunity to look beyond the narrow confines of one’s own research niche. It’s time to ‘think big’! As part of the annual course at RCDS, members… Read More DSD Summer Reading #7
Defence-In-Depth 