DR KEN PAYNE I’m writing a new book, provisionally titled Sex and Statecraft.My research question: is there something particularly ‘male’ about modern international politics—especially in matters of war and diplomacy? I think there is, and that we can profitably learn something about it from evolutionary psychology, especially from theories of sexual selection. Why are most… Read More Sex and the Statesman
MATT LEWIS What is violence? An instrumental means to an end? Or the end itself? Is violence the visceral embodiment of a long held grievance, rather than a tool to change the aggrieving behaviour? Earlier this month, Childish Gambino’s ‘This is America’ presented a gut-wrenching visualisation of randomised and anonymised violence in urban America: one… Read More Channelling Fanon: What Childish Gambino tells us about Violence and Urban Space
DR BLEDDYN E. BOWEN Bleddyn Bowen is a Lecturer in International Relations and expert in space warfare, space policy, and the politics of outer space at the School of History, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He was published in several academic journals, contributed op-eds to numerous professional outelts including the LSE’s… Read More Better the devil you know? Galileo, Brexit, and British defence space strategy
DR EDWARD BURKE Dr Burke is Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Nottingham. ‘An Army of Tribes: British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland’ is published in paperback by Liverpool University Press, and is available here. Today’s officers in the British Army who served in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner… Read More ‘Counter-Insurgency Against Kith and Kin’: British Army Combat and Cohesion in Northern Ireland
During the four year centenary of the First World War, Defence-in-Depth has run a series of posts exploring various aspects of the conflict and the centenary itself. We’ll summarise the posts relating to commemoration and the centenary separately, but for now we’ve written a survey of some of our most popular entries on the conduct… Read More The First World War on Defence in Depth, 2014-18
DR ROD THORNTON, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London The Russian military appears to be in Syria very much for the long haul. Indeed, the adjective ‘permanent’ [postoyannyi] has been applied by senior Russian political and military figures to describe both the presence of the Russian forces on land in Syria and the Russian Navy’s… Read More The Russian military’s ‘permanent’ commitment in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean
DR AMIR M. KAMEL This post is based on an aspect of a paper presented on a roundtable titled Global Power Aspirations? Assessing the European Union’s (EU) Relations with Regional and Great Powers in the Shadow of BREXIT at the 2018 International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention from April 4-7, 2018. The roundtable brought together… Read More EU-Iran Ties in the Shadow of BREXIT
DR TIM BENBOW Warning: contains spoilers for the film ‘Dunkirk’, and unashamedly subjective opinions on several other films… Historians are, I understand, notorious for offering their opinions (sought or otherwise) on the accuracy of films or television shows that touch on real events. Astonishingly, these informed views are not always welcomed by the people watching… Read More History on Film: Entertainment or Accuracy?
BEN KIENZLE is a Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London In recent months, the European Union Committee of the House of Lords has published its report on sanctions after Brexit (followed two months later by an official government response). The report highlights quite rightly that ‘the most effective sanctions regimes are designed and… Read More UK Sanction Policies after Brexit: A Strategic Perspective
DR ALEX GOULD & DR MATTHEW FORD The need to standardise equipment, weapons and doctrine in NATO was recognized as a strategic imperative from the onset of the Cold War. As Eliot Cohen noted in an article published in Foreign Policy in 1978, ‘non-standardised armies require unique and separate supply lines, making wide-ranging manoeuvres difficult…neighbouring troops… Read More Military identities, conventional capability and the politics of NATO standardisation at the beginning of the Second Cold War, 1970-1980
