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?

Dr Christopher Kinsey, Defence Studies Department, & Ronald Ti, PhD candidate, Wars Studies Department, King’s College London Cargo cults exist to this day in the South-West Pacific. They arose following World War Two after vast quantities of materiel were left by the departing Allied forces. The belief sprang up that more of this vast wealth… Read More The UK Integrated Review and security sector innovation: a ‘Cargo Cult’?

Dr Christian Tripodi, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London Recent events in Afghanistan brings to the fore some sobering considerations for Western policymakers. From whether the move will be interpreted by the West’s strategic adversaries as a display of weakness rather than ruthlessness; the extent that the new Taliban regime may now play host to… Read More The Integrated Review, failing states, and why persistent problems persist

Christopher Kinsey, Defence Studies Department, and Bob Parr, PhD student at King’s College London and a 25-year veteran of UK Special Forces Images of appalling violence and humanitarian distress surrounding the recently completed crisis evacuations from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul have brought into sharp relief the failure of the Afghan Armed Forces to… Read More Governments and Mercenaries: A New Era of Cooperation after Afghanistan?