Professor Harsh V. Pant The Narendra Modi government will complete two years in office this month. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government came to power in May 2014, it has been dominated by the powerful personality of its Prime Minister. Today, Mr Modi remains India’s most popular politician. He has benefited in many… Read More Two Years of Modi Government in India
PROFESSOR WYN BOWEN In the run up to the July 2016 NATO Summit in Warsaw, the British and Polish Embassies in Copenhagen, hosted by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organised a one-day conference on ‘Transforming NATO in an Unpredictable Security Environment’. At the event in March I gave a talk on a topic related… Read More NATO and the challenges of implementing effective deterrence vis-à-vis Russia
Professor Matthew Uttley & Dr. Benedict Wilkinson In one of his more exasperated moments, Sherlock Holmes turns to his long-term companion, Dr. Watson and chides him for his impatience, saying ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.’ Strong words they may be, but wise ones… Read More A Capital Mistake: Evidence and Defence in the Brexit Debates
This is the first in a series of occasional posts from scholars outside of the Defence Studies Department. If you would be interested to contribute to this series please contact the editors: Dr Amir Kamel and Dr David Morgan-Owen. Prof. Jeremy Black Jeremy Black studied at studied at Queens’ College Cambridge, St John’s College Oxford, and Merton… Read More Air Power: Strength and Weaknesses
Dr Ian Speller and Dr Christopher Tuck Next month, our multi-authored volume Understanding Modern Warfare will be published in its second edition by Cambridge University Press. Understanding Modern Warfare is a book explicitly about modern warfare. There are many excellent existing works on war generally: this volume is concerned instead with the employment of organised… Read More Understanding Modern Warfare
By DR AMIR M KAMEL Following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in January 2016, involving Iran and the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany, on behalf of the international community), there has been an increased potential for a new era of Iranian cooperation when it comes to… Read More Iran and Regional Security
By DR HUW J. DAVIES The annual meeting of any large professional body or learned society usually produces a wide-range of panels and papers, to which it is impossible to attend all, and between which there is usually a limited relationship. They are an opportunity for old and new colleagues from across the… Read More Conference Report: Society of Military History Annual Meeting, Ottawa, April 2016
DR DAVID MORGAN-OWEN At shortly after 4am on the morning of April 25th 1916 the residents of Lowestoft were awakened by the thunder of naval gunfire. Heavy caliber shells began to crash into the town in a whirlwind bombardment which lasted around ten minutes. Half an hour later, for the second time in the War, the… Read More Strategy, Operations and Perception: The Coastal Bombardments of 1916
ANNA BRINKMAN International agreements are often touted as great achievements of a nation’s foreign policy and are usually accompanied by great fanfare. Peace treaties, meant to offer some form of conflict resolution, and treaties which govern the conduct of neutral nations during times of war are no exception. Once the fanfare has subsided, however, there… Read More “The Room Where it Happens” Enforcing Neutrality in the West Indies during the American War of Independence
By DR AMIR M KAMEL At the 2016 International Studies Association (ISA) conference, I presented a paper arguing that the EU’s peace-through-trade policy failed in the cases of Iraq, Iran and Libya as it did not take into account the context in which it was being implemented, i.e. the barriers to peace. The paper draws from… Read More WHY THE EU’S FOREIGN POLICY FAILS TO BREAK DOWN BARRIERS TO PEACE
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