GERAINT HUGHES The 4th March 1978 was a pivotal day in one of the most obscure decisive battles in military history. The battle of Jijiga was the climax of an eight month war between Ethiopia and Somalia, provoked by the latter’s territorial claim on the province of Ogaden, and it was a crushing victory for the… Read More THE BATTLE FOR THE HORN OF AFRICA: A RETROSPECTIVE
DR CHRIS TRIPODI Oddly, and in contrast to my colleagues, there’ll be relatively little reading happening for me this summer. Largely because the summer recess that I do get (i.e. August) will be spent writing. Consequently, most of my summer reading has already been done. And very illuminating it has been, I must say. Research… Read More DSD Summer Reading #6
DR GERAINT HUGHES In August the Round Table, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, will publish a special edition on ‘The Commonwealth and Peacekeeping’, produced to mark over sixty years of peacekeeping operations since the establishment of UNEF after the 1956 Suez Crisis. This edition will contain articles on Gender and Peacekeeping, on Oceania’s role… Read More A FORGOTTEN INTERVENTION: OPERATION HYPERION AND BRITISH PEACEKEEPERS IN LEBANON, 1982-1984.
The King’s College Research Centre for the History of Conflict will be hosting a symposium, ‘Armed Forces and the Cold War: Operations and Legacies’, at the JSCSC in the Tedder Lecture Theatre on 13th July 2016. All staff and students are warmly invited to attend. DR GERAINT HUGHES In the autumn of 1972 Shah Reza… Read More All the Shah’s Men: The Imperial Iranian Brigade Group in the Dhofar War
DR GERAINT HUGHES Military manuals do not often attract readers from outside of the profession of arms, and the publication of the US Army/US Marine Corps’ manual on counter-insurgency (FM3/24) by the University of Chicago Press ten years ago was one of those rare occasions where military doctrine gained an audience beyond the armed forces. FM3/24… Read More Uncertain COINage
DR KATE UTTING In the past information, influence or non-kinetic psychological aspects of conflict had a supporting function to the physical, kinetic aspects; today it is seen as central. Militaries have done ‘influence’ for years, but there is a dominant view that in the current information environment all actions, deeds and words are scrutinised in… Read More Palestine 1945-48: the Information Campaign and the Limits of Influence
DR CHRISTINA GOULTER As Dr Huw Davies suggested in this post, how successfully the British armed forces incorporate their recent experience of counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq into doctrine and planning is likely to shape future perceptions of those campaigns. The fight against the Taliban has not ended, even for the West, because some advisory work by… Read More COUNTER-INSURGENCY: A QUESTION OF VICTORY
DR GERAINT HUGHES In a previous post I commented on the increasing importance of militias in internal conflicts, particular with both the Syrian civil war and the conflict in Iraq against so-called Islamic State. Scholars of Iraqi history can indeed draw parallels between the Kurdish peshmerga’s relevance to the US-led Coalition war effort and the… Read More ‘COUP-PROOFING’, INSURGENCIES AND MILITIAS.
by Lt Col EDWARD T. NEVGLOSKI, USMC In the 50 years since US Marines first landed at Da Nang on the morning of 8 March 1965, the history of their involvement in the Vietnam War has been one of the most misunderstood and sometimes contentious topics in modern military history. In most cases historians assert… Read More Reconsidering US Marine Corps Involvement in the Vietnam War
This is the fifth of several posts running on Defence-in-Depth arising out of the Military Learning and Innovation Roundtable held at the Joint Services Command and Staff College on Wednesday 17 June 2015. The roundtable explored the various ways in which armed forces have learned, adapted, and innovated in times of war and peace, austerity, and pressure… Read More Military Innovation Studies: Well-Set for the Future?
Defence-In-Depth 